Germany’s Year-End 2023 Figures: Record 29,500 Recognized Stateless Persons
According to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), 29,500 stateless persons were registered in Germany by the end of 2023, a new record high, but with a nearly constant trend in 2023.. The UN Convention of 1954 defines a stateless person as one for whom no state recognizes them as a national. Their statelessness is usually determined during the application for a residence permit or asylum procedures. In the years 2005 to 2013, the number of recognized stateless persons in Germany fluctuated between 13,000 and 14,000. With the onset of strong migration in 2014, the number doubled to 29,500 by the end of 2022.
The number of stateless persons born in Germany has increased from around 3,600 to 5,000 since the end of 2014, while the number of those born abroad has more than doubled from 11,100 to 24,500 over the same period. Children of foreign parents born in Germany do not automatically receive German nationality unless at least one parent has lived in Germany for five years with an unlimited residence permit. More than half of the 29,500 stateless persons registered in Germany at the end of 2023 were male (57%, or 16,900), and a quarter were children and young people under the age of 18 (25%, or 7,300).
Statelessness can be ended through naturalization. The rising number of stateless individuals in Germany has slowed, partly due to increased naturalizations: The number of naturalizations of stateless individuals rose from around 1,400 in 2021, 2,600 in 2022, and then to 3,600 in 2023.
Almost half of the 29,500 recognized stateless persons registered in Germany at the end of 2023 were born in Syria (48%, or 14,100), followed by Germany (17%) and Lebanon (6%).
If a person’s nationality cannot be clearly confirmed, or their statelessness cannot be definitively established, they remain in a state of unclear nationality. According to the Ausländerzentralregister, the number of people in Germany living with unclear nationality remained nearly constant at the end of 2023, with 94,200 people, having only marginally decreased from 94,900 in the previous year, and thus remaining at a historically high level, as the statisticians pointed out.
The trend observed in the number of unclarified state of nationality parallels that of recognized statelessness, with a strong increase from 37,600 in 2014 to 94,200 by the end of 2023, a more than double increase.