One of the problems in economics that economists have devoted a considerable amount of attention in prevalent years has been to ensure consistency in the models they employ. Assuming markets to be generally in some state of equilibrium, it is asked under what circumstances such equilibrium is possible. The fundamental mathematical tools used to address this concern are fixed point theorems: the conditions under which sets of assumptions have a solution. This book gives the reader access to the mathematical (...) techniques involved and goes on to apply fixed point theorems to proving the existence of equilibria for economics and for co-operative and noncooperative games. Special emphasis is given to economics and games in cases where the preferences of agents may not be transitive. The author presents topical proofs of old results in order to further clarify the results. He also proposes fresh results, notably in the last chapter, that refer to the core of a game without transitivity. This book will be useful as a text or reference work for mathematical economists and graduate and advanced undergraduate students. (shrink)

Indigenous migration from Latin America to the United States has been on the rise over the past decades. There has also been an increase in Indigenous self‐identification amongst people in the United States who previously self‐identified as Hispanic or Latina/o on census forms. Though Latin American Indigenous migration to the United States has been steadily on the rise since the 1990s, there remains a lack of resources—philosophical, political, and bureaucratic—to account for this migrant group. My goal in this article is (...) to explore in greater depth why Latin American Indigenous migration is hermeneutically marginalised. First, I argue that we problematically fail to understand settler‐state borders—particularly the Mexico‐US border—as, in part, Indigenous spaces. Second, and relatedly, I argue that our failure to understand borders as Indigenous spaces is connected to the widespread, inaccurate presumption that Indigenous peoples ‘lose their authenticity’ (and, in turn, their very Indigenous identities) upon crossing settler‐state borders. Contrary to what I describe as the dominant view of borders as de‐Indigenised or non‐Indigenous spaces, I argue in that many settler‐state borders are spaces where Indigenous peoples, including Indigenous migrants, may experience their Indigenous identities intimately, and even publicly articulate and defend them. Importantly, this does not mean that settler‐state borders do not also harm Indigenous peoples by threating Indigenous sovereignty. I end by arguing that addressing the hermeneutical marginalisation of Latin American Indigenous migration requires a rigorous reconceptualisation of borders themselves as Indigenous spaces. (shrink)

Ecological refugees are expected to make up an increasing percentage of overall refugees in the coming decades as predicted climate change related disasters will displace millions of people. In this essay, I focus on those rights ecological refugees may claim on the basis of collective self-determination. To this end, I will focus on a few specific cases that I call cases of ‘ecological refugee states’. Tuvalu, the Maldives, and to a certain extent, Bangladesh are predicted to be ecological refugee states (...) in the near future. These are states whose entire (or close to it) geographical territory is predicted to be lost to rising sea levels; the collective body of the people will itself become an ecological refugee.The question is: what may the people of an ecological refugee state legitimately claim on the basis of their right to self-determination? Should we redraw state borders to accommodate a New Tuvalu? I argue that a plausible position regarding territorial rights is that when (1) a people clearly is (or recently was) self-determining and has a legitimate claim to continue to be self-determining, and (2) the self-determination of a people is existentially threatened because the people lacks territorial rights, that (3) the people becomes a candidate for sovereign over a new territory. The result is that existing state borders may need to change to accommodate something like a New Tuvalu. To generate these results on behalf of ecological refugee states, I examine the principles of the system of territorial states. Because the system of territorial states is a system of exclusive rights over goods, especially land, it is possible that it is subject to the conditions of a Lockean proviso mechanism. This paper is dedicated mainly to adapting a version of the Lockean proviso for use in territorial rights theory. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically examine an important premise in theories of global distributive justice that, despite its widespread influence, has remained largely unexamined. This is the claim that state borders are morally arbitrary with respect to a just distribution of goods. I examine two common arguments for this claim, the argument that state borders are historically unjust and therefore morally arbitrary; and the argument first made by Charles Beitz that the conditions of a fair, hypothetical (...) social contract would not include knowledge of one's location with respect to the distribution of natural resources between state borders. I argue that there are good reasons to reject both arguments. Beitz's immense contribution to international justice can be gauged by the fact that it is difficult to find a contemporary work on global justice that does not reference his arguments in Political Theory and International Relations . Although some authors find Beitz's cosmopolitan theory objectionable, no author has, to my knowledge, criticized Beitz's pivotal arguments that our placement in the distribution of natural resources is morally arbitrary. The aim of this paper is to do just that. (shrink)

