From Statistics to Solidarity: Applying Arendt's Political Responsibility and Statelessness

December 2024

In this blog entry, Rebekah Prystupa, Honours student at the University of Melbourne in the Politics and International Studies faculty considers the limitations of statistical measurement in the context of statelessness in Australia. In doing so, she highlights the dependence on a government’s willingness to undertake the proactive collection of such data, and how this may not be reflective of how stateless people actually identify themselves. Drawing on Hannah Arendt's concept of political responsibility, the piece argues for a shift in perspective from relying on statistics to collective engagement.

In 2023, the UN reported over 8,000 stateless people in Australia, while the Australian government recorded only 52 in 2017 and 132 in 2018. This disparity raises concerns about the reliability of data, and more specifically, it connects to our responsibility to address statelessness. As I argued in a recently published opinion piece, statelessness is not on our government's policy platform, as demonstrated by the disparity between the UN and Australian government reporting.

Further, data on statelessness often fails to be reflective of the wishes of those with lived experiences of statelessness. One example previously described in the CSS blog is the Rohingya Muslims, who belong to a region that falls within the territory they are no longer legally a citizen of – Myanmar. Their connection to the region means they disagree with their categorisation under the stateless label. From this, we can notice that statistics on statelessness sometimes fail to account for those with lived experience, and whether they identify with such labelling.

Arendt’s conception of political responsibility, developed through reflection on her own statelessness after being stripped of German citizenship during World War Two, is particularly relevant to understanding contemporary situations of statelessness because there is very little willingness by states, including Australia, to address this problem. In our situation where blame is not singular, and governments eschew obligations, Arendt’s theorisations help Australians understand ‘why me?’. Typically, we consider responsibility in two ways: as a form of redress for past acts and as connected to what individual agents have/have not done. In contrast, Arendt’s notion of political responsibility denotes collective imperatives stemming, suggesting that addressing an issue is not solely a matter for perpetrators or governments, but all implicated subjects within a community.

Arendt’s conception of political responsibility has been utilised in various approaches. Iris Marion Young makes use of this concept to argue that, despite the tendency to distance ourselves from such realities, we as consumers bear responsibility for the conditions in sweatshops. She states that responsibility must apply “between strangers in the same country or city as much as transnationally”. Benjamin P Davis makes a similar argument in his text Choose Your Bearing, stating that our globalised world must embody a decolonial responsibility amongst individuals in the West. Given that statelessness in Australia stems largely from migratory rather than in situ contexts, such a model of political responsibility extends duties beyond direct blame for past acts towards commitment to future actions.

Through this model of political responsibility, we can extend the onus from governments and institutions to individuals. This is necessary in the Australian context, wherein I doubt the possibility of statistical measuring providing apt recourse. In an essay discussing the #IBelong campaign to End Statelessness, Kristy A. Belton laments the progressive potential of the campaign (which included suggestions to improve quantitative data on statelessness) against the reality that “states still jealously guard their sovereign right to determine who belongs,” adding that “it is difficult to imagine how statelessness—itself a by-product of the state system's malfunctioning—can be resolved by the very actors that generated stateless people in the first place”. This is especially true in the Australian context, wherein migration caps are part and parcel of our immigration policy. For example, Australia’s visa program with Tuvalu, allowing only 280 annual climate migrants, reflects the quantitative focus that prioritises exclusion and quotas over responsibility to others.

We cannot depend on governments to take action or make use of statistics on statelessness in an ethical manner. As such, with political responsibility in mind, the view that “Australia should address statelessness” moves from the idea that our government should do more to the obligation that we, as individuals, should do more. As Davis states, this imposes a need for actors to make “political responsibility a larger part of their lives, well beyond the start of the movement”, going beyond a singular moment of political engagement to make this a commitment to effecting change. By invoking a need for future acts that must be continuously reaffirmed and taken up the way we address social and political wrongs becomes a relational practice, one which requires sustained commitment. Through conceptualising our obligations to the stateless through political responsibility, a need for continued commitment is invoked, going beyond the frozen moment where a statistic is measured.

Moreover, the model of political responsibility can allow us to be more connected to, and reflective of, the lived experiences of the stateless.  Clearly, the statistics do not reflect the stateless, nor are they built to engender action in the global community. But this model of political responsibility aims to overcome this.  Citing Davis again, he states that responsibility “must start from and refer back to the claims of marginalised peoples and dominated classes”. It imposes a need to remain connected to the experiences and wishes of those experiencing statelessness – a much-needed change to the discourse.  Arendt’s concept of political responsibility is of great use to stateless advocacy, overcoming the immobile, unreflective nature of statistical reporting.

_{Image by Ferdinand Stöhr on Unsplash}