The Roman imperial Stoics were familiar with exile. This paper argues that the Stoics’ view of being a refugee differed sharply from their view of what is owed to refugees. A Stoic adopts the perspective of a cosmopolitēs, a “citizen of the world,” a rational being everywhere at home in the universe. Virtue can be cultivated and practiced in any locale, so being a refugee is an “indifferent” that poses no obstacle to happiness. Other people are our fellow (...) cosmic citizens, however, regardless of their language, race, ethnicity, customs, or country of origin. Our natural affinity and shared sociability with all people require us to help refugees and embrace them as welcome neighbors. Failure to do so violates our common reason, justice, and the gods’ cosmic law. (shrink)

The Roman imperial Stoics were familiar with exile. I argue that the Stoics’ view of being a refugee differed sharply from their view of what is owed to refugees. A Stoic adopts the perspective of a cosmopolitēs, a ‘citizen of the world’, a rational being everywhere at home in the universe. Virtue can be cultivated and practiced in any locale, so being a refugee is an ‘indifferent’ that poses no obstacle to happiness. But other people are our fellow (...) cosmic citizens regardless of their language, race, ethnicity, customs, or country of origin. Our natural affinity and shared sociability with all people require us to help refugees and embrace them as welcome neighbors. Failure to do so violates our common reason, justice, and the gods’ cosmic law. (shrink)

Multiple states are at risk of becoming uninhabitable due to climate change, forcing their populations to flee. While the 1951 Refugee Convention provides the gold standard of international protection, it is only applied to a limited subset of people fleeing their countries, those who suffer persecution, which most people fleeing climate change cannot establish. While many journalists and non-lawyers freely use the term “climate refugees,” governments, and courts, as well as UNHCR and many refugee experts, have excluded most (...) climate refugees from the Convention as a matter of legal interpretation. In our 2015 paper, “Unable to Return in the 1951 Refugee Convention: Stateless Refugees and Climate Change”, we sought to reopen the debate on “climate refugees” by arguing that some climate refugees qualify under the 1951 Convention as it is currently written (even if they are not persecuted): those who are stateless and are unable to return to their country of origin because climate change has rendered it uninhabitable. Our interpretation, however, has been rejected by Goodwin-Gill and McAdam (2021) and by Foster and Lambert (2019), which explicitly responds to our paper. Here, we address and respond to their arguments, and develop a new supplementary one, drawing on the principle of systemic integration, as enshrined in Article 31(3)(c) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. (shrink)

