Ideas - Rights vs Deservingness: How We Decide Who Belongs

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

With increasingly diverse societies, the sorting of people into "us" and "them" is inevitable. This sorting brings with it a social and cultural assessment of who does, and does not, deserve social benefits and political rights. The so-called 'deservingness ladder' is shifting as democracies around the world turn towards right-wing populist leaders. 

When a body is discovered 10 miles out to sea, it sparks a mind-blowing police investigation. There's a man living in this address in the name of a deceased. He's one of the most wanted men in the world. This isn't really happening. Officers are finding large sums of money. It's a tale of murder, skullduggery and international intrigue. So who really is he? I'm Sam Mullins and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncovered, available now.

This is a CBC Podcast. Welcome to Ideas, I'm Nala Ihead. There are between 20,000 and 500,000 people in Canada that are not supposed to be here. Chaos and outrage today in downtown LA with thousands of people protesting President Trump's threat of mass deportation. As liberal democracies become increasingly fractured, the sorting of people into us and them has become instinctual. The reasons for that are many, but it's especially stoked by political leaders and their rhetoric.

Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States. A growing number of young people do not subscribe to British values. The sorting brings with it a social and cultural assessment of who does and does not deserve social benefits and political rights. One name for that hierarchy is the deservingness ladder. You'll be judged by are you a contributor to society

or a taker out? So assessments about deservingness are really about moral judgments that we may make. They're exceptionally prone to emotion and because they're so prone to emotion, they can shift and change quite a bit. The so-called deservingness ladder is shifting as democracies around the world turn towards right-wing populist leaders. Who is treated as a legitimate member of the nation and who is not. And that is ramifications for politics. Whose vote should count.

Whose rights should be protected. Who is a true American, a true Canadian and whose voice should be amplified, heard and reflected in political leadership. These are questions that preoccupy Bart Bonacowsky and his colleagues at the Boundaries, Membership and Belonging Program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. He is Associate Professor of Sociology and Politics at New York University and a Faculty Affiliate at NYU's Centre for Data Science. So, when I think about deservingness, I usually think about it from a public opinion perspective.

Alison Harrell is Professor of Political Science, Université de Québec à Montréal. And so thinking about the ways in which people think about who should get what. And so in the context of my own work, that usually has to do with the types of things that the government or the state provides for people and how we think about who should get those types of benefits. So when you talk about us thinking about who should get benefits or who should be deserving in society, how is that different from, you know, having prejudice or biggest bigotry against people? So I think prejudice can absolutely play a role in deserving us. So often people that we have prejudices against,

we don't think are deserving, but that's not the only thing that's there. You can not have any particular hostile attitudes towards someone, but still not think that in the grand scheme of things, they should be the one getting the benefits. And in my own work, that usually comes with thinking about how we envision the political community that we belong to being part of the same country creates obligations to other citizens.

And so that's where prejudices can kind of get in the way of the ways in which we might distribute various types of benefits from the state. So you mentioned the word belong. Bart, where does that word fit into the idea of deserving this? For me, quite centrally. So I agree with Alison's definition and adhere pretty much the same one. In the context of my own work though,

my focus is on the symbolic boundaries of the nation. Who is treated as a legitimate member of the nation and who is not. And that is ramifications for politics, whose vote should count, whose rights should be protected, who is a true American, a true Canadian, and whose voice should be amplified, heard, and reflected in political leadership. So all of that, of course, is related to the distribution of goods and services and state benefits, of course, is related to the distribution of goods and services and state benefits, of course. But in particular, it's really for me, who is a true, true co-national? A true...

Co-national. Co-national. Yeah. A true compatriot. A fellow citizen. Yeah. That's right. And, you know, sorry, in recent politics, this is what's at stake in my view, right?

Especially in the United States, but also in a number of other countries where the radical right has risen, that it's sort of a backlash against the various forms of progress that have been made in terms of minority rights and a desire for a return to a nation that is controlled by its true core citizens, often in the case of Europe and the United States and beyond, white, often Christian, predominantly male citizens who are viewed as the real true nationals. And Bart, just by way of introduction, can we talk briefly, can you talk briefly about the kinds of accusations that are leveled at those who supposedly don't belong?

Sure. Some of these are explicit, of course, and so we've heard all forms of anti-immigrant rhetoric from whether it's Trump or radical right leaders in Europe. So in the United States, it's often a specific focus on undocumented migrants. Those are the most easily vilified and most frequently vilified outgroups. But it really extends beyond that. It extends to all immigrants in some cases, it particularly extends to non-white minorities, often racial, ethnic or religious minorities. And those references are sometimes explicit, but often quite implicit, right? It's about making America great again with an implicit golden era of the past, right? Trump, for instance, never tells us to which, which decade should we go back to.

