ABSTRACT
In order to examine the nature of the relationships such individuals have with those States, we need to look for their commonalities. Left unacknowledged, noncitizenship can make individuals destitute, detained, and even left to die with impunity in and by States ostensibly built on liberal democratic principles. This chapter does not deny the special relationship of citizenship. It draws attention to another special relationship, that of noncitizenship, which has been ignored for too long. In his 2000 book, Philosophies of Exclusion, Phillip Cole not only warns that noncitizens are absent from liberal theorising, he also suggests that perhaps they can never be included. In restatements of what he comes to call 'insider theory', Cole explains that liberal theory, by its very definition, is an insider theory, as it is constructed by its insiders who, perhaps unwittingly, define noncitizens out of consideration.
