Seyla benhabib biography of barack obama

Yale philosopher Seyla Benhabib interviewed by Karin Wahl-Jorgensen

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Notes

By Seyla Benhabib*

I.

If the COVID-19 pandemic has made anything clear it is the absurdity of our faith in closing borders which many citizens and residents all over the world clamored for as a measure against an invisible virus, while at the same time accepting shipments of masks and materials from all over the world without asking whether they may also be invisible carriers. The use of territorial exclusion to deny rights is one of the reflex mechanisms of the modern statal imaginary (Scott 1988).  The deep-seated fear of the outsider and the stranger as an invisible threat, as a potential carrier of disease and danger is so embedded in the imaginary of the modern state that even without any proof that asylum seekers and non-citizen foreigners were potential carriers of the Corona virus or were infected by it, in the Spring of 2020 one state after another closed its borders to them.  Not only was travel between US and Europe suspended for all non-citizens, but the European Union followed suit by shutting its outside borders to all non-EU citizens, while leaving movement across the Schengen borders to the discretion of individual states.

The tightening of the distinction between the citizen and the non-citizen  has implications for  the lives of those already inside

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I want to begin by discussing the relationship between democracy and demography. Over the past two decades, I’ve focused extensively on migration and the boundaries of the demos—an issue that resonates deeply within democracies.

To start, I’d like to recall how Donald Trump challenged Barack Obama’s presidency by questioning Obama’s birthright. For many years, Trump sought to “other” Obama, which was part of an early attempt to articulate a deep-seated fear. This fear is often described as the majority-minority democracy—the concern that the United States could evolve not only into a multi-ethnic democracy, but also into a multi-racial one. Trump’s efforts to stoke these fears about national identity and the boundaries of the demos have a long history, and they have clearly resonated with many.

In discussions about immigration, it’s common to hear a sense of urgency and anxiety, but the numbers don’t always match the intensity of the conversation. Only about 3.6 percent of the global population—roughly 281 million people out of 7.8 billion—live in countries other than their country of birth. This represents a relatively small percentage of the global population. So why does migration spark such anxious discourse?

Part of the explanation l