But implicitly, the idea is, well, let's maybe go back to a time when white Christians were the unquestionable core of the nation and others knew their place, quote unquote. So that, you know, implicit there is a set of boundaries drawn around belonging and deservingness. Well, I just want to start by saying I agree with Alice and Bard in the way that they're describing things. And another way to put this question of deservingness is to think about the opposite or the flip side of deservingness, which is rights or rights claims. Yasmine Aboulaban is Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Politics of Citizenship and Human Rights in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta. She's also

part of the Boundaries, Membership and Belonging Program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. So if you think about rights claims, they're couched in a formal language, they're usually legalistic. Deserving this claims are different. So assessments about deserving this are really about moral judgments that we may make. They're exceptionally prone to emotion.

And because they're so prone to emotion, they can shift and change quite a bit. And so if you're sort of thinking about a ladder or a hierarchy of deservingness, we can see it in things like immigration. So just as one example, Trump, incoming president, Donald Trump, is speaking recently about nice countries of immigration and the nice countries of immigration he was referring to that he wanted immigrants from were Sweden and Denmark or Switzerland and Denmark. And that was being contrasted implicitly with bad countries of immigration.

And if you look at other kinds of speeches that he's made, he's really talking about countries of Africa, countries of the Middle East, countries of Latin America not being nice countries of immigration. And so you get a kind of hierarchy of who is wanted and who's not wanted through those statements. And sometimes those kinds of hierarchies can shift and they shift because ideas about deservingness are really, they're not inherent. There's nothing inherent that makes one person or one group more deserving than the other. It's about judgments that we make and people are involved in making judgments. And so, and those people may be the media, those people may be politicians, those people may be educators. There's all kinds of ways that those ideas get

filtered and they can change. So for example, if you think historically, slavery was justified, historically, it was legal historically. People may have used very racist arguments to justify slavery. Today, we see it as repugnant, it's not legal, and so ideas about that have shifted. Absolutely, and we'll be talking about that in more detail. I'm curious if you talked about the American example, but here in Canada, can you describe how that ladder might look like here in Canada right in this moment? Well, I mean, I think in really the recent months, sort of after the pandemic, we've started to have more negative public opinion around immigration.

We have also had more discussions, including even from the two-deal liberals who had been very much in favor of immigration, criticizing, for example, international students coming or making adjustments on the overall levels of immigration, how many immigrants they're taking in each year. And so that really represents a contrast because if you think back, and it wasn't that long ago to the days of the pandemic, what was happening in that period was that public opinion was very favorable to immigrants. Immigrants were the ones who were doing many of the dangerous jobs. And the government was even coming up with different kinds of pathways by which people that were refugee claimants, for example, who did work in healthcare could be eligible to become permanent residents and eventually

Canadian citizens and sort of track through in a different way. And so, you know, in a very short period of time, we've had very different evaluations, even from the same government about immigration and the worth of immigrants. And that sort of shifting, I guess, ladder of deservingness also happens, you know, in very specific local contexts. You're all in different parts of North America. Alison, you're in Quebec. Yasmin, you're in Alberta and Bart, you're in the US,

but you're also watching or you do look at Europe. Can we talk about each of your contexts? Because I wanna compare them all. Of how the relationship between deservingness and rights is playing out where you are. And Alison, if we could start with you. Sure, so I think that's a really interesting question, in part because often we talk about the Quebec context

as if it's drastically different from the rest of Canada. And so I don't wanna overly go in that direction. I think a lot of what we see in Quebec are the same sorts of dynamics that we see elsewhere despite focusing on particular issues in the Quebec context recently. So I think that there's that caveat that a lot of the times when I look at public opinion data, Quebec actually looks a lot like the rest of Canada more so than it's distinct. But I think one of the areas in which deservingness obviously engages something that engages less outside of Quebec

is really on linguistic distinctions and how those play out in connection with immigration. Obviously, linguistic conceptions of what it means to be a co-national in the Quebec context include a more strong adherence to the importance of the French language for Quebec culture and society. And so that can play in sometimes to the types of dynamics that we see, especially in the media and in the news lately. That being said, I think it goes without saying that some of the distinctions that are the most important in Quebec are also the most important outside of Quebec. And so here a lot of my work shows biases in deservingness perceptions, especially

towards Indigenous peoples, those existing Quebec as they do in the rest of Canada. In some more recent work we've done, also we've shown really strict deservingness judgments against people without status in Quebec and the rest of Canada as well. So just so I think that go ahead. Yeah, sorry. You finished that thought. So I just think that. Go ahead. So I just want to understand what the initial statement that you made is, did I understand correctly that that language, French in particular,

