3 ms·
Uh, since "people not claimed by any country" is essentially an empty set, I don't see a reason to avoid using this term for it's more usual meaning of "people
by randallsquared 13y ago
Uh, since "people not claimed by any country" is essentially an empty set, I don't see a reason to avoid using this term for it's more usual meaning of "people not a citizen of the country with the law to which we're referring".
- nraynaud 13y ago1) alas it's a largely non-empty set, there are international treaties (one of them asking countris not to remove the last citizenship of someone) and UN branches dedicated to the problem. I think currently it happens mostly in eastern Europe and Africa. At the personal level, loosing some papers, having registries burned during a war and being from a not really liked ethnic background might make your nationality hard to prove. There are systems trying to give "quickly" a nationality to a refugee. It is seen as a legal emergency. 2) the word was actually created as the opposite of "subject" (of the ruler), to insist on the democratic side, not as the opposite of "foreigner".
- randallsquared 13y agoHm. I guess my objection to using "foreigner" is that it sounds slightly pejorative. "Non-citizen", by contrast, sounds only descriptive. But I'd be fine with figuring out a different mainly-descriptive word. :)