Democracy and its others

"Today's unprecedented levels of human migration present urgent challenges to traditional conceptualizations of national identity, nation-state sovereignty, and democratic citizenship. Foreigners are commonly viewed as outsiders whose inclusion within or exclusion from "the people" of the democratic state rests upon whether they benefit or threaten the unity of the nation. Against this instrumentalization of the foreigner, this book traces the historical development of the concepts of sovereignty and foreignness through the thought of philosophers such as Plato, Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Derrida, and Benhabib in order to show that foreignness is a structural feature of sovereignty that cannot be purged or assimilated. Understood in this light, foreignness allows for new forms of democratic political unity to be imagined that reject local practices which deprive individuals of political membership solely on the basis of national citizenship. This cosmopolitan model for citizenship provides a novel conceptual framework that simultaneously upholds the legal importance of democratic citizenship for political justice while ceaselessly contesting the exclusionary logic of the nation-state that reserves democratic rights for members of the nation alone."—Bloomsbury Publishing.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 320 pages

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  1. The DREAMers: How the Undocumented Youth Movement Transformed the Immigrant Rights Debate Shares noncitizens, immigration, civil rights
  2. The immigrant's refrigerator Shares noncitizens, immigration, alien
  3. Malaya Shares noncitizens, immigration, alien
  4. Dreams and Nightmares: I Fled Alone to the United States When I Was Fourteen Shares noncitizens, immigration, alien

“If you want more of the same (philosophy about civil rights), start with these.”

  1. Marcha Latino Chicago And The Immigrant Rights Movement
  2. Rallying for immigrant rights
  3. Amendment XIV--Equal Protection
  4. Strangers in our midst

“If it was the noncitizens that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. International Tax as International Law
  2. Enemies
  3. Ethnic Americans
  4. Eclipse of Dreams

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. The political theory of global citizenship
  2. Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty
  3. Ethics of citizenship
  4. Gender equality