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Solidarity at the Margins: Arendt, Refugees, and the Inclusive Politics of World-Making

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Arendt on Freedom, Liberation, and Revolution

Part of the book series: Philosophers in Depth ((PID))

Abstract

Attention to the plight of refugees centers on how states should satisfy their legal obligations and comply with legal rules. We claim that the global refugee crisis necessitates focusing on political interaction between refugees and non-refugees, serving as a corrective to the depoliticization of the legalist approach. Hannah Arendt famously articulates a relational and interaction-oriented approach to political recognition with her notion of a “right to have rights.” We argue that Arendt’s notion can counter depoliticizing legalism, when supplemented by the theme of solidarity. After discussing how equality and solidarity are corequisites for recognition of the subjects of rights, we explore examples of solidaristic action that aim to counteract the “rightlessness” of refugees today, and consider how such action promotes freedom as inclusive world-making practices.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “Figures at a Glance,” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, accessed 3 August 2017, http://www.unhcr.org/uk/figures-at-a-glance.html.

  2. 2.

    The recently adopted UNGA New York Declaration (19 September 2016), for example, calls on states to enhance the international community’s capacity to respond to mass displacement, through implementation of a Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF). The CRRF is premised, however, on reaffirmation of the existing (and unmodified) international refugee regime. In this regard the New York Declaration reinforces the authoritative status of what Ian Hurd calls “international legalism”; How to Do Things with International Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 130.

  3. 3.

    Hannah Arendt, The Originsof Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1973), 270–75.

  4. 4.

    Nanda Oudejans, “The Right to Have Rights as the Right to Asylum,” Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy 43, no. 1 (2014): 10.

  5. 5.

    Arendt,Origins, 291.

  6. 6.

    Ibid.

  7. 7.

    Ibid.

  8. 8.

    Tal Correm, “Hannah Arendt on National Liberation, Violence, and Federalism,” manuscript pages 2–4.

  9. 9.

    Ayten Gündoğdu, Rightlessness in an Age of Rights: Hannah Arendt and the Contemporary Struggles of Migrants (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 43–44.

  10. 10.

    Arendt,Origins, 292.

  11. 11.

    Ibid., 296.

  12. 12.

    Ibid., 293.

  13. 13.

    Ibid., 296.

  14. 14.

    Ibid., 226–34.

  15. 15.

    Megan Bradley, “Rethinking Refugeehood: Statelessness, Repatriation, and Refugee Agency,” Review of International Studies 40, no. 1 (2014): 102.

  16. 16.

    “Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees,” United Nations, accessed 1 September 2017, http://www.unhcr.org/uk/3b66c2aa10.

  17. 17.

    B. S. Chimni, “From Resettlement to Involuntary Repatriation: Towards a Critical History of Durable Solutions to Refugee Problems,” Refugee Survey Quarterly 23, no. 3 (2004): 63.

  18. 18.

    Jennifer Hyndman and Alison Mountz, “Another Brick in the Wall? Neo-Refoulement and the Externalization of Asylum by Australia and Europe,” Government and Opposition 43, no. 2 (2008): 249.

  19. 19.

    Ibid.

  20. 20.

    In August 2016, The Guardian received a cache of over 2000 leaked documents, now known as the Nauru Files, detailing appalling living conditions in the detention camps and allegations of widespread abuse, including of children, by authorities.

  21. 21.

    See, for example: Alison Kesby, The Right to HaveRights: Citizenship, Humanity, and International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

  22. 22.

    Judith N. Shklar, Legalism: Law, Morals, and Political Trials (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), 1.

  23. 23.

    Ibid., 3, ix.

  24. 24.

    Arendt,Origins, 379ff.

  25. 25.

    Ibid., 298, 297.

  26. 26.

    Hannah Arendt, TheHuman Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 7–9, 49–57.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., 180, 199–203.

  28. 28.

