In "Escape from Freedom", Erich Fromm wrote about the tension between our needs for freedom and independence, on the one side, and for belonging and security, on the other. The work was first published more than eighty years ago and now is the right time to revisit it, not so much for the psychoanalytic theory put forward in it, as for the more universal insights into the social and political situation at the time, which in many ways parallel our own.

Hannah Arendt’s experiences of exile, from Nazi Germany to the U.S., shaped her reflections on statelessness, belonging, and the limits of the nation-state. In this essay, Anna Argirò explores Arendt's urgent call to rethink human rights, citizenship, and politics beyond borders. In a world of walls and displacement, her thought invites us to imagine a political community grounded not in exclusion, but in plurality, responsibility, and shared humanity.