Can a liberal state exclude illiberal immigrants in order to preserve its liberal status? Hrishikesh Joshi has argued that liberalism cannot require a commitment to open borders because this would entail that liberalism is committed to its own demise in circumstances in which many illiberal immigrants aim to immigrate into a liberal society. I argue that liberalism is committed to its own demise in certain circumstances, but that this is not as bad as it may appear. Liberalism’s commitment to its (...) own demise is merely a reflection of the fact that it must take into account the rights of outsiders, not just the rights of existing citizens, and of the fact that circumstances of injustice can sometimes leave liberal societies with no correct choice. (shrink)

This paper proposes an original account, based on the capabilities approach, that explains which kinds of attachment to natural resources are sufficiently morally weighty to give rise to special resource rights. The paper provides a critique of current attachment theories, which fail to provide a clear way to differentiate between what is a preference and what is a legitimate attachment, and thereby justify overreaching resource rights. It then examines Armstrong’s welfarist account of natural resources justice, and argues that the capabilities (...) approach can be used to specify the relevant dimensions of well-being, as elements of human flourishing. A capabilities-based account is appealing because it is more limited in scope than existing attachment theories, and able to make finer distinctions regarding the scope and content of individuals’ rights claims. Attachment claims are legitimate when the valuable basic capabilities held by individuals depend on their relationship to specific natural resources. By using capabilities as a mediating concept, we can detect more precisely when attachment claims are normatively significant and can ground special resource rights. (shrink)

A recent challenge to statist arguments defending the right of states to exclude prospective immigrants maintains that such statist arguments prove too much. Specifically, the challenge argues that statist arguments, insofar as they are correct, entail that states may permissibily exclude current members' newcomers by birth, which seems to violate a widely held intuition that members' newcomers by birth ought automatically to be granted membership rights. The basic claim is that statist arguments cannot account for the differntial treatment between prospective (...) immigrants and newcomers by birth. Call this the newcomer-by-birth objection. This article rejects the newcomer-by-birth rejection. It begins by sketching the precise extent to which the objection applies to statist arguments. It then examines the case of newcomers by birth and argues for a principled basis for treating them differentially from prospective immigrants such that a right to exclude prospective immigrants need not entail a right to exclude newcomers by birth. But this distinction holds only in most cases, not all, and therefore the newcomer-by-birth objection is not entirely defeated. With respect to the cases in which the objection does hold, it is argued that such cases are morally akin to international adoption, and thus morally benign. All considered, statist arguments easily survive the newcomer-by-birth objection. (shrink)

Temporariness has become the norm in contemporary refugee protection. Many refugees face extended periods of time waiting for permanent status, either in camps or living among citizens in their state of asylum. Whilst this practice of keeping refugees waiting is of benefit to states, I argue that not only is it harmful to refugees but it also constitutes an injustice. First, I outline the prevalence of temporary assistance in the refugee protection regime. Second, I outline the orthodox view on temporary (...) refugee protection – it is acceptable as long as it is not indefinite. I then spend the remainder of the article considering four arguments against temporary refugee protection: the plan argument, the reciprocity argument, the domination argument, and the compounding injustice argument. I contend that the first two arguments, which already feature in the literature, merely show that temporary protection is harmful to refugees. My own arguments on domination and compounding injustice show, instead, that giving refugees temporary protection constitutes an injustice. The domination argument allows us to critique the current practice of temporary refugee protection, whereas the compounding injustice argument shows that temporariness in any form constitutes an injustice. (shrink)