How should the global set of social institutions distribute income and wealth among members of different states? I present a Theory of Global Justice which supports the Bounded Significance of State Borders: The states system must satisfy the Determinate Human Needs of all, and the distribution within each state must satisfy Rawls' Difference Principle. However, justice does not require a Global Difference Principle: income and wealth need not be distributed so as to maximize the income and wealth (...) of the globally worst off. ;The Theory of Global Justice illuminates the status of claims to equality within contractualism. There is no general presumption for equality of condition, and only contingent grounds for equality of certain goods. ;The claim to satisfaction of needs and the claim to equal income and wealth stem from two different sources: The Principle of Human Rights and The Principle of Equal Procedural Controls. The Principle of Equal Procedural Controls applies among citizens within state borders, but not among individuals in different states. ;Chapter 1 presents the central concepts of the Theory of Global Justice: states systems, contractualism and impact arguments. ;The Theory of Global Justice recognizes two kinds of interests as grounding claims on social institutions: Determinate Human Needs, and various controls over factors which affect our lives. Chapter 2 explains the notion of Determinate Human Needs. ;Chapter 3 argues for The Principle of Human Rights. The set of international institutions must seek to secure the satisfaction of the Determinate Human Needs of all. ;Chapter 4 presents the Principle of Equal Procedural Controls. Participants in important procedures can sometimes reasonably claim an equal share of procedural controls. ;The Principle of Equal Procedural Controls applies differently among compatriots and among foreigners. Chapter 5 claims that this principle requires equality of Social Primary Goods and the Difference Principle among citizens. ;Chapter 6 denies that the Principle of Equal Procedural Controls applies among individuals in different states in such a way as to support a Global Difference Principle. State borders thus legitimately affect individuals' grounds for claiming equal shares of procedural controls. (shrink)

A number of recent articles have invoked the republican ideal of non-domination to justify either open borders, and/or the reduction of states’ discretionary powers to unilaterally determine immigration policy. In this paper, I show that such arguments are one-sided, as they fail to fully account for the deep ambiguity of the very ideal which they invoke. In fact, non-domination lends just as powerful support to maintaining state border controls as it does to dismantling them. There are only two (...) exceptions to the rule. It is well established that promoting non-domination demands, one the one hand, that refugees be admitted, and second, that all migrants have a right to contest decisions concerning their own admission. But aside from these things, the policy implications of the ideal are unclear. In itself, therefore, it is insufficient to justify either open borders, or the reduction of states said discretionary powers. Such arguments will have to rely on other, additional moral criteria. -/- . (shrink)

This article discusses the significance of international borders in Europe and Northeast Asia during the Cold War (1945–1989) and after. Using the concept of ‘moral hazard’, the article examines what happens when great powers frequently violate the borders of neighboring countries without suffering adverse repercussions. Norms of sovereignty and territorial integrity are viable only if large countries are willing to uphold them most of the time. The Soviet Union used or threatened to use military force against East European (...) countries on numerous occasions (1953, 1956, 1968, and 1980–1981) with impunity. The Russian Federation adopted a broadly similar policy toward neighboring countries that had been republics of the Soviet Union until 1991. Russian forces in Georgia, Moldova, Tajikistan, Belarus, and Ukraine served as instruments of Russian hegemony in those countries. Until 2014, Western governments made little or no effort to deter or counter Russian military encroachments in neighboring republics. By the principle of moral hazard, leaders in the Kremlin came to believe that they could act with a free hand in the former USSR. (shrink)

Certain states in the Global North have responded to refugees seeking safety on their territories through harmful practices of border violence, detention, encampment and containment that serve to prevent and deter refugee arrivals. These practices are ostensibly justified through an appeal to a right to control borders. This paper therefore assesses whether these harmful practices can indeed be morally justified by a state’s right to control borders. It analyses whether Christopher Heath Wellman’s account of a state’s (...) right to freedom of association, which represents the most restrictive account of a state’s right to control borders available in the literature, can extend to justify current harmful practices against refugees. If not, then no available justification will be able to do so, and thus contemporary harmful practices used against refugees cannot be justified by a state’s right to control borders. (shrink)

What are borders? For many in the movement opposing mandatory detention they are simply expressions of the state. Yes this position cannot give us a coherent and critical politics. Rethinking borders is essential to the project of a genuinely democratic society.

