Refugees and the Rise of the Novel: Trespass, Necessity, and Humanitarian Casuistry in the Long Refugee Crisis

Abstract:The present-day legal theory of the refugee relies on Hannah Arendt's famous phrase, "the right to have rights." Yet Arendt also pointed to an earlier tradition of asylum-seeking. In this article, Professor Youssef explores early English novels' historical association of refugees with the necessity that drives trespass. Examining the early Anglo-American novel in light of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the essay tracks morally involuntary trespass in Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) to argue that the novel models an early theory of the refugee by way of the examination of the affect of defendants who raise the defense of necessity. Viewing the novel as a device that investigates the motivation of those in distress places imaginative fiction at the convergence of defenses of morally involuntary conduct and theories of asylum.