Even though the phenomenon of gentrification is ever-growing in contemporary urban contexts, especially in high income countries, it has been mostly overlooked by normative political theorists and philosophers. In this paper we examine the normative dimensions of gentrification through the lens of food. By drawing on Huber and Wolkenstein’s (Huber and Wolkenstein, Politics, Philosophy & Economics 17:378–397, 2018) work, we use food as an example to illustrate the multiple ways in which life plans can be located and to argue that (...) both existing residents and newcomers have an interest in occupancy rights. More specifically, while newcomers have an interest in moving freely to new neighbourhoods in order to purse their preferred life plans, they also have an interest in being able to continue to pursue those life plans once they have acquired them, and this requires occupancy rights and the implementation of measures aimed at regulating and slowing down gentrification. Moreover, when residents belong to already disadvantaged groups, more significant anti-gentrification measures can be implemented in order to prevent injustices from being compounded. (shrink)

This article makes the normative case for a differentiated approach to the sovereignty of states over natural resources. In the first half of the article, drawing on the example of the Yasuní-ITT-Initiative, I will argue that countries commit a moral wrong when they exploit natural resources for their own benefit, but that they have the moral right to do so given the current structure of the international system. In the second half of the article, I address the question of whether (...) states' rights over natural resources can be justified. Central to my argument will be the distinction between “control rights” and “income rights.” Only control rights, I will argue, can be justified as inherently tied to collective self-determination. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Anthropogenic climate change is an existential threat to the people of sinking island states. When their territories inevitably disappear, what, if anything, do the world's remaining territorial st...

Who should have a right to participate in a polity’s decision-making? Although the answers to this ‘boundary problem’ in democratic theory remain controversial, it is widely believed that the enfranchisement of tourists and children is unacceptable. Yet, the two most prominent inclusion principles in the literature – Robert Goodin’s ‘all (possibly) affected interests’-principle and the ‘all subjected to law’-principle – both enfranchise those groups. Unsurprisingly, democratic theorists have therefore offered several reasons for nonetheless exempting tourists and children from the franchise. (...) In this paper, I argue that their attempts fail. None of the proposed rationales can do the job without having unacceptable implications for the voting rights of other groups. I then develop a new specification of the affected interests-view, one that avoids such problems. According to my life plan-principle, a person is entitled to participate in a polity’s decision-making if and only if its decisions will actually affect her autonomously chosen life plans, or prevent her from developing or revising plans of that kind. I show that this principle straightforwardly avoids enfranchising tourists and children, and thus improves upon its two prominent rivals. The paper ends by considering and rejecting two objections to my new principle. (shrink)

Exclusionary defeat is Joseph Raz’s proposal for understanding the more complex, layered structure of practical reasoning. Exclusionary reasons are widely appealed to in legal theory and consistently arise in many other areas of philosophy. They have also been subject to a variety of challenges. I propose a new account of exclusionary reasons based on their justificatory role, rejecting Raz’s motivational account and especially contrasting exclusion with undercutting defeat. I explain the appeal and coherence of exclusionary reasons by appeal to commonsense (...) value pluralism and the intermediate space of public policies, social roles, and organizations. We often want our choices to have a certain character or instantiate a certain value and in order to do so, that choice can only be based on a restricted set of reasons. Exclusion explains how pro tanto practical reasons can be disqualified from counting towards a choice of a particular kind without being outweighed or undercut. (shrink)

We now have good reason to worry that many coastal cities will be flooded by the end of the century. How should we confront this possibility (or inevitability)? What attitudes should we adopt to impending inundation of such magnitude? In the case of place-loss due to anthropogenic climate change, I argue that there may ultimately be something fitting about letting go, both thinking prospectively, when the likelihood of preservation is bleak, and retrospectively, when we reflect on our inability to prevent (...) destruction. I then explore some of the ethical complications of this response. (shrink)

In ‘Colonialism, territory and pre-existing obligations,’ Cara Nine argues that Lea Ypi’s account of the wrongness of colonialism has a hole in it: Ypi leaves open the possibility of justified settler colonialism. Nine suggests that we can patch this hole by attaching value to existing political associations. But Nine’s solution has its own hole. Many political associations exist due to settler colonialism, and thus if we endorse the value of these associations we seem to endorse colonialism. In response, we could (...) say that past colonial injustices have been remediated or superseded. Or, we could leave the hole open: colonialism is sometimes justified. I argue that, surprisingly, the second option is likely preferable, because it does not require us to say that the injustices of colonialism are gone, and because it points towards a better theory of colonialism’s wrongness than Ypi’s: cosmopolitan instrumentalism, according to which colonialism is wrong only when it is unjust according to one’s overall theory of cosmopolitan justice. (shrink)

