5 Banal dehumanisation Drawing upon sociologist Michael Billig’s notion of ‘banal nationalism’, ‘banal dehumanisation’ refers to a mundane denial of a person’s humanity so that, through the activities and speech acts of daily life and underlying institutional arrangements, someone can be constructed out of the scope of consideration for justice.1 This comes in three forms. First, there is the dehumanisation that locates individuals as below other people in a hierarchy of concern. Second, there is the dehumanisation that denies individuals’ existence altogether. Finally, there are the alterations of the frame within which s/he can live out her/is own humanity. All three of these take place in two ways. On the one hand, the dehumanisation can be inadvertent, constructed through the theoretical framework itself. On the other hand, it may be part of an intentional project. These need not occur exclusively of each other. For example, dehumanisation may initially be inadvertent, but then generate a future desire to dehumanise, or dehumanisation may be intentional to an extent, but some of its consequences may be unintended. This chapter particularly addresses the role of the liberal democratic theoretical framework as currently understood in banal dehumanisation of noncitizens, and implications for the institutional and social frameworks based upon it. Making people less than human [L]abels do not exist in a vacuum. They are the tangible representation of policies and programmes … labels develop their own rationale and legitimacy and become a convenient and accepted shorthand. (Roger Zetter, writing in Journal of Refugee Studies in 20072) Much has been written about how terminology has enabled the dehumanisation of persons and groups, leading to some of the worst actions of humans against 1 This draws on Michael Billig’s notion of ‘banal nationalism’: Michael Billig (2002) Banal Nation alism, Sage [first published in 1995]. 2 Roger Zetter (2007) ‘More Labels, Fewer Refugees: Remaking the Refugee Label in an Era of Globalization’, pp. 172–192 in Journal of Refugee Studies 20(2). This builds upon his classic paper, Roger Zetter (1991) ‘Labelling Refugees: Forming and Transforming a Bureaucratic Identity’, pp. 39–62 in Journal of Refugee Studies 4(1).