78 Banal dehumanisation associated – and that of ‘unwanted’ noncitizens in particular – generates forms of obligation that differ from those associated with citizenship because the vulnerability is of a different sort. It may be an abject vulnerability even to the theoretical system itself and forces people to engage with the State and with other individuals from a position of weakness. The vulnerability of noncitizens needs to be understood as a whole and as a fundamental part of the existing liberal theoretical and political system of States infrastructure. Dehumanisation and the politicisation of ‘unwanted’ noncitizens … a mother, unable to find employment and desperate to feed her children […] will be turned away if she tries to cross into another country (such as ours, for example) – and this not by crooks and thugs but by ‘the law’, by judges, immigration inspectors, the police, who, backed by our recognition or acquiescence, do their ‘duty’ in the name of human justice. (Thomas Pogge, writing in Realizing Rawls, 198952) For the most part, irregular migration is peaceful. It may include those disobeying laws because they believe them to be unjust, but most likely mainly involves those who primarily disobey laws because they must, or they believe they must, irrespective of what they think of them. Disobedience has traditionally been used by people who are constructed out of the scope of justice to draw attention to, and to challenge, the structures that exclude them.53 When instances of irregular migration are seen in this way, then, increasingly repressive attempts to control immigration can resemble the efforts of those who benefit from a repressive regime to maintain the status quo. And the reactions to irregular immigrants then seem reminiscent of attacks on those disobeying unjust laws in other contexts (though this does not assume all migration control is unjust). Civil disobedience is usually reserved for those who are citizens, who follow all the other rules except the unjust ones against which they are protesting.54 The actions of those kept even from any recognised relationship with a State or the State system may not be actions of ‘civil disobedience’ of this form. But they can be seen as actions of informed and intentional ‘disobedience’ against specific injustices. 52 Thomas Pogge (1989) Realizing Rawls, Cornell University Press, Ithaca p. 276. 53 Martin Borstelmann has referred to the global anticolonial movement as ‘the international civil rights movement’. 54 For example, John Rawls and Brian Smart seem to disagree on everything about civil disobedience except that it is for citizens. John Rawls describes it as a last resort, when ‘standard democratic processes have failed’. See John Rawls (1999) ‘Civil Disobedience’, pp. 244–253 in Aileen Kavangh and John Oberdiek (eds) (2009) Arguing About Law, Routledge, first published in Col lected Papers, Harvard University Press; Brian Smart (1978) ‘Defining Civil Disobedience’, pp. 249–269 in Inquiry 21.