Sara Silverstein

“A Place to Exist” considers the history of statelessness and rights from the perspective of people who were themselves stateless. Focusing on Eastern Europe, this project explores the work and voices of people who responded to the rise of nation-states and associated ways of thinking about rights with their own diverse ideas about identity, social organization, autonomy, and alliance, and who built mechanisms and institutions to protect their rights when a state would not do so. In pursuing their own rights, these stateless activists became involved in broader issues of democracy and universal rights. “A Place to Exist” aspires to shift the doctrinal understanding of rights and citizenship by incorporating the voices and activities of people who were excluded as they watched this system evolve. In recovering these overlooked perspectives, we discover creative visions for a broad scope of political possibility.

A Place to Exist considers the history of statelessness and belonging from the perspective of people who were themselves stateless. The project examines how stateless people conceptualized rights––and created mechanisms and institutions to protect them––during the period in which modern understandings of the state and of citizenship emerged, focusing on the 1910s–1960s in central and eastern Europe. 

This project explores healthcare provision for refugees following the Second World War, focusing on the part refugee doctors took in organizing relief. Through their work, they evolved new standards of individual and collective rights to health and healthcare, and re-envisioned the institutions to protect these rights beyond traditional state-based welfare. Contributing to the rehabilitation of both national and international programs, their concept of rights became underpinnings of emerging European institutions.