Identity, Borders, and Human Responsibility in Contemporary Liquid Society
Abstract: The widespread use of simplifying identity-based slogans in the context of global society and liquid modernity raises questions about the ways in which they reduce the complexity of identity to emotional and polarizing formulas. Drawing on Zygmunt Bauman’s reflections on the loss of orientation and the fragility of social bonds, the text shows how identity tends to shift from a critical and responsible process to an emotional refuge. Through an ethical-political reading inspired by Hannah Arendt, the article highlights the link between slogans, the suspension of judgment, and the impoverishment of the public sphere, while Paul Ricoeur’s perspective allows for a distinction between essentialized identity and narrative identity, grounded in recognition and relationality. The essay also addresses the confusion between appearing and being, the risk of a performative reduction of identity, and the symbolic drifts of exclusion. In conclusion, the concept of “remigration” is reinterpreted in ethical and anthropological terms as a return to human essence and shared responsibility, emphasizing the need for coexistence based on plurality, critical judgment, and respect for otherness.
Keywords: #Identity #LiquidModernity #GlobalSociety #IdentitySlogans #Belonging #EthicalBoundaries #CriticalJudgment #Plurality #NarrativeIdentity #Recognition #Inclusion #Otherness #SharedResponsibility #PublicSphere #CriticalThinking #ElhemBeddouda #ethicasocietas #ethicasocietasjournal #scientificjournal #humansciences #socialsciences #ethicasocietasupli
Elhem Beddouda, professional educator with a degree in Sciences of Education and Training Processes from the University of Parma, with a thesis entitled “Islam and the Educational Function. Perspectives on Religious Assistance in Prison”. She is currently enrolled in the degree programme “Global Studies for Sustainable Local and International Development and Cooperation” at the same university.
versione italiana – version française
Premise: Official Immigration Data
Residents born in non-EU countries – Official EU immigration data
EU: 44.7 million people out of 449.3 million residents in the EU, representing 9.9% of the total population.
Italy: 5 million people out of 59 million residents, representing 8.6% of the total population (–13.1% compared to the EU average).
The Value of Immigrant Labor in Italy
According to 2025 data from the Leone Moressa Foundation, immigrant labor in Italy generates 9% of the national GDP, with an estimated added value of €177 billion. This structural contribution is supported by approximately 2.5 million foreign workers, who account for 10.5% of total employment, with sectoral peaks in agriculture (18%) and construction (16.4%).
Introduction: the slogan as an identity surrogate
The expression “Italy for Italians” is situated within a discursive context increasingly dominated by simplifying slogans that claim to address complex identity issues through immediate, emotional, and polarizing formulas. Such statements are grounded in an implicit conception of identity as a natural, stable, and immutable given, overlooking the profound historical, social, and cultural transformations that have progressively redefined its meaning and forms of belonging.
In a globalized society characterized by mobility, interdependence, and fragmentation, the appeal to an idealized past risks turning into a mythological narrative devoid of historical grounding and critical capacity. The identity evoked by the slogan is not the result of a conscious reflection on one’s roots, but rather a symbolic construction reduced to a watchword, functional more to confrontation than to understanding.
Liquid modernity and the loss of orientation
Zygmunt Bauman described contemporary modernity as “liquid,” emphasizing the dissolution of stable structures that once provided orientation, security, and continuity (Bauman, 2000). In this scenario, identity is no longer a guaranteed inheritance but a permanent, fragile, and often conflictual task.
According to Bauman, the function of sociology is to provide tools of orientation in a world undergoing constant transformation (Bauman, 1992). However, when change is not accompanied by awareness, it tends to generate fear, closure, and symbolic regression. The recourse to identity slogans can thus be read as a defensive response to this condition of uncertainty: a reassuring simplification that promises clear boundaries in a world perceived as chaotic.
In this sense, identity tends to become an emotional refuge rather than a process of critical and responsible elaboration.
Visible and invisible boundaries
In contemporary public debate, boundaries are often understood exclusively in geographical, political, or security terms. Yet in global society, invisible boundaries emerge—ethical, cultural, and symbolic in nature—that prove decisive for the protection of shared humanity.
The paradox lies in the obsessive reinforcement of physical borders alongside a progressive weakening of moral, symbolic, and relational ones. As Bauman observes (2003), the fragility of social bonds produces isolation and transforms the other into a threat rather than an interlocutor. In this framework, exclusion is not only material but above all symbolic: the other is stripped of complexity and reduced to a category, label, or enemy.
