Exceptions of Modern Citizenship: Refugees and Camps in the Human Rights Criticism within the Framework of Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben s Perspectives

In this study, human rights criticism has been addressed by considering concepts of refugees those are deprived of citizenship de jure or de facto and citizens. In this context, the meaning of the fact that French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen includes two different subjects as “citizen” and “man” and states that everyone’s innate, inalienable and inviolable rights is discussed by taking Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben’s perspectives into account. Firstly, the study addresses the human rights crises arising as a result of the increasing number of refugees as national states begin to collapse. In order to understand the reason of refugee s deprivation of human rights, the nation-birth link which causes the exclusion of citizenship has been discussed. Additionally, the legal and political structure of the camps in which refugees those deprived of this link has been argued. At the end of the study, the human rights concept was criticized in terms of positions of man and citizen against rights. Despite the dynamic structure of human rights, it has been revealed that refugee who is deprive of “right to have rights” is an important concept which indicates the exclusiveness of citizenship and the naked life deprived of citizenship.