Hannah Arendt states in The Origins of Totalitarianism that statelessness leads to rightlessness for persons. Basic privileges like owning a home or legal rights, such as being protected by the government start being stripped away. It’s not only in their country that they lose rights, but as a stateless person, they lose rights in all countries.
Here’s what’s at stake with losing rights of citizenship: “Not only did loss of national rights in all instances entail the loss of human rights; the restoration of human rights, as the recent example of the State of Israel proves, has been achieved so far only through the restoration or the establishment of national rights” (The Origins of Totalitarianism, 299).
This article:
Trump’s New Target in the Politics of Fear: Citizenship
by John Ganz (7/23/2018, NYTimes) talks about the relevance of Hannah Arendt today. The author of the article, John Ganz, argues that making citizenship a right that cannot be taken away is necessary to protect rights of the citizens.
I’ve been reading Hannah Arendt’s argument on the statelessness and what that entails. So I was elated to read this article.
revalicekim 