Arendt's Refugees: From Rightlessness to Participation

In this dissertation, I argue that Hannah Arendt’s advocacy for a pluralist and participatory politics follows from her concern with the exclusion of rightless refugees. I focus on her understanding of refugees as separated from the common world of a community. From the view of her mature works, refugees who are denied citizenship do not just lose legal rights but also the ability to appear and act in public space. This exclusion exposes a deficiency in the very idea of political membership, since the vitality of the public realm and its security against tyranny depends on its openness and inclusivity. To support this case, I trace Arendt’s discussion of the refugee’s condition throughout her political writings. Arendt’s notion of the ‘right to have rights’ in The Origins of Totalitarianism is often taken as her answer to the crisis of refugee rightlessness. Against this view, I argue that her actual answer lies in her later exposition of the practises of recognition, deliberation, and the founding of polities through collective action. While The Human Condition and On Revolution do not refer to refugees, her analyses in these works reflect a close engagement with their plight. In the former, her accounts of natality and plurality affirm an understanding of political community as perpetually diverse and open to new members. In the latter, her study of freedom and political foundation supports a view of political action based on collective participation and debate rather than legislation. Together, these late works contribute a concept of the political that is accessible to and enriched by newcomers, strangers, and—by inference—refugees.