ABSTRACT
The relationship of refugees and democracy appears as one of opposites. Democracy, in a simplified picture, consists of procedures within states and among citizens. Refugees, by contrast, lack effective membership in a state. The picture of refugees and democracy as antithetical is a valid starting point, yet it must be complicated. The chapter outlines how the meaning of democracy evolved and discusses in particular the relationship of democracy and borders. In the academic debate about the “boundary problem” of democracy, two perspectives are often not sufficiently distinguished: one of a normative horizon of democracy as a question of inclusion, and one as a factual horizon of democracy as a matter of institutions. This simultaneity of a need for institutions and demands of inclusion creates a dynamic, the subject of democracy is in that sense in constant motion. The chapter describes this dynamic by drawing on Hannah Arendt’s conception of the relationship between law and politics. Moreover, it discusses the implications of globalization and an internationalization of law for democracy. How democracy can be understood beyond the state framework is significant for the political inclusion of refugees in a dual sense: first, the international level might allow for including refugee voices in a way that the state does not. Second, the debate around democracy beyond the state in some ways parallels questions of refugee inclusion as it concerns conditions of political participation that differ from the representative institutions of the territorial state.
