BELONGING WITHOUT BORDERS: SHIFTING LEGAL THRESHOLDS IN REFUGEE PROTECTION, TERRITORIAL ASYLUM, AND THE RIGHTS OF STATELESS PERSONS

International refugee law, once conceived as a relatively contained set of obligations addressed to the aftermath of the Second World War, has grown into a sprawling normative architecture that must now contend with climate-driven displacement, digitised persecution, statelessness on an industrial scale, and the resurgence of extraterritorial push-back practices by states increasingly hostile to asylum. This article examines the evolving legal thresholds that determine who qualify for protection under international law, with particular attention to three interlocking areas: the expansion and judicial elaboration of the refugee definition in the 1951 Refugee Convention, the contested doctrine of territorial asylum and its relationship to the principle of non-refoulement, and the chronic under-protection of stateless persons under both the 1954 and 1961 Statelessness Conventions. The article identifies three principal lacunae: the exclusion of environmentally displaced persons from the refugee definition, the absence of a binding international instrument on territorial asylum, and the persistent gap between the formal obligations of the statelessness conventions and their practical enforcement. It concludes with proposals directed at courts, treaty bodies, and legislatures for a more coherent and principled approach to the protection of the forcibly displaced.