In this paper I argue that we should not frame the debate over whether or not we have duties to help refugees in terms of duties of rescue. This way of framing the issue, where Western states are depicted as rescuing refugees from harms unconnected to them, does not adequately represent the reality experienced by refugees in the 21 st century. I suggest that we need a framework that includes the secondary harms experienced by refugees as they try to seek (...) refuge in camps, urban spaces and via asylum. These secondary harms constitute serious violations of human rights and prevent refugees from accessing the minimum conditions of human dignity. As a result, the rescue metaphor is inappropriate and, perhaps more importantly, prevents us from having a proper debate about the obligations of states in general, and Western states in particular, to refugees. (shrink)

How much should we sacrifice for the sake of others? While some argue in favour of significant sacrifices, others contend that morality cannot demand too much from individuals. Recently, the debate has taken a new turn by focusing on moral demands under non-ideal conditions in which the essential interests of many people are set back. Under such conditions, in some views, moral theories must require extreme moral demands as anything less is incompatible with equal consideration of everyone’s interests. The insistence (...) on the extremeness of moral demands, however, presupposes a simplistic account of non-ideal conditions as characterized mainly by the non-compliance of many individuals. Non-ideal conditions are also characterized by institutional non-compliance, whereby institutions often do not do what they ought to do. Institutional non-compliance is significant as it increases the size of moral demands significantly, thereby exacerbating the conflict between these demands and the self-interest of individuals subjected to these institutions. I argue that individuals have a meta-interest in not experiencing such internal conflicts as these can undermine their affirmation of self-respect. Meta-interest can be advanced by adopting the promotion of just institutions as an ultimate aim, as such institutions lessen the conflict and, accordingly, enable us to live more harmonious lives. Moreover, the promotion of just institutions allows us to affirm our sense of self-respect under non-ideal conditions too. Because the promotion of just institutions is in our self-interest, this is not an extreme but a moderate moral demand. (shrink)

The current practices of refugee protection refugees largely leave the burdens of the refugee regime to lie where they fall. Those states which are geographically proximate to refugee-producing regions, already amongst the least advantaged, bear the bulk of these burdens. In this paper, I critically assess two proposals which seek to address this maldistribution: a market in asylum services and a principle of comparative advantage. I argue that from the standpoint of justice, these proposals share two objectionable features. First, they (...) enable relations of domination between states, because they ignore the background relations of inequality upon which they depend for their effectiveness. Second, they institute an injustice of ‘misframing,’ in that they preclude consideration of refugees’ legitimate claims to be hosted (or not to be hosted) in a particular state. The failings of these approaches are illuminating and, I argue, provide us with some theoretical desiderata for a positive account of justice in the distribution of responsibilities to refugees. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe standard view of demandingness understands demandingness exclusively as a matter of costs to the agent. The paper discusses whether the standard view must be given up because we should think of demandingness as a matter of difficulty or restriction of options. I will argue that difficulty can indeed increase demandingness, but only insofar as it leads to further costs. As to restrictions of options, I will show that confinement can become costly and thus increase demandingness in three ways, by (...) prohibiting actions that the agent wants to perform in order to promote his well-being, by limiting the development of future preferences and projects and also by making the society less open. The paper thus defends a new variant of the standard view by arguing that difficulty and restrictions of options can increase the demandingness of morality on grounds of being costly. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the question of what duties the principles of democratic legitimacy prescribe for receiving states towards asylum seekers in general, and towards those who belong to vulnera...

Many contributions to the philosophical debate about conceptual and normative issues raised by the refugee crisis fail to take properly account of the difference between ideal and nonideal theory. This makes several otherwise interesting and apparently plausible contributions to the philosophy of the refugee crisis problematic. They are problematic in the sense that they mix up ideal and nonideal aspirations and assumptions in an incoherent way undermining the proposed views. Two examples of this problem are discussed. The first example is (...) David Miller’s contribution to the conceptual debate about how we should understand refugeehood. The second example is a common argument from the normative debate about how states should discharge their duties to help refugees, namely the claim that states should help in neighboring countries rather than by taking in more asylum seekers. Both are examples of arguments about how we should understand or respond to the refugee crisis, which appear to offer coherent principles for the moral guidance of political actors but which are actually incoherent as principles of practical reasoning for the context they aim to address. (shrink)

