ABSTRACT
Seyla Benhabib is an eminent political theorist who represents a universalist moral standpoint and a vision of cosmopolitan politics. Benhabib's main concerns in The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens can be traced back in embryo to her doctoral thesis on G. W. F. Hegel's Philosophy of Right, which examined the tensions between freedom, universal rights, and political membership in sovereign states. Benhabib's concern with the rights of immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers is most evident in her book The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt, published in 1996. An important shift in Benhabib's philosophical work came in the mid-1990s when she began to turn to empirical questions around multiculturalism, citizenship, and immigration within the European Union. This coincided with the Treaty of Maastricht and the creation of European citizenship. Benhabib's ideas have been adapted and applied to a range of topics including European Union political integration, the Eurozone financial crisis, and the challenges of multiculturalism in Germany.