This volume examines comparatively the views and principles of seven prominent ethical traditions on one of the most pressing issues of modern politics - the making and unmaking of state and national boundaries. The traditions represented are Judaism, Christianity, Islam, natural law, Confucianism, liberalism and international law. Each contributor, an expert within one of these traditions, shows how that tradition can handle the five dominant methods of altering state and national boundaries: conquest, settlement, purchase, inheritance and secession. Written (...) by a distinguished group of international specialists this volume is unique in providing both in-depth normative and comparative perspectives on a troubling question that will offer readers real insight into inter-tradition conflict. Those readers will range from upper-level undergraduates to scholars in such fields as philosophy, political science, international relations and comparative religion. (shrink)

Papers presented at an international seminar held at IIT, Chennai, during Dec. 19-20, 2009.

Two normative principles of toleration are offered, one individual-regarding, the other group-regarding. The first is John Stuart Mill’s harm principle; the other is “Principle T,” meant to be the harm principle writ large. It is argued that the state should tolerate autonomous sacrifices of autonomy, including instances where an individual rationally chooses to be enslaved, lobotomized, or killed. Consistent with that, it is argued that the state should tolerate internal restrictions within minority groups even where these prevent autonomy (...) promotion of members of the group. Finally, it is argued that toleration excludes external protections of minority groups. (shrink)

Responses to COVID-19 have been characterized by rapid border closures that have transformed the pandemic from a crisis of health to a crisis of mobility. While Canada was quick to implement border restrictions for non-citizens like refugees and asylum seekers, exemptions were made for some migrant groups like temporary workers. The pandemic marked a departure from who is considered worthy of admission to Canada. In fact, the border through restricted and securitized measures has filtered desirable versus non-desirable migrants, creating a (...) hierarchy among migrants within Canada’s immigration system by categorizing groups into those deserving versus non-deserving of admission. Deeply embedded societal discrimination and structural inequalities means that COVID-19 has exacerbated the vulnerabilities of migrant groups more than others. COVID-19 has placed an uneven burden on refugees who face increased border restrictions, significant health and safety risks, and limitations in accessing human rights. This paper documents the challenges, social and economic impacts, and exacerbated vulnerabilities border closures have imposed on refugees, asylum seekers and temporary migrants. We assess the many challenges that COVID-19 has created at the intersection of border studies, security resilience and human rights. We employ the conceptual frame of security resilience to critically analyse the dynamics of how and why border strategies have restricted migrant groups in times of crisis and amounted to an unjustified weakening of refugee rights. Finally, we argue that social resilience, which is rooted in rights-based strategies, not only ensures that societies are prepared to meet external shocks and disruptions, but that policy responses mitigate societal discrimination and inequalities. We highlight these strategies as effective mechanisms for reconciling both public health concerns and the rights of migrants to create more cohesive societies in times of crisis. (shrink)

This article begins to undertake a human rights analysis of the increasing number of migrants who die annually while trying to cross the borders of Europe in an irregular manner. Over the past 20 years, border policies increasingly focus on border management instead of on classical border control. On the basis of existing data, it seems plausible to assume that the increasing migrant mortality is an unintended side-effect of this shift from control to management. The article argues that it (...) is possible to collect data, which are more reliable than those presently available, and presents data from a pilot project carried out on Sicily in November 2011. Presuming better data can be collected; two diverging human rights approaches are developed – a conventional approach holding that European states are not accountable under human rights law for these side-effects and a functional approach holding that human rights law does impose obligations on European states in this context. On all four doctrinal issues which are relevant to the problem , these diverging approaches lead to diverging doctrinal positions. A choice between the two approaches implies not only legal but also moral, ethical, and political choices. (shrink)

Crossing Borders: Essays In Honour of Ian H. Angus is a collection of original and cutting-edge essays by eighteen outstanding and diverse Canadian and International scholars that engage with Professor Ian Angus's rich contributions to three distinct, albeit overlapping, fields: Canadian Studies, Phenomenology and Critical Theory, and Communication and Media Studies. These contributions are distinct, unique, and have had resonance across the intellectual landscape over the thirty years that Angus has been teaching communications, philosophy, Canadian Studies, theory, and humanities (...) first in the United States and then in Canada. (shrink)

