Abstract
Today's refugee crisis requires our era to closely examine the reasons why we might choose to deny refuge to the displaced. While the vulnerability of the displaced would appear to offer obvious ethical grounds for opening borders, our post-9/11 climate has more often used appeals to vulnerability to justify exclusionary measures. This paper analyses the role that neoliberalism plays in producing optimal conditions to obscure the vulnerability of the displaced, positioning them beyond the ambit of ethical responsiveness. In Exit West, Mohsin Hamid contests the story that neoliberalism offers of the refuge crisis. He exposes the ways in which the articulation of neoliberal values via various bordering practices, alongside the neoliberal subject's misdirected desire to defend against the precarity produced by the dismantling of the welfare state, result in dehumanising the displaced. Having stripped away the stories that keep the displaced at a symbolic and physical distance, Hamid offers a new story of the refuge crisis. This is a story that not only foregrounds the vulnerability that attends being denied the grounds of inter-subjective recognition, but also the possibilities that emerge when borders become doors to other worlds and other ways of relating to people.