Global migration raises important ethical issues. One of the most significant is the question of whether liberal democratic societies have strong moral obligations to admit immigrants. Historically, most philosophers have argued that liberal states are morally free to restrict immigration at their discretion, with few exceptions. Recently, however, liberal egalitarians have begun to challenge this conventional view in two lines of argument. The first contends that immigration restrictions are inconsistent with basic liberal egalitarian values, including freedom and moral equality. The (...) second maintains that affluent, liberal democratic societies are morally obligated to admit immigrants as a partial response to global injustices, such as poverty and human rights violations. This article surveys the main philosophical arguments for these positions on immigration and discusses the critical responses to these arguments. (shrink)

The philosophical debate on the freedom of movement focuses almost exclusively on long-term migration, what I call, migration as settlement. The normative justifications defending border controls assume that the movement of people across political borders, independent of its purpose and the length of stay, refers to migration as settlement. “Global mobility,” “international movement,” and “immigration” are oftenused interchangeably. However, global mobility also refers to the movements of people across international borders for a short length of time such (...) as travel, short-term and circular migration. While most scholarly attention has focused on long-term migration, the vast majority of cross-border movement of people (approximately 85% of all cross-border movements in 2019) is short-term. The existing literature offers normative arguments for border controls, which are grounded on states’ right to self-determination, the freedom of (dis)association, the welfare state, the duty to compatriots, and brain drain. In this paper, I argue that these arguments do not justify excluding travelers, short-term and circular migrants from the territory. (shrink)

Do liberal states have a moral duty to admit immigrants? According to what has been called the “conventional view”, this question is to be answered in the negative. One of the most prominent critics of the conventional view is Joseph Carens. In the past 30 years Carens’ contributions to the open borders debate have gradually taken on a different complexion. This is explained by the varying “ideality” of his approaches. Sometimes Carens attempts to figure out what states (...) would be obliged to do under otherwise perfectly just conditions (i.e., he attempts to establish an ideal). At other times, he is more interested in what to do, given the (not fully just) world that we actually live in. In my view, the relevance of the ideal/non-ideal theory debate to the open borders debate (and the ethics of migration more generally) has not yet received sufficient attention. My aim in this paper therefore is to show in detail how Carens’ varying approaches affect his critique of the conventional view. To this effect I analyze three of his papers: “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders” (1987), “Realistic and Idealistic Approaches to the Ethics of Migration” (1996), and “Who Should get in? The Ethics of Immigration Admissions” (2003). (shrink)

The moral debate about open borders needs to go beyond focusing on the interests of the migrant versus the interests of the hosting state and its original citizens to focusing more on the interests of the countries that migrants are leaving. I hint at the long-term insufficiency of so-called economic remittances to the development of migrant-sending states when compared to domiciled skilled labor. But most importantly, I identify the irrelevance of current empirical research on brain drain to (...) an open borders scenario. I hint at the potential scale of brain drain in such a scenario, and I raise a moral question about the propriety of proposing open borders with a focus on the wellbeing of the individual migrant if such a focus is determined to be at the expense of the wellbeing of the migrant’s home country. I add that a preamble to opening borders would be to significantly address gross global economic disparities, world poverty, and political injustices. (shrink)

The Ethics of Immigration, by Joseph Carens, Oxford University Press, 2013. -/- Joseph Carens is arguably the most prominent political theorist to defend open borders, a view which he did much to make intellectually respectable in a famous 1987 article, “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders.” In The Ethics of Immigration Carens again defends the open borders view, but with a new rationale. Whereas before he argued that seemingly opposed philosophies provided converging (...) support for open borders, now he bases his case on “democratic principles,” by which he means uncontroversial moral commitments that are widely shared in liberal states. Carens argues that one such commitment is to freedom, which can be understood as “not being the subject of the will of another.” A commitment to such a value would explain why freedom of movement within a state is considered a basic human right. But, Carens asks, if we have a general right to freedom of movement within countries, why not between them? -/- Carens has long noted that despite the attractiveness of open borders at the level of pure justice, it is deeply at odds with how immigration policy is normally viewed. Given this, Carens’ many writings on immigration have long approached it from a second perspective, one that puts aside questions of ideal theory and takes for granted the conventional view that states are entitled to discretionary control over their borders. This second perspective is the dominant one in The Ethics of Immigration, as Carens spends most of the book outlining standards of fair treatment for permanent residents, temporary workers, refugees and other migrants that do not presuppose any commitment to open borders. In this mode Carens offers a revised version of one his most thought-provoking and controversial arguments, defending amnesty for immigrants who first arrive illegally. -/- Carens’ investigation of immigration issues at both the level of ideal justice and the more immediate plane of the debate over amnesty and related issues makes his book unusually rich. It has the rare virtue of being both philosophically rigorous and politically relevant. -/- . (shrink)