This article argues that there is no human right to cross borders without impediment. Receiving states, however, must recognize the procedural rights of those unable to protect their human rights in the place where they currently reside. Asylum claims must be properly investigated, and in the event that the state declines to admit them as refugees, it must ensure that the third country to which they are transferred can protect their rights. Both procedural and substantive rights apply while (...) refugees are physically present in the state’s territory and their immigration status is being investigated. The state’s obligation to protect these rights arises from the power it exercises over them. In contrast, the state does not exercise equivalent power over those it declines to admit in the first place, even though its immigration criteria – if discriminatory in the negative sense – can be faulted on other grounds. Beneath these arguments lie two basic assumptions: one is the need to separate human rights claims from other claims of justice, especially those deriving from citizenship; the other is the need to determine who bears the obligations that correspond to these rights. Attention to the different relations in which prospective immigrants may stand toward the state they hope to enter can help us understand how border regimes may comply with, or violate, human rights. (shrink)

This book expands our understanding of a growing, yet largely unstudied phenomenon: the flow of children across borders through intercountry adoption. What explains the spread of intercountry adoption through the international system over time? McBride investigates the interconnected networks of states, individuals, and adoption agencies that have collaborated to develop the practice of intercountry adoption we see today. This book tells the story of how adoption agencies mediate between individuals and states in two ways: first by teaching states about (...) intercountry adoption as a policy, and second by helping states implement intercountry adoption as a practice. McBride argues that this process of states learning about intercountry adoption from adoption agencies has facilitated the global development of the practice in the past seventy years. (shrink)

From one viewpoint, interstate borders are simple ‘artefacts on the ground’. Borders exist for a variety of practical reasons and can be classified according to the purposes they serve and how they serve them. They enable a whole host of important political, social, and economic activities. From a very different perspective, borders are artefacts of dominant discursive processes that have led to the fencing off of chunks of territory and people from one another. Such processes can change (...) and as they do, borders live on as residual phenomena that may still capture our imagination but no longer serve any essential purpose. Yet, what if, although still necessary for all sorts of reasons, borders are also inherently problematic? We need to change the way in which we think about borders to openly acknowledge their equivocal character. In other words, we need to see a border not as that which is either fixed or that as such must be overcome, but as an evolving construction that has both practical merits and demerits that must be constantly reweighed. Thinking about borders should be opened up to consider territorial spaces as ‘dwelling’ rather than national spaces and to see political responsibility for pursuit of a ‘decent life’ as extending beyond the borders of any particular state. Borders matter, then, both because they have real effects and because they trap thinking about and acting in the world in territorial terms. Keywords: borders, frontiers, decent life, dwelling, territory, heterotopia, globalization (Published online: 7 November 2008) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics. Vol. 1, No. 4, 2008, pp. 175-191. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v1i4.1892. (shrink)

State borders allocate access to basic goods, opportunities, rights, and protections along lines of nationality, race, and gender. However, the discriminatory effects of state borders rarely appear as an issue in the self-understanding of liberal-democratic societies and their political theorizing. In this paper, I explore how the category of nationality has been and continues to be used to exclude people who have been negatively racialized by European colonialism. I draw on a number of studies that reconstruct (...) the colonial history of states' claims to authority over people's movements and over the composition of their populations. The idea of territorial nationalities allowed nation-states, in particular those emerging from the settler colonies and metropoles of European empires, to continue practices of racial ordering without using explicit racial categories. With the help of these studies, I criticize liberal nationalists such as David Miller for appealing to the value of national identities to support a right of states to exclude would-be immigrants. I suggest that using genealogical and phenomenological methods allows us to undermine the default authority that is often accorded to the category of nationality. (shrink)

