52 Introducing ‘unwanted’ noncitizens More generally, constructing someone as an ‘unwanted’ noncitizen forces displacement (‘expulsion’ to use Saskia Sassen’s terminology42) from the current understanding of the State system, one in which it is States that get to choose who can fall within their scope of concern. Using the apparently legalistic mechanisms of formal citizenship and of immigration control can obscure race, class and other arbitrary discrimination in this expulsion. With Kelly Staples, this book rejects the idea that people cannot be recognised as people if they are not recognised as citizens somewhere. However, it acknowledges that, in practice, in a world of States, the recognised relationship a person has with a State will impact upon this.43 Problematising humanitarian exceptionalism by considering when it is denied No failed asylum seeker need face destitution if they comply with the law and the decisions of our courts and go home when required and able to do so. (Statement in BBC broadcast, attributed to UK Home Office44) A key way in which the assumption of exclusion is often considered to be overridable is where a humanitarian exception is identified. This is presented even by liberal nationalists who presume particularly closed borders alongside the ‘principle of asylum’, whereby if someone arrives at a State’s borders having fled for their life, they should be admitted.45 In practice, this usually means that if a person arrives at a State and can prove that s/he is a victim of some atrocity that can be defined as persecution, then s/he can be included, on terms dictated by the receiving State. The most important version of this is refugee status, but there are also other humanitarian statuses found in different States in different ways. These statuses are vital in the context of the citizenist interpretation of liberalism in most existing States built upon liberal democratic principles. They enable some of those most ill-affected by exclusion from the existing State system to find some way of accessing it. Yet, it is also problematic. This will be shown here by considering an example of refused asylum seekers in the UK.46 Unable to prove the 42 Saskia Sassen (2014) Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in Global Economy, Harvard University Press. Though this is only one element of Sassen’s expulsion. She uses the word more broadly. 43 Kelly Staples (2012) Retheorising Statelessness, Edinburgh University Press. 44 Quoted in Catrin Nye, ‘Glasgow’s destitute asylum-seekers’ (2013) BBC News Scotland website www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-21835432 (accessed 16 June 2014). 45 David Miller (2005) ‘Immigration: The Case for Limits’, pp. 193–206 in Andrew Cohen and Christopher Heath Wellman (eds) (2005) Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics, Blackwell. 46 I want to thank Anne Kershen who kindly allowed me to draw heavily upon this chapter: Tendayi Bloom (2015) ‘London’s Role in the Policy of Destitution of Asylum Seekers: The ‘Ghosts’ in the British Migration Infrastructure’, in Anne Kershen (ed.) (2015) London the Promised Land, Ashgate.