The border war between semantics and pragmatics has an early version in the dispute between Mates and Cavell. While Mates argues for a strict separation between semantic inferences and mere pragmatic regularities, Cavell argues for a “logic of ordinary language”, identifying the commitments following the act of saying something. This answer gives a clue to the contemporary debate between minimalists and contextualists: we may either think that pragmatic inferences are only effective after the proposition is grasped, or think that (...) it is part of the determination of what is said. However, Cavell has also another answer, that seems much less amenable to logical regimentation: we understand what an agent is committed to as we evaluate what is appropriate to do in a given situation. In this latter case, there is no logic to backtrack to the very determination of what is said: the agent is attuned to the complexity of her contexts of action, but it does not lead to a local adjustment of concepts. This is precisely what a semanticist does, according to Predelli: she is attuned to the complexity of human purposes, and represents this contextual sensitivity at points of evaluation of sentences, but does not build this complexity into his semantic system. Predelli is at odds both with minimalists and contextualists in this respect, and we can see the specificity of his position as we construe different maps of the theoretical landscape. A bit of historical perspective opens up new ways to see some current discussions. (shrink)

Until recently, much of the philosophical literature on refugees has focused on what Serena Parekh (2020) in No Refuge: Ethics and the Global Refugee Crisis, calls the “first refugee crisis,” i.e., the refugee crisis as experienced from Europe, understood as the arrival of large numbers of asylum seekers and the political handling of this situation. This literature has therefore dealt primarily with questions about who really counts as a refugee and when states acquire obligations to admit non-citizens. Rarely, however, do (...) philosophers talk about the ethical implications of what Parekh calls “the second refugee crisis”: the crisis for refugees themselves, who “are unable to access the minimum conditions of human dignity while they wait for a more permanent solution.” In short, when philosophers debate the ethics of asylum and refugeehood, the conclusions or insights they come to will, at best, be applicable to about 10 percent of the world’s forcibly displaced. In this review essay, I briefly outline Serena Parekh’s (2020) argument, showing how her reframing of the refugee crisis provides a much-needed intervention in the current philosophical literature. I then extend these insights into questions concerning immigration enforcement. In doing so, I argue that in order to adequately deal with the second refugee crisis we must be more receptive to the open borders position than Parekh seems to allow. (shrink)

The ethics of immigration has emerged as a topic of considerable interest among political philosophers. The subject includes normative questions related to various dimensions of global migration, including territorial admissions, admission to citizenship, and the rights and duties of noncitizen residents. The central issue in these debates is whether liberal democratic states have a moral right to restrict immigration. On one side of the issue, philosophers argue that states have a moral right to exclude immigrants in most cases. On the (...) other, proponents insist that a commitment to fundamental liberal values, such as freedom and equality, requires states to maintain mostly open borders. This chapter surveys the main lines of argument in this debate, along with recent contributions by feminist philosophers. (shrink)

Do states have the right to prevent potential immigrants from crossing their borders, or should people have the freedom to migrate and settle wherever they wish? Christopher Heath Wellman and Phillip Cole develop and defend opposing answers to this timely and important question.