Responsibility, judgment, and the public sphere: an ethical-political reading
The contemporary identity crisis is not merely cultural or symbolic but profoundly ethical and political. Hannah Arendt showed how the loss of the capacity for judgment represents one of the gravest risks for public life. In contexts where thought is reduced to the repetition of slogans, political action ceases to be responsible and becomes automatic, hetero-directed, and incapable of questioning its own consequences (Arendt, 1963; 1971).
From this perspective, the use of simplifying identity formulas can be understood as a suspension of judgment: one no longer thinks with others, but against others. Arendt described this process as a form of “banality,” not of evil in the strict sense, but of irresponsibility produced by the renunciation of thinking and judging—the inability to assume the weight of one’s words and actions in the public sphere.
Deprived of the dimension of critical thought, politics thus slips into a logic of exclusive belonging, in which identity is no longer a space of encounter but an instrument of delimitation.
Integration with Ricoeur: narrative identity and recognition
Alongside this reading stands the perspective of Paul Ricoeur, who distinguishes between idem identity (what remains the same over time) and ipse identity (the capacity to keep a promise, to assume responsibility, to recognize oneself in change) (Ricoeur, 1990).
Identity slogans are predominantly grounded in idem identity: a presumed immutable and rigid essence that claims to define who belongs and who does not. For Ricoeur, however, authentic identity is always narrative and relational—constructed over time through the relationship with others, conflict, memory, and responsibility.
From this perspective, exclusion is not merely a political act but a narrative wound: it interrupts the possibility of narrating oneself as a plural community, reducing history to myth and the future to repetition.
Ricoeur’s ethics of recognition implies that identity does not affirm itself by denying the other, but by assuming the risk of alterity as a condition of its own existence.
Appearing and being: identity as representation
A central node of the contemporary identity crisis concerns the confusion between appearing and being. Mirroring oneself in historical or ideological symbols does not amount to authentic identification. As Erving Goffman (1959) highlighted, identity can be reduced to a social performance when it loses inner grounding and critical reflexivity.
In this sense, the instrumental use of origins as an identity banner risks emptying history of its meaning, transforming it into an object of symbolic consumption rather than a resource for understanding. Identity thus becomes something to be displayed, not inhabited or assumed as responsibility.
Inclusion, difference, and cultural intelligence
The safeguarding of tradition does not imply its crystallization. On the contrary, a living tradition is one capable of dialoguing with the present without dissolving itself. Authentic inclusion does not consist in eliminating differences, but in valuing them within a shared horizon.
In a liquid society, a form of cultural intelligence is required that is equally flexible, yet capable of filtering symbolic “debris” and retaining what contributes to the construction of the common good. Without this capacity for discernment, fluidity turns into dispersion and inclusion into forced adaptation.
A different remigration: the return to human essence
The concept of “remigration,” often used in ideological and identitarian terms, is here reinterpreted in an ethical and anthropological sense. It does not refer to a geographical or ethnic return, but to a return to the essence of the human being.
In the Islamic tradition, this essence is expressed by the concept of fitra, which denotes the original, innate, and uncorrupted nature of the human being, oriented toward good and truth (Nasr, 2002). This perspective allows for thinking a universal foundation of identity compatible with cultural and traditional plurality, without falling into hierarchies or exclusions.
In this reading, true remigration is not toward a place, but toward shared responsibility.
Conclusions: thinking, judging, responding
In an era dominated by simplifications and ideological idols, the task of critical thought is not only to “think against the current,” but to judge and to respond. As Hannah Arendt reminded us, thinking is not an abstract exercise but a practice that makes responsibility in the public sphere possible.
Likewise, following Ricoeur, identity cannot be reduced to an inheritance to be defended, but must be understood as an open narrative, renewed through encounter and mutual recognition.
True “remigration” is neither a return to the past nor an identity closure, but an ethical movement in depth: toward a renewed capacity to think, judge, and act without renouncing the humanity of the other. Everything else risks being nothing more than a remigration of ignorance, disguised as belonging and legitimized by the rejection of plurality.
NOTE BIBLIOGRAFICHE
Bauman, Z. (1992). La scienza della libertà. Roma-Bari: Laterza.
Bauman, Z. (2000). Modernità liquida. Roma-Bari: Laterza.
Bauman, Z. (2003). Liquid love: On the frailty of human bonds. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York, NY: Anchor Books.
Nasr, S. H. (2002). The heart of Islam: Enduring values for humanity. New York, NY: HarperOne.
Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. New York, NY: Viking Press.
Arendt, H. (1971). Thinking and moral considerations. Social Research, 38(3), 417–446.
Ricoeur, P. (1990). Soi-même comme un autre. Paris: Seuil.
Weber, M. (2004). La scienza come professione (Ed. orig. 1919). Torino: Einaudi.
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