Attacks on migrant and refugee entrepreneurs and their properties by South African rivals and ordinary citizens have become a common phenomenon throughout the country, including the city of Cape Town. Business robberies often result in deaths or serious injuries. The Somali Community Board has noted that over 400 Somali refugees, many of them informal traders, were murdered in South Africa between early 2002 and mid-2010. The police are frequently accused by migrants of fomenting or turning a blind eye to (...) xenophobic attacks on their businesses. Meanwhile, the government refuses to acknowledge the existence of xenophobia or the xenophobic rhetoric in many of these attacks, claiming instead that they are simply the actions of criminal elements. Photographs published in the media of the looting of migrant stores do not tend to feature hardened criminals, but ordinary citizens including children in school uniform. -/- Migrant businesses are portrayed by officials, citizens and the media as having a negative impact on the South African economy and undermining the livelihoods of South Africans. The prevalence of such perceptions helps to explain growing xenophobic sentiment against migrants and refugees. Contrary to these popular perceptions, an emerging literature on migrant entrepreneurship is beginning to demonstrate the positive economic contributions of migrants and refugees to the country. This report examines the nature of informal migrant and refugee entrepreneurship in Cape Town and whether or not the negative stereotypes have any validity. It also seeks to examine what economic contributions migrants and refugees make to the local economy. -/- The report is based on the research conducted by the Growing Informal Cities project, a partnership between SAMP/IMRC, the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town, the Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO) and Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo. A questionnaire was administered to a sample of 518 migrant owners of microenterprises, which had to meet three basic criteria for inclusion: (a) owned by a non-South African; (b) in operation for at least two years; and (c) unregistered with the South African Revenue Services (SARS). Although migrant entrepreneurs are located in most areas of the city, certain areas have particular concentrations of migrant-owned businesses. "e questionnaires were administered in four such areas: Imizamo Yethu, Philippi, Bellville, and Cape Town CBD. Thirty in-depth interviews were also conducted with selected owners of informal micro-enterprises. Two focus group discussions were held in the Cape Town CBD and Philippi respectively. Fifteen key informant interviews were held with various stakeholders in Cape Town to understand the operation and constraints faced by migrants operating in the city’s informal economy. -/- The major findings of the personal profile of the migrant and refugee entrepreneurs were as follows: -/- • The entrepreneurs came from over 20 different countries of which Zimbabwe, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Nigeria, Malawi, Ethiopia and Cameroon were the most prominent. Just over a third were from other countries in the SADC. The prominence of Zimbabwean entrepreneurs in the Cape Town informal economy is not surprising, given the events in that country over the past decade and a half and resultant mass migration to South Africa. A total of 57% of the entrepreneurs were from other African countries, especially the DRC, Somalia, Nigeria and Ethiopia. "e majority of migrants from these countries (except Nigeria) came to South Africa as refugees. -/- • A third of the entrepreneurs had refugee permits. Of these, nearly 60% came from only three countries: the DRC, Ethiopia and Somalia. A further 31% held asylum-seeker permits. Of these, 32% were Zimbabwean while another 30% came from DRC, Ethiopia and Somalia. Nearly 12% had permanent residence permits while 8% were holders of work permits. Only 7% of the respondents indicated that they did not have official documentation to stay in South Africa. Thus, the majority of migrant entrepreneurs have forced migrants who are entitled to human rights protection under international and South African refugee law. • Very few of the entrepreneurs entered South Africa before 1994. Only 8% arrived in the immediate post-apartheid years. While another 20% came in the period 2000to 2004, the vast majority (70%) came during the last decade. As many as 44% arrived between 2005 and 2009 and a further 27% thereafter. Migration from Zimbabwe, in particular, escalated between 2005 and 2009 as the country plunged deeper into crisis. • Despite the perception that unemployment at home is a driver of migration to South Africa, only 14% of the entrepreneurs were unemployed immediately before leaving for South Africa. Another 19% were students. Twenty-six percent were working in the informal economy in their home countries. -/- .......INCOMPLETE..... (shrink)

In this chapter I focus on two problems facing immigration systems around the world, and Australia in particular. The topics addressed are chosen because each one involves important fundamental rights and because significant improvement in these areas is possible even if each state acts alone, without significant coordination with others. First, I examine refugee programmes, focussing specifically on the ‘two- tier’ refugee programmes pioneered by Australia with the introduction of Temporary Protection Visas by the Howard Government in 1999. (...) Next, I look at recent declines in refugee resettlement schemes from already stingy levels and, in relation to Australia in particular, I show how the tying of resettlement numbers to the number of affirmative asylum claims granted is both wrong- headed and counterproductive. The second area of immigration policy explored is family migration, another area where immigration systems around the world have been moving in the wrong direction, often via less than transparent administrative processes. Australia is no exception. While Australia’s family migration system is reasonably good on its face, in practice there are several factors which make the programme significantly less than satisfactory from the perspective of protecting the basic rights of migrants and, arguably more importantly, citizens. These problems can and should be fixed in straightforward ways, and since doing so would be more just, would have few— if any— significant negative consequences, and in fact would have a number of clear benefits, those changes should be made. (shrink)

Owing to its grappling with a motley of intricate socioeconomic, as well as medico-legal, crises, Haiti has found itself bereft of some of its people, many of whom have had to leave the Caribbean country in search of improved lives elsewhere. Receiving some of the Haitian refugees fleeing abject poverty, unemployment, and other harms and barriers has been the United States, one of Haiti's northern neighbors and a country that has played an outcome-determinative, if not outsized, role in steering the (...) country toward its presently hobbled state. Drawing on the U.S.’s recent treatment of Haitian refugees, this paper argues that U.S. reception of Haitian immigrants rubs salt in the wound of a long history of dehumanizing and oppressive abuses endured by Haitians. Furthermore, and more importantly, this paper posits that U.S. failure to wholly embrace its legal obligation to accept Haitian refugees under international law needs to be understood in the light of the specific horrors inflicted by science, in pre-independence Haiti, on non-consenting, Afro-Haitian experimental subjects. And by extension, such a contextually-nuanced understanding is crucial in shaping the delivery of healthcare services to Haitian refugees fortunate enough to remain in the U.S. —as an awareness and appreciation of the socio-historical context of patients' lived experiences, i.e., their complete social history, can furnish important clues vis-à-vis the presence and etiologies of disease, influence the foci of physical exams, and generally pave the way for the provision of cost-efficient and evidence-based care. (shrink)

