On the Margins of Citizenship: The Refugee Crisis and the Transformation of Identities in Europe

Abstract

Drawing on the notion of the “right to have rights”, the study aims to explore how the European responses in the context of the current so called “refugee crisis”, based on strong inclusion-exclusion mechanisms, as well as the current shortcomings of the international human rights regime can be pertinent for analysing and capturing current transformations of the notion and foundations of European citizenship. It is further suggested that the institution of European citizenship in its current form needs to be superseded, in order to attain a truly cosmopolitan content and to provide a basis for a universalistic human rights regime. The main proposal presented in this direction, stresses the need to rethink human rights in terms of political practices and to “rediscover” the revolutionary heritage of human rights from an Arendtian perspective.

Keywords

• Arendt
• Balibar
• European Convention on Human Rights
• citizenship
• human rights
• refugee crisis
• right to have rights
• rightlessness
• undocumented immigrants