The Rights of Others

The Rights of Others examines the boundaries of political community by focusing on political membership - the principles and practices for incorporating aliens and strangers, immigrants and newcomers, refugees and asylum seekers into existing polities. Boundaries define some as members, others as aliens. But when state sovereignty is becoming frayed, and national citizenship is unravelling, definitions of political membership become much less clear. As Seyla Benhabib explains with great clarity and elegance, few issues in world politics today are more important, or more troubling, but morally acceptable solutions do nonetheless exist.