This article argues against privileging the expectations of settlers over those of dispossessed peoples. I assume in this article that historical rights to occupancy do not persist through all changes in circumstances, but a theory of justice should reduce perverse incentives to unjustly settle on land in hopes of legitimating occupancy. Margaret Moore, in her 2015 book, A Political Theory of Territory, tries to balance these intuitions through an argument based on legitimate expectations. I argue that Moore’s attempt to reduce (...) perverse incentives (through expectation-altering institutional design) fails. Moore unduly privileges settler expectations, especially over those of indigenous peoples. I criticize United States court decisions resurrecting the expectations of past settlers in the allotment era (which share structural features with Moore’s arguments). Lastly, distinguishing between ‘final’ supersession of historical injustice through changing circumstances, and ‘dormant’ supersession, shows how indigenous claims to land and jurisdiction may revive. (shrink)

This article defends the right that Palestinians have to return to the territory governed by Israel. However, it does not defend the duty on Israel to permit return. Whether there is such a duty depends on whether the economic, social and security costs override that right. In order to defend the right of return, it is shown both that the current generation of Palestinians retain a significant interest in return, and that insofar as their interests are diminished, their rights are (...) not diminished proportionally. The interests of Jewish Israelis in excluding the Palestinians are then considered. Their rights of self-determination, it is argued, do not powerfully favour excluding the Palestinians. The economic, social and security costs may do so. Overall, I conclude that either the Israel should grant return to the Palestinians or it should properly acknowledge the right of return and respond appropriately through a powerful effort to compensate and resettle them. (shrink)

This article discusses two normative questions raised by cases of colonial settlement. First, is it sometimes wrong to migrate and settle in a previously inhabited land? If so, under what conditions? Second, should settler countries ever take steps to undo wrongful settlement, by enforcing repatriation and return? The article argues that it is wrong to settle in another country in cases where one comes with intent to colonize the population against their will, or one possesses an adequate territorial base somewhere (...) else, lacks an urgent interest in moving, and seeks to settle in a new place under conditions where settlement would severely harm the practices of prior occupants. It also argues for a presumption of repatriation and return in the first generation of wrongful settlement and holds that these remedies may be extended to second and higher generations in some – but not all – cases. (shrink)

What is special about refugees? In this paper, I argue that the two main accounts of who should count as a refugee have major shortcomings. The first, based on protection from persecution, is too n...

This essay defends a strong right against displacement as part of a basic individual right to secure access to one’s home. The analysis is purposefully situated within the difficult context of climate change adaptation policies. Under increasing environmental pressures, especially regarding water security, there are weighty reasons motivating the forced displacement of persons—to safeguard water resources or prevent water-related disasters. Even in these pressing circumstances, I argue, individuals have weighty rights to secure access to their homes. I explain how the (...) home provides a functional context for conditions of autonomous agency. Being coerced from the home disrupts and subverts the conditions necessary for autonomous processes. I conclude by suggesting that the right to the home could be a foundational element of territorial rights. (shrink)

This essay examines the most recent justifications for a people's exclusive right to resources as part of a territorial right. Divided into eight parts, the discussion covers contemporary philosophical discussion regarding: the conception of natural resources, the conception of resource rights, the general form of arguments supporting resource rights, arguments from self-determination, objections to arguments from self-determination, arguments from residence, arguments from improvement, and new directions for research in the future.

