Anthropogenic climate change is expected to contribute to mass migration from many different regions. Heyward and Ödalen (2016) propose a tailor-made migration option for victims of total territorial loss: a Free Movement Passport for the Territorially Dispossessed (PTD). The PTD presents a significant advancement over standard proposals for individual migration in response to total territorial loss. However, I argue that the compensatory obligations of states are more restrictive than the PTD scheme assumes (sec. 5), and that the contents of the (...) right to compensation of the territorially dispossessed are not as far-reaching as required by it (sec. 6). In response to these difficulties, I argue that its purpose is better served by means of collective migration and propose a Passport for Territorially Dispossessed Collectives, which is also well positioned to serve as a framework for compensating a range of other climate-change related losses (sec. 9). (shrink)

This paper considers the philosophical foundations of the law relating to migration. It examines the kinds of reasons that might justify the restriction of liberty as people move about on the face of the earth—something humans have done since time immemorial. The paper also examines the various interests that might be at stake in moral calculations regarding migration: economic interests, cultural interests, religious interests, or just sheer preferences. Drawing on the work of Locke, Kant, and Sidgwick, it considers conceptions like (...) common ownership of the earth, the right of hospitality, and the difference between defending property and restricting access to economic interaction. The paper also considers the ambiguity of the commonly heard slogan that states by definition have a right to control their borders. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

This paper argues that pre‐departure language requirements for family reunification are unjustified. Such requirements are assumed to safeguard (1) the non‐instrumental cultural interests of citizens of the receiving society and (2) the instrumental language interests of both citizens and immigrants, for democratic life and political participation. The paper explores nationalist and multiculturalist arguments for implementing post‐arrival integration to ensure a shared public language but contends that such arguments cannot justify pre‐departure language requirements. In addition, instrumental language interests for democratic political (...) life fall empirically short and place undue burdens on immigrants. The case of family reunification poses a unique moral problem, given the vital interest in living with one's family. The paper argues that the linguistic interests of the receiving state, in general, do not outweigh the claim to family reunification. (shrink)

Human activities are being increasingly regulated by means of technologies. Smart borders regulating human movement are no exception. I argue that the process of digitization – including through AI, Big Data and algorithmic processing – falls short of respecting (fundamental) rights to the extent to which it ignores what I term to be the problem of indeterminacy. While adopting a data feminist approach in this paper, assuming that data is the ‘new oil’, that is power, I begin theorizing indeterminacy from (...) the imminent risks of datafication as a new instrument of oppression perpetuating injustice and widening inequality gaps. I conclude that technologies regulating human activities must stand ethical scrutiny, especially if they can and do result in (human) rights violations. Unlike the oil being extracted from the ground, data is de facto extracted from people endowed with agency, autonomy, rights and contexts – all which ought to be respected and protected. (shrink)

Qui peut revendiquer un territoire, sur quelles bases et avec quelles conséquences sont des questions qui font l’objet de débats en philosophie politique contemporaine. En réponse, j’adopte « la théorie de l’État légitime » proposée par Stilz. Selon Wellman, une conséquence des revendications territoriales serait le droit de l’État de refuser la migration sur son territoire. Je juxtapose son propos de l’État légitime avec celui de Stilz et soutiens que, si l’on accepte la fondation de l’État légitime sur la valeur (...) de l’autonomie individuelle, accepter seulement des devoirs négatifs, soit de ne pas violer les droits des non-citoyens, n’est pas plausible. Je justifie les devoirs positifs des États légitimes d’aider à la réalisation de l’autonomie individuelle pour tous ceux dont les États d’origine échouent à la tâche et qui souhaitent se joindre et soutenir les institutions de l’État légitime. Cela implique l’obligation de l’État de permettre leur immigration.Who can claim a territory, on what grounds and what such claims entitle to has recently been the subject of much philosophical debate. In answer to this question, I adopt the ‘legitimate state theory’ proposed by Stilz. One consequence of the claim to territory that has been proposed by Wellman is the right to refuse migration onto a territory. I contrast his and Stilz’ account of the legitimate state and argue that if we accept that legitimate states are grounded on the value of individual autonomy, it is not plausible why states only have the negative duty to not violate human rights in dealings with non-citizens ; instead, I argue that states have positive duties to realize the possibility for individual autonomy for all those whose states fail in providing them with the means to individual autonomy and who wish to join and support the institutions of the legitimate state. This implies a duty to allow their immigration. (shrink)