A critical but underdeveloped part of the libertarian debate about immigration is the question of who, if anyone, owns public property, and the consequences of the answer to this question. Libertarians who favor restrictive immigration policies, such as Hans-Hermann Hoppe, argue that taxpayers own public property, and that the state, while it is in control of such property, should manage it on behalf of taxpayers in the same way private owners would manage their own property. In other words, it (...) should be quite selective about who may enter. Walter Block, who takes an “open borders” position, does not appear to dispute the claim that taxpayers own public property, but nevertheless argues that immigrants are entitled to ignore the state’s control of, and thus may freely enter, such property. In this article I explore the question of public property ownership using Rothbardian property rights principles. I conclude that, at least with respect to a particular type of public property, neither Hoppe’s nor Block’s reasoning is consistent with these principles. I also consider the idea that the state ought to have a role in managing public property in light of some libertarian anarchist ideas about the state. I conclude that supporting a legitimate role for the state as an immigration gatekeeper is inconsistent with Rothbardian and Hoppean libertarian anarchism, as well as with the associated strategy of advocating always and in every instance reductions in the state’s role in society. (shrink)

Critics of ideal theory typically argue that prevailing liberal egalitarian principles were constructed under idealized assumptions and are thus ill suited to real-world circumstances where such assumptions do not apply. Specifically, they raise three related objections: (1) ideal theory cannot help us understand current injustices in the actual, nonideal world; (2) ideal principles are not sufficiently action-guiding; and (3) ideal theory tends to reflect and perpetuate unjust group privilege. This chapter explores recent philosophical work on borders and immigration in (...) light of these criticisms. I argue that prominent arguments on both sides of the open borders debate are subject to the standard criticisms of ideal theory, and thus that a nonideal approach to migration justice is urgently needed. I conclude by suggesting several methodological desiderata for such an approach. (shrink)

