Thoughts on the refugee crisis through the Arendtian category of “banality of evil”

Abstract

The author presents a brief introduction to the European refugee crisis —the migratory movements that have been developing from 2011 to the present as a result of the Arab Spring and the Syrian War, and the resulting humanitarian crisis in connection to the asylum policies of the European Union—. Then, the phenomenon is interpreted from the perspective of the Arendtian “banal evil” in order to explain the situation in relation to post-modern logic and to the Weberian legal-rational type of domination.