The movement of people across borders is one of the most pressing issues of our time. Yet it is still unclear how migration should be regulated to be fair to the sending societies, the host societies and the individual migrant. What is at issue? Are we discussing migration from an ethical or from a political philosophical perspective, or both? Are we discussing migration from a global justice perspective or social justice perspective? Do we consider political legitimacy and democratic self-determination as (...) part of our analysis? How should we balance demands of justice in immigration compared to those of emigration? (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to question, from the perspective of a principled theory of criminalization, the legitimacy of making irregular immigration a crime. In order to do this, I identify three main ways in which the political decision to introduce a crime of IM may be defended: according to the first, IM is a malum in se the wrongness of which resides in its being a violation of states’ territorial sovereignty; according to the second, IM is a justified (...) malum prohibitum the wrongness of which resides in its being a violation of a justified immigration regulation; according to the third, IM is a malum in se the wrongness of which resides in its harmful consequences for receiving states’ citizens. My thesis is that none of these arguments succeeds in providing us with sufficiently good reasons to justify the use of criminal punishment to enforce the closure of state borders. As regards the first, I argue that it relies on a misleading conception of what is entailed by states’ territorial sovereignty, and that therefore it is unsound as an argument for the state’s right to control immigration. With regard to the second, I argue that, be they legitimate or not, immigration regulations enacted by states cannot provide those would-be immigrants they aim to exclude with content-independent reasons to comply with them; and this is a necessary pre-condition to conclude that IM is a justified malum prohibitum. As regards harm-based approaches, I argue that the notions they rely on are completely unfit as criteria for criminalization. This leads me to the conclusion that, unless other more convincing arguments are provided for, IM should not be criminalized. (shrink)

Brock argues that states’ rights of border control should be understood to be conditional on states’ protecting human rights internally as well as on states’ appropriately contributing to the human rights conditions of migrants internationally. I discuss these requirements in turn. I first argue that Brock needs further to specify how internal human rights failures affect the legitimacy of states’ border control rights. I then outline some considerations that I believe would strengthen Brock’s proposal for better international cooperation on migrants’ (...) human rights. (shrink)

Much of the debate over the justice of immigration restrictions focuses on their impact on would-be migrants. Restrictionists often focus on potentially harmful effects of immigration on residents of receiving countries. This article cuts across this long-standing debate by outlining ways in which immigration restrictions inflict harm on natives, specifically by undermining their economic liberty. It covers both the libertarian “negative” view of economic freedom and the “positive” version advanced by left-liberals. Section 1 focuses on “negative” economic freedom. It shows (...) that migration restrictions massively restrict the negative economic liberty of natives. Section 2 takes up “positive” theories of economic freedom; here, too, there are massive effects. Finally, section 3 describes how to address potentially harmful side effects of migration that might undermine economic liberty. (shrink)

There is an awakening of interest in links between geography and moral philosophy, or ethics. This paper reviews a range of issues where common ground might be found on this new disciplinary interface. These issues include the historical geography of moralities, the notion of moral geographies, inclusion and exclusion in the context of the bounding of spaces, and the moral significance of distance and proximity, as well as the more familiar concern with social justice. Environmental ethics provides a link with (...) the physical side of the subject. Some suggestions are made as to the possible contribution of geography to the understanding of moral issues. (shrink)

This symposium brings into conversation normative political theory on migration and critical border/migration studies, with a particular focus on digital border control technology. Normative theorists have long been concerned with questions about the extent and nature of control over migration that the state should exercise, and the balance of rights and duties between states and migrants. To date, however, there has been little reflection among such theorists on digital border control technology. Critical border/migration studies scholars, on the other hand, have (...) paid considerable attention to the rapid development of digital technology in the border control/mobility management space, and revealed a range of problems with the technology itself and the ways it is deployed. What has thus far been lacking, however, is sustained ethical reflection on what should be done about the use of this technology. The papers in this symposium thus seek to bring these two groups of scholars together and to prompt what we hope will be a sustained conversation on these rapidly evolving and deeply problematic practices. This introduction contextualises the issue at the heart of this symposium – the rapid expansion of digital border controls and the ethical challenges that these pose – and offers brief summaries of the contributions. (shrink)

