Name: Denny
Date of birth: 18 February 2010
Country of birth: The Netherlands
Nationality: unknown

Seven years old, Denny has grown up in asylum seekers’ centres. His mother Xiaojie was born in China but can’t prove it, as she was never registered by her parents on account of China’s one-child policy. Brought to the Netherlands by human traffickers at age 16, the Dutch immigration service rejected Xiaojie’s request for asylum. Ever since then she has been living here illegally, working at Chinese takeaways and forced into prostitution. Denny and his sister Angela were both born in the Netherlands, but they too are regarded as illegal immigrants and registered as ‘nationality unknown’. Because of the lack of documents, the Chinese embassy is neither willing nor able to confirm their origin and the Netherlands refuses to recognize them as being stateless.