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Abstract

Hannah Arendt’s expression of the “right to have right” forms a focal point in debates
about the foundation of rights and the possibility to prevent rightlessness. Not only in
Arendt’s text but also in later scholarship that draws on the expression, it is particularly
the situation of migrants that drives the reflections. However, the role of spatial distance
for rights has received surprisingly little attention. The paper explores how spatial dis-
tance relates to legal guarantees and affects the claiming of rights. It discusses the dif-
ferent interpretations that the “right to have rights” was given and asks about its per-
sistent relevance in times of international human rights treaties. Nowhere is the
precarity of the “right to have rights” today as palpable as in the conditions of accessing
territory in search of protection. The reach of fundamental rights guarantees regularly
hinges on the jurisdiction of a state, laws and practices of hindering access can easily
circumvent legal liability. And even where the legality is in doubt, the physical distance
of potential claimants leaves most cases unchallenged. The paper revisits the debate
about the “right to have rights” with view to the situation of distant claimants. It argues
that theories of political contestation often build on the co-presence of persons as an
implicit premise and that this gives rise to a puzzle since co-presence is itself condi-
tioned by legal rules. The paper suggests that this requires us to examine how conditions
of presence, visibility and communication affect the political founding and negotiation
of rights, and to ask how law shapes these conditions.