This essay argues that the illiberal anti-immigrant sentiments which lie behind the success of populist right-wing parties deserve the attention of political theorists working on the ethics of migration, even though such sentiments exceed the boundaries of admissible disagreement on justice in migration. Firstly, populist anti-immigrant sentiments hinder the implementation of liberal democratic immigration policies and thus they represent a feasibility constraint for any liberal ethics of migration, not only the most cosmopolitan ones. Secondly, there are legitimacy reasons why such (...) views should be neither merely dismissed nor simply contained, since they are voiced by populist political parties which are admitted in the electoral competition and even participate in governments. The main upshot of this discussion is a methodological one: the article argues that, since political theory should deal with the feasibility and legitimacy issues raised by populist anti-immigrant sentiments, a realistic approach is needed. The last section shows that such a methodological change offers the opportunity to extend the scope of normative theorising. In particular, it illustrates how a realistic approach encourages theorists to focus on local-level policies, as well as to devote attention to non-governmental actors and to their role in tackling citizens’ hostility towards immigrants. (shrink)

The discussion of migrants’ education focuses generally on whether and how host countries should educate their migrant populations, examining the goals and moral principles underlying educational services for immigrants. While apparently innocuous, such formulations of the issue stipulate a framework with clear roles: host countries are posited as providers and immigrants as recipients of services. Host countries are, thus, placed in a hierarchical position of ‘granting’ belonging, ‘granting’ services, ‘granting’ education, as benefactors, whether for the purposes of duty, utility, or (...) justice. In this paper, I challenge this unidirectional order of beneficence. I propose that the inclusion of migrants in public institutions should more properly be viewed (also) as providing a necessary good/service for the host communities. The encounter with the alien, the foreign, the migrant, in oneself and in one’s world, forces individuals and communities to reflect on what and who they are as well as what and who they want to be – their identity and their future development. I argue that migrant populations with diverse linguistic traditions and customs are uniquely situated to bring to consciousness and help denaturalize the given traditions and culture of their host communities and thus make possible a more self-aware, informed, and freer path of development for their host countries. (shrink)

Liberal egalitarians tend to be committed both to generous asylum policies and generous, universal welfare states. Yet there may be political, social and economic reasons why there is a conflict in realising both. Asylum seekers may create economic pressures to the welfare state, or undermine national solidarity supposedly necessary to support redistribution. In this paper, I discuss how political theorists should approach these empirical concerns. I take issue with the view that theorists can simply move between ‘realism’ and ‘idealism’ by (...) accepting more or less of reality. Instead, political theorists should seek to offer a critical description of the conflict, which can reveal structures of power that ought to be subject to normative scrutiny. To this end, I discuss two accounts of how the welfare state may justify asylum restrictions in relation to the case of Sweden, a universal welfare state that has recently introduced restrictions on asylum to protect the welfare state. I argue along these accounts that the welfare state is both an important source of political and social order and a foundation of the personal moral experience. Yet a critical analysis also illustrates how these claims weaken as underlying methodological nationalism and bias towards existing power structures are brought to light. Asylum restrictions cannot be justified if they contribute to perpetuating these power structures, which cause some of the conflict with the welfare state in the first place. (shrink)

This paper explores the implications of empirical theories of migration for normative accounts of migration and distributive justice. It examines neo-classical economics, world-systems theory, dual labor market theory, and feminist approaches to migration and contends that neo-classical economic theory in isolation provides an inadequate understanding of migration. Other theories provide a fuller account of how national and global economic, political, and social institutions cause and shape migration flows by actively affecting people's opportunity sets in source countries and by admitting people (...) according to social categories such as class and gender. These empirical theories reveal the causal impact of institutions regulating migration and clarify moral obligations frequently overlooked by normative theorists. (shrink)

Interdisciplinary work on the nature of borders and society has enriched and complicated our understanding of democracy, community, distributive justice, and migration. It reveals the cognitive bias of methodological nationalism, which has distorted normative political thought on these topics, uncritically and often unconsciously adapting and reifying state‐centered conceptions of territory, space, and community. Under methodological nationalism, state territories demarcate the boundaries of the political; society is conceived as composed of immobile, culturally homogenous citizens, each belonging to one and only one (...) state; and the distribution of goods is analyzed according to a stark opposition between the domestic and the international. This article describes how methodological nationalism has shaped central debates in political philosophy and introduces recent work that helps dispel this bias. (shrink)