The movement of people from one country to another in search of greener pasture, peaceful settlement and so on, has become very rampant in the world today. These same reasons have triggered internal migrations as well. Lives have been lost in the bid to circumvent immigration laws of countries by immigrants. The current spate of wars, political crises, natural disasters and hunger has led to increase in illegal migration in the world. Nigeria is not left out. We hear of boundary (...) clashes and insurgencies, which have resulted in illegal emigration to other countries basically in search of job opportunities and better living conditions. Nigerians have severally been repatriated from foreign lands. Recently, over five thousand Nigerians were repatriated from Libya. Nigeria has also played host to migrants from neighbouring countries, and has experienced internal migration in several parts of the country. The frequently asked questions are: “what role can religion play in curbing the spate of illegal migration and refugee crises in Cross River State, Nigeria? The research discovered that religion can be a veritable partner to government in resolving this ever-increasing menace that has become an embarrassment to the state and nation. This work adopted qualitative or explorative research method. It employed the content analysis approach in examining available printed materials on the subject matter. In view of its peculiarity, oral interviews were conducted on specific groups and individuals. This work proposes the involvement of religious organisations in preaching and teaching on the dangers of illegal migration, the provision of vocational training for our teaming youth population to reduce emigration, and the provision of counselling and resettlement programmes for the repatriated and those in refugee camps across the country. The work also encourages the government to evolve modalities to curb the spate of violence and bloodshed that has fuelled refugee crises in Cross River State and Nigeria in general. (shrink)

All efforts undertaken so far to establish peace between Israel and the Palestinians have failed to seriously address the right of return of the Palestinian refugees. This failure stemmed from a conviction that the question of historical justice in general had to be avoided. Since justice is a subjective construct, it was argued, allowing it to become a subject of negotiation would only perpetuate the conflict. However, the experience of these peace efforts has shown that without solving the problem of (...) the Palestinian refugees an agreement cannot be reached. And the problem cannot possibly be solved without addressing the key Palestinian demand on this issue — the right of return. For both sides, the right of return, more than any other issue, touches on the essence of their history since the beginning of the conflict between them, and on their future. The national narrative of each side thus centers on its version of the history of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, in the course of which the Palestinian refugee problem was created. And each side maintains the fundamental belief that its future national existence hinges on whether, and how, the issue of the right of return is resolved. For the Palestinians, the right of return is an inalienable right that defines their national identity and their struggle for liberation. For Israeli Jews, the right of return is perceived as an existential threat to the Jewish character of their society, if not to its very existence. It is not surprising, therefore, that within each of the two societies a national consensus has been built around this issue and that the position of each society seems to stand in complete opposition to that of the other. However, we argue that a morally and politically sound basis could and should be established for a workable solution and that such a basis can be provided by the notion of "transitional justice." Transitional justice stresses two major steps as necessary for reconciliation between parties involved in an historic conflict: recognition and restitution. Recognition entails revealing the historical truth about the injustices committed and according their victims dignity and respect as rights-bearing human beings. Restitution is meant to alleviate some of the material deprivation suffered by the victims and is also a form of recognition. In the Israeli-Palestinian case, recognition by Israel of the right of return would entail its assumption of responsibility for the uprooting of the majority of Palestinian society in 1948. This would satisfy a demand that has become a fundamental element in Palestinian national identity. Recognition would then enable the two parties to enter negotiations over restitution, in particular the implementation of the right of return. In these negotiations, as many Palestinian political leaders have indicated, the concerns of Israeli Jews with their national identity would be taken into account. Only if the fundamental concerns of the two parties, which center on the issue of the right of return, are met can the road towards reconciliation between them be opened. (shrink)