States restrict immigration on a massive scale. Governments fortify their borders with walls and fences, authorize border patrols, imprison migrants in detention centers, and deport large numbers of foreigners. Unjust Borders: Individuals and the Ethics of Immigration argues that immigration restrictions are systematically unjust and examines how individual actors should respond to this injustice. Javier Hidalgo maintains that individuals can rightfully resist immigration restrictions and often have strong moral reasons to subvert these laws. This book makes the case (...) that unauthorized migrants can permissibly evade, deceive, and use defensive force against immigration agents, that smugglers can aid migrants in crossing borders, and that citizens should disobey laws that compel them to harm immigrants. Unjust Borders is a meditation on how individuals should act in the midst of pervasive injustice. (shrink)

The question of whether or not a closed border entry policy under the unilateral control of a democratic state is legitimate cannot be settled until we first know to whom the justification of a regime of control is owed. According to the state sovereignty view, the control of entry policy, including of movement, immigration, and naturalization, ought to be under the unilateral discretion of the state itself: justification for entry policy is owed solely to members. This position, (...) however, is inconsistent with the democratic theory of popular sovereignty. Anyone accepting the democratic theory of political legitimation domestically is thereby committed to rejecting the unilateral domestic right to control state boundaries. Because the demos of democratic theory is in principle unbounded, the regime of boundary control must be democratically justified to foreigners as well as to citizens, in political institutions in which both foreigners and citizens can participate. (shrink)

How might we historicize the idea of border control? If state borders can be understood as institutional sites of governance, what forms of governance do they enact? This article asks what insights Foucauldian political sociology might offer these questions. Drawing on Deleuze's analytic of ‘control’, the article seeks to bring new meaning to the idea of border control. Under standing control as a particular technology of power, special attention to the changing topography of border control as well as (...) the changing subjectivities presupposed by this form of power is paid. (shrink)

Critics of state sovereignty have typically challenged the state’s right to close its borders to foreigners by appeal to the liberal egalitarian discourse of human rights. According to the liberty argument, freedom of movement is a basic human right; according to the equality or justice argument, open borders are necessary to reduce global poverty and inequality, both matters of global justice. I argue that human rights considerations do indeed mandate borders considerably more open than is (...) the norm today but that, no matter how radical in its critique of state sovereignty, human rights discourse fails to address a crucial feature of this ideology. It is not enough to engage in a substantive moral argument about what the state’s moral duties are. One must also address the procedural political question of who has the legitimate authority to decide what rights and duties to act on in cases of disagreement. In addition to human rights discourse, I argue, border activists must also draw on the challenge posed to the doctrine of state sovereignty by the democratic theory of popular sovereignty. According to democratic theory, the people subject to the state’s coercive exercise of political power, and not the state itself, is ultimately the sovereign arbiter of political questions. And because foreigners are subject to the state’s border laws, democratic theory requires granting them a participatory say in setting those laws. (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.

In this paper the border is evaluated as a fold of power relations in which sovereign capacity and competence is marshaled in the furtherance of illiberal practices. Drawing from interview data of officials in various agencies engaged in the US-Canada and particularly the Windsor-Detroit corridor, the argument is made that the border is a site for both negative and positive power, for insertion and subtraction, and that surveillance and compliance regimes are ‘run’ not so much in the furtherance of a (...) precautionary or preemptive end-state, but as intermediate values that are sufficiently malleable by an invigorated sovereign, expressed in the residue of discretion in and between the many border agencies. (shrink)

This article aims to examine the racialized forms of violence enacted by contemporary border regimes by rethinking border deaths as “forced disappearances." Although “forced disappearance” is often associated with military dictatorships, I extend it to border control policies that push migrants beyond the pale of the law, make it difficult to find out about their fates or whereabouts, and render their lives disposable. In thinking about border deaths as forced disappearances, I move beyond the strictly juridical meaning of this term (...) and foreground its phenomenological resonances to inquire into the conditions of appearance and disappearance, including the social structures, normative orders, and representational frameworks that make and unmake one’s relations to the world and other living beings. To undertake such an inquiry, I engage with Frantz Fanon's works and examine how borders establish racialized partitions among both the living and the dead. The analysis highlights how certain elements of colonialism—spatial compartmentalization, racial immobilization, routinized violence, legalized lawlessness—reappear within border governance. It also points to the crucial role that law plays in legitimizing racialized state violence in border control. (shrink)