on a deserving this land ladder, Trump other traits like race or color or religion. Is that correct? Am I understanding you right? So I don't think I would go that far, actually. I think that a lot of the ways in which immigration is talked about in the Canadian context uses culture and language as a way in which to start the conversation. And so that's one sort of intersection of difference that's more salient in Quebec, especially when it comes to immigration. But I don't think it trumps other types of diversity that come into context. And so when you have a Muslim immigrant who speaks French, the French interacts with their other background, their religion, their gender in the ways in which it's mobilized. And

so I really think it's at the intersection of things where language plays more of a role in Quebec than it would in the rest of Canada. Okay. Yasmine, you're in Alberta. Can you talk about Okay. Yasmine, you're in Alberta. Can you talk about the latter in that context? Well, I would agree with Alison that, you know, it's not like Albertans are completely, you know, different group of people from other Canadians, but there are certain ways that some of these questions are playing out right now, partly because of the government and power and the kinds of policies that are being pursued. And so as one example, in the United Conservative Party platform that members had an essay in, they were arguing over the last couple of years that any university that pursued policies related to what Canadians call equity, diversity, and inclusion,

or what Americans would call diversity, equity, and inclusion, DEI versus EDI, that any university that was doing that should not get government funding. And of course, education is a major provincial responsibility. So that has become an issue for universities and you're starting to see a recrafting of policies going on in the Alberta context and distancing from that language of equity, diversity and inclusion. So that really, I think, gets at deserving this idea is because diversity, equity and inclusion is really aimed at saying, hey, there's certain groups that have been disadvantaged historically. We want to even out the playing field and make a workplace, make an education system wherever you happen to be looking at, a federal bureaucracy more inclusive of everybody. And this is really challenging that and saying that essentially, things should go back to

a period where you just supposedly judge everybody based on characteristics that have nothing to do with their race or their gender or other kinds of criteria. But even if in fact those kinds of policies might favor white males. So, Bart, let's talk about what is now becoming Trump's America. The US, along with other liberal democracies, are facing a turn towards a more extreme version of the right. I'm wondering if you could describe how, in that context, how the deserving-est ladder shifts. Absolutely.

We can think of the rise of Trumpism and related radical right movements and other liberal democracies as a reactionary backlash to rapid social and cultural change. And so if you think about the period in the nineties, but really some of it dates back further, but really nineties through the early two thousands, with people seeing rapid economic change, shifting ideas about who's a true American in terms of ethnicity and race, and progression of rights, essentially rights expansion. The radical right has capitalized on the sort of backlash against that and has sought to pursue rights retrenchment. So if we think back to Black Lives Matter and the opposition to that through Blue Lives Matter,

right, whose lives should we be worried about? Is it the Black men who are often murdered back to Black Lives Matter and the opposition to that through Blue Lives Matter, right? Whose lives should we be worried about? Is it the Black men who are often murdered by police in the United States or the cops themselves? If we think about women's rights, the backlash against abortion rights, the backlash against Me Too as a social movement, or everything we've heard about trans rights over the last few years in the US, but also in other countries, which has also sort of amplified this sense of backlash against change. And of course, we've already talked about anti-immigrant attitudes, anti-immigrant rhetoric, Trump's immigration bans during the first term, all of this has to do with whose rights we should protect,

either legally or in terms of enforcement. So even if the laws don't change, you know, who are state agencies actually protecting or not? And of course, in the ensuing years after the first Trump term, we had the rise in anti-DEI rhetoric, they as being alluded to, all this rhetoric around anti-wokenness, quote unquote, opposition to critical race theory, or even just teaching anything about race in schools. So all of this is kind of a broad set of counter movements to the historical rights expansion for a number of minority groups and a desire to bring back the country to a status quo ante to a time before

these groups had political representation, had legal representation and legal rights. And I think that the final move in this is also something that scholars have written and talked about in the recent years, and that's the vilification of political opposition. So the vilification of the other party in the United States, the Democratic Party, this question of who gets to vote and gerrymandering certain populations out of the voting process. Once people vote, whose votes are honored, right? And we think about the attempted coup on January 6, 2021.

That was an attempt to essentially disregard votes that had already been cast. And back to this question of state services, who gets assistance in times of crisis, right? The idea that when after the hurricane in Puerto Rico, Trump basically said, well, we're not gonna help. And now after the fires in Los Angeles, well, maybe we'll help, but with strings attached, all of this gets to the question of who gets to be deserving of assistance,

who gets to be deserving of political representation and expression. And I mentioned both sort of backlash to be deserving of a system who gets to be deserving of political representation and expression. And I mentioned both sort of backlash against minority rights and a vilification of the political opposition together because these things are deeply interconnected. So the Democratic Party in the United States is seen as a party of coastal urban elite liberals, but they're also seen as in cahoots with minorities, as in cahoots with gay rights and trans rights movements and immigrants, right?

