The paper is divided in two related parts. The first one offers a textual chain based on the short text “We Refugees” written by Hannah Arendt in 1943. What does this ‘we refugees’ mean, who are those ‘we’, and could we not once become refugees? The figure of a refugee is read through several instances of the phrase introduced by Arendt, with the special emphasis on the ideas of human rights, citizenship, fear, territory and belonging. The figure of a refugee allows us to introduce an important difference, often omitted within strictly juridical and policy papers, between the right to life and the right to a livable life. The second part of the text examines the hypothesis that a livable life requires three conditions for its possibility: equality, the absence of war and the absence of poverty. The life of a refugee can be thought of as a retraction of these conditions, and thus as unlivable.
