Refugees today: superflousness and humanitarianism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15448/1980-864X.2017.3.26139Keywords:
Refugees, Migrants, Humanitarianism, Arendt, Agamben, Superfluousness, Europe.Abstract
This article discusses some questions concerning the humanitarian approach to “solving” the so called refugee crisis in Europe in autumn 2015, when thousands of refugees headed on the journey to EU, most of them to Germany, by the so called Balkan migrant route. When some European states like Slovenia started to place razor wire on their southern borders, the others resumed the control of their inner EU borders and almost all introduced more restrictions on the existing laws on international protection of refugees and asylum. While taking up the question of what is the core element of today’s “refugee problem” the main argument relies on Hannah Arendt’s concept of superfluousness as the key feature of the new form of global government. There are two sides of the phenomenon of superfluousness that are crucial for understanding the situation in which we find ourselves in regard to the so-called “mass migrations”, the problem of “refugees”, “migrants” and “us”. Regardless of the need for a dose of humanitarianism in such moments, the focus on the humanitarian “solving” of the problem conceals the key question: how to enable, as soon as possible and in the long term, those who are excluded from political units and the law to be included (have the right to have rights) in a political community?
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