And so Trump-like populism is really a tripartite populism and nationalism, where the vilification of elites goes hand in hand with the vilification of minorities. And the idea is that in order to scale back on minority rights and scale back on the excesses of liberal elites, one must elect Trump who can single-handedly make America great again and turn back history to a time when, you know, again, white Christian Americans were in charge. What you're talking about basically is the weaponization of deservingness. And I wonder if you could talk about whether, is this moment different from what you've seen before?

Is this a level of conversation about deservingness that we've never reached before in the US? I mean, the US, the entire history of the United States is a history of progress and backlash. So in a sense, that's not new. I mean, thinking about the abolition of slavery, the Civil War, later the civil rights movement. I mean, in some ways we can think of American history

as sort of waxing and waning in terms of the expansion and contraction of sort of deserving this within the American society, American polity. I think what's different this time is just the level of illiberal and anti-democratic sentiment, rhetoric, and to some degree policy that's being enacted at the highest levels of US government. So in some ways we can think of history

sort of progressing forward with some setbacks, again, kind of moments of progress, backlash. But the current moment is really one where the very foundational institutions of American liberal democracy are at risk. So I think we haven't seen that in a very, very long time. And what makes it more, even more concerning is that America is not alone in this crisis. We see the similar movements and similar crises of institutions in Western Eastern European countries. We see them in South Asia, in India, right? We see them in Latin America. So there is, there is a broad, widespread moment of crisis

in a world that seemed like it was moving towards greater rights expansion for some time. As you say, just to get back to the point that you just mentioned, it is something that is happening across the West and in other places, as you say. And it's not uncommon to hear populists in Western liberal countries talk about, you know,

the glorious past, the return to something better. And that message often has, you know, for lack of a better description, racist undertones. But among the base of supporters for these kinds of populists are also large numbers of racialized people who happen to also be the targets of deserving this rhetoric. How do you explain that? It's not always easy to explain because on the face of it doesn't seem to be in the

interests of minorities to be supporting people or supporting movements that seem to be against their interests. But I think one of the things that we should keep in mind about populism is that it can take the form of being on the left as well as being on the right. And so the end goals of populist movements and what they aim to achieve may be very, very different. And I think the fact that there is this appetite for populist movements is saying something about the economic situation that people are finding themselves, it's saying something about the economic situation that people are finding themselves, it's saying something about some combination with the cultural situation in which they're finding themselves at. What we've seen so far is that there's sort of been a propensity, at least in countries of Europe and in North America, for populism

to be mobilized by the right rather than by the left. But it is really speaking to real issues that are facing people, real economic inequalities that we know have been growing and also a very complex environment as concerns the way we get our information and the way we talk about ideas. So Alison, can you pick up from there and just talk about, I mean, we saw this contradiction that we're pointing to here, you know, even in situations like the trucker convoy during COVID, you know, and there was this confusion about how to talk about the diversity of people who were involved in those rallies and the fact that they had support in places like India and Sweden and, you know, it isn't as clean cut as one might think. What does that tell you about how deservingness as an idea stretches and morphs? I think one thing we haven't necessarily

talked about is the sort of very very sort of sexist masculinist component of a lot of this discourse too and so in the US context a lot of the shifts that you saw were more prominent around racialized minority men than women. And there is a very much masculinist discourse going on thinking about the glory days, which were also very patriarchal. And so I think there's lots of things that push people to be attracted to these sorts of messages. And they're not necessarily just about a white Christian past, they're also about a patriarchal past and a past that was viewed as being prosperous economically as well. CBC Radio 1 in Canada, on US Public Radio, across North America, on SiriusXM, in Australia, on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas.

Find us on the CBC News app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayaad. I'm Sarah Trelevin and for over a, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake.