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the primary fundamental rights concerns related to biometrics and their use in automated border controls, as well as how these issues converge in the European Commission’s Smart Borders proposal. Design/methodology/approach – This paper draws on extensive background research and qualitative in-depth interviews conducted in 2013 for the European Union FP-7 project “FastPass – A harmonized, modular reference system for all European automatic border crossing points”. Findings – The Smart Borders proposal not (...) only compounds the individual concerns related to the use of biometrics in border controls and automatisation thereof, but also has serious issues of its own, premier among which is the imposition of a two-tier border control system. Social implications – The paper is a catalyst for open debate on the fundamental questions of how we got to this point and where do we want to go. It questions the process by which the increased use of IT in border controls has become the norm and policy trend in Europe, and discusses where the limits could be drawn from a fundamental rights perspective. In particular, it warns against the institutionalisation of a two-tier border control system among third-country nationals. Originality/value – Little attention is given to the fundamental rights concerns raised for EU and non-EU citizens as related to biometrics and their use in ABCs, and how these issues are reproduced in the Smart Borders proposal. The paper fills this gap by taking a bottom-up approach: examining the implications of individual elements of the proposal to see their impact on the broader policy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kinship across Borders: A Christian Ethic of Immigration by Kristin E. HeyerVictor CarmonaKinship across Borders: A Christian Ethic of Immigration By Kristin E. Heyer WASHINGTON, DC: GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2012. 198 PP. $29.95Heyer renders an important service to the discipline, which has not seen a book-length account of a Christian immigration ethic since Dana Wilbanks’s Recreating America (1996). In Kinship across Borders, Heyer provides a (...) nuanced and comprehensive theological ethical analysis of undocumented immigration and argues that “a Christian immigration ethic calls believers to promote structures and practices marked by kinship and justice” (4). To that end, she advances four distinct theses in as many chapters—interpretations of personhood, sin, family, and solidarity—each appropriating a specific resource from the Christian tradition in order to reorient immigration policies from a “paradigm centered on national interest, expediency, or economic efficiency” to one that is person centered (4). Her project challenges American Christians to reckon with their responsibility in advancing structures and furthering ideologies that sustain forced migrations, including economic refugees, in the Western Hemisphere.Chapter 1 relies on Margaret Farley’s “obligating features of person-hood”—namely, autonomy and relationality—to identify the prevailing immigration paradigm, which views immigrants as economic commodities, security threats, and/or foreigners to be assimilated (21). This paradigm reflects internalized ideologies and a series of external structures that weaken the personal agency of immigrants who, in significant ways, “are unable to [End Page 194] determine the direction their lives will take” (22). Chapter 2 turns to Catholic social encyclicals and liberation theology to develop a dialectical interpretation of personal and social sin. Heyer posits that though persons are responsible for their actions, they “remain subject to external [structural] influences” that limit the ways in which they may exercise their agency (46). She uses this idea not to accuse undocumented immigrants but rather to highlight the sinful ideological blinders that often limit American Christians’ capacity to act hospitably towards them. “Given the relationship between the United States and sending countries in geographic, economic, and political terms,” she writes, “US citizens may be willfully negligent of or indirectly responsible for the conditions that give rise to undocumented migration across their borders” (46).Chapters 3 and 4 provide robust accounts of cross-border kinship in the context of the family and globalization, with their rich visions of human relationships that break open the prevailing immigration paradigm. For example, though familismo among Latin American immigrants may lend itself to restrict women’s personal agency, it nevertheless offers an “extensive and malleable understanding of kinship networks, … [with] boundaries among members that remain fluid and transcend genetics,” thus broadening the relationships within which to flourish (82). To address global kinship, Heyer develops an account of institutional, incarnational, and conflictual solidarity that breaks free from the tendency to frame the immigration debate in the United States as a purely domestic issue that lacks meaningful global implications. Chapter 5 concludes the book by identifying implications for reorienting immigration policy and rhetoric as well as Christian ethics so that they better account for the immigrant experience by developing the necessary resources, including a more robust understanding of moral agency in the midst of marginalization.The argument is strongest in chapters 2 and 3, which develop a crisp critical analysis of the sources and insightful interpretations of often overlooked ones, including immigrants’ experiences. Furthermore, Heyer adeptly engages multiple US Hispanic theologians and Christian ethicists in ways that sharpen her argument throughout. The argument is weakest in chapter 5 because it does not fully integrate earlier insights on cross-border familial and global kinship while accounting for civic kinship. I strongly recommend Kinship across Borders for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students taking courses on Catholic social thought, Protestant social ethics, and theology and/or ethics of migration. [End Page 195]Victor CarmonaOblate School of TheologyCopyright © 2015 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

This paper argues that the relevant unit of analysis for assessing the justice of an immigration policy is the socially-situated individual (as opposed to the individual simpliciter or the nation-state, for example). This methodological principle is demonstrated indirectly by showing how some liberal, cosmopolitan defenses of "open borders" and the alleged right of immigration fail by their own standards, owing to the implicit adoption of an inappropriate unit of analysis.

What are libertarian open borders advocates even advocating for? Is it, as the title to Michael Huemer’s influential essay suggests, a prima facie “right to immigrate”? Or is it, as the branding connotes, literal open borders, or a strong prima facie moral right to free movement across borders that entails a right to immigrate? In this paper, I peel apart the view that people have a strong moral right to freely cross international borders, or (...) "open access," from the view that non-citizens have a right to immigrate, which I will call "open residence." As radical as open residence is, open access is even more extreme; so whether open borders ideology commits one to open access matters to its plausibility. At times it can seem that libertarian open borders advocates, by emphasizing our prima facie right to free movement, call for open access. Nonetheless, I suggest that libertarian open borders advocates should content themselves with mere open residence, even though open residence is compatible with tight border controls and even border walls—policies which they might (rightly or wrongly) object to for independent reasons. (shrink)

This paper aims to establish connections between the theoretical debates on migration and multiculturalism. In the former, there are two dominant positions: the open borders approach and another approach that argues for the legitimacy of border control based on several considerations (we will call it controlled borders approach). In the second, based on the autonomy granted to groups, a distinction is made between strong and weak multiculturalism. It is generally believed that an open borders approach (...) is connected to strong multiculturalism and that a controlled borders approach should be conjoined with weak multiculturalism. This paper prompts us to consider the possibility of developing further theoretical options and, as a result, enriches the debate by showing possibilities that have been largely overlooked so far. In particular, the paper sketches two unprecedented positions, one coming from the combination of open borders approach and weak multiculturalism, and another coming from controlled borders approach and strong multiculturalism. (shrink)