On 26 January 2021, while announcing that the country had reached the mark of 100,000 deaths within 28 days of COVID-19, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that he took “full responsibility for everything that the Government has done” as part of British efforts to tackle the pandemic. The force of this statement was undermined, however, by what followed: -/- What I can tell you is that we truly did everything we could, and continue to do everything that we can, (...) to minimise loss of life and to minimise suffering... -/- Taking these sentiments together, it was hard to avoid the conclusion that the government took responsibility only for doing everything right. Such an admission of responsibility, accommodating no admission of error or wrongdoing, is not really about responsibility at all. Indeed, the UK’s pandemic response has been marked from its earliest days by a shifting of focus from institutional responsibility to personal responsibility for individual UK residents. -/- This paper explores the relationship between these two sites of responsibility—the institutional and the personal—in the context of the sort of pandemic that is ongoing as we write. Section 2 offers some initial definitions and discussions of key terms. Section 3 outlines how these two ideas interact in principle during such emergencies. Section 4 turns to the ‘non-ideal’ implications for personal responsibility of failures of institutional responsibility. While our focus is on the specific context with which we are most familiar, the UK governmental approach, where appropriate we also include examples from other states. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

In this article, I argue that there are good reasons to permit states to engage in their own forms of prioritization of refugees for admission, if doing so enables more refugees overall to find safety. I identify three distinct clusters of programs that states operate, those that emphasize contribution-based reciprocity, those that emphasize anticipated benefit, and those that elevate cultural considerations. I assess the legitimacy of these programs separately, and then consider them together, to defend the view that – overall, (...) considering the profound need for resettlement spots – they warrant our normative support. At least at first glance, the reason that these programs are legitimate is that they are all underpinned by principles in moral philosophy that in general command widespread support. In the final section, I examine the discomfort they generate, and suggest that the discomfort has three related sources: (i) that there is something wrong with considering the benefits refugees may bring when at issue is simply whether states are carrying out their moral duties towards them; (ii) that the result of permitting such prioritization is that those who are most vulnerable are left behind; and (iii) that cultural considerations can easily slide into racist considerations. While I agree that we must be attentive to how these programs operate in practice, and whether they generate harm (in particular, more harm than good), I believe that in the current context, these objections can be adequately countered so that we should in general offer these programs our cautious, and conditional, support. (shrink)

Does the failure of others to comply with collective duties create duties for us to step in and do their share? Defenders of the so-called duty to take up the slack answer this question in the positive. Against their view, defenders of fair shares argue that we only have a duty to contribute our fair share to discharging the collective duty. This paper offers a partial vindication of Liam Murphy’s account of fair shares. I argue that three common objections to (...) fair shares fail to rebut Murphy’s account. On the reading I propose, fair shares may ground as – or more – extensive duties towards third parties as the duty to take up the slack. In addition, fair shares provides something that defenses of slack-taking tend to omit – an account of the limits of our nonideal duties. The paper highlights previously overlooked aspects of Murphy’s account and paves the way for future discussions about slack-taking in the domain of global politics. (shrink)

Most challenges to immigration restrictions have not shown that states lack a claim-right to exclude, or a moral right against outside interference to make membership decisions. And an important, unexamined aspect of the claim-right is that states have the right against interference to wrongfully exclude, or the right to do wrong when making admission decisions. A major implication of this right is that even political or economic measures to affect states’ immigration policies are off the table – significantly compromising the (...) prospect of meaningfully addressing the world’s growing refugee crisis. In the form of a reductio argument, I provide reason to reject this position. Specifically, I try to demonstrate that, in the relevant cases, a plausible moral defense for the right to wrongfully exclude can only be given for states with objectionable character – protecting the very states whose immigration policies we should be most concerned with, which is surely morally counterintuitive. (shrink)