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These refugees are at the Moria camp on Lesbos. Thousands continue to arrive on this overcrowded island every week. Everyone in this camp has risked their life to get here, but the winter weather over the Christmas period and a crackdown by Turkey on people smuggling boats has seen arrivals slow a little. At the height of the 2015 refugee crisis, more than a million people sought asylum in the European Union, a right that's legally guaranteed by international and EU law. The sudden spike caused a humanitarian crisis that captured the world's attention as thousands died trying to reach Europe. In 2011, the civil war in Syria forced millions of people to seek refuge in neighbouring countries,

mostly Lebanon and Turkey. Some of those fleeing made their way to Europe, where many governments were clear that Syrians needed to stay out. Then one grey September morning in 2015, the world saw an image of two-year-old Elan Kurdi. His tiny body, covered in a red t-shirt, blue shorts and small shoes, washed up on the Turkish shore. He lay face down in the water, his body on the beach, arms by his sides, palms to the sky. He was fleeing the still ongoing violence in Syria, but he drowned along with his mother and his brother. In September there was a change in tone. There was one particular photo of one lost life that really got noticed internationally and it changed the scene. It suddenly became a

place where there was mass mobilization. That one image upended the prevailing narrative about Syrian refugees in Europe and elsewhere. In Canada, there was widespread outrage when the public learned the government had rejected Eilan and his family for sponsorship. Suddenly, everywhere, refugees were told they were welcome. Contrary to what many of our politicians and media say, most people in the UK believe in fair and compassionate approach to refugees.

Where a given group ends up on the deservingness ladder depends on a variety of factors. A move up or down the rungs can be sparked by a soundbite, a natural disaster, a political moment, even a single image. Ideas about deservingness are tied up in ideas of nationalism. What does it mean to be American or British or Canadian and who do we think deserves to be part of that? My research suggests that the idea that that presidential elections turn on contrasting conceptions of nationalism, of nationhood, that's relatively new. So in some sense, there have been many elections that have been about rights,

that have been about policies, well, certainly about slavery in the 19th century, but about civil rights in the 20th century, about women's rights and so forth. But the idea that our entire politics revolves around whether my America is the same as your America is relatively new. And that has, in some ways, it has to do with the way that ideas about nationhood and legitimate belonging have sorted by party. So I've shown in my research that if we go back to the 1990s, by party. So I've shown in my research that if we go back to 1990s, there was a relatively low correlation between partisan identity and what you thought America meant, so that you couldn't sort of predict somebody's nationalist beliefs based on their party ID and vice versa. And as we proceed through the late 90s into the 2000s, there's been this really consistent and rapid

sorting of nationalism by party ID. So that basically, we're at a point where Republicans and Democrats fundamentally disagree about what America is. And what that produces is the sort of effect where every election turns on this question, who's America? Are we going to to live in? And I think there was always an element of this in American politics, but it wasn't always the sole driving force in every election. We disagreed about all kinds of other policies about, and where deservingness always played

a role, but it wasn't about a fundamental disagreement about the very nature of the nation that we live in. Yesmin, is there a moment you could point to as to when liberal democracies kind of started moving away in earnest from the language of rights to talking about what people do or don't deserve? You know, I think if you look at, you know, sort of the long duray of human history, the longest period possible, you can start to see very quickly that what happened after World War II was really unique because not only in countries like the United States and Canada, but internationally through the United Nations, you had what has been referred to

as the human rights revolution. And the human rights revolution was really kind of a revolution in the sense that for a lot of human history, people were treated inequitably. And what human rights said is, you know what? Everybody who's a human being deserves certain things just because they're a human being, because they're a person. They should get these different things. I think probably increasingly over the late 90s and through the 2000s, we've seen some degree of a chipping away. And certainly by the time we get into the 2010s and into the 2020s where we are now, I think we've seen more of a chipping away

at the idea of human rights, at the value of human rights, which then also opens up questions about the rights that citizens may have and who's a citizen and who's not. So I do see what's happening now as distinct as compared to say the kinds of political discussions we had in the 1970s or 1980s where the idea of human rights wasn't so up in the air the way it seems to be now. Yeah. Alison, is it simplistic to say that this shift in the way as mean describes it was inevitable with increasing diversity, however, you define diversity. So I don't think I would say it was inevitable. And I actually I

think this might be one point where Yasmin and I disagree a little bit in terms of how we things see things developing because in the second half of the 20th century is also where you saw the development of the modern welfare state in Western Europe and North America. And so at the same time, you see the sort of universalistic discourse around human rights emerge, you also see the expanding of the state in terms of what it thinks it needs to provide its citizens. And so you get the development of much broader range of services that the states are providing. And over this period, you see an expansion of who gets included in those rights.

