The Scars of the Erasure_web

Erasure_4a 10.1.11 20:29 Page 69THE ERASURE AS A TESTING GROUND FOR EUROPEAN MIGRATION POLICIES69has established that the “erasure from the register of permanent residents andrefusal or invalidation of Slovenian citizenship […] in some cases led to de factostatelessness, although formally and legally this should not have happened becauseevery citizen of the SFRY had also citizenship of one of the former Yugoslavrepublics. However, in practice this legal fiction did not work, particularly not if aperson was born in the Republic of Slovenia and was therefore not entered intothe register of births in another republic of the former Yugoslavia” (Dedić 2003,55–56). That this is true is corroborated by erased people’s testimonies, regardlessof their present place of residence. What happened was that they were enteredin the Slovenian register of births as citizens of one or another formerYugoslav republic, but the republics whose citizens they were supposed to bewere not officially notified of their birth or existence. Consequently, when Yugoslaviadissolved, they were not automatically included in the lists of citizensof the newly formed countries. “The problem of statelessness especially comesto light at the time when a country’s borders are changed and new countries areformed; stateless persons are the most vulnerable population group, becausewithout citizenship they are left without legal identity, they do not have citizenrights and freedoms and no diplomatic protection. Statelessness is a pheno -menon that is most frequent in those new countries where the ius sanguinisprinciple is the main criterion observed when granting citizenship, as in the successorstates to the former SFRY” (Dedić 2003, 38). Many post-socialist countriesthat were formed during the early 1990s granted citizenship on grounds ofethnic affiliation, in accordance with the ius sanguinis principle, which necessarilyproduced exclusion of population segments that did not fit into this newlyadopted approach to country formation.Some of the children who were made stateless, now already adults, laterhad (or still have!) unimaginable difficulties when they applied for citizenship,particularly when they came of age. As underage children, they could obtain citi -zenship only through their parents or other ancestors, but this was not alwayspossible. It is also necessary to emphasize that statelessness was a problemencountered not only by the erased children, but also by children whose parentshad temporary residence in Slovenia before it became an independent country,or had no registered residence at all, and children born in Slovenia to erasedparents (see the chapter by Neža Kogovšek in this volume). As in all other areas,there were certain deviations within this one as well, indicating a certain degreeof arbitrariness in population categorization. Here we have in mind primarilythose families in which one child was granted Slovenian citizenship automatically,while the other child was made stateless.Securing citizenship, and particularly personal documents, therefore appearsto have been the primary problem encountered by the erased people. Aswe have indicated several times earlier, the situations of erased people were extremelyheterogeneous, because they were co-shaped by their individual circumstances,by decisions they took or had to take, and various external factors. We