[EN] In this article we argue for a world in which open borders are the rule and not the exception. This argument is based on the general recognition of ius migrandi as a basic right of persons. An open-border immigration policy is preferable—at least from a normative standpoint—to the typical policies designed to control or block borders through the simplistic mode of constructing walls. On the basis of a global conception of distributive justice as suggested by (...) cosmopolitan egalitarians, we claim that open-door policies—or, failing in that, the implementation of a system of economic compensation for poor countries—provide powerful means to respond to the enormous inequalities that exist between countries and represent an appropriate way to order current migratory flows. [ES] En este artículo se arguye a favor de un mundo en donde las fronteras abiertas sean la regla y no la excepción. Para ello, se presentan dos tipos de argumentos. El primero se basa en el reconocimiento general del ius migrandi como un derecho fundamental de las personas. Además de un modo idóneo de ordenar los actuales flujos migratorios, una política migratoria de fronteras abiertas es preferible, al menos desde un punto de vista normativo, a las habituales políticas diseñadas para controlar o bloquear las fronteras mediante la construcción de muros. El segundo se asienta sobre una concepción global de la justicia distributiva desarrollada por los igualitaristas cosmopolitas, se sostiene que una política de puertas abiertas –o, en su defecto, un modelo de compensación económica– constituiría un modo de responder a las enormes desigualdades existentes entre los países. (shrink)

From the summer of 2015 onwards the high influx of migrants and its effects have dominated the public debate in Europe. At first this influx posed mainly an administrative challenge in host countries such as Austria, Germany, and Sweden. Yet the seemingly incessant flow of migrants from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, seeking refuge from war or economic deprivation, soon sparked a heated controversy on the possibility of integrating people from very different cultural and religious backgrounds into European (...) societies. Security concerns following the Paris attacks of November 2015 fuelled support for right-wing parties and extremist movements all over Europe. Meanwhile, one EU member state after another introduced restrictive policies contravening the open border policy introduced by the Schengen Agreement in their attempt to shift the administrative burden of handling the migrant crisis onto neighbouring states. The growing anxiety around questions of identity and security was compounded by growing concerns about the economy and welfare. In this essay I delineate the role played by public intellectuals in the debate about this crisis. Drawing on Richard Posner’s broad definition of a public intellectual as someone who writes knowledgeably about ideas for a popular audience on matters of public concern, I focus on how German public intellectuals debated the questions of national identity and the role of the nation-state in the EU migration crisis. (shrink)

Current European innovation and security policies are increasingly channeled into efforts to address the assumed challenges that threaten European societies. A field in which this has become particularly salient is digitized EU border management. Here, the framework of responsible research and innovation (RRI) has recently been used to point to the alleged sensitivity of political actors towards the contingent dimensions of emerging security technologies. RRI, in general, is concerned with societal needs and the engagement and inclusion of various stakeholder groups (...) in the research and innovation processes, aiming to anticipate undesired consequences of and identifying socially acceptable alternatives for emerging technologies. However, RRI has also been criticized as an industry-driven attempt to gain societal legitimacy for new technologies. In this article, we argue that while RRI evokes a space where different actors enter co-creative dialogues, it lays bare the specific challenges of governing security innovation in socially responsible ways. Empirically, we draw on the case study of BODEGA, the first EU funded research project to apply the RRI framework to the field of border security. We show how stakeholders involved in the project represent their work in relation to RRI and the resulting benefits and challenges they face. The paper argues that applying the framework to the field of (border) security lays bare its limitations, namely that RRI itself embodies a political agenda, conceals alternative experiences by those on whom security is enacted upon and that its key propositions of openness and transparency are hardly met in practice due to confidentiality agreements. Our hope is to contribute to work on RRI and emerging debates about how the concept can (or cannot) be contextualized for the field of security—a field that might be more in need than any other to consider the ethical dimension of its activities. (shrink)

This essay examines Joseph Carens' open borders argument in the light of a case study of recent Somali migrants to the UK. It argues that, although arguments for significantly more open borders are compelling, they must take into account existing domestic injustice in receiving states as well as existing global injustice.