And so over time, those programs not only expand, but permanent residents, for example, gain access to some of those programs, various categories of individuals who aren't necessarily citizens start to get access to those programs as well. And so this, I think, has created a lot of tension as well as the sort of dynamics that Yasmin is talking about in terms of deservingness becoming front and center. Because it's not just about paying taxes and, you know, doing military service, but it's also about how do we divide the wealth of the state among citizens who might need it? And when we start talking about who needs it, that's really where those deservingness judgments come in

and they've shifted immensely over time, especially as these populations have become more diverse. Right, and certainly as these services are under more strain, that certainly would play into the conversation, would it not? But at the period I'm talking about, because Alison and I agree with you, there's ways that you can look at the way the welfare rights expanded in the late 20th century, but it's also towards the end of the 20th century and into the 21st century that you see the amazing growth of surveillance technologies, of policing of borders, of rhetoric around who is coming

in and who is taking our goods, our wealth, our jobs, and also more growth of far-right parties. For example, it started in France with the Front National in the 1980s and sort of expanded. So that's the kind of stuff I'm thinking about when I'm talking about that latter part of the 20th century and then into the 21st century. I think that it's very hard to separate how we talk about who is coming into the state, who's coming in as an immigrant versus who's already here. You start to get new kinds of debates emerging around the welfare state and how we think about citizens and

citizenship because of that. If I could just add one more thing now on inevitability. So I think it's tempting to see these changes as inevitable because we see them occurring in so many different countries with so many different starting conditions, but yet similar outcomes. But I think that one important thing to remember is that even if the soil may have been sort of fertile for this kind of radical right turn, it was by no means inevitable. I think what has happened and what Yasmine just mentioned is important to remember. This started in some ways, the rise of the radical right. It started in France with Rhone National and a few other European countries, but it never quite took

off. And it really took a few catalyzing political figures and catalyzing political parties in a few places to really kind of serve as an inflection point for the rise of the radical right. And then what happens is political leaders start mimicking one another around the world, right? They see that a certain winning formula of the radical right that puts together nationalism with populism and authoritarianism works in one place. Well, let's adapt it to our own context and sort of activate the grievances of our own population in a similar fashion. And when that works, that sort of adds momentum to the entire kind of transnational movement of this form of politics. And so in some ways, there are a lot of very particular moments in specific countries that

activate this form of politics. And once it takes off, it takes on a life of its own. And in the United States, for instance, if you think about it, the rise of Trump is obviously partly influenced by the fact that Barack Obama was president for two terms, right? The election of the first black president. And the fact that Trump happened to be available, happened to feel insulted by Obama in some ways, and so decided to pursue this political

career at the time when he did. I think if it weren't for Trump, others probably would have tried and failed because they didn't have the same kind of, well, I almost hesitate to say charisma, but same political efficacy as Trump, others probably would have tried and failed because they didn't have the same kind of, well, I almost hesitate to say charisma, but same political efficacy as Trump, right? And maybe that movement wouldn't have taken off in the United States in the same way as it did. And that probably would have not set a set of other dominoes into motion in other places. And same thing in other countries. So in Poland, you know, the radical rights rise followed a plane crash that essentially did away with a good chunk of the government, which then created a pretext for all kinds of radical right rhetoric, anti-Russian rhetoric that then mobilized the population. So again, there are these

particular moments in specific countries that if we roll back history and things played out differently, maybe would not have led to the radical right which would then have slowed down the progress of this kind of politics more broadly. Bart, just before we move on, can you kind of give a list of what some of those catalyzing figures who were those some of those catalyzing figures that you're talking about kind of at the beginning? So if you think about Le Pen senior, so Marine Le Pen's father in the Front National in France, if we think about Herd Wilders in the Netherlands and before him actually Pim Fortyne

in the Netherlands as well in the early 2000s. And actually Pim Fortyne was a fascinating figure. This is a gay Dutch politician who perfected this sort of anti-Muslim rhetoric based on the need to protect Dutch gay rights and women's rights, which we see a lot in Western Europe. So that was an important figure. Erdogan in Turkey, certainly Viktor Orban in Hungary,

who Trump often put up on pedestal and treats as a hero. The Kaczynski brothers in Poland, of course, Modi in India, if you want to go beyond Europe, Bolsonaro at some point in Brazil. And so, you know, the cast of characters is large and ever growing, we may be able to add Puglia to that cast quite soon in Canada. So the examples are ample. And really, you can see this sort of diffusion process. It's not necessarily that these people

are in cahoots across countries. I mean, in some cases, they do talk, you know, Nigel Farage has done tours of the U S and has interacted with Trump. Uh, but, but it's even if we sort of leave aside the direct interaction, it is extra of a mimicry, a copying of certain political mobilization efforts across countries when they are seen to be effective. Yeah. I wonder Alison, if you think it's possible to undermine or to counter this growing

