Although the notion of universal human rights allows for the idea that states (and supranational organizations such as the European Union) can, or even should, control and impose restrictions on migration, both notions clearly do not sit well together. The ensuing tension manifests itself in our ambivalent attitude towards migration, but also affects the border guards who have to implement national and supranational policies on migration. Little has been written on the ethics that has to guide these border guards in (...) their work. Juxtaposing the ethics of border guarding against the ethics of the somewhat related military profession, this article attempts to (a) describe border guarding as a comparatively rule-guided profession; (b) outline the aim and basis of the ethics education that prepares border guards for their work; and (c) propose a research agenda for the future that should further our understanding of (a) and (b), but also help us improve the moral education of border guards. (shrink)

This work explores the increasing militarization of borders throughout the world, particularly the United States border with Mexico. Rather than further rhetoric of "border security," this work views increases in guards, technology and the building of walls as militarized action. The goal of this essay is to place the onus upon states to justify their actions at borders in ways that do not appeal to tropes of terrorism. This work then explores how a logic of security infiltrates philosophical discussions of (...) "the right to exclude," thereby curtailing the ability to see borders in any other way than as a locale that must be militarized. Specifically, I analyze the work of Michael Blake and his juridical theory of immigration restrictions. I argue that his work necessitates the walling of borders and removal of those who create new obligations for current members of existing political institutions. (shrink)

Debates on borders in both normative political theory and critical border studies tend to focus on the spatiality of bordering. This article evaluates this territorialist epistemology by identifying the complex temporality of borders and highlighting the specific normative challenges that it engenders. In particular, it argues for the centrality of time–space governance as a frame for examining bordering processes. This challenge is exemplified through contemporary debates on the movement of people and theoretical arguments about how to construct migration policy. The (...) article contends that complex temporality necessitates an orientation to the future that reconfigures the manner in which theorists should address the time–space governance of migration. (shrink)

The concept of boundary represents one of the fundamental philosophical issues triggered and required by the reflection upon geography – and ontology of geography specifically. But what kind of entity are geographical boundaries? What sorts of boundary have been identified by contemporary ontologists of geography? How can boundaries be classified from a geo-ontological point of view? What are the main contemporary classifications of geographical boundaries? How can culture and human beliefs influence such classifications? These questions represent the starting point of (...) this paper, aimed at analyzing how the notion of boundary has been conceived by contemporary ontologists of geography, what kinds of geographical boundaries have been identified and categorized, and the influence eventually exerted by cultural diversities and human beliefs on such geo-ontological classifications. Primarily, we will take into account Smith’s and Galton’s taxonomies, which represent two of the most cited examples of comprehensive classifications of geographical boundaries encompassing physical, biological, psychological, social, and political phenomena. Secondly, starting from Smith’s and Mark’s considerations, the importance of cultural diversities and human beliefs for geo-ontological classifications will be discussed. As third, we will analyze the possibility of the existence of cultural boundaries and the prospect of categorizations that can influence, in their turn, beliefs, culture and individual or collective behavior. The idea is to show three different modalities through which culture and beliefs may have an influence on (and the power to modify) the definition and the individuation of geographical boundaries. (shrink)

This paper considers political agency and space as found in Cavarero's For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression in order to take a critical philosophical approach to human rights education and the political implications of its increasingly legal discourse. Like Arendt, Cavarero is concerned with a radical rethinking of political space, as not limited to place or legal borders, but bound by our human condition of plurality and relationality. Both Arendt and Cavarero want politics to be (...) coupled with justice, nevertheless, Cavarero provides a notion of politics that lets us think beyond territorial terms of a polis, which opens for exploring an expanded conceptualization of human rights politics, as not bound by national legislative measures, but as concerning political action in-between human beings. In contrast to the dominant discourse on ‘human rights experts’ who frame the content for HRE, the notion of ‘absolute local space’ questions the dichotomy of universal/particular in raising the importance of a plurality of unique voices who create a spectrum for the universality of rights. (shrink)