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Volume 21, Issue 3, Page 313-344, August 2022. This paper discusses why and how public attitudes should matter in regulating asylum and refugee protection in rich democracies, with a focus on Europe. Taking a realistic approach, I argue that public views constitute a soft feasibility constraint on effective and sustainable policies towards asylum seekers and refugees, and that a failure to take seriously and understand the attitudes of the host country’s population can have a very damaging (...) effect on refugee protection and migrants’ rights in practice. Bringing together insights from political philosophy, the politics of asylum, and research on public attitudes, I develop my argument by discussing why ‘what the people think’ should matter in asylum and refugee polices; how public views can and should matter given the well-known challenges with measuring attitudes and policy preferences; and what the prevailing public views might mean for the reform of asylum and refugee policies in Europe. (shrink)

Despite a common agenda of normative analysis of the international order, philosophical work on international political morality and international law and legal scholarship have, until recently, worked at a distance from one another.The mutual suspicion can be traced to different aims and methodologies, including a divide between work on matters of deep structure, on the one hand, and practical institutional analysis and prescription, on the other. Yet international law is a key part of the normative practices ofstates, has a direct (...) effect on state behavior, and, as a meth-odological matter, can contribute to good theorizing onmatters of international ethics. Recently, philosophical workhas demonstrated a greater engagement with the moral aspects of international law. One strand of scholarship has treated the rules of international law as a proper subject for philosophical inquiry. Another has used international legal rules to support moral arguments about aspects of the international order. Future dialogue and cooperation would benefit both fields, in particular on the challenges to global cooperation from nationalism and on strategies for allocating responsibilities among global actors for rectifying global harms. (shrink)

Most accounts of immigration ethics implicitly rely upon neoclassical migration theory, which understands migration as the result of poverty and unemployment in sending countries. This paper argues that neoclassical migration theory assumes an account of the human person as solely an autonomous rational agent which then leads to ethics of migration which overemphasize freedom and self-determination. This tendency to assume that migration works as neoclassical migration theory describes is shared by political philosophers, such as Joseph Carens, Michael Walzer, and David (...) Miller. This paper argues that all three philosophers incorrectly frame migration as a contest between the freedom of the migrant and the communal self-determination of the political community. Migration systems theory is presented as a theory that draws upon a relationally embedded understanding of autonomy in order to begin to develop a migration systems ethics. This paper concludes by arguing that the central ethical category for an ethics of migration is not freedom or self-determination, but justice-in-relation. (shrink)

This article offers a critical analysis of David Miller’s proposal that liberal immigration policies should be conceptualized in terms of a quasi-contract between receiving nations and immigrant groups, designed to ensure both that cultural diversity does not undermine trust among citizens and that immigrants are treated fairly. This proposal fails to address sufficiently two related concerns. Firstly, an open-ended, quasi-contractual requirement for cultural integration leaves immigrant groups exposed to arbitrary critique as insufficiently integrated and unworthy of trust as citizens. Secondly, (...) the focus on national culture instead of citizenship obfuscates the close link between political membership and political trustworthiness. An examination of two models of interpersonal trust, affective and cognitive,shows that there is no room for the mid-way position associated with a quasi-contract. The effect of grounding political trust in a shared national culture instead of democratic institutions is to normalize the domination of immigrants and citizens alike. (shrink)

In a democratic society, the social rules are imposed by all upon each. As “recipients” of the rules, we tend to think that they should be designed to engender the best attainable distribution of goods and ills or quality of life. We are inclined to assess social institutions by how they affect their participants. But there is another, oft-neglected perspective which the topic of health equity raises with special clarity: As imposers of the rules, we are inclined to think that (...) harms we inflict through the rules have greater moral weight than like harms we merely fail to prevent or to mitigate. What matters morally is not merely how we affect people, but how we treat them through the rules we impose. While current (consequentialist and Rawlsian) theorizing is dominated by the first perspective and thus supports purely recipient-oriented moral conceptions, an adequate approach to social justice requires a balancing of both. Such balancing results in a relational conception of justice, which distinguishes various ways in which an institutional scheme may causally affect the quality of life of its participants.This essay argues that the strength of our moral reason to prevent or mitigate particular medical conditions depends not only on what one might call distributional factors, such as how badly off the people affected by these conditions are in absolute and relative terms, how costly prevention or treatment would be, and how much patients would benefit from given treatment. Rather, it depends also on relational factors, that is, on how we are related to the medical conditions they suffer. It then discusses some implications of this view for understanding responsibilities for international health outcomes. (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)

