Warning: the following blog may contain traces of morality, caution is advised.

Under the facilitation of some of our members, the SAWIP team recently entered a dialogue on human rights and immigration. In preparation, our facilitators recommended we read up on the theories of Hannah Arendt.

For those who don’t know (I numbered amongst the uninformed merely a week ago): Hannah Arendt was a political philosopher, inspired by her German-Jewish heritage and flight from the Nazi regime in 1933 to write about political justice, civic engagement and representative democracy, amongst other titanic subjects.

Statelessness is also one of the main focuses of her work; understandable given her background, having spent eighteen years as a stateless refugee. The Nazi regime used the sovereignty of state to deny collective citizen and human rights to entire ethnic groups. It is no wonder Ms. Arendt wrote that statelessness denies one the “right to have rights”. Without a state to implement one’s rights, who shall do so? When no country legally claims you, who should provide for you? Protect you?

But the question that truly resonated with me was not primarily one of the above, as vital as they are. The question that snuck hauntingly into the back of my mind, guided by our reading, was: by what right are you a citizen of a specific country?

I anticipate the legal minds and ask them not to bludgeon me with jargon and precedent. This argument is not one restricted to black and white or literal thinking. I restate: this is a moral interpretation of the argument.

By what right am I a South Africa citizen?

To satisfy the lawyers’ need for precedent: 98 percent of citizens worldwide acquired citizenship in the country of one or both of their parents birth, or acquiring it in the country of their own birth.

Morally, this arrangement is flawed. Citizenship to a specific country moulds the circumstances in which you develop and live. The social capital, health benefits and legal protection the state affords you shapes the standard of your living.

A child born in Afghanistan has an average life expectancy of 44.6 years. If that child had been born in Japan, he or she would on average live to 83.2 years. What if that child had been born in Canada, where more than 50% of the population has a tertiary degree, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)? Would that child not have an enormous advantage over children in developing countries, where tertiary degrees are scarce and a luxury?

Why should the second-case child be doomed to grow up in an underdeveloped social infrastructure, just because his/her mother gave birth at certain GPS co-ordinates?

Even worse: a child born to a country in conflict. Should the child be nursed in a world of chaos, or allowed to develop in a country with stability and resources even though he was not born there?

Naturalization processes around the world takes many years, attempts and administration costs. States around the world have been given the right to refuse entry and legal protection to individuals that are not citizens. States have been given the power or right to withhold rights, in the form of citizenship. I understand the need for these regulations, supported by arguments regarding national security and organizational provision of resources. But is it moral?

There is a school of thought that advocates for citizenship to be made available to all who choose to live in a country. The implications of this liberal argument are, however, the establishment of a global state where citizens can move in and out of countries as they so please. The advocates argue that certain residency requirements will regulate the sovereignty of regional states, but the practical implications of this argument is just too unrealistically concrete for me to be supportive of the concept. Morally, of course, it appears correct.

Others argue that citizenship should be awarded to all who are subject to the laws of that state. If these individuals have to live by the laws, they need to be represented in the political processes of the state that shape said laws and policies. Or that citizens should be those who economically or socially contribute to the society of the state. If you play a role in developing the state, they argue, you must be granted the protection of said state.

Which school of thought do I support?

Firstly, I believe statelessness denies you a collective identity. It makes you vulnerable, to poverty and violence, as you are under no state’s legal protection or provision. It condemns you, in some cases, to the life of a refugee, where your opinion or actions have no credible effect or agency. Arendt actually says: that within a “completely organized humanity” the “loss of home and political status becomes identical with expulsion from humanity altogether.”

I agree to a great extent with Hannah Arendt when she says that “the only human right is the right to citizenship.” This right, after all, affords you many other rights. Do I then believe that power to restrict citizenship and the rights associated with it should be left to the sovereignty of states? With 32.9 million displaced people globally in 2006 alone, I do question the structure of citizenship application and implementation. The obvious solution would be for all of these stateless people to be granted nationality in the various states they currently live in, or could be provided for.

But unfortunately, this argument is not merely a moral one. It is a racial, regional, economical, political argument. States not willing to legally absorb these refugees to establish them in communities conducive to growth are instead moving towards a so-called containment strategy. This involves the use of mass repatriation and internment camps, including emergency and holding stations. These states may legally exclude these individuals from their territory for whatever reason.

By what right are you, and not the stateless, citizens of a country?

Going by the place of birth of your parents or yourself seems feudal and primitive. Giving everyone license to roam free seems like a recipe for resource misdistribution. The one thing I do believe is that the processes of naturalization should be simplified, as to make transition easier for citizens. In the era of globalization, this only seems logical. Also: if an individual needs to be an economic agent contributing towards the state to be a citizen, what becomes of the marginalized who cannot do so? I believe that the individuals subject to the laws of a state give the state legitimacy. This seems a fair basis for citizenship, to my amateur mind.

The other thing I know is that sovereignty of state is failing us in addressing the problem of statelessness. Did Hannah Arendt have a solution for the problem?

No. Nor do I. Yet.