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Resident Foreigners

      A Philosophy of Migration

      Donatella Di Cesare

      Translated by David Broder

      polity

Copyright page

      First published in Italian as Stranieri Residenti © Bollati Boringhieri 2017

      This English edition © Polity Press, 2020

      Polity Press

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      All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

      ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3354-1

      ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3355-8 (pb)

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Di Cesare, Donatella, author.

      Title: Resident foreigners : a philosophy of migration / Donatella Di Cesare.

      Other titles: Stranieri residenti. English

      Description: English edition. | Medford, MA : Polity, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2019014899 (print) | LCCN 2019980058 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509533541 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509533558 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781509533572 (ebook)

      Subjects: LCSH: Emigration and immigration--Philosophy.

      Classification: LCC JV6035 .D4913 2019 (print) | LCC JV6035 (ebook) | DDC 304.801--dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019014899

      LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019980058

      Typeset in 10.5 on 12 pt Times New Roman

      by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NL

      Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Limited

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      Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

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Dedication

       To my grandfather Francesco La Torre,

       anarchist and socialist,

       who set off from Marseilles

       and landed, clandestinely,

       at Ellis Island in 1925

Introduction: In Short

      In this book, the reader will find no ‘answers’ to questions like ‘how migration flows ought to be governed’, what criteria should be used to ‘distinguish between refugees and economic migrants’, or how they should be ‘integrated’. Rather, this work poses a fundamental challenge to such questions. For they are all inscribed in a politics that, while it claims to be pragmatic, responds only to the self-immunizing logic of exclusion. No solutions are to be found along these lines. This politics, which goes so far as to portray even barring entry to the migrant as an expression of concern for her wellbeing, and her rejection as an act of consideration towards her, aims only to defend the state’s territory, understood as a closed-off space under collective ownership. But the nation cannot invoke any ius soli as a reason to deny hospitality, any more than it can a ius sanguinis. It is no surprise that two ancient spectres – the blood and the soil, which have forever been the linchpins of discrimination – have re-emerged in Europe in recent years.

      Today’s world is subdivided into multiple states that face one another, confront one another, and support one another. For the children of the nation, the state appears as a natural, almost eternal entity; since birth, they have shared the dominant state-centric perspective, which still