An estimated 65 million people have been forced to flee their homelands in the last few years. Average length of displacement for a refugee is now estimated at 17 years. A whole generation of young people are forced to spend their whole youth in refugee camps and can only be educated there. On the other side the international community is strongly underfinancing any education efforts by aid agencies and international organizations. So, it is common that classes have as (...) many as 100 children and teachers must deal with inevitable language barriers. We also have to remember that most children are traumatized by their experiences of fleeing their homes. Whereas the focus of most efforts is aimed at primary education it should not be forgotten that it is also necessary to support older children even up to higher education. A lot of the refugee adolescents have to support their families through activities that make education impossible. According to the UNHCR, more than 3.5 million refugee children do not have the chance to attend an appropriate school education. The inclusion of refugees in the national education systems of their host countries is a promising way of softening the challenges but the financial burden is too heavy to be carried without substantial support from the international community. Unfortunately, this is still dramatically lacking. Seeing these challenges in the world’s toughest classrooms we need to be aware that missing this opportunity to help and educate these traumatized children will fuel the feelings of being disadvantaged and forgotten by the rest of the world. Such feelings are smoothening the way for disaffection and they may become lured to be part of religious extremist organizations if not sufficiently addressed by providing sufficient infrastructure and finances for proper primary and secondary education. (shrink)

Under the UDHR, all persons have the right to "seek and to enjoy . . . asylum from persecution." From this designation as fundamental followed codification of the right in the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol Relating (collectively 'the Convention'), the "centrepiece" of treaties and customary norms that make up international refugee law. It defines and regulates the status and rights of refugees; its purpose is to safeguard the basic rights of persons (...) "outside their country of origin," who have fled due to a legitimate fear of persecution. Fundamentally, it guarantees that asylees and refugees enjoy rights without discrimination; without penalization for illegal territorial entry; and, without expulsion or return to "territories where . . . life or freedom would be threatened on account of . . . race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion," —or 'non-refoulement'. What follows is background on development of the principle of non-refoulement, evasive US Asylum Cooperative Agreements ('ACAs') and implementing legislation, and the resulting erosion to the right to asylum. (shrink)

My aim is to extend and complement the arguments that others have already made for the claim that women who are citizens of economically disadvantaged states and who have been trafficked into sex work in economically advantaged states should be considered candidates for asylum. Familiar arguments cite the sexual violence and forced labor that trafficked women are subjected to along with their well-founded fear of persecution if they’re repatriated. What hasn’t been considered is that reproductive rights are also at stake. (...) I explain how reproductive rights are implicated in sex trafficking. Moreover, I contend that sex traffickers’ abuse of women’s reproductive rights is persecutory and that that this persecutory abuse obliges destination states to offer asylum to transnational sex trafficking victims. I start by sketching reproductive human rights doctrine. I then examine studies of women who are in post-trafficking recovery programs in order to ascertain the impact of their past experience of forced sex work on their reproductive freedom and health. On the basis of these findings, I maintain that, among other outrages, sex trafficking systematically violates victims’ reproductive human rights. In view of this abuse, women trafficked into sex work might seem to be prime candidates for asylum in destination states. Yet, economically well-off destination states are not particularly receptive to this idea, and international law provides some justification for their chilliness. Preliminary to challenging them, I explicate four ways in which international anti-trafficking law and international refugee law interfere with viewing women trafficked into sex work as refugees and approving their applications for asylum. The second half of my paper aims to overcome those legal obstacles. In the interest of parsimony and because there are many continuities between U.S. refugee law and anti-trafficking law and the policies of similar destination states, I focus mainly on the U.S. in this part of the paper. To anchor my argument, I spotlight two precedents in refugee law for taking reproductive human rights seriously and several precedents for treating trafficked women as members of a distinct social group as required by refugee law. I then urge that a law enforcement gestalt has gained undue influence over U.S. legal practices where anti-trafficking law intersects with refugee protection law. A human rights gestalt is needed as a counterweight, for otherwise victims of sex trafficking and the reproductive abuse they’ve suffered are erased. Taking up a human rights perspective and mobilizing the precedents I’ve identified, I show that respecting the reproductive human rights of women who have been trafficked into sex work entails that affluent destination states must recognize their right to asylum. (shrink)

A Significant percentage of the people outside their country of citizenship or residence who are unable to meet their basic needs on their own, and need international protection, do not fall under the definition set out in the UN Refugee Convention. This has led many - both academic commentators and activists - to call for a new, expanded refugee definition, preferably backed up by a new, binding, international convention. In earlier work I have resisted this call, arguing that (...) there is good reason to pick out a sub-stet of those in need of international aid - a set that largely, if not completely, corresponds to those picked out by the Refugee Convention - for special benefit and protection. However, even if Convention refugees are in some ways special, we are left with the question of what, if anything, is owed to those in need of aid who are not Convention refugees. In this chapter, I set out philosophical foundations for so-called complementary protection, and show how this may and should apply to people in need of international aid who are not Convention refugees. (shrink)

The poem gives a voice to many refugees who died crossing borders and many more asylum seekers who will lose their lives crossing international borders.