This paper argues that by overestimating the importance of citizenship rights, the ethics of immigration turns away from the more serious problem of closed borders. Precisely, this contribution is a threefold critique of Carens’ idea that "justice requires that democratic states grant citizenship at birth to the descendants of settled immigrants" (Carens, 2013: 20). Firstly, I argue that by making 'justice' dependent on states and their attributes (birthright citizenship), this idea strengthens methodological nationalism which views humanity as naturally divided (...) into bounded nation-states. Secondly, I analyze its justification and argue that grounding (citizenship) rights on the existence of social connections is logically and morally problematic. Thirdly, I analyze its scope (granting rights to the descendants of the ‘settled’) and its method of implementation (granting citizenship rights automatically ‘at birth’). While from a less sedentarist perspective, no one can be considered ‘settled’ in advance, I will express some doubts that granting citizenship rights is always automatically a way to extend people’s rights. All in all, I argue that by its justification, scope and method of implementation, this idea moves us away from, rather than gets us closer to, an open-borders world. (shrink)

Immigration restrictions close-off large portions of the earth to large proportions of the earth’s population. For those who regard the earth and its natural resources as belonging to mankind equally and in common, this is a morally impermissible state of affairs. This is because, if the earth and its resources belong to all equally, then the exclusion of anyone from any portion of the earth will be a violation of their natural ownership rights. A commitment to Natural Resource Egalitarianism (NRE) (...) is therefore held to entail a commitment to substantially more open, or even fully open borders. This paper does not seek to directly refute the claims of NRE, but rather seeks to demonstrate the failure of arguments from NRE, to establish the moral necessity of a general opening of borders. This paper addresses the two most prominent accounts of Open Borders NRE—Equal Division NRE and Egalitarian Ownership NRE—as well as a more recent attempt to advocate for open borders by combining these two positions into a so-called ‘Combined Model’. This paper argues that none of these three positions can plausibly and coherently account for the moral necessity of open borders. (shrink)

Two important recent books on migration and justice argue for different approaches to how we should view borders. Alex Sager defends open borders, while Sarah Song argues for the rights of democratic communities to find their own balance between open and closed borders. While both authors present significant considerations in defence of their views, in this article I argue that a human-rights-oriented account of migration justice captures their strengths well while not sharing the weaknesses I (...) identify with each. In addition, the approach I favour offers some progressive pathways for holding each other to account in reducing migration injustice in our actual world, in ways that are both feasible and normatively compelling. (shrink)

To explain the correct libertarian approach to immigration, a thought-experiment posits a minimal-state libertarian UK and then the introduction of several relevant anti-libertarian policies with their increasingly disastrous effects. It is argued that the reverse of these imagined policies, as far as is politically possible, must be the correct way forward. This framing is intended to counter the tendency for many articles to misapply libertarian principles to the current messy situation on the mistaken assumption that a state need only stop (...) interfering without rectifying or adjusting for its previous interferences. The relevant parts of various open-border texts are then criticised in light of this and for other errors, in particular for overlooking the likely huge scale of immigration as indicated by Gallup surveys. Additional criticisms are addressed in footnotes throughout. The conclusion outlines three broad options on immigration and suggests that directionally-libertarian policies are both more libertarian and practical than having states open their borders. The readers that might be interested in this subject matter include those engaging in libertarian philosophy, economics, and political theory. (shrink)