    Arendt, Origins, 301. For some major interpretations of Arendt’s notion of the right to have rights, see Seyla Benhabib, “‘The Right to Have Rights’: Hannah Arendt on the Contradictions of the Nation-State,” in The Rights of Others, 49; James Ingram, “What Is a ‘Right to Have Rights’? Three Images of the Politics of Human Rights,” American Political Science Review 102, no. 4 (2008): 401; Frank Michelman, “Parsing ‘A Right to Have Rights’,” Constellations 3, no. 2 (1996): 200; and Serena Parekh, “A Meaningful Place in the World: Hannah Arendt on the Nature of Human Rights,” Journal of Human Rights 3, no. 1 (2004): 41.

  29. 29.

    Michelman, “Parsing ‘A Right to Have Rights’,” 206.

  30. 30.

    Arendt, TheHuman Condition, 175–76.

  31. 31.

    Christoph Menke, “The ‘Aporias of Human Rights’ and the ‘One Human Right’: Regarding the Coherence of Hannah Arendt’s Argument,” Social Research 74, no. 3 (2007): 753.

  32. 32.

    Kristy A. Belton, “Statelessness: A Matter of Human Rights,” in The Human Right to Citizenship: A Slippery Concept, ed. Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann and Margaret Walton-Roberts (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015), 36.

  33. 33.

    Hannah Arendt, The Promise of Politics (New York: Schocken Books, 2005), 132, 167.

  34. 34.

    Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, for instance, declares: “Every citizen shall have the right and the opportunity … [to] take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives” (emphasis added). The Convention thus excludes a political rendering of the right to have rights, and formally deprives non-citizens of political voice and public presence.

  35. 35.

    Hannah Arendt, The Jewish Writings (New York: Schocken Books, 2007), 271.

  36. 36.

    Our interpretation of the right to have rights contra the legalist paradigm is, we believe, consistent with Arendt’s insistence that “it is precisely sovereignty [we] must renounce” if we wish to be free; Between Past and Future (New York: Penguin Classics, 2006), 165. This is because the legalist paradigm regards human rights as both founded alongside, and necessarily referring back to, the sovereign right of the state. For more on Arendt’s critique of the conventional alignment of political freedom with sovereignty, see the chapters by Keith Breen and Kei Hiruta in this volume.

  37. 37.

    Arendt, TheHuman Condition, 215.

  38. 38.

    Hannah Arendt, Men inDark Times (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968), 73–80.

  39. 39.

    Michel Agier, Borderlands (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016), 53, 63–66.

  40. 40.

    Arendt, Men inDark Times, 12–17.

  41. 41.

    See Hauke Brunkhorst, Solidarity: From Civic Friendship to a Global Legal Community (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2005); and Lawrence Wilde, Global Solidarity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013).

  42. 42.

    Avery H. Kolers, “Dynamics of Solidarity,” Journal of PoliticalPhilosophy 20, no. 4 (2012): 367.

  43. 43.

    Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Penguin Classics, 2006), 89.

  44. 44.

    Ibid., 88–89.

  45. 45.

    Ibid., 248; see also Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1970), 69.

  46. 46.

    Ken Reshaur refers to this social conception of solidarity (or fraternity) as “natural solidarity”; see “Concepts of Solidarity in the Political Theory of Hannah Arendt,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 25, no. 4 (1992): 734.

  47. 47.

    Sally J. Scholz, Political Solidarity (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008), 21–50; and Arendt, Men inDark Times, 13.

  48. 48.

    Reshaur, “Concepts of Solidarity,” 725.

  49. 49.

    Amy Allen, “Solidarity after Identity Politics: Hannah Arendt and the Power of Feminist Theory,” Philosophy & Social Criticism 25, no. 1 (1999): 101–2.

  50. 50.

    Arendt, Men inDark Times, 83.

  51. 51.

    Ibid., 82.

  52. 52.

    Ibid., 83.

  53. 53.

    Arendt, Men inDark Times, 25.

  54. 54.

    Arendt, TheHuman Condition, 243.

  55. 55.

    Arendt, Men inDark Times, 30.

  56. 56.

    Hannah Arendt, The Life ofthe Mind (Orlando: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), 200.

  57. 57.

    Ibid., 15.

  58. 58.

