72 Banal dehumanisation Shame, stigma and the scope of justification Banal dehumanisation cannot, however, only be understood with regard to how resultant policies affect physical realities. It is also part of a process that gives rise to conditions which in turn contribute to further banal dehumanisation. When the relationship of noncitizenship goes unacknowledged, the individuals in question are not only excluded from recognised relationships with a particular State. They are also potentially excluded from the scope of consideration within the theoretical framework itself. As such, a stateless person for example could not either accept or reject the reason for her/is exclusion from theory within a theory that has no space for her/im. This is because s/he is simply not recognisably present within it unless a State chooses to allocate her/im some status therein. It is not conceptually possible for someone reasonably to share reasons for excluding her/imself even from the conceptual possibility of consideration, because it is not clear how one would give meaning to her/is reasons for so doing within that framework. This represents a vulnerability that is difficult to understand within dominant understandings of the existing theoretical framework. First, some persons, as ‘unwanted’ noncitizens, are forced to continue to break laws and administrative regulations in order to survive, feeding into the construction of irregular immigrants as criminals, and stateless persons as untrustworthy. At the same time, in order to obtain rights-protection, including protection of the very basic goods needed for life, it is for the most part necessary for individuals to engage with the States that exclude them by assumption and prove eligibility for recognition. The citizenist State system requires individuals to submit to its logic in order to claim this recognition, rather than allowing contestation and debate of the system itself. Insofar as they do not have the usual protections of citizens and those with citizen-like relationships, ‘unwanted’ noncitizens are rendered even more vulnerable through their unacknowledged existence. As implied by the quotation from the official at the head of the previous subsection, things that happen to such persons may even not seem real. But this does not mean such persons are apolitical or only vulnerable. As was reflected above in the examples of Stefan Zweig and the mother of Wei Ming Kam, this banal dehumanisation is not only dehumanisation in the minds of others. It also risks undermining an individual’s self-respect, while denigrating and humiliating attitudes play a role in the destruction of self-worth as well as enabling others to justify their actions.40 This also highlights the resilience of those who maintain self-respect despite such dehumanisation. Some contemporary understandings of self-respect have been framed as the capability to stand up in public without shame (Sen, Nussbaum), and even a condition for the pursuit of a good life (Rawls).41 In fact, in A Theory of Justice, John Rawls 40 See, for example, the results of studies presented in Chapter 4. 41 Amartya Sen develops this from the statement by Adam Smith as a capability-deprivation taking the form of social exclusion. Amartya Sen (1993) ‘Capability and Well-Being’ in Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum (eds) (1993) The Quality of Life; Amartya Sen (1983) ‘Development: Which Way Now?’, pp. 745–762 in The Economic Journal 93.