Building upon recent work on epistemic varieties of liberalism, avant-garde political agency and the theory and practice of activism, I claim that a liberal defence of more open borders does not presuppose either indifference to the problem of the deep structural sources of poverty in poorer countries, or the absence of an account of those structures’ transformation. Rather, it is claimed that in addition to the remittance of money and other economic goods to alleviate the symptoms of poverty, (...) more open borders facilitate the remittance of norms and values in terms of which individuals and activist communities in poorer countries may transform the deep structures and institutions that are poverty’s sources. This liberal account of more open borders and deep structural transformation also makes possible the non-coercive discharge of obligations of global justice on the part of wealthier states to the world’s poor, when poorer nations are either unable or unwilling to discharge them themselves. (shrink)

Building upon recent work on epistemic varieties of liberalism, avant-garde political agency and the theory and practice of activism, I claim that a liberal defence of more open borders does not presuppose either indifference to the problem of the deep structural sources of poverty in poorer countries, or the absence of an account of those structures’ transformation. Rather, it is claimed that in addition to the remittance of money and other economic goods to alleviate the symptoms of poverty, (...) more open borders facilitate the remittance of norms and values in terms of which individuals and activist communities in poorer countries may transform the deep structures and institutions that are poverty’s sources. This liberal account of more open borders and deep structural transformation also makes possible the non-coercive discharge of obligations of global justice on the part of wealthier states to the world’s poor, when poorer nations are either unable or unwilling to discharge them themselves. (shrink)

Some proponents of global justice question that opening borders is an effective strategy to alleviate global poverty and reduce inequalities between countries. This article goes a step further and asks whether an open borders policy is compatible with the objectives of global distributive justice. The latter, it will be argued, entails the ordering of needs, the assignment of priorities and the preference or subordination of some interests over others. In other words, global justice requires the establishment of (...) conditions and restrictions on mobility. On the contrary, open borders claim an unrestricted and unconditional (not unqualified) freedom of movement, limited only by public health considerations, serious threats to national security or democratic institutions, but not by an aspiration for maximizing global redistributive utility. The main point is that not only would freedom of movement be instrumentalized, losing its presumptive moral force, but ultimately open borders as a remedy of global justice are an oxymoron. The article concludes with an alternative defence of freedom of international movement. (shrink)

According to the special-obligations challenge to the justice argument for more open borders, immigration restrictions to wealthier polities are justified because of special obligations owed to disadvantaged compatriots. I interrogate this challenge by considering three types of ground for special obligations amongst compatriots. First, the social relations that come with shared residence, such as participation in a territorially bounded, mutually beneficial scheme of cooperation; having fundamental interests especially vulnerable to the state’s exercise of power; being subject to coercion (...) by the state; and having pervasive and roughly equal stakes in a political society. Second, the civic relations of shared citizenship, such as participation in a common political enterprise. And third, the political relation of joint responsibility for the exercise of political power. In light of this analysis, I argue that whatever special obligations are owed by citizens (or residents) of wealthier polities to their domestic poor, they do not justify restrictions on immigration by the global poor. (shrink)

Puts leading Italian thinkers into conversation with established Continental philosophers concerning the future of the nature of the human, technology, metaphysical foundations, globalization, and social and political oppression.

This book explores the constraints which justice imposes on immigration policy. Like liberal nationalists, Ryan Pevnick argues that citizens have special claims to the institutions of their states. However, the source of these special claims is located in the citizenry's ownership of state institutions rather than in a shared national identity. Citizens contribute to the construction and maintenance of institutions, and as a result they have special claims to these institutions and a limited right to exclude outsiders. Pevnick shows that (...) the resulting view justifies a set of policies - including support for certain types of guest worker programs - which is distinct from those supported by either liberal nationalists or advocates of open borders. His book provides a framework for considering a number of connected topics including issues related to self-determination, the scope of distributive justice and the significance of shared national identity. (shrink)

