Szigeti reframes Arendt’s “right to have rights” through private law

Development summary

Péter D Szigeti examines the creation of rightlessness affecting undocumented migrants, stateless persons and refugees through Hannah Arendt’s idea of the “right to have rights”. The central question is how people without citizenship or immigration status may secure freedom and legal belonging through contract and property rights.

Szigeti argues that this right is fundamentally a private-law right, with contract and property rights capable of supplying the freedom and belonging that Arendt found lacking. Drawing on the legal history of the past 150 years and the lives of Max Stoeck and Friedrich Nottebohm, the article argues that rightlessness today is produced increasingly through documentation requirements and the obstruction of private transactions rather than directly through citizenship or statelessness.