The challenge of developing humane migration and refugee politics in Western states is far from resolved. This ongoing failure is typically attributed to the increased influence of right-wing populism and neo-fascism in Western migration politics. In this article I discuss a more radical explanation: Christoph Menke argues that political liberalism and its framing of migration as an issue of subjective human rights is the deeper root of the problem. While the merit of Menke’s approach is its criticism of subjectification (...) through individual rights that blocks politics, I show that his Critique of Rights may lead to an anti-pluralist and paternalistic ‘radical republicanism’. To react to this problem, I propose a ‘reflective liberalism’ that allows to criticise subjectification without abandoning the form of individual rights. This position, which I develop through a discussion of Foucault’s concept of ‘freedom as critique’, shows that in addition to protecting minorities such as migrants, individual rights turn out to be part of a regime of critical subjectification that constitutes critical subjects. Such critical subjectification by law can help to break through the blockade of politics that prevent the development of humane migration and refugee politics. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to proof the argument – i.e. ‘there are significant linkages amongst tolerance, hybrid identities and migration.’ These linkages can be comprehended by means of conceptualising extensions of hybrid identities in aggregate trans/inter-migration processes. It can be put forward that arising hybrid identities are embedded in a blurring structure of thoughts, beliefs, states of affairs, facts, belongings and so forth. From multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism viewpoints, it is argued that tolerance and migration ought to be analysed (...) in frame of sociology of law, human rights, international migration law, and of course the European Union law. So far, normative arguments and soft law approaches are very much well integrated with social aspects of migration, tolerance, identity and culture. In this context, the study examines to what extent cultural and human components are protected by law in multiple levels from an interdisciplinary perspective. In this framework, it is crucial to raise the research enquiries: What are possible criteria for the limits of tolerance? To what extent tolerance is related to human rights and morality? What ought to be the limit of tolerance towards hybrid identities in multicultural and cosmopolitan societies? In a consistent manner, the criteria and standards developed by some leading scholars were reconstructed and discussed throughout this paper. These criteria and standards are both moral (part of a universal system of morality) and legal (international, supranational, or national – i.e. constitutional). In order to apply such standards their validity was discussed (i.e. the respective normative power has the norms at the various levels). In the case of morals, their difference to particular ethnic systems was established (i.e. criteria by which the two can be distinguished). Then the research argument was elaborated on whether and how the legal standards comply with the moral standards, how national standards comply with supranational or international standards. Likewise, the study highlights the crucial contributions of “World Society and World System Paradigms” that are associated with social space, global civil society, cosmopolitanism, ethnic diversity, cultural hybridity, human rights activism and public sphere. Recent debates in Refugee Studies (e.g. Syrian Refugee Crisis, Dual and Multiple Citizenship Issues and so forth) highlight the fact that the European Union needs to consider new aspects of tolerance for hybrid identities and tolerate cultural rights of hybrid identities, create cohesion in communities and establish intercultural dialogue amongst home-states and host-states. Sanguinely, the efforts of hybrid identities are strengthening the relations between home-host states and these ought to attract some considerable attention. The authors of this study hope that their endeavours may contribute somewhat towards that. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPeople smugglers help transport migrants across international borders without authorization and in return for compensation. Many people object to people smuggling and believe that the smuggling of migrants is an evil trade. In this paper, I offer a qualified defense of people smuggling. In particular, I argue that people smuggling that assists refugees in escaping threats to their rights can be morally justified. I then rebut the objections that people smugglers exploit migrants, have defective motivations, and wrongly violate the law. (...) My conclusion is that people smuggling is sometimes a permissible way of helping refugees to evade unjust immigration restrictions and compelling states to bear their fair share of the global refugee population. (shrink)

It cannot be overstated that in recent times the gravity and complexity of irregular maritime migration have triggered concerns and debates in the academic domains of International Relations and International Law. The article examines how states’ compliance with, and enforcement of, international law and legal norms would tackle the challenges of irregular migration in the Indian Ocean region. The legislative and policy challenges regarding irregular migration can be analyzed under two segments. First, there is a lack of comprehensive discussion about (...) the sending and the receiving states’ commitments (regarding irregular migrants) to international law and legal norms. Secondly, deficit of comparative analysis to show how the littoral states comply with international law norms on migration and refugee influx. Such analysis from multiple perspectives would be helpful to get insights and make policy recommendations about how effectively international law norms could be enforced through national legislation and policy framework. (shrink)

This Article explores the interpretation and construction of executive orders using as examples President Trump’s two executive orders captioned “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States” (the “Two Executive Orders”). President Trump issued the Two Executive Orders in the context of (among other things) Candidate Trump’s statements such as: “Islam hates us,” and “[W]e can’t allow people coming into this country who have this hatred.” President Trump subsequently provided further context including his tweet about the second (...) of his Two Executive Orders: “People, the lawyers and the courts can call [the second of the Two Executive Orders] whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!” Although President Trump replaced the first of the Two Executive Orders with the second one and although the Supreme Court by orders dated October 10, 2017 and October 24, 2017, vacated and remanded litigation involving the second order on grounds of mootness, the Two Executive Orders remain highly instructive for those who would understand the interpretation and construction of executive orders. This article therefore examines in detail the original speaker's (i.e., President Trump's) intended meaning and effect of the Two Executive Orders. It performs such examination using insights from the semiotic subfield of pragmatics, a semiotic subfield which explores how real-world people actually use, interpret, and construe language in various real-world contexts (including contexts where the issuer of the Two Executive Orders himself has claimed that “Islam hates us” and has tweeted “TRAVEL BAN!”). Using such insights of pragmatics, this Article also explores why reasonable judges thoroughly versed in legal theory, legal practice, and pragmatics should conclude that President Trump unlawfully targeted Muslims in the Two Executive Orders. This Article, among other things, also questions the sensibility of such notions as “facial legitimacy” to the extent such notions suggest text has meaning apart from context. Keywords: executive orders, speaker meaning, interpretation, construction, semiotics, pragmatics, originalism, speech acts, context, facial legitimacy, Constitutionality, First Amendment,Trump v. Int’l Refugee Assistance Project, Scalia, immigration, semantics, original meaning, travel ban, Trump, textualism. (shrink)

There is an old and powerful argument for the claim that divine foreknowledge is incompatible with the freedom to do otherwise. A recent response to this argument, sometimes called the “dependence response,” centers around the claim that God’s relevant past beliefs depend on the relevant agent’s current or future behavior in a certain way. This paper offers a new argument for the dependence response, one that revolves around different cases of time travel. Somewhat serendipitously, the argument also paves the way (...) for a new reply to a compelling objection to the dependence response, the challenge from prepunishment. But perhaps not so serendipitously, the argument also renders the dependence response incompatible with certain views of providence. (shrink)

Let (leeway) incompatibilism be the thesis that causal determinism is incompatible with the freedom to do otherwise. Several prominent authors have claimed that incompatibilism alone can capture, or at least best captures, the intuitive appeal behind Jorge Luis Borges's famous “Garden of Forking Paths” metaphor. The thought, briefly, is this: the “single path” leading up to one's present decision represents the past; the forking paths that one must decide between represent those possible futures consistent with the past and the laws (...) of nature. But if determinism is true, there is only one possible future consistent with the past and the laws and, hence, only one path to choose from. That is, if determinism is true, then we are not free to do otherwise. In this paper, I argue that this understanding of the Garden of Forking Paths faces a number of problems and ought to be rejected even by incompatibilists. I then present an alternative understanding that not only avoids these problems but still supports incompatibilism. Finally, I consider how various versions of (leeway) compatibilism fit with the Garden of Forking Paths as well as the broader question of whether metaphors, however intuitive, have any dialectical force in the debates over freedom. (shrink)

Is the virtue of the good citizen the same as the virtue of the good man? Aristotle addresses this in Politics 3.4. His answer is twofold. On the one hand, (the account for Difference) they are not the same both because what the citizen’s virtue is depends on the constitution, on what preserves it, and on the role the citizen plays in it, and because the good citizens in the best constitution cannot all be good men, whereas the good man’s (...) virtue is uniform. On the other hand, (the account for Identity) the two virtues are identical in the good men in the best constitution, in which all are good citizens, each possessing the ability for ruling and for being ruled. This nuanced answer can be seen as Aristotle’s synthesis of a Periclean view (contribution to state blots out personal wrongs) and a Socratic view (no good citizen is without justice). Its nuances reflect the extent to which Aristotle’s conceptions of good citizenship and the best constitution accommodate deviations of what is probable from the human ideal set out in his ethical writings. In the present chapter, I will first address three puzzles regarding the nuances of Aristotle’s answer. Second, I will consider one question about its implication: Does Aristotle’s account for Difference turn out to entail something ultra-Periclean: that no one can simultaneously be a good man and a good citizen in any constitution other than the best? I shall argue the negative. (shrink)

Suppose Molinism is true and God placed Adam in the garden because God knew Adam would freely eat of the fruit. Suppose further that, had it not been true that Adam would freely eat of the fruit, were he placed in the garden, God would have placed someone else there instead. When Adam freely eats of the fruit, is he free to do otherwise? This paper argues that there is a strong case for both a positive and a negative answer. (...) Assuming such cases are possible under Molinism, we are left with a puzzling question: if Molinism is true, what can you do? (shrink)

Libertarian views of freedom claim that, although determinism would rule out our freedom, we are nevertheless free on some occasions. An odd implication of such views (to put it mildly) seems to be that indeterminism somehow enhances or contributes to our agency. But how could that be? What does indeterminism have to offer agency? This paper develops a novel answer, one that is centred around the notion of explanation. In short, it is argued that, if indeterminism holds in the right (...) places, then the best explanation of the history of the world necessarily cites facts about our agency. Along the way, alternative proposals regarding the significance of indeterminism are considered and, ultimately, rejected in favour of the one developed in this paper. (shrink)

Recently, several authors have utilized the notion of dependence to respond to the traditional argument for the incompatibility of freedom and divine foreknowledge. However, proponents of this response have not always been so clear in specifying where the incompatibility argument goes wrong, which has led to some unfounded objections to the response. We remedy this dialectical confusion by clarifying both the dependence response itself and its interaction with the standard incompatibility argument. Once these clarifications are made, it becomes clear both (...) (1.) that the dependence response does not beg the question against the proponent of the incompatibility argument and (2.) that the dependence response advances the dialectic whether it is developed as a version of Ockhamism or as a version of multiple-pasts compatibilism. (shrink)

Review of Causation and Free Will by Carolina Sartorio, Oxford University Press, 2016. viii + 188 pp. £35.00.

In the TACITUS project for using commonsense knowledge in the understanding of texts about mechanical devices and their failures, we have been developing various commonsense theories that are needed to mediate between the way we talk about the behavior of such devices and causal models of their operation. Of central importance in this effort is the axiomatization of what might be called commonsense metaphysics. This includes a number of areas that figure in virtually every domain of discourse, such as granularity, (...) scales, time, space, material, physical objects, shape, causality, functionality, and force. Our effort has been to construct core theories of each of these areas, and then to define, or at least characterize, a large number of lexical items in terms provided by the core theories. In this paper we discuss our methodological principles and describe the key ideas in the various domains we are investigating. (shrink)

According to the UN, 65.3 million forcibly displaced people languish in camps and slums or making desperate journeys toward safety. The global community has not only failed to help many of these people; in many cases it has actively obstructed them from finding security and a new home for themselves and their families. Moral responsibilities to refugees are not exhausted by policies and actions. They also extend to how to think about the refugee crisis. Pundits, politicians, and political philosophers (...) have failed to live up to these responsibilities by perpetuating populist myths, the causes of refugees’ flight, and the policies that prevent them from resuming their lives. (shrink)

Wars and crises worldwide force millions of people to flee and seek refuge, often outside their countries of origin. What moral responsibilities do states have towards refugees? In this Ethical Annotation, Dr Jos Philips and his co-authors zoom in on the responsibilities of EU countries. They consider arguments in favour of and against admitting refugