Having recently emerged from its unenviable status as the runt of international law , the phenomenon of statelessness nonetheless eludes traditional international legal instruments and categories. Even as bodies such as the UNHCR focus on formal efforts to reduce statelessness, states adopt increasingly creative measures to obscure the ways in which they actively produce statelessness or indefinitely postpone its determination. The article that will be presented in this Globalcit session theorizes the different ways in which states manipulate temporality, spatiality, and documentary practices to manufacture de facto statelessness. It argues that these insidious forms of statelessness are unlikely to be resolved and might even proliferate as a response to the formalistic framework adopted in the UNHCR’s campaign to end statelessness by 2024. The article develops a vocabulary for international law to recognize and respond to this statelessness creep and highlights the potential and limits of international law’s ability to shape nationality and citizenship laws.