This article considers and ultimately rejects three prominent liberal egalitarian strategies for safeguarding the occupational freedom of the economically talented. First, Dworkinian concerns regarding the envy of the talented for the less talented are shown to be insufficient to rule out occupationally coercive taxation. Second, Rawlsian arguments about the priority of basic liberties in general and freedom of occupation in particular are shown to be unsuccessful, primarily because Rawls lacks the theoretical resources to protect freedom of occupation as a basic (...) liberty. Finally, concerns about the practical difficulty and moral undesirability of gathering the information necessary to implement occupationally coercive taxation are shown to be insufficient to rule out such taxation. The aim of the article is not to lead liberal egalitarians to reject freedom of occupation. Rather, the aim is to highlight the difficulties in protecting freedom of occupation and to motivate work on alternative liberal egalitarian strategies for safeguarding this important economic liberty. At the end of the article, a hypothesis is put forward for why occupationally coercive taxation should be rejected that appeals to the prohibition on using people as means. (shrink)

Which role can physical proximity play in our thinking about the foundations of political community in a world where, due to political, economic and technological developments, we seem to live side by side with virtually everyone globally? This article interrogates this question in conversation with Kant’s political thought, where proximity makes a prominent appearance both as a foundation of statehood and of cosmopolitan community. I argue that, as a scalar criterion, the idea of proximity cannot serve as a particularisation principle (...) that guides us in carving up the world into peoples or territories. However, as a regulative principle it provides an appealing normative criterion for the internal constitution of existing states. While this is predicated on accepting Kantian conservatism about boundaries, the proximity-based state is structured in a way that deflates the normative significance of the very distinction between insider and outsider. (shrink)

What, if anything, is problematic about gentrification? This article addresses this question from the perspective of normative political theory. We argue that gentrification is problematic insofar as it involves a violation of city-dwellers’ occupancy rights. We distinguish these rights from other forms of territorial rights and discuss the different implications of the argument for urban governance. If we agree on the ultimate importance of being able to pursue one’s located life plans, the argument goes, we must also agree on limiting (...) the impact of gentrification on peoples’ lives. Limiting gentrification’s impact, however, does not entail halting processes of gentrification once and for all. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

I criticize two ways of interpreting Kant's claim that property rights are merely ‘provisional’ in the state of nature.Weak provisionalityholds that in the state of nature agents can make rightful claims to property. What is lacking is the institutional context necessary to render their claims secure. By contrast,strong provisionalityholds that making property claims in the state of nature wrongs others. I argue for a third view,anticipatory provisionality, according to which state of nature property claims do not wrong others, but anticipate (...) a condition in which the authority to make such claims can no longer be unilaterally determined. (shrink)

In the last few decades, residency in some of the world’s desired destination cities has become a privilege, as housing supply has not kept pace with population growth. This has led to a significant rise in housing prices and consequently to the exclusion of middle- and low-income populations on a large scale. These developments have received only scant attention in political theory despite their prominence in local policymaking and their contribution to processes of redrawing the boundaries of inclusion into local (...) political communities. My focus in this article is on the question ‘is it morally permissible for cities to sort members by economic means, and grant the better-off privileged access to residency?’ I explore this question by examining the main arguments used to support the city’s right to selectively admit would-be members. This allows me to delineate the limitations of the city’s general duty to be accessible to all segments of society and to present particular cases where the city has special obligations to incorporate nonmembers. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 4, Page 480-495, December 2021.

It is widely accepted that states have a right to control immigration, but must accept refugees at risk in their home countries. If this is true, perhaps states have a right to deport refugees once their lives are no longer at risk in their home countries. I raise three types of arguments against this claim, and in support of refugees’ right to remain. Citizenship-based arguments hold that refugees have a right to obtain citizenship, and with citizenship comes the right to (...) remain. Plans-based arguments hold that refugees have a right to plan their lives, and they will struggle to plan without the right to remain. Reciprocity-based arguments hold that refugees have a right to reciprocal relationships with citizens, far easier if they know they can remain. I reject the first two arguments, and defend the third. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that states have a right to control immigration, but must accept refugees at risk in their home countries. If this is true, perhaps states have a right to deport refugees once their lives are no longer at risk in their home countries. I raise three types of arguments against this claim, and in support of refugees’ right to remain. Citizenship-based arguments hold that refugees have a right to obtain citizenship, and with citizenship comes the right to (...) remain. Plans-based arguments hold that refugees have a right to plan their lives, and they will struggle to plan without the right to remain. Reciprocity-based arguments hold that refugees have a right to reciprocal relationships with citizens, far easier if they know they can remain. I reject the first two arguments, and defend the third. (shrink)

