How should we understand the political morality of migration? Are travel bans, walls, or carrier sanctions ever morally permissible in a just society? This book offers a new approach to these and related questions. It identifies a particular vision of how we might apply the notion of justice to migration policy - and an argument in favor of expanding the ethical tools we use, to include not only justice but moral notions such as mercy.

This book carefully engages philosophical arguments for and against open borders, bringing together major approaches to open borders across disciplines and establishing the feasibility of open borders against the charge of utopianism.

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

La migración internacional nos enfrenta con problemas irresolubles desde la figura moderna del Estado nacional, su concepto de ciudadanía y su noción de justicia. Juan Carlos Velasco critica las limitaciones y la orientación de las políticas contemporáneas que nos hacen percibir a la migración como una “invasión”, y propone un modo radicalmente diferente de entender e intervenir el fenómeno desde lo trasnacional. Nacer de uno u otro lado de una línea divisoria es un evento azaroso, no obstante delimitar la frontera (...) es una construcción histórico-política: la desigualdad en las oportunidades que ofrecen las naciones es una situación estructural de injusticia que se perpetúa con las políticas de exclusión de los migrantes y la deslegitimación de su derecho a buscar una vida mejor. Esa circunstancia genera fracturas sociales, injustificables pero normalizadas, que imposibilitan alcanzar la justicia global. Velasco presenta un análisis completo que abarca las dimensiones política, jurídica y moral del tema, en el que lleva a la filosofía política a un terreno práctico del que se desprenden las claves para entender y actuar en esta nueva era en la que, debido a los conflictos sociales y políticos, la migración vuelve a ser argumento de discusión relevante. (Texto de la CONTRAPORTADA del libro). (shrink)

We do not live in a just world. This may be the least controversial claim one could make in political theory. But it is much less clear what, if anything, justice on a world scale might mean, or what the hope for justice should lead us to want in the domain of international or global institutions, and in the policies of states that are in a position to affect the world order. By comparison with the perplexing and undeveloped state of (...) this subject, domestic political theory is very well understood, with multiple highly developed theories offering alternative solutions to well-defined problems. By contrast, concepts and theories of global justice are in the early stages of formation, and it is not clear what the main questions are, let alone the main possible answers. I believe that the need for workable ideas about the global or international case presents political theory with its most important current task, and even perhaps with the opportunity to make a practical contribution in the long run, though perhaps only the very long run. (shrink)

Immigration restrictions violate the prima facie right of potential immigrants not to be subject to harmful coercion. This prima facie right is not neutralized or outweighed by the economic, fiscal, or cultural effects of immigration, nor by the state’s special duties to its own citizens, or to its poorest citizens. Nor does the state have a right to control citizenship conditions in the same way that private clubs may control their membership conditions.

In this paper I focus on one very influential argument for open borders, the freedom of movement argument, which says that if we value freedom of movement we must demand open borders. I begin the paper the paper by discussing Joseph Carens’ well known version of the argument. I then consider, and reject, David Miller’s response to that argument. Finally, I develop my own reply to Carens. Both Carens and Miller, I argue, are mistaken about the proper grounds for freedom (...) of movement. Once we see this, it is clear how we can value freedom of movement without being committed to open borders. (shrink)

Eminent political theorist Joseph Carens tests the limits of democratic theory in the realm of immigration, arguing that any acceptable immigration policy must be based on moral principles even if it conflicts with the will of the majority.

Do states have the right to prevent potential immigrants from crossing their borders, or should people have the freedom to migrate and settle wherever they wish? Christopher Heath Wellman and Phillip Cole develop and defend opposing answers to this timely and important question.

Gillian Brock develops a model of global justice that takes seriously the moral equality of all human beings notwithstanding their legitimate diverse identifications and affiliations. She addresses concerns about implementing global justice, showing how we can move from theory to feasible public policy that makes progress toward global justice.

This chapter argues that people have a human right to immigrate to other states. People have essential interests in being able to make important personal decisions and engage in politics without state restrictions on the options available to them. It is these interests that other human rights, such as the human rights to internal freedom of movement, expression and association, protect. The human right to immigrate is not absolute. Like other human freedom rights , it can be restricted in certain (...) extreme circumstances. Outside these circumstances, however, immigration restrictions are unjust. Having presented the argument for a human right to immigrate, the chapter responds to objections from distributive justice, culture and scarcity. (shrink)

Many poor and oppressed people wish to leave their countries of origin in the third world to come to affluent Western societies. This essay argues that there is little justification for keeping them out. The essay draws on three contemporary approaches to political theory - the Rawlsian,the Nozickean, and the utilitarian - to construct arguments for open borders. The fact that all three theories converge upon the same results on this issue, despite their significant disagreements on others, strengthens the case (...) for open borders and reveals its roots in our deep commitment to respect all human beings as free and equal moral persons. The final part of the essay considers communitarian objections to this conclusion, especially those of Michael Walzer. (shrink)

[EN] In this article we argue for a world in which open borders are the rule and not the exception. This argument is based on the general recognition of ius migrandi as a basic right of persons. An open-border immigration policy is preferable—at least from a normative standpoint—to the typical policies designed to control or block borders through the simplistic mode of constructing walls. On the basis of a global conception of distributive justice as suggested by cosmopolitan egalitarians, we claim (...) that open-door policies—or, failing in that, the implementation of a system of economic compensation for poor countries—provide powerful means to respond to the enormous inequalities that exist between countries and represent an appropriate way to order current migratory flows. [ES] En este artículo se arguye a favor de un mundo en donde las fronteras abiertas sean la regla y no la excepción. Para ello, se presentan dos tipos de argumentos. El primero se basa en el reconocimiento general del ius migrandi como un derecho fundamental de las personas. Además de un modo idóneo de ordenar los actuales flujos migratorios, una política migratoria de fronteras abiertas es preferible, al menos desde un punto de vista normativo, a las habituales políticas diseñadas para controlar o bloquear las fronteras mediante la construcción de muros. El segundo se asienta sobre una concepción global de la justicia distributiva desarrollada por los igualitaristas cosmopolitas, se sostiene que una política de puertas abiertas –o, en su defecto, un modelo de compensación económica– constituiría un modo de responder a las enormes desigualdades existentes entre los países. (shrink)