The politics of citizenship and security : the case of stateless and refugee communities in Indonesia during the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

This paper explores the interconnection between the politics of citizenship and security, specifically in the case of stateless and refugee communities in Indonesia during the Covid-19 pandemic. When the rights of individuals are dependent on the citizenship they hold as they do in our current state society system, a lack of a functioning citizenship becomes a fundamental problem to their human security. The current system we have regarding citizenship unintentionally undermines human rights as the politics of citizenship create a group of people who are citizens therefore with rights, and a group of people who are not citizens and therefore without rights. The key finding of this research is that the politics of citizenship was proven to provide grounds for exclusion in the security protection of refugees in Indonesia during the pandemic. The country is a non-signatory state of the international conventions and protocols on stateless persons and refugees, therefore under no obligation to provide stateless persons and refugees with the same set of rights and treatment as their own citizens. This suggests that as long as stateless persons and refugees still exist, the current system should be analyzed further to prevent the lack of a citizenship becoming a source of threat and grounds for exclusion of the protection of this vulnerable population.