Supporters of open borders sometimes argue that the state has no pro tanto right to restrict immigration, because such a right would also entail a right to exclude existing citizens for whatever reasons justify excluding immigrants. These arguments can be defeated by suggesting that people have a right to stay put. I present a new form of the exclusion argument against closed borders which escapes this “right to stay put” reply. I do this by describing a kind (...) of exclusion that has not been discussed in depth, which I call “territorial exclusion.” Territorial exclusion is the process according to which the group that wishes to exclude current citizens secedes from the territory in which those citizens reside. I argue that the wrongness of territorial exclusion explains why there is no pro tanto right for a state to exclude immigrants, because otherwise there would be a pro tanto right for the state to kick people out by seceding from the territory they inhabit. Because kicking people out like this is typically wrong, borders cannot be closed. (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)

On the one hand, we have a moral principle that we should treat persons equally. We have a moral principle of universality. On the other hand, we have an moral intuition that we have special obligations to our compatriots. We have a moral intuition of particularity. How can we reach equilibrium between universality and particularity? To put it another way, the welfare state assists the national poor. How can we justify favoring our nationals over foreigners? Can we justify the (...) welfare state in an age of globalization? We have two approaches to defend the welfare state. The first approach, the relationship theory, starts from the intuition of particularity; the second approach, the assigned responsibility model, starts from the principle of universality. The refinement of the second approach leads us to a new conception of the world order: complex borders. Personal national boundaries are not simple any longer. Complex borders have been developed to work out the best solutions to various global problems. Globalization urges us to live in an age of complex borders. (shrink)

Corrupt political institutions, lack of resources, and gang violence in Central America fuel the influx of asylum-seeking women and children to the United States. Yet, immigrant women and children are still at risk for poor health and violence in the US due to the lack of protection and support. Through a case study of a teenage girl from Honduras living in the US who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend who followed her to the US, we elucidate ways in which the (...) US and Honduras have violated the rights of women and children. As background, we describe the context of US foreign policy towards immigration and the market for illicit drugs; and, in Honduras, the lack of appropriate healthcare, education, and legal protections. We identify human rights–based solutions to protect the rights of women and children and provide recommendations for improvement for the US government and organizations in Honduras. (shrink)

States more or less universally claim discretionary rights to decide who may or may not cross their boundaries, and to use force and violence to ensure compliance with these decisions. The justification of these practices has received much attention, but I think there is an important underexplored element of this debate. I argue that, in order to provide a plausible justification, it is indispensable to ask questions about feasibility. Any plausible defence of anything like the kind of border control regime (...) actually in force will need to pay close attention to social scientific research into feasible alternatives. (shrink)

The border is one of the most urgent issues of our times. We tend to think of a border as a static line, but recent bordering techniques have broken away from the map, as governments have developed legal tools to limit the rights of migrants before and after they enter a country's territory. The consequent detachment of state power from any fixed geographical marker has created a new paradigm: the shifting border, an adjustable legal construct untethered in space. This (...) transformation upsets our assumptions about waning sovereignty, while also revealing the limits of the populist push toward border-fortification. At the same time, it presents a tremendous opportunity to rethink states' responsibilities to migrants. This book proposes a new, functional approach to human mobility and access to membership in a world where borders, like people, have the capacity to move. (shrink)

Legal scholarship has so far paid little attention to the concept of border, which is one of the reasons for the lack of clarity regarding the characteristics of public borders at the present time. This paper aims to contribute to fill this gap by looking at an apparently eccentric phenomenon regarding the contemporary transformation of state borders: the so-called border walls. At a first sight, border walls seem to reiterate the traditional functions of state borders. (...) But their rising up as physical uncrossable barriers signifies a strong change in their function and institutional nature. In the light of this, a question arises: Does the proliferation of border walls simply indicate a revival of the territorial sovereignty of the states, or is it a phenomenon with quite different characteristics? To answer this question the paper proceeds by first considering the distinctive features of modern public borders from a historical and theoretical point of view, and then distinguishing different types of border walls on the basis of their functional characteristics. This will help clarify whether border walls are an eccentric phenomenon compared to traditional state borders, and whether the analysis of their features leads us to reframe the traditional concept of state border. (shrink)

