Introduction
5
within liberal States. In reality, though, some individuals are excluded from
human rights frameworks, often because a duty-holder is not adequately desig
nated. The noncitizen claims examined in this book are not general. They are
special obligations, generated from the special relationship of noncitizenship. As
such, the obligations are assigned, even if sometimes they are shared between
States. In order to ensure everyone’s rights are secured, this book will address
the logics of expulsion directly – and the logics of both hyphenated noncitizenship and unhyphenated noncitizenship. People do not only relate to States
from within their borders, and an individual may relate with a particular State in
several ways. Noncitizenship provides a mechanism by which to examine the
continuity between various sites of engagement.
Today, then, those in noncitizen relationships with powerful States, wherever
they live, may have to fight to be taken into account, even conceptually.14 This
arises at the level of theory and it will need to be addressed at this level. At the time
of writing, the discourse of fear is increasingly common in popular and policy
debate in States built upon liberal democratic norms, and security concerns are
used to justify increasing exclusions and expulsions.15 This book does not rule out
exclusions but argues that discrimination and expulsion cannot be the default.
Noncitizens are not anathema to a liberal political framework (on both State and
global levels), but are fundamental to it. Noncitizens are in a special relationship
with States and have claims upon them as a result. Noncitizens and their claims
become challenging when their reality goes unacknowledged or is inappropriately
activated. This book, then, identifies a theoretical problem with significant realworld implications that urgently need to be addressed.
Rather than start from and then qualify an ideal theory, this book begins from
the world as it is now and draws attention to a form of relationship that really
exists, albeit ignored. On the one hand, it builds upon the theoretical approach of
Phillip Cole, who warns that liberal theory as we know it is necessarily an
‘insider theory’, constructed by and for those on the inside of it, who are then
blinded to realities outside a framework that is serving them well.16 On the other
hand, it develops a historical approach, examining deeply problematic elements
of the roots of contemporary liberal political philosophy and considering how to
move away from them. This includes the role of key liberal theorists in the
13
13 Benhabib 2004 ibid.; David Weissbrodt (2008) the Human Rights of Non-citizens, Oxford Uni
versity Press. See also, for example, Laura van Waas and Amal de Chickera (2017) ‘Unpacking
Statelessness’, in Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss and Phillip Cole (eds) (2017) Understand
ing Statelessness, Routledge.
14 This problem for liberalism was already famously pointed out by Hannah Arendt.
15 Valeria Bello (2017) International Migration and International Security: Why Prejudice Is a
Global Security Threat, Routledge.
16 Phillip Cole (2017) ‘Insider Theory and the Construction of Statelessness’ in Tendayi Bloom, Kath
erine Tonkiss and Phillip Cole (eds) (2017) Understanding Statelessness, Routledge. An important
aspect of this is who is able to be heard within the dominant discourses; see for example, Anke
Graness (2015) ‘Is the Debate on “Global Justice” a Global One? Some Considerations in View of
Modern Philosophy in Africa’, pp. 126–140 in Journal of Global Ethics 11(1).