This article seeks to advance the discussions on our moral obligations towards refugees of protracted crises by proposing a nuanced application of outcome responsibility. Differentiating causal and outcome responsibility through intention, involvement, and side-taking principles has both symbolic and practical significance in assigning reparative and remedial duties. The framework utilizes domestic analogies to help explain the refined version of these two responsibility types. It examines the Syrian crisis within this paradigm to offer a clearer understanding of the actors that are (...) ‘morally obligated and more likely’ to help. This argument addresses political communities instead of their states, emphasizing their pivotal role as bearers of the consequences of state decisions. Employing an outcome responsibility-based sense of ethical duty (ORSED) can foster more inclusive and welcoming environments, mitigating resentment regardless of border controls or burden allocation. (shrink)

Normative theorists of migration are beginning to shift their focus away from an earlier obsession with whether the ‘liberal' or ‘legitimate’ state should have a right to exclude, and toward evaluation of how states engage in immigration control. However, with some notable exceptions – such as work of Rebecca Buxton, David Owen, Serena Parekh, and Alex Sager – this work tends not to focus on the global coordination of such control, and is still largely concerned with issues of membership. In (...) this paper I aim to show the value of shifting normative attention to the fundamentally interdependent nature of state control of migration, and the management of all forms of movement – not just settlement. This global management is greatly facilitated by the rapid digitisation of border controls. As such, I outline three aspects of the way digital border controls work – profiling, biometric identification, and the data sharing practices upon which they rest – and highlight ethical challenges of accountability, consent and the reach of the state, and entrenching global inequalities in access to movement. Ultimately, I hope to show that the globally interconnected nature of migration management is a combination of practices that normative theorists of migration should turn their attention to. (shrink)

One of the ways to address the effects of skilled worker emigration is to restrict the movement of skilled workers. However, even if skilled workers have responsibilities to assist their compatriots, what if other parties, such as affluent countries or source country governments, do not fulfil their fair share of responsibilities? This discussion raises an interesting problem about how to think of individual responsibilities under partial compliance where other agents (including affluent countries, developing states, or other individuals) do not fulfil (...) their fair share of responsibilities. What is fair to expect from them? Taking health worker emigration as a case in point, I discuss whether the individual health workers’ fair share of responsibilities to address basic health care needs decreases or increases when the other parties do not fulfil their share. First, I review the responsibilities that different stakeholders may hold. Second, I argue that there are strong reasons against increasing or decreasing health workers’ fair share of responsibilities in a situation of partial compliance. I also argue that it is unfair for non-complier states to enforce health workers to fulfil their fair share or take up the slack. (shrink)

Hassan Al Kontar appeared in major headlines in 2018. He had left his country of origin, Syria, and refused to return when the Syrian Civil War broke out. He had emigrated a few years earlier to the United Arab Emirates, where he worked as an insurance marketing agent. His work permit expired after the start of the conflict in Syria. So did his passport. Hassan remained in the Emirates illegally, out of fear of being drafted by the army upon his (...) return to Syria. He was then arrested and sent to Malaysia where he was given a three-month tourist visa, but impeded from leaving the airport. Hassan ended up in a legal limbo. In a world like ours, where states jurisdictions exhaust the surface of the earth and determine the relationship between the state and its legal subjects, yet that pledges to protect the human rights of everyone, including non-nationals, how can these legal limbos in the international human rights regime be allowed? Some think there is a paradox at play here in that international human rights law gives a person a right to leave the state where he is physically present, regardless of nationality, but no matching right to enter elsewhere. Others deny this to be the case. This article is not an attempt to add yet another voice pro et contra the wrongfulness of the alleged state of affairs in international law. Rather it seeks to clarify the disagreement by offering a systematic problem-setting. We show what the matter under dispute consists in and which theoretical commitments are necessary to commit to in either side of this debate. We do this in three steps. First, we offer an ecumenical description of the matter under normative dispute. Second, we show that the matter under dispute is unclear concerning the ratio materiae of the action-class regulated by the norms in question. Third, we draw the consequences of this circumstance for the conditions of truth of the opposing positions. It seems that the disagreement is rooted in the very description of the action-class that the norm purports to regulate: in a nutshell, it seems that while one side thinks that the action is a movement of one and the same body in space across the territorial jurisdictional lines of two state actors, the other side to the debate thinks that we are dealing with two actions, separate and separable institutional facts that refer to the individual’s position vis-à-vis a state. (shrink)