Introduction 7 sometimes ignored by liberal theorists, is present in liberal State discourses and beyond – and, in reality, it is important to how people construct their lives. According to liberalism, individual humans are the ultimate units of concern. That is, if you divide up a person you do not get smaller political units. This is not to discount important goods that emerge only amongst groups of individuals living together, such as a feeling of shared pride, or the value in interactions within special relationships of families or communities. But these are valued insofar as they are good for individual humans. Another important aspect is uni versalism – that this approach and its corollaries apply for all people for all time. These elements are often seen as being in tension, but they need not be. A core challenge within the liberal project is to address what should be done both when freedom for some implies oppression and constraint for others, and when freedom comes into conflict with equality. This is particularly relevant here since the freedoms associated with citizenship have often relied upon the loss of freedoms associated with unacknowledged noncitizenship – not least, for those colonial sub jects constructed at modern liberalism’s founding. The tension between freedom and equality has long been seen as a key problem in liberal thought even without considering noncitizenship. This is because in its simplistic form, enforcing material equality seems to require a breach of liberty, and enforcing liberty in its simplest form will most likely lead to material and other inequality.18 A common response to this is to see liberty as necessarily intertwined with equality, such that there is an equal right of all persons to be free.19 For this to make sense, ‘equality’ must be seen beyond the notion of ‘sameness’. Rather, equality is about removing hierar chy.20 The pre-political scope of a liberal theory must include everyone. While much work has been done reconciling liberty and equality, attempts to balance liberty and solidarity have often been neglected.21 Often sidelined in mainstream liberal discourses, solidarity is more commonly taken up instead by nationalisms and communitarianisms on the one hand and socialisms on the other.22 Yet, a sometimes-implicit commitment to solidarity obscures implicit commitments of the theorists themselves, as well as ignoring a key element of human society. In this book, solidarity and togetherness in some form are 18 This tension has been central to the development of libertarianism, which prioritises liberty over equality and argues that freedom will inevitably lead to acceptable inequality. For a classic pre sentation, see Robert Nozick (1974) Anarchy, State and Utopia, Basic Books. 19 Ronald Dworkin (1991 – first published 1977) Taking Rights Seriously, Duckworth, London, p. 266; Atracta Ingram (1994) A Political Theory of Rights, Oxford University Press; HLA Hart (1955) ‘Are there any Natural Rights?’ pp. 175–191 in Philosophical Review 64. See also, for example, John Mackie (1984) ‘Can there be a Right based Moral Theory?’ pp. 168–181 in Jeremy Waldron (ed.) (1984) Theories of Rights, Oxford University Press, p. 177. 20 See, for example, Catharine MacKinnon (1987) Feminism Unmodified: Discourses On Life and Law, Harvard University Press. 21 Attracta Ingram (1994) A Political Theory of Rights, Oxford University Press, p. 13. Note that the word ‘solidarity’ is used, rather than ‘fraternity’, which is traditionally located within the tri umvirate. This is to avoid the inherent sexism and paternalism in the terminology of fraternity. 22 Yael Tamir (1995) Liberal Nationalism, Princeton University Press; David Miller (1995) On Nationality, Clarendon Press; Gerry Cohen (2009) Why Not Socialism? Princeton University Press.