From Dehumanisation to Resistance: A Kantian Account of our Duties to Refugees

The last few years have witnessed the emergence of approaches grounding our duties to refugees in the illegitimacy of the existing system of sovereign states (Carens 2013, Haddad 2008, Owen 2020). My paper is intended as a contribution to this literature. My main objective is to bring into relief the radical character of this illegitimacy by showing how the existing global refugee regime allows or even prescribes dehumanising behaviour. To this end, I will mobilise Kant’s conception of the injustice of public laws. I will argue that this injustice is best interpreted in terms of ‘juridical depersonification’: it involves the violation of a human being’s status as a juridical person, that is, as an externally free and responsible agent, a bearer of juridical rights and duties. Equipped with this notion of ‘juridical depersonification’, I will show how the existing global refugee regime, while basically aimed at protecting against dehumanisation, has turned into an instrument of dehumanisation, which creates a social climate that tends to normalise dehumanising behaviour towards refugees. I will end by examining whether the radical illegitimacy of the existing system of sovereign states, with its concomitant global refugee regime, can justify the recognition of a right or even a duty not to respect immigration laws (ie, a right of resistance).