Climate change is undeniably a global problem, but the situation is especially dire for countries whose territory is comprised entirely or primarily of low-lying land. While geoengineering might offer an opportunity to protect these states, international consensus on the particulars of any geoengineering proposal seems unlikely. To consider the moral complexities created by unilateral deploy- ment of geoengineering technologies, we turn to a moral convention with a rich history of assessing interference in the sovereign affairs of foreign states: the just (...) war tradition. We argue that the just war framework demonstrates that, for these nations, geoengineering offers a justified form of self-defense from an unwar- ranted, albeit unintentional, aggression. This startling result places our own car- bon-emitting activities in a stark new light: in perpetrating climate change, we are, in fact, waging war on the most vulnerable. (shrink)

he territorial impacts of climate change will affect millions. This will happen not only as a direct consequence of climate change, but also because of policies for mitigating it—for example, through the installation of large wind and solar farms, the conservation of land in its role as carbon sink, and the extraction of materials needed for renewable energy technologies. In this article, we offer an overview of the justice-related issues that these impacts create. The literature on climate justice and territory (...) is vast and spans a range of disciplines, so we limit our discussion to a specific understanding of territory and a specific understanding of injustice that arises from its loss. We understand territory as a normative concept that describes a place under some agent's jurisdiction, where the agent is a politically organized collective and where the jurisdictional rights over that place secure a relevant degree of self-determination for that collective. Accordingly, we consider that the main injustice connected to the loss of territory due to climate change is the loss or undermining of the ability to exercise the collective right to self-determination, which requires some control over the place. This can happen if a territorial agent literally loses the ground where to stand as a direct effect of climate change, raising issues of justice in relocation; or if their place changes due to mitigation policies, affecting their use and understanding of territory, raising issues of justice in energy transition. In concluding, we point to topics for future research. (shrink)

This is a collection of four papers about the All-Affected Principle (AAP): the view that every person whose morally weighty interests are affected by a democratic decision has the right to participate in that decision. -/- The first paper (“Narrow Possibilism about Democratic Enfranchisement”) examines how we should distribute democratic participation rights: a plausible version of AAP must avoid treating unlike cases alike, which would be procedurally unfair. The solution is to distribute participation rights proportionately to the risk that a (...) person’s interests will be affected. AAP thus implies an account of political equality that requires adherence to the ‘one person—one vote’ model only if interests are indeed equally affected. -/- The second paper (“Economic Participation Rights and the AAP”) argues that AAP supporters have paid insufficient attention to economic participation rights. The exercise of such rights raises unique worries about democratic accountability, which is why their exercise is constrained by a number of duties. -/- The third paper (“What AAP Is, and How (Not) to Fight It”) explores how AAP fares in light of possible objections from desirability and feasibility. Unlike crude versions of AAP, a plausibly restricted version of AAP cannot be dismissed as easily as many AAP sceptics may have thought. My reflections here are useful for AAP supporters and sceptics alike: this paper helps clarify what kind of objection can cast serious doubt on AAP. -/- The fourth paper (“Criminal Disenfranchisement, Political Wrongdoing, and Affected Interests”) asks: is AAP compatible with criminal disenfranchisement? AAP, when endorsed in combination with a plausible theory of punishment, is compatible with disenfranchising a narrow set of criminal wrongdoers only: those guilty of ‘political wrongdoing’, which is wrong primarily because it undermines democratic procedures and institutions for private gain. The upshot is that current blanket policies of criminal disenfranchisement are incompatible with AAP. (shrink)

