Abstract

This paper focuses on the relevance of borders and national membership as barriers to first admission. Strengths and weaknesses of the different liberal arguments for open and restricted borders will be analysed, focusing on the ‘liberal paradox’ which holds that an asymmetrical view on entry and exit is compatible with the liberal commitment to equality and individual liberties. Finally, a proposal will be formulated in order to find a middle way between the idealism of open borders and more realist versions of liberal egalitarianism by incorporating a hermeneutical account of human morality as a relational, contextual matter which does not think in terms of borders but instead of trans-boundary dialogical spaces.