Humanitarian Rhetoric and Deservingness in the Democratic Discourse on Refugees: The Example of Classical Athens

This chapter examines the functioning of humanitarian rhetoric and notions of deservingness in Athenian democratic discourse, with a specific focus on refugees. It begins with an examination of the current discourse on displaced persons and refugees, where two main ways of portraying them emerge: the ‘immunitarian rhetoric’, a defensive discourse that perceives refugees as a radical threat to the security of the host community, and the ‘humanitarian rhetoric’, which perpetuates the idea that refugees are weak, passive victims in need of humanitarian assistance. While the immunitarian rhetoric against refugees was absent from Athenian democratic discourse, the humanitarian rhetoric was employed at multiple levels and utilised by both those promoting reception and the refugees themselves. Based on these assumptions, this chapter analyses the functioning of the notions of the ‘deserving refugee’ and the ‘refugee in need of everything’ within the humanitarian rhetoric discourse, as well as their combined use. It first focuses on Demosthenes’ Against Leptines. Here, the speaker presents some controversial exiles, whose image was contested at home, as democratic heroes who deserved the fiscal privileges they received as a reward for their loyalty to the Athenians. Some attention is then given to Isocrates’ Plataikos, which is exemplary in showing the humanitarian reasons to which refugees could resort. Besides, the discourse of the Plataian refugee illustrates how the deserving refugee argument can be combined with a more properly humanitarian argument. They are complementary techniques, exploiting from different angles the traditional image of the Athenians as welcoming people and protectors of the weak.