The open borders view is frequently dismissed for making infeasible demands. This is a potent strategy. Unlike normative arguments regarding open borders, which tend to be relatively intractable, the charge of infeasibility is supposed to operate as what we call a "normative argument-stopper." Nonetheless, we argue that the strategy fails. Bringing about open borders is perfectly feasible on the most plausible account of feasibility. We consider and reject what we take to be the only (...) three credible ways to save the charge of infeasibility: by proposing an alternative account of feasibility; by proposing an alternative, more circumscribed interpretation of the subject-matter of feasibility claims; and by proposing a more expansive account of the addressees of the demand for open borders. The first fails to vindicate the claim that infeasibility is a normative argument-stopper. The second does not provide an argument against open borders at all. The third underestimates the power of at least some non-state actors. We conclude by drawing some lessons for the open borders view and the use of feasibility in politics more generally. (shrink)

Deep brain stimulation as investigational intervention for symptomatic relief from Alzheimer disease has generated big expectations. Our aim is to discuss the ethical justification of this research agenda by examining the underlying research rationale as well as potential methodological pitfalls. The shortcomings we address are of high ethical importance because only scientifically valid research has the potential to be ethical. We performed a systematic search on MEDLINE and EMBASE. We included 166 publications about DBS for AD into the analysis of (...) research rationale, risks and ethical aspects. Fifty-eight patients were reported in peer-reviewed journals with very mixed results. A grey literature search revealed hints for 75 yet to be published, potentially enrolled patients. The results of our systematic review indicate methodological shortcomings in the literature that are both scientific and ethical in nature. According to our analysis, research with human subjects was performed before decisive preclinical research was published examining the specific research question at stake. We also raise the concern that conclusions on the potential safety and efficacy have been reported in the literature that seem premature given the design of the feasibility studies from which they were drawn. In addition, some publications report that DBS for AD was performed without written informed consent from some patients, but from surrogates only. Furthermore, registered ongoing trials plan to enroll severely demented patients. We provide reasons that this would violate Art. 28 of the Declaration of Helsinki, because DBS for AD involves more than minimal risks and burdens, and because its efficacy and safety are not yet empirically established to be likely. Based on our empirical analysis, we argue that clinical research on interventions of risk class III should not be exploratory but grounded on sound, preclinically tested, and disease-specific a posteriori hypotheses. This also applies to DBS for dementia as long as therapeutic benefits are uncertain, and especially when research subjects with cognitive deficits are involved, who may foreseeably progress to full incapacity to provide informed consent during the required follow-up period. (shrink)

This chapter defends open borders on the grounds that people have a right to immigrate and that increased immigration would enrich the world significantly, with large gains going to the global poor. I consider three major objections: immigration can create economic and social costs for citizens of destination countries, citizens ought to prioritize the interests of their compatriots over those of immigrants, and nations possess rights of self-determination that permit them to restrict immigration. I argue that these objections (...) fail to justify significant immigration restrictions and that the case for open borders stands. (shrink)

According to the special-obligations challenge to the justice argument for more open borders, immigration restrictions to wealthier polities are justified because of special obligations owed to disadvantaged compatriots negatively impacted by the immigration of low-skilled foreign workers. We refute the special-obligations challenge by refuting its empirical premise and draw out the normative implications of the empirical evidence for border policies. We show that immigration to wealthier polities has negligible impact on domestic wages and that only previous cohorts of (...) immigrants are adversely affected. The special-obligations challenge therefore succeeds only if special obligations owed to previous immigrants justify closing borders to further immigration; we argue that they do not. (shrink)

This study is devoted to the ways and means to justify a ‘more’ cosmopolitan realization of certain policy implications, in the case of immigration. The raison d’être of this study is the idea that the contemporary debate over open borders suffers from indeterminate discussions on whether liberal states are entitled to restrict immigration. On the other hand, most of the liberal cosmopolitan accounts neglect the detrimental consequences of their open borders argument – which take it (...) as a means to compensate people in need –, such as brain drain and the effects of brain drain on the opportunity sets of members of sending countries. Therefore I offer a moral cosmopolitan account of immigration which takes the interests of would-be immigrants, the residents in receiving, along with the residents in sending countries in respect to their opportunity sets because of the way arbitrary border control represents the inequality of opportunity. I do not provide a well-formed immigration policy here, yet I believe the account provided here is more feasible in considering phenomena such as brain drain. (shrink)