Christiana Bukalo on living stateless

Christiana Bukalo recently received spotlight on an article by Borderline. In the article titled “I just have no national identity – Christiana Bukalo on living stateless,” author Isabelle Roughol unfolds the Landecker Fellow’s stateless experience.

Discussed in an interview, Christiana talks about her journey as a stateless born in Munich, Germany in a West African family. Across the interview, she explains her non-national status: “At some point you just tie your self-worth to a system that is way bigger than you. And that strengthens this narrative of powerlessness, something that stateless people, if I can generalise, so often feel.”

The following are questions asked by Isabelle during the interview:

• How and when did you come to understand yourself as stateless?
• What are some of the other ways that people become stateless?
• How does it feel on a personal level, beyond the legal complexities, that no one nation is claiming you as one of her own?
• Is the nation-state something you want to be part of or do you want some kind of non-national identity to be recognised?

To read Christiana’s answers, find the full interview and article on this Borderline page.

Christiana is one of thirty Landecker Democracy Fellows. This fellowship, a collaboration between the Alfred Landecker Foundation and Humanity in Action, was created to strengthen a new generation of leaders whose approaches to political and social challenges can become catalysts for democratic placemaking and community building. Read more about the fellowship here.