This chapter introduces and discusses the concepts that are in-depth articulated in the volume. International migration is presented here as a test bench where the normative limits of institutional order, its contradictions and internal tensions are examined. Migrations allows to call into question classical political categories and models. Pointing at walls and fences as tools that reproduce enormous inequalities within the globalized neo-liberal system, this chapter presents the conceptual tensions and contradictions between migration policies and global justice. We challenge the (...) conceptualization of justice as a relationship between citizens of the same country and the State and argue that, in our globalized world, nation-state cannot constitute the basic unit of the theories of justice. We argue that an integral approach that includes the complex and interconnected forms of structural inequalities and transcends the borders of national sovereign states is required. Avoiding the methodological nationalism and the exclusionary biases that inform current migration and border control policies, this chapter finally places attention on the most marginalized subjects of the migration chain: migrant women workers. We point out the importance of addressing transnational structural inequalities and bringing social reproduction to the center of global justice theories. (shrink)

Abstract This essay is motivated by the question, how might we describe the occurrences of cultural borders? It is organized in three sections with these titles: A. Borders of Concealment and Translation; B. Attunement with Fragmented, Differential Borders; C. Metaphors, Relations of Power, Borderlands. I limit these topics by focusing primarily on cultural borders and transformations within the United States. My aims within the context of these situated accounts are to encourage greater awareness of borders (...) as events that often have shared and describable characteristics, to make evident a group of issues that need further philosophical attention, to develop an enlarged philosophical vocabulary for such thought in comparison to that in standard use, and to bring to the fore questions of cultural sensibility and their transformations. In this process I address and utilize specific works by Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gloria Anzaldúa. (shrink)

The renaissance of border studies during the past decade has been characterized by a crossing of disciplinary borders, bringing together geographers, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, literary scholars, legal experts, along with border practitioners engaged in the practical aspects of boundary demarcation, delimitation and management. This growth in border studies runs contrary to much of the globalization discourse which was prevalent during the late 1980s and early 1990s, positing a new ‘borderless’ world, in which the barrier impact of (...) class='Hi'>borders became insignificant. The article points to the common use of terminology which can create a shared border discourse among a diverse group of scholars, such as boundary demarcation, the nature of frontiers, borderlands and transition zones, and the ways in which borders are crossed. The article also discusses the reclosing of borders which is taking place as a result of 9/11 as part of the stated war against global terror. (shrink)

Arash Abizadeh claims that ‘[a]nyone accepting the democratic theory of political legitimation domestically is thereby committed to rejecting the unilateral domestic right to control state boundaries’. He bases this conclusion on the premise that ‘to be democratically legitimate, a state’s regime of border control must result from political processes in which those subject to it—including foreigners—have a right of democratic participation’. I shall argue that this premise, even if it were correct, does not support the conclusion since ‘democratic (...) legitimacy’ is morally irrelevant: that something is ‘democratically illegitimate’ in no way suggests, let alone implies, that it is also morally impermissible or contravenes a moral right. I shall consider counter-arguments advanced against this objection by Maxime Lepoutre and Abizadeh himself and argue that they fail. Thus there is no valid democratic argument against border coercion. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Across the Mexico-United States borderlands, overlapping white supremacist and Anglo-nationalist movements are building private walls as monuments to Donald Trump. Numerous social justice activists and ecological stewards have warned that these Trumpist border walls present specific and new threats to social and ecological landscapes, particularly along the riparian sections of the borderlands. To slow their building and even topple these walls, justice activists and ecological caretakers are working to fortify networks with similar efforts elsewhere. In an effort to provide (...) analyses useful to such justice endeavors, I employ Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics to situate the borderland activist struggles against the Trumpist walls within a broader context of struggle against the commemoration of racist terror in the US South. Specifically, I use Mbembe’s theorization of necropolitical deathworlds to illustrate some potential common cause linking protests against Trumpist walls in the Paso del Norte region of the Mexico-US border with a Black Lives Matter/Say Her Name coalition that is bringing down Confederate monuments in central Texas. In placing these movements in connection with each other, I highlight a synergy of the white supremacy of Jim Crow with the Anglo nationalism behind a Juan Crow variant of racist terror and anti-immigrant hatred driving the Trumpist wall constructions. Recognition of this convergence is one way, I maintain, for identifying opportunities for making common cause across the Americas’ myriad struggles to destroy the racist monuments that glorify the necropolitical legacy of racist colonialism and its ongoing social and ecological devastation. (shrink)