The Human Rights of Non-citizens 3 protection. The chapters in this part illustrate the deficiencies of a state-centric view of who has rights and the terrible harms this approach inflicts on the most vulnerable – creating in effect a system of global apartheid. The contributions in the second half of the book explore alternative foundations for rights, including empathy, solidarity, empowerment, and responsibility. Empathy and solidarity are emotional responses that can provide the necessary impetus for political action to protect and empower the vulnerable. Empowerment does not necessarily have to be tied to political membership but can be manifested through participation in an economic community. Those who act must take responsibility for the harms of their own actions. And the law can embody these principles not only in substance but in process; the very process of law creation can contribute to the development of conditions needed for rights to be realized across borders. A few caveats are in order, however. First, although all of the pieces in this collection address the rights of non-citizens, they focus on different aspects of noncitizenship. In general, the chapters use the term “refugee” to refer to individuals who meet the international definition of this term, whether or not they have been officially recognized as refugees by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees.6 Individuals who meet the definition of a refugee are refugees even if their status has not yet been adjudicated.7 In addition, basic human rights should be afforded to all, including those who do not qualify for recognition as refugees.8 Some of the contributions also address the problem of statelessness and the political and logistical challenges of identifying who lacks effective protection of a state. The tenth chapter in this collection discusses the rights of “noncitizens” as a way of signaling all of the myriad ways in which individuals are affected by states of which they are not citizens. Second, the contributions in this volume are not studies of citizenship in the traditional sense. A rich interdisciplinary literature theorizes the varied meanings and enactments of citizenship that have emerged in the modern nation-state system.9 The chapters in this volume engage questions of the legal status of citizens 6 7 8 9 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status under the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2011), } 28. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Note on Determination of Refugee Status under International Instruments EC/SCP/5 (August 24, 1977), } 5, www.unhcr.org/excom/scip/ 3ae68cc04/note-determination-refugee-status-under-international-instruments.html (noting that “determination of refugee status can only be of a declaratory nature” and that “any person is a refugee within the framework of a given instrument if he meets the criteria of the refugee definition in that instrument, whether he is formally recognized as a refugee or not”). Weissbrodt, “The Rights of Noncitizens.” See, e.g., E. F. Isin and G. M. Nielsen (eds.), Acts of Citizenship (London: Zed Books, 2008); Brysk and Shafir (eds.), People Out of Place; Howard-Hassmann and Walton-Roberts, The Human Right to Citizenship; B. N. Lawrence and J. Stevens (eds.), Citizenship in Question: Evidentiary Birthright and Statelessness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108914994 Published online by Cambridge University Press