Nation-states protect citizens’ dignity by refusing it to outsiders through tests of worth

Evidence

Nation-states protect the human dignity of their ‘citizens’ through legal, political and economic mechanisms that, in certain conditions, refuse dignity to others. Nation-states create ‘tests of worth’ for aliens, refugees, strangers, whose ‘format’ they are, unfortunately, not able to change (see Boltanski and Th é venot, 2006 [ 1991 ]). — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 70

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to citizenship-as-membership and the stranger/alien literature, and echoes the exclusion-via-protection paradox in The Reluctant Fundamentalist.