Indigenous and non-indigenous communities in Latin America make land claims and support them with a variety of arguments. Some, such as Zapatistas and the Mapuche, have appealed to the “ancestral” or “historical” connections between specific communities and the land. Other groups, such as MST in Brazil, have appealed to the extremely unequal distribution of the land and the effects of this on the poor; the land in this case is seen mainly as a means for securing a decent standard of (...) living for members of disadvantaged groups. Although there is a large literature on the history as well as the social and political dimensions of land contestations and conflicts in Latin America, the question of whether the land claims put forward by disadvantaged groups can be morally justified has not been adequately examined. In this essay, we investigate the scope and limits of appeals to what we shall call assistance-based, contribution-based, and benefitting-based moral reasons with respect to land claims made by these disadvantaged groups. (shrink)

En este trabajo se pide suponer que algo está mal con el colonialismo, con lo cual se hace una revisión de las principales posturas que intentan justificarlo, para mostrar que no resuelven correctamente ciertos cuestionamientos.

Temporary workers stand to gain from temporary migration programs, which can also benefit sender and recipient states. Some critics of temporary migration programs, however, argue that failing to extend citizenship rights or a secure pathway to permanent residency to such migrants places them in an unacceptable position of domination with respect to other members of society. We shall argue that access to permanent residency and citizenship rights should not be regarded as a condition for the moral permissibility of such programs. (...) Instead we will focus on the essential protections that must be extended to all migrant workers, irrespective of the length of their migration project. (shrink)

Are democratic states permitted to denationalize citizens, in particular those whom they believe pose dangers to the physical safety of others? In this article, I argue that they are not. The power to denationalize citizens—that is, to revoke citizenship—is one that many states have historically claimed for themselves, but which has largely been in disuse in the last several decades. Recent terrorist events have, however, prompted scholars and political actors to reconsider the role that denationalization can and perhaps should play (...) in democratic states, in particular with respect to its role in protecting national security and in supporting the global fight against terror more generally. In this article, my objective is to show that denationalization laws have no place in democratic states. To understand why, I propose examining the foundations of the right of citizenship, which lie, I shall argue, in the very strong interests that individuals have in security of residence. I use this formulation of the right to respond to two broad clusters of arguments: (1) those that claim that it is justifiable to denationalize citizens who threaten to undermine the safety of citizens in a democratic state or the ability of a democratic state to function as a democratic state, and (2) those that claim that it is justifiable to denationalize dual citizens because they possess citizenship status in a second country that is also able to protect their rights. (shrink)

This chapter sides with those who believe that a right to stay should be counted among fundamental human rights. However, it also acknowledges that there are good reasons for objecting to the most popular justifications of the right to stay, which are based on the assumption that people have valuable ties to their community of residence and that people’s life plans are located where they live. In response to these qualms, this chapter argues that the best way to make sense (...) of the right to stay is to conceive it as belonging to the category of “control rights”; these are the rights that protect people’s control over their own bodies and personal space, which is an essential condition for personhood and human dignity. This account of the right to stay can overcome the most pressing objections to its recognition as a fundamental human right. (shrink)

Reflection on the historical injustice suffered by many formerly colonized groups has left us with a peculiar account of their claims to material objects. One important upshot of that account, relevant to present day justice, is that many people seem to think that members of indigenous groups have special claims to the use of particular external objects by virtue of their attachment to them. In the first part of this paper I argue against that attachment-based claim. In the second part (...) I suggest that, to provide a normatively defensible account of why sometimes agents who are attached to certain external objects might also have special claims over them, the most important consideration is whether the agents making such claims suffer from structural injustice in the present. In the third part I try to explain why structural injustice matters, in what way attachment-based claims relate to it and when they count. (shrink)