Sara Silverstein

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.