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From exile of citizens to deportation of non-citizens: ancient Greece as a mirror to illuminate a modern transition

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 15; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13621025.2011.583788

1469-3593

Benjamin Gray,

Religious Freedom and Discrimination

Abstract This article is an ancient Greek historian's response to an invitation to reflect upon modern liberal democratic deportation. The article identifies a revealing contrast between ancient Greek city-states and their modern republican successors. In ancient Greece, institutionalised lawful expulsion of non-citizens was not a major concern. Rather, it was lawful expulsion of citizens which was a prominent political issue, comparable to modern liberal democratic deportation. Indeed, modern liberal democratic deportation and associated rhetoric were significantly foreshadowed in the ancient Greek politics of expulsion: Greeks used and justified lawful expulsion of citizens as a means of constructing and reinforcing both state power and abstract, rationalistic norms of citizenship. The article suggests the hypothesis that the contrast between the ancient and the modern situations can be explained by the modern prevalence of universalist human rights norms, not politically influential in ancient Greece. First, human rights norms exert pressures on modern liberal democratic states, unparalleled in ancient Greece, to integrate and assist outsiders. Deportation is partly a reaction against those pressures, of a type unnecessary in the ancient Greek world. Second, although the modern liberal democratic analogues of Classical republican ideas, partly derived from their Classical antecedents, encourage lawful citizen expulsion, the modern citizen's inalienable human right to residence in his home state militates against it. Modern liberal democratic deportation of non-citizens, and associated rhetoric, can thus be interpreted partly as alternative outlets for the use of expulsion and exclusionary rhetoric to construct and reinforce complex norms of citizenship. Keywords: ancient Greek city-statedemocracyexileunmaking citizensorigins of deportation Acknowledgements I would like to thank participants in the Oxford conference on Deportation and the Development of Citizenship in December 2009, for comments on the oral version of this article, and Matthew Gibney, Richard Gray, Simon Hornblower and the anonymous reviewers for Citizenship Studies, for their help with the written version. I am also very grateful to John Ma for his help with the ancient historical research on which this article draws. Abbreviations follow the Oxford Classical Dictionary (third edition) and the Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum. Notes 1. For an argument that ancient Greek political life was distinctively rational: Murray (Citation1990). 2. For Athens: Davies (Citation1977/8), Osborne (Citation1981–1983). 3. For a full collection of the evidence for individual city-states' constitutions: Hansen and Nielsen (Citation2004). For broad political treatments of the Greek polis, see (for example) Murray and Price (Citation1990) and Hansen (Citation2006). 4. Philochorus FGrH 328 F119, Figueira Citation2003, 47, note 11 (an Athenian case). 5. Cf. Diodorus Siculus 11.76.5 (concerning fifth-century Sicilian city-states). Incarceration of disruptive mercenaries was another possibility: Polyaenus Strategemata 2.30.1. 6. Xenelasia is securely attested elsewhere only at the city-state of Apollonia on the Adriatic (Aelian Varia Historia 13.16, Figueira Citation2003, 46, note 9); there is also a possible attestation at Lyttos on Crete (Whitehead Citation2002, p. 122, SEG 39.974). 7. Walzer (Citation1983, pp. 52–55), compares modern Gastarbeiter with Athenian metics. 8. Other major studies of ancient Greek exile and exiles include Balogh (Citation1943), Grasmück (Citation1978), Seibert (Citation1979) and McKechnie (Citation1989). 9. For a related view of Greek normative political thought: Balot (Citation2006). 10. Nomima I, no. 105 (Teos, early fifth century), fragment b, ll. 5–12; SEG 26.1306 (Teos, third century), ll. 21–26. 11. I.Ilion 25 (Ilion, Hellenistic), ll. 97–104. 12. Nomima I, no. 19 (Halicarnassus, probably 475–450), ll. 32–41. 13. Michel Recueil no. 1334 (Elis, c. 350 or c. 335), ll. 3–5. 14. Voutiras and Sismanides (Citation2007), text pp. 257–259 (Dikaia, 365–359), ll. 17–21. 15. IG XII 9 191 (Eretria, c. 322–309/8), ll 29–33, 56–58. 16. E.g. SEG 53.565, ll. 1–13. 17. For a full list: Hansen (Citation1976, pp. 72–74). 18. E.g. IG XII 6 1 172 (Hellenistic Samos), face A, ll. 78–79 (atimia until the fine is paid). 19. IG XII 9 191 (Eretria, late fourth century), l. 43. 20. Nomima I, no. 43 (Hypoknemidian Lokrian law concerning a new colony at Naupaktos, c. 460–450), ll. 43–45; Nomima I, no. 84 (Erythrai, mid-fifth to early fourth century), ll. 9–13. 21. E.g. IG XII 7 515 (Aegiale, late second century), ll. 125–129. 22. Ostracism is best attested for Athens, but similar practices are known from some other Greek city-states: Forsdyke (Citation2005, pp. 285–288). 23. SEG 53.565, ll. 1–13. 24. SEG 18.726, ll. 46–48, with Heraclides Lembus Constitutions 18. 25. SEG 51.1105B, ll. 3–6. 26. Cf. Plato Laws 867c4–d3, with Saunders (Citation1991, p. 227). 27. Analysis of this tendency: Walzer (Citation1983, pp. 32, 39, 61–62), Gibney (Citation2004, pp. 25–27), de Genova and Peutz (Citation2010, introduction, pp. 1–2). 28. In political history: the entanglement of racial and religious criteria for deportation with notions of political virtue in the USA from the eighteenth century onwards is clear from King (Citation2000) and Kanstroom (Citation2007). Compare some political philosophy: Walzer (Citation1983, p. 39) refers to the shared political culture of a national political community. 29. Compare Kingston (Citation2005, pp. 35–36), on revolutionary France. 30. Contrast Ober (Citation1996, esp. p. 101). 31. Vandorpe (Citation2007, pp. 123, 125), ll. 1–20, esp. 9–15. 32. Voutiras and Sismanides (Citation2007, pp. 257–259), ll. 41–43; IG XII 7 3, ll. 38–46. 33. Compare the rhetoric of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2007, concerning the deportation of foreign criminals: 'you play by the rules or you face the consequences' (Johnston Citation2007). 34. Compare Gordon Brown's rhetoric about the conditionality of immigrants' privileges in 2010: 'I know people think it's unfair when it feels as though some can take advantage of the freedoms and opportunities we offer in Britain without making a fair contribution or playing by the rules. So do I' (Watson 2010). In an earlier speech, Brown explicitly invoked a citizenship 'contract' in this context (Wilson Citation2007). 35. I am very grateful to Matthew Gibney for discussion. 36. Some other relevant factors are specific to particular liberal states: compare Kingston (Citation2005, pp. 28–30), discussing anti-banishment arguments in revolutionary France. 37. See Johnston (2007), Wilson (2007), Watson (2010). 38. Compare de Genova (Citation2010, pp. 37–46) and Walters (Citation2010, pp. 74–75), developing arguments of Arendt and Agamben. 39. For comparable modern criticisms of civic republican and communitarian politics in general, see (e.g.) Derrida (Citation1994, pp. 176–179, 247–252); Frazer (Citation1999); Rawls (Citation2001, pp. 21–23). *All ancient dates mentioned in this article are BC.