Abstract
The refugee is typically understood as a uniquely modern figure, but US refugee debates and legislation are as old as the country. This essay considers how eighteenth-century debates about refugees can defamiliarize and enrich narratives about the US rights tradition that Hannah Arendt and others have developed based on post–World War accounts of refugees. Drawing on the first US refugee act in 1798, the essay moves beyond the iconic universalisms of natural rights and the abstract model of citizenship associated with it by identifying a grievance-based tradition of settler rights characterized by individualized narratives of patriotic service and political injury. The first section of the essay distinguishes the contemporary, post–World War association of “refugee” with statelessness from an earlier, protection-based understanding of the term that is rooted in its etymological connection with the safety of refuge. The second section uses Thomas Paine’s self-characterizations as a “refugee” to reframe his better-known contributions to rights philosophy. The third section concludes by reading the twenty-seven grievances in the Declaration of Independence as the most canonical example of what the essay calls the “aggrieved personality of rights”: the personal allegiances, circumstances, and injuries that inspire individuals to seek redress in the language of rights.