    Ibid., 23, 31.

  59. 59.

    Arendt, The Promise of Politics, 129.

  60. 60.

    “Asylum Statistics (2016),” Eurostat, accessed 3 August 2017, http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Asylum_statistics.

  61. 61.

    “Irregular Migration & Return,” European Commission, Migration and Home Affairs, accessed 3 August 2017, https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/irregular-migration-return-policy_en.

  62. 62.

    “Fenced Out: Hungary’s Violation of the Rights of Refugees and Migrants,” Amnesty International, accessed 12 September 2017, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur27/2614/2015/en/.

  63. 63.

    Amnesty International, “Fenced Out,” 4.

  64. 64.

    Minna Annastiina Kallius, Daniel Monterescu, and Prem Kumar Rajaram, “Immobilizing Mobility: Border Ethnography, Illiberal Democracy, and the Politics of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Hungary,” American Ethnologist 43, no. 1 (2016): 26.

  65. 65.

    Ibid., 27.

  66. 66.

    “Our History,” Migszol, accessed 1 July 2017, http://www.migszol.com/our-history.html.

  67. 67.

    “Our Values,” Migszol, accessed 1 July 2017, http://www.migszol.com/our-values.html.

  68. 68.

    “Mission Statement,” Migszol, accessed 1 July 2017, http://www.migszol.com/mission-statement.html.

  69. 69.

    “School,” Migszol, accessed 1 July 2017, http://www.migszol.com/school.html.

  70. 70.

    “About Other Migszol Groups,” Migszol, accessed 1 July 2017, http://www.migszol.com/other-migszol-groups.html; http://www.migszol.com/join.html.

  71. 71.

    Kallius, Monterescu, and Rajaram, “Immobilizing Mobility,” 27, 31; and “Mission Statement,” Migszol, accessed 1 July 2017, http://www.migszol.com/mission-statement.html.

  72. 72.

    Hyndman and Mountz, “Another Brick in the Wall,” 256–62.

  73. 73.

    Human Rights Watch’s 2017 World Report on Australia summarizes various human rights violations in Australia’s offshore detention policies; see “Asylum Seekers and Refugees,” accessed 25 October 2017, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country-chapters/australia.

  74. 74.

    “Refugee Rights Movement in Australia: ‘For’ or ‘with’?” WACA—Whistleblowers, Activists and Citizens Alliance, accessed 26 July 2017, http://www.waca.net.au/refugee_rights_movement_for_or_with.

  75. 75.

    “Who We Are,” RISE: Refugees, Survivors and Ex-detainees, accessed 26 July 2017, http://riserefugee.org/who-we-are/.

  76. 76.

    “#BlockTheBillCampaign,” RISE: Refugees, Survivors and Ex-detainees, accessed 26 July 2017, http://riserefugee.org/blockthebillcampaign/.

  77. 77.

    “Our Charter and Aims,” RISE: Refugees, Survivors and Ex-detainees, accessed 26 July 2017, http://riserefugee.org/who-we-are/our-charter-and-aims/.

  78. 78.

    Arendt, Between Past and Future, 241; and Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant’sPolitical Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 73–74.

  79. 79.

    Arendt, TheHuman Condition, 52.

  80. 80.

    Arendt, The Promise of Politics, 118.

  81. 81.

    Tim Gaynor (2016), “UN Chiefs Call for Greater Solidarity with Forcibly Displaced,” accessed 2 May 2017, http://www.unhcr.org/uk/news/latest/2016/10/57f252169/un-chiefs-call-greater-solidarity-forcibly-displaced.html.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Scotland, UK

    Patrick Hayden & Natasha Saunders

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  1. Patrick Hayden
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Correspondence to Patrick Hayden .

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  1. Oxford University, Oxford, UK

    Kei Hiruta

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Hayden, P., Saunders, N. (2019). Solidarity at the Margins: Arendt, Refugees, and the Inclusive Politics of World-Making. In: Hiruta, K. (eds) Arendt on Freedom, Liberation, and Revolution. Philosophers in Depth. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11695-8_7

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