conversation or the sense that there are people who do or don't belong. At this stage, is it possible in this moment? There's lots of reasons to expect people to counter mobilize against these messages. And I think you see it happening. You saw it after Trump's first election in the ways in which people mobilized. You saw it with his Muslim ban when people mobilized. And so I think there are lots of people who are dedicated to principles of DEI, but also sort of equality in the larger sense of human rights that are mobilizing and often mobilizing in very creative ways as technology changes and the platforms change. I think you

see it with movement off of X. There are people who don't want to be part of a conversation that is that constrained and trying to seek out alternatives. I can be optimistic that they're successful, to seek out alternatives. I can be optimistic that they're successful. But but I think there's lots of efforts to do it. And I'm always sort of in awe of the creativity of the ways in which people try and counter these messages. Yeah. Bart, is it possible for societies kind of where this this kind of rhetoric is being exploited by populace and others to come back from it or to leave it behind? I agree with Alison. Yes, I think it is. And we've seen some evidence of this, for instance, in Poland, where the radical right party was in power for several years and had really eroded liberal democratic institutions, whether it's the autonomy of the judiciary or the media,

they really followed the same recipe as we saw play out in Turkey and elsewhere and Hungary. So this was really in the 11th hour that the people voted this party out and essentially reverted back to a liberal democratic status quo. And it was through unprecedented voter turnout and mobilization. And so in some ways, Poland seems like one optimistic case for the possibility of turning back the clock on radical right inroads into politics. But I think we shouldn't be naive about the fact that radical right leaders get to work very quickly upon being elected on dismantling the channels through which people can have a political voice. So, you know, whether again,

whether it's co-opting the judiciary, whether it's co-opting the media, which we've already seen in the United States, by the way, you know, we used to think, I mean, many scholars thought that countries that have private media systems are more resilient in some ways, right? Because the state doesn't control the media and cannot just fire the existing media personnel, replace them with

party apparatchiks. But in other places, in other cases like Hungary, and now in the US, we've seen that actually, radical right politicians can be quite creative in exerting pressure on media owners to fall into line. And we've seen this already with Jeff Bezos in the United States and others. And so again, so the media is another institution that often gets rooted quite quickly. And ultimately, of course, what we worry about the most is free and fair elections. And in many ways, those have already been jeopardized by past attempts at voter suppression and disenfranchisement.

But nonetheless, we still have elections. It's not clear how this is going to play out in the long run, when Trump and the Republican Party have been planning for many years now how to further erode the ability of Democrats to compete in elections against them. So I think the worry is, and of course, the other thing to mention is, as Alison alluded to,

social movements often have all kinds of creative and surprising, surprisingly effective strategies for countering current configurations of power. And I'm sure we'll see many protests around various Trump policies in the years to come, but that can also meet with very strong repression by the state. And, you know, in the first Trump term, this almost happened. They almost used the military on protesters.

And in the final moments, that decision, you know, was not taken. There's no guarantee that over the next four years that won't happen. And so as we start seeing the kind of chilling effects on civil society, on the free expression of ideas and opposition in the media, and ultimately on sort of institutional channels of political representation like the elections, the kind of levers through which we can take the radical right out of power, maybe fewer than before. Yes, I mean, in the Canadian context, you know, we have an official policy here of multiculturalism and the country, of course,

is more diverse than ever, as it is in the US, as it is in Europe. I'm wondering if there is a policy intervention that you think can soften the distinction here between those who belong and those who don't. Is there something the state could do? Canada has had a long history of practicing what is sometimes referred to as cultural pluralism by giving recognition to different kinds of groups, right? So even in something like the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, official language minorities are recognized. So English speakers inside Quebec as well as French speakers outside Quebec are given recognition and certain kinds of protections. And if you look at

the Charter of Rights, which again, it's part of our constitution, so the highest law of the land, it also talks about the multicultural heritage of Canadians. So multiculturalism isn't just, you know, a policy or an act, but it's also referenced in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And so there are some ways that the fact that Canada has that gives something like multiculturalism a certain kind of resilience, a certain kind of stability, but maybe not in the policy itself, but just in the idea of it being there. And I think the safeguarding of it really has to do with the awareness of people, the awareness of what's going on. Having discussions like this to sort of open up thoughts about, you know, are we making

judgments on deservingness instead of rights? Is that the most appropriate way to do things given that deservingness judgments tend to be of a very moralistic nature. Often we don't know all the facts, should we be thinking more about rights? And so I think those kinds of discussions are important. And I think also what watching what happens on the policy front itself. And I don't think Canada is uniquely isolated from stuff that happens in other parts of the world. And we see examples of rhetoric being used here, including that language of woke. Woke is just kind of a shorthand term for what some people think they don't like. It's not exactly clear what that means, but it is being employed now. And, I think we need to be attuned to these things as, you know, Canadian citizens as voters, as people that are engaged in, and thinking about the kind of country that we

