Statelessness in Spain: Case analysis of stateless Romanian and Western Saharan children

In a context where the state is the sole provider of individual rights, not being member of any state brings along fundamental human rights violations. It has been studied in social sciences within the concept of statelessness. This thesis conducts a study on Spain which is evaluated very positively in Statelessness Index on the prevention and reduction of the problem. Nevertheless, the study demonstrates that there is actually no holistic resolutionary effort in Spain regarding statelessness. To clarify the ambuigity and its causes, stateless children from Romania and Western Sahara origin were chosen for a within case analysis. Statelessness is directly linked to the regulation of citizenship policies, which necessitates to analyze the citizenship policy-making process. The case comparison gives an opportunity to understand how and why these two policy processes related to the statelessness problem end up with different outcomes. The study shows that two vital components of the Multiple Stream Framework that we use to compare the policy change processes, which known as "Policy Entrepreneur" and "Policy Window" are effective in the formation of different policy outcomes. While in case of Romanian children, these two factors were effective and led the process to success, for Sahrawis the status quo persists due to the lack of people or institutions who will be the advocator of policy-change.