Transnational Struggle for Recognition: Axel Honneth on the Embodied Dignity of Stateless Persons

Abstract

In the last 15 years, scholars have increasingly applied Axel Honneth’s recognition theory to global issues such as justice, poverty, solidarity, peace, cosmopolitanism, and climate change. UNHCR estimates that there are currently 12 million stateless people worldwide. Their citizenship rights and human rights are mis-recognized. As humans, their human rights and human dignity should be protected. However, this requires being a citizen of a state, which, by definition, excludes stateless people. Although representing a fairly large group among today’s irregular migrants, within the above Honneth scholarship, statelessness is seldom investigated. And if being explored, the primary focus is rights-based recognition within states. In contrast, therefore, I reconstruct what I perceive as a Honnethian idea of a “transnational struggle for recognition” of stateless people. First, I reframe the concrete universalism of the early Honneth’s philosophical anthropology, which includes stateless persons. It is concrete by being grounded in subjects’ bodily experiences, and it is universal by understanding recognition as a human condition. Second, building on his philosophical anthropology, I argue that embodied, vulnerable humans are motivated by mis-recognition. Stateless peoples’ transnational struggle for recognition is driven, then, by the lack of love, respect, and esteem. In some instances, however, statelessness even generates “refugee patients,” where stateless persons may be subjected to bodily experiencing, e.g., extreme traumatization due to the limbo situation often caused by statelessness. By being non-recognized, and not merely mis-recognized, stateless persons may be hindered from struggling for recognition. Finally, I emphasize the relevance of the entire Honnethian framework in the case of statelessness based on the suffering caused by the experience of mis-recognition as well as non-recognition. This approach involves applying all three forms of recognition: respect, love, and esteem. I conclude that this framing invokes what I conceptualize as a “transnational recognitive demand” that stateless people be recognized—as humans—in order to live a full life with dignity.