Law and the Stranger
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1. The Neighborliness of the Law: Kant on the Cosmopolitan Right of Hospitality 1. The Neighborliness of the Law: Kant on the Cosmopolitan Right of Hospitality
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2. Strangers in the Home: The Global Trade in Domestic Workers 2. Strangers in the Home: The Global Trade in Domestic Workers
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3. Unrightful Hospitalities: The Trade in Women from Mainland China to Hong Kong in Fruit Chan's Durian Durian 3. Unrightful Hospitalities: The Trade in Women from Mainland China to Hong Kong in Fruit Chan's Durian Durian
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Envoi Envoi
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Notes Notes
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Necessary Strangers: Law's Hospitality in the Age of Transnational Migrancy
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Published:06 July 2010
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Abstract
This chapter examines how global capitalism and the circulation of workers across borders give rise to so-called “necessary strangers.” It offers a critique of Immanuel Kant's ideas on neighborliness and hospitality, including his argument that conditional hospitality flows from sovereignty and nation states. Kant also claims that the relation between law and stranger is governed by a dynamic of attraction and repulsion that can be overcome only by the unconditional hospitality created by commerce and international trade. The chapter challenges Kant's arguments with two examples that show how contemporary globalization intensifies rather than ameliorates the tension in law between the attraction and repulsion of the stranger. The first example deals with the legal construction of female migrant domestic workers in Southeast Singapore, while the second focuses on sex workers migrating from mainland China to Hong Kong. The chapter illustrates the role of law in global capitalism's modalities of inclusion and exclusion, and specifically how global capitalism has turned low-status workers such as domestic and sex workers into permanent strangers.
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