Banal dehumanisation 79 When individuals are denied recognition in the world of States, or denied a favourable position within it, they might disobey the system that constructs them into this situation. Moving home, working, playing sports, need not be seen as political acts, but where these are impeded or criminalised, they also become politicised. Such individuals who undertake these activities irregularly when they have been inappropriately denied could, then, be seen as claiming that which is unjustifiedly and unjustifiably being kept from them. Forbidden from joining the labour market, when ‘unwanted’ noncitizens work, this act can be seen as a form of political disobedience. If ‘unwanted’ noncitizens are forbidden from entering the cultural community of the State, are prevented from accessing the means to survive, then in participating in the community and in finding the means to survive, those persons can find themselves engaging in political acts. This is not disobedience simpliciter, though, it looks like a political disobedience.55 If these are seen as political acts (alongside other forms of protest), then even ‘unwanted’ noncitizens have political voice, and they have that voice even if attempts to mute traditional forms of political expression are successful.56 Far from rendering persons apolitical, then, restrictions placed upon ‘unwanted’ noncitizens, in deepening their vulnerability, also force even very basic actions to be politicised. Failing to recognise the reality of the noncitizen relationship with a State does not mean that the relationship disappears but that, in order to live out that relationship, individuals must perform acts of disobedience. ‘Unwanted’ noncitizens are forced, then, to become political actors, even if they would have preferred not to engage in politics at all. The failure to mitigate their special form of vulnerability, and allowing it to give rise to extremes of deprivation, contributes to a noncitizen politics that is challenging and can seem threatening. The banal dehumanisation in the denial of a recognised individual-State noncitizen relationship, then, overwhelmingly burdens those individuals most directly affected. But it also impairs the possibility of developing a system that is just according to liberal democratic principles more generally. 55 Consider, for example, Bonnie Honig (1993) Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics, Cornell University Press; Peter Nyers (2012) ‘Moving Borders: The Politics of Dirt’, pp. 2–6 in Radical Philosophy 174; as well as the papers in Peter Nyers and Kim Rygiel (eds) Citizenship, Migrant Activism and the Politics of Movement. 56 This is developed in Chapter 11.