This book offers a critical inquiry of human rights by rethinking Hannah Arendt’s political theory in the light of the challenging questions posed by contemporary struggles of migrants. Arendt wrote about the plight of statelessness in the immediate aftermath of World War II, and there have been remarkable developments in the field of human rights since then. Despite all the changes, however, various categories of migrants, especially asylum seekers, refugees, and undocumented immigrants, continue to find it very difficult to access human rights. This book argues that the contemporary manifest ... More

This book offers a critical inquiry of human rights by rethinking Hannah Arendt’s political theory in the light of the challenging questions posed by contemporary struggles of migrants. Arendt wrote about the plight of statelessness in the immediate aftermath of World War II, and there have been remarkable developments in the field of human rights since then. Despite all the changes, however, various categories of migrants, especially asylum seekers, refugees, and undocumented immigrants, continue to find it very difficult to access human rights. This book argues that the contemporary manifestations of rightlessness reveal the perplexities of human rights, including those arising from the simultaneous affirmation of personhood and territorial sovereignty in this universalistic discourse. This argument is developed by engaging in an Arendtian analysis of contemporary problems such as immigration detention, deportation, and prolonged confinement in refugee camps. The analysis also turns attention to the various struggles waged by migrants, particularly the new rights claims articulated in demands for regularization. These claims highlight how the perplexities of human rights can be politically navigated to reinvent equality and freedom in response to challenging problems of rightlessness. What arises from this critical reflection on human rights is also a novel reading of Arendt, casting a different light on the various dimensions of her political thought, including her phenomenological account of the human condition, her critical analysis of “the social question,” and her puzzling proposal of “a right to have rights.”