Citizenship and Global Ethics: “The Principle of Affected Interests” in the Politics of Hospitality

Abstract

The issue of citizenship in the theory of justice has focused almost exclusively on the relationship of individuals with the domestic government-of citizens with their state. However, the condition of citizenship is dynamically changing both inside and outside of the domestic government in the era of globalization.

This paper will theorize the reflection on the notion of citizenship in hospitality, building on Derrida’s engagement with “unconditional hospitality” through the bridging of political theory, moral philosophy, and international relations theory, especially by focusing on the implication of recent ideas on the concept of “the principle of affected interests” and stakeholder democracy. In doing so, I define the suitable postulates and conditions of citizenship, which is compatible with global ethics, by referring critically to some of the dichotomic debates between communitarianism’s “thick moral” and cosmopolitanism’s “thin moral”; I attempt to go beyond this dichotomy, a term that is sometimes used overenthusiastically, neglecting the negative implications it may carry.

A similar uncritical stance may be observed in the reception of Kant’s notion of “the right of a stranger,” which is limited to the conditions of universal hospitality, developed in his famous piece on Perpetual Peace, a text that has been at the core of recent debates on cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitan citizenship. I revisit Kant’s text to discuss the implications of his project and Derrida’s critique of Kant’s idea on the conditional hospitality of “the right of a stranger.”

After distinguishing between the “conditional hospitality” and “unconditional hospitality” of the stranger, I attempt to develop a politics and ethics of hospitality due to the stranger. I conclude with a few implications of “the politics of hospitality.”