ABSTRACT
Using the work of Hannah Arendt, this chapter demonstrates that forced displacement entails two distinct harms (legal/political harms and ontological harms) that must be analyzed separately. The ontological deprivation has three different dimensions: the loss of identity and reduction to bare life; the expulsion from common humanity; and the loss of agency understood not as a subjective disposition, but an ability to have refugees’ words and actions be recognized as meaningful and politically relevant. Importantly, once philosophers take seriously the ontological deprivation as a distinct harm, other moral obligations and ways ought to help the displaced become more evident. Addressing the ontological deprivation of statelessness may require that philosophers think about ways that stateless people may be able to keep a meaningful political identity, and resist a reduction to bare life, even though they may be formally bereft of citizenship or political membership.
