爭議性公民身份與無國籍：討論海外台灣人與在台藏人流亡者的公民身份問題

Contested Citizenship and Statelessness in Question: An Analysis of Cases of Overseas Taiwanese People and Tibetan Exiles in Taiwan

長年以來，海外台灣人與流亡的西藏／圖博人因其具爭議性的公民身份而持續面臨認同上的困難。公民權／公民身份（citizenship）是一種含有法社會學意涵的複合性身分地位，不僅代表人民與國家之間的成員關係，也如鄂蘭（Arendt, 1961）所言，是「擁有其他權利的權利」。儘管公民權是人們取得權利的重要依據，但公民權往往是流動而不穩定的，尤其是對於身處主權爭議情境中的人而言。
本研究運用法社會學方法，探討爭議性公民身份與不具完整公民資格者所面臨的處境，並以流亡西藏人在台灣的案例與海外台灣人為分析對象。台灣人在跨越國境時常遭遇公民資格遭否認的情況，而流亡的西藏／圖博人在移居台灣過程中則面對身分認定的混淆。兩者所處的公民身份具有不穩定與邊緣化特質，並可能因台灣與中國間的地緣政治以及族群自我認同的張力而陷入無國籍狀態。為呈現個體如何經驗並回應這類公民權爭議，我進行了半結構式訪談，對象為在旅行、移民與定居過程中，曾面對公民身份不確定性的個人。這些生命經驗故事展現了人們的能動性，以及他們如何透過法律動員在日常生活與社會運動中展現公民行動，回應其邊緣化的公民身份處境。
現有研究鮮少從台灣脈絡出發，思考無國籍議題，忽略了台灣國際地位長期不穩與緊張所帶來的影響，以及台灣內部的認同矛盾與實際無國籍者的真實生命經驗。我的研究填補此一缺口，並發現對某些人而言，無國籍身份反而具有生產性特質，使其得以迴避不被認同的法律身份，並保有爭取理想身份的可能性。因此，處於流動狀態的公民權不應僅被視為身份的缺失，而是一種來自於不完整公民資格之下，對多元身份訴求的具體展現。為更深入理解公民權的複雜性，本研究援引 Nancy Fraser 的正義理論，從承認（recognition）、再分配（redistribution）與代表性（representation）三個維度分析公民權的建構，並探討在當代民主政體下，公民權如何透過法律與國家權力，以及人民的實踐與回應，動態地被形塑與再造。

For years, overseas Taiwanese and Tibetan exiles have faced constant identity difficulties because of their contested citizenship. Citizenship is a complex status containing socio-legal meanings. It may denote a membership between people and the state and “the right to have other rights (Arendt, 1961).” Even though citizenship is crucial for people to access rights, it can also be fluid and unstable, especially for those related to contested sovereignty states. This socio-legal research analyses the contested citizenship and the predicaments faced by those without full citizenship, by focusing on the cases of the Tibetan exiles in Taiwan and the overseas Taiwanese. Taiwanese people face denial of citizenship randomly when travelling across national borders, while Tibetan exiles confront confusion about citizenship during the process of migration to Taiwan. The unstable and liminal character of citizenship may cause statelessness due to the geopolitical power between China and Taiwan and the conflicts of self-identification among these ethnic groups. To show how individuals experience and react to the debates on citizenship, I conducted semi-structured interviews with people who struggled with the uncertainty of citizenship in the process of travel, migration and settlement; the stories depict people’s agency and the legal mobilisation through which they exercise citizenship acts countering the challenges of liminal citizenship in social movements and daily lives.
Current research fails to reflect on the issue of statelessness in the context of the long-standing instability and tensions connected to Taiwan’s international standing, the controversies and conflicts within Taiwan itself, and the relevant concrete true-life experiences of actual stateless persons. My research fills this gap by highlighting the productive character of statelessness for people who are therefore able to eschew an undesired legal identity and to maintain the possibility of regaining the desired one. Thus, with the fluid citizenship status, statelessness may be used not just as an equivalent to lack of citizenship, but as an expression of people that is cultivated from the lack of full citizenship for demanding different identities. For a better understanding to the complexity of citizenship, I apply Nancy Fraser’s theories of justice to examine recognition, redistribution and representation of citizenship, and then discuss how these three dimensions are constructed in today’s democratic regime to dynamically formulate citizenship not only by the legal system or bureaucracy which presents state power, but also by the people.