This essay aims to bring to light the distinctive features of Fichte's construal of cosmopolitan right in the Foundations of Natural Right—in comparison to Kant's—in the light of the current philosophical debate on migration and global justice. The paper is articulated in three steps. First, it analyzes the addressees and content of Fichte's cosmopolitan right by emphasizing its limited scope: by focusing on those individuals who do not come “from any state,” Fichte's discussion of cosmopolitan right foreruns Arendt's philosophical theorization (...) of statelessness and the “right to have rights.” Second, it considers Fichte's justification of cosmopolitan right—and its compatibility with his justification of private property rights—by stressing its ontological anchoring in the notions of “absolute will,” “personhood,” and “original right.” Finally, the essay considers the systematic position of cosmopolitan right with regard to the “right of nations” and the “right of a state” in Fichte's doctrine of right by giving special attention to the range of reasons that, according to Fichte, can legitimate the rejection of a stranger. (shrink)

The ethics of immigration is currently marked by a division between realists and idealists. The idealists generally focus on formulating morally ideal immigration policies. The realists, however, tend to dismiss these ideals as far-fetched and infeasible. In contrast to the idealists, the realists seek to resolve pressing practical issues relating to immigration, principally by advancing what they consider to be actionable policy recommendations. In this article, I take issue with this conception of realism. I begin by surveying the way in (...) which it exemplifies what certain political theorists have recently called ‘problem-solving’ realism – a species of realism which they reject as incoherent. These theorists demonstrate that what counts as a ‘feasible’ solution is far harder to establish than most problem-solving realists would have us believe. Applying this general critique to the specific domain of immigration ethics turns out to radically undermine the notion of realism that prevails in this sphere of applied ethics. I conclude that we should therefore revise our conception of what constitutes a genuinely realist approach to the problem of immigration. (shrink)

Feminists have noted the injustice of the institution of marriage and the asymmetric power dynamics within gender-structured marriages. Recently, feminists have found an unexpected supporter of this struggle against marriage in some liberal political theorists. I argue that this new wave of interest in the wrongness of marriage within liberalism reveals shortcomings from a feminist perspective. While some liberals fail to realise that instead of being disestablished, the institution of marriage should be radically reformed, others do not recognise that such (...) a reform should be theorised by starting from our non-idealised conditions of gender inequality and from an analysis of how the institution of marriage intersects with other spheres of gender injustice. This article provides recommendations for the radical reform of marriage by following some methodological premises of feminist theory. To illustrate how the reform of marriage should be theorised, it focuses on the intersection between the sphere of gender injustice represented by immigration and that of marriage. (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)

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)

Eine Ethik der Integration kann den aktuellen öffentlichen Diskurs über Migrationspolitik bereichern. Dazu ist es jedoch erforderlich, über die idealtheoretisch geprägten Debatten der politischen Theorie hinauszugehen und eine moralstrategische Perspektive einzunehmen. In diesem Beitrag werden einige Grundlagen einer pragmatischen Ethik der Integration geklärt, wobei drei Fragen im Zentrum stehen: Was sind die Kriterien einer gelingenden Integration von Immigrant_innen? Was sind die auf Integration bezogenen Pflichten und Rechte der Institutionen und Bürger_innen eines Landes, das Immigrant_innen aufnimmt? Was sind die auf Integration (...) bezogenen Rechte und Pflichten von Immigrant_innen? (shrink)

Even though anthropogenic climate change is largely caused by industrialized nations, its burden is distributed unevenly with poor developing countries suffering the most. A common response to livelihood insecurities and destruction is migration. Using Peter Singer's ‘historical principle’, this paper argues that a morally just evaluation requires taking causality between climate change and migration under consideration. The historical principle is employed to emphasize shortcomings in commonly made philosophical arguments to oppose immigration. The article concludes that none of these arguments is (...) able to override the moral responsibility of industrialized countries to compensate for harms that their actions have caused. (shrink)