want to have, and also the kind of world that we want to live in. But Yasmine, is there any kind of, of nationalism, you think that could offer a way off the deserving this ladder? think that could offer a way off the deserving this ladder? Well, sometimes the language of inclusive nationalism is used. So that's kind of a form of nationalism that would, you know, incorporate diversity and in some ways, you know, saying Canada recognizes two official languages or actually, you know, more more official languages, if you think about Indigenous languages, that Canada recognizes multiculturalism, that Canada is in a process of having reconciliation. All of those kinds of

ideas may point to a more inclusive style of citizenship if we continue on those kinds of paths, an inclusive kind of style of nationalism. But I'd also say that nationalism really rests on the idea of the world being divided into different states and that different states contain nations. And we may want to still protect and defend the idea of people being treated equally and decently as contained in the idea of human rights. And so probably it's some kind of combination of having that inclusive nationalism in a world of nation states and having a really robust support of human rights that will end up being the most inclusive outcome for people, both in Canada and globally. Alison and Bart is a final question I'd like both of you to weigh in on this, on whether

there is a way off the deserving this ladder. So Alison first and then Bart. So the term that Yasmin was using of inclusive nationalism, I think is definitely out there as a way in which we can think about a more civic form of nationalism that's more inclusive of diversity and difference. I think in a lot of ways there are people in, I've studied mostly Western Europe and North America, in those publics who ascribe to those more sort of open and egalitarian conceptions of the nation. And in my own work, you see this with people who have a much more sort of egalitarian view of immigrants and other racialized minorities as full members of the political community of the country.

How do we sort of inscribe that in policy, I think, is a really challenging question. I think we partly do it by ensuring that the next generations coming up experience these sorts of diversities in positive ways, and so that their de facto understanding of what it means to be Canadian or American or French or Dutch includes these very sort of diverse experiences in formative years of what it means to be part of that country. So I have some optimism there. At the same time, I think as human beings, we make in-group and out-group distinctions. There's always going to be an us and a them. And so I think part of the challenge is making sure that our institutions

have safeguards in place so that the discretionary judgments where deservingness can come into play more easily are constrained by the institutions that we have in place. Because I think even if people have a more inclusive sense of the nation, there are always those others that fall outside of the national boundaries and we have obligations to them through human rights, but also just as fellow human beings. And so I think that's really the tension for me in that question. Okay. And Bart?

I think that's exactly right, both what Yasmina and Alison said. My own research is focused on the varieties of nationalist beliefs that are held by national populations. And I think what's quite clear is that within all countries, certainly all liberal democracies, there are deep disagreements within the nation about what the nation means. And the rise of the radical right and the contestation against it has been a battle between different nationalisms over the last 20 years or so, between a more exclusionary variety of nationalism and a more inclusive one.

And so, yes, there is an alternative, and it's an alternative that those who want to preserve liberal democratic institutions and minority rights should be pursuing and have been pursuing. But as we've seen, it's not enough. That vision of an inclusive nation must be combined with actual policies and a vision for economic well-being of all members of the nation, for a sense of worth that is accessible to all members of the nation. And so it's a difficult political needle to thread. And I think actually in the United States, the Biden administration did quite a good

job despite its various other failures, of articulating a vision domestically for an inclusive nationalism combined with progressive economic policies. But as we saw, that wasn't enough. The anti-incumbent sentiment that's been widespread throughout liberal democracy, that's partly a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, was stronger. It led people away from Democratic Party. It either led Democrats to stay at home or something even shift toward Trump. And so it wasn't enough this time around.

I think the path forward is to keep trying and keep articulating a vision of the nation that respects the rights of all and that provides as much as possible that respects the rights of all and that provides as much as possible for the better well-being of all. And hopefully there'll be other elections where Democrats can contest the presidency and Congress and articulate that vision successfully. And then as Alison was pointing out, do more work to protect liberal democratic institutions so that

we can continue having disagreements about policy and about whose rights should be protected in the long run. You've been listening to a discussion about the deservingness ladder with Yasmine Abou-Laven, Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Politics of Citizenship and Human Rights in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta. Alison Harrell, Professor of Political Science, Université de Québec à Montréal. And Bart Banachowski, Associate Professor of Sociology and Politics at New York University and a Faculty Affiliate at NYU's Center for Data Science. All three are members of the Boundaries,

Membership and Belonging Program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. This episode was produced by Naheed Mustafa. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Our technical producer is Danielle Duval. The senior producer is Nikola Lukcic. The executive producer of Ideas is Greg Kelly and I'm Nala Ayed.