Abstract
"The conception of human rights," writes Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalita-rianism, "founded on the presumed existence of a human being as such, has always collapsed when those who declared those rights first met with people who had really lost all their qualities and specific relations - excepting that they were still people." Giorgio Agamben, appealing to this insight, shows us how supposedly sacred and inalienable human rights are, in reality, always dependent on the rights of citizens of some or other state. A person who has lost all qualities except their humanity thus becomes bare life rather than a being bearing rights.
Today it is more and more the refugee who becomes this bare life, excluded from the state system - the one who at least for a time appears as a person bereft of the mask of citizenship, which otherwise always provides a cover for one's face. The refugee, by severing the bond between person and citizen, is a limit concept, which on the one hand presents a disturbing element in the organisation of the national state, while on the other hand also enables the renewal of political categories.