The United States may justifiably exclude unvaccinated aliens, perhaps even under the assumption of Open Borders, according to which people should generally be permitted to settle in countries of their choosing. Furthermore, there are good reasons to endorse the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) current vaccination-related exclusion criteria, which were last revised in 2009. I frame my discussion around CDC’s 2008 decision to permit immigrant girls and women to be excluded if they were not vaccinated against human papillomavirus (...) (HPV)—a decision that was quickly reversed and that led to the 2009 revisions to CDC’s vaccination-related immigrant exclusion criteria. (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)

We created Justice: The Game, an educational, role-immersion game designed to be used in philosophy courses. We seek to describe Justice in sufficent detail so that it is understandable to readers not already familiar with role-immersion pedagogy. We hope some instructors will be sufficiently interested in using the game. In addition to describing the game we also evaluate it, thereby highlighting the pedagogical potential of role-immersion games designed to teach political philosophy. We analyze the game by drawing on our observations (...) as designers and playtesters of Justice, along with feedback from students obtained in focus-groups conducted shortly after playtesting ended. We present evidence that Justice, compared to conventional instructional methods alone, plausibly enhances student learning of philosophical skills and content by requiring them to practice those skills and put their content-area knowledge to use in a highly-motivating and engaging context. (shrink)

This paper gives a normative assessment of the problem of forced environmental migration, or, migration driven primarily by environmental events, drawing particular attention to the framing of citizen and non-citizen rights in the context of anthropogenic climate change. It explores a moral imperative to install special migration rights for Environmentally Displaced Peoples and briefly assesses the ability of current domestic migration policy to offer such rights. The paper concludes by offering three theoretical policy-oriented exercises, ultimately locating tiered citizenship as the (...) most immediate ethically robust and politically acceptable solution to the challenge of environmental displacement. (shrink)

In the scholarly debate, refugeehood is often understood to arise from a special need for basic protection, i.e., for protection of basic needs and rights. However, the main definitions of refugeehood shift to duties when aiming to develop this view. Either, refugees are defined as all those individuals who can receive basic protection from the international community, and thus arguably ought to be protected, or refugees are defined as all those to whom a special form of protection, namely protection by (...) admission is owed. The paper argues that either definition is incompatible with a commonsense desideratum on consistent and plausible criteria for refugeehood, since these definitions imply that refugeehood depends partly on the capacities of protecting states and on the needs of third parties. Instead, refugeehood is defined by the need for basic protection and by flight aiming to remedy this condition. (shrink)

In this article, I address the question: what kind of normative principles should regulate the governance processes through which migration across international borders is managed? I begin by contrasting two distinct categories of normative controversy relating to this question. The first is a familiar set of moral controversies about justice within border governance, concerning what I call the ethics of exclusion. The second is a more theoretically neglected set of normative controversies about how institutional capacity for well functioning border governance (...) can best be achieved, concerning what I call the constitution of control of international borders. I argue that progress can be made in resolving controversies of the latter kind by applying a new normative theory of political legitimacy, distinct from the moral theories of justice routinely applied to ethics of exclusion controversies. On the ‘collective agency’ model of political legitimacy that I propose here, principles of political legitimacy have the regulatory role of combating complex collective action problems that may otherwise impede an institution’s collectively valuable functions. Through applying this theory, I sketch some provisional prescriptions for the design of international border governance institutions that may follow from the demand for strengthening their political legitimacy. (shrink)

El artículo analiza cómo se relaciona la premisa normativa de la dignidad humana con la evaluación del fenómeno migratorio. Para aquello, da cuenta de una concepción de dignidad humana que no recurre a presupuestos naturalistas ni supraempíricos, y presenta tres alternativas diferentes para otorgarle contenido normativo en base a un umbral suficientarista. Desde estas perspectivas, se sostiene que el trato corriente que se da a los refugiados, a los desplazados medioambientales y a los inmigrantes económicos, amenaza su dignidad y debe, (...) por tanto, dar paso a otros modos de hacer frente al fenómeno migratorio. (shrink)