Abstract

This article combines the critical citizenship literature with geographical conceptions of spatial politics to analyse contentions in Cyprus, a context where the basic notions of national community are embroiled in a frozen conflict. It looks at people who are not paradigmatic citizens and juxtaposes the legal dimensions and the lived realities of their citizenship. More specifically, we focus on three communities who are not part of the primary body politic: 1) Greek Cypriots who live in the ‘Turkish’ North; 2) Turkish Cypriots who live in the ‘Greek’ South; and 3) asylum-seekers who get stuck in the buffer zone between the two. The article draws on both legal scholarship and fieldwork methods. It makes a case for understanding legal realities through the interplay of law, political conflict dynamics, and people’s everyday practices. This interplay generates disparate consequences for different kinds of citizens and non-citizens in Cyprus. On the one hand, being ‘out of place’ generates precarities. The people concerned experience major rights violations and aspects of de facto statelessness. On the other hand, this same constellation generates political significance in the broader conflict landscape. This raises the political stakes and therefore the ability to attract state attention.