Hasib Hourani

Born in 1996, in Awali, a suburb in Bahrain, Hasib Hourani came to Australia when he was little, with his parents and older sister. His mother is Lebanese and father was a stateless Palestinian, and so Hasib and his sister were also stateless. Their younger brother was born in Australia, receiving citizenship at birth, and the others became citizens a few years later. Hasib spent his childhood in the Gulf, returning to Australia to study at university.

According to Hasib, “there are so few images of what statelessness looks like. And so I do feel – it’s not even pride, but I do want to contribute to the breaking down of one homogenous stateless identity. Especially because, as someone who experienced statelessness, I’ve also moved around so much. And so I think that that’s an experience that – I meet other people who have similar circumstances to me, who are the same, where it’s like statelessness doesn’t necessarily dictate stagnance and not being able to move. It’s this constant motion. And that’s, at the moment, still very underrepresented.”