Banal dehumanisation 75 Figure 5.3 James (Siyabonga Melongisi Shibe), still from the film James Journey to Jerusalem (Ra’anan Aleixandrowicz, Lama Prodcutions, Zeitgeist Films, 2003). (though it may lead to other sorts of vulnerability). In fact, their lack of any recognised relationship with a State was created administratively and it was the implications of this lack of relationship that made people vulnerable, including making their physical movement particularly dangerous, for example. In turn, that lack of relationship was found to be constructed, and may well be illiberal and arbitrary. Chapter 4 observed that US citizens made up one of the largest groups of irregular migrants in Australia, yet Americans were not found in immigration detention facilities. They were not subjected to the same vulnerability as others in an ostensibly similar situation. Conversely, James, the pilgrim from James’s Journey to Jerusalem, was assumed to be nefarious and in need of control. There are four aspects to the vulnerability and to the dehumanisation discussed here: (1) Protection of basic interests is out of one’s control; (2) Personal security is not protected; (3) Agency is undermined, including the freedom to make moral choices; and (4) A person is shamed; his or her dignity is not protected. All four of these stem from the need for an individual to demonstrate that s/he has a relationship with the State in question in order to receive recognition and respect. In the context of a liberalism obscured by methodological citizenism and assumed exclusion, for recognition as human, an individual must demonstrate why a particular State needs to take note of her/is interests – and this must be done through obtaining a citizen or quasi-citizen status. Noncitizen-vulnerability, then, is not mitigated or even recognised as problematic. The vulnerability of