The refugee as a limiting concept os contemporary politics in the Arendtian perspective of the right to have rights

Abstract

The inability of States and international institutions to deal with the growing number of stateless persons and refugees, the greatest indicator since the Second World War, corroborates the need for analysis on this mass phenomenon. Therefore, the objective of this article is to examine the condition of these individuals in situations of extreme vulnerability, in light of the political theory of Hannah Arendt. If the 1789 Declaration of Human Rights seemed to have provided individuals with the necessary legal support, in fact the legal framework inherent in human rights has proved ineffective because it is still essentially related to the pre-existence of a nationality. The author points out that the contemporary novelty of forced migration is due to the fact that the impossibility of these persons finding a permanent home makes them not only outside of any legal scope, but also marginalizes them from humanity itself, which means that the removal of the rights, besides eliminating any type of legitimized belonging to some community, usually ends up condemning the individuals to the situation of barbarism. It is, therefore, guiding us through the Arendtian perspective on stateless persons and refugees, that the latter will be taken as the limiting concept from which contemporary politics can be understood because it is strongly inscribed in the fragility of concepts of State and of Law, as well as the degradation of the public sphere, corroborating with the right to have rights, that would be the guarantee of the man to belong to the own humanity.

Keywords: Human rights. Stateless people. Refugees. Forced Migration. International relations.