Redrawing Political Boundaries: What does Let us Count as Equal?

Abstract

The common thread running through all the Papers presented in this Panel is a rebuttal of a clear-cut distinction between citizens and aliens. Four authors explore four different situations in which newcomers are entitled to claim and to enjoy different bundles of rights within host communities. The question in the spotlight is: ‘On what grounds such rights are granted to newcomers?’ The first contribution to the panel reflects on the meaning and on the function of solidarity as grounding principle for such rights. More specifically, Panascì looks at solidarity as a strong transnational bond between EU citizens. Her analysis maps out the access to social rights for economically inactive citizens. In the second contribution to the panel, Dziedzic, looks at refugee protest movements, from Calais to the Vienna Refugee Camp. The author explores how protection seekers use rights usually reserved to citizens (especially ‘political rights’) in order to manifest the violation of their ‘human rights’. In claiming participation in the political discourse, refugees position themselves somewhere in between being aliens and citizens and, in doing so, they challenge default positions assigned to them by the host community. In the third contribution to the panel, Kaur explores the lived reality of asylum seekers and refugees as active subjects in law. The author looks at how law empowers or constrains forced migrants from having an active and influential voice in enacting social change for their own empowerment. The study presents a sociolinguistic perspective on how refugees and asylum seekers claim rights in practice. The paper puts emphasis on how individuals are able to utilise their linguistic strategies to navigate complex legal discourses across different normative orders. The aim of the study is showcasing what it means when marginalised subjects speak and act to find justice; and how their voice impacts then on the hosting community. In the fourth contribution to the panel, Raucea invites to look at the inclusion of newcomers in hosting communities through the lens of the joint commitment theory proposed by Margaret Gilbert. The paper maps out situations in which citizenship rights of formal members and rights of non-members are so much alike and interdependent that they cannot be told apart. The author argues that, in such cases, formal members and non-members are equally involved in a common enterprise and the notion of citizenship is the best way to account for the rights and obligations arising from this form of joint commitment. In the last contribution to this panel, Pedro revisits the theoretical puzzle known as ‘the boundary problem’. The paper explores the challenge that the intricate relationship between democracy and sovereignty poses to immigration. More specifically, the author questions the validity of the claim that the sovereign state is to be the duty-bearer of the rights of those to whom it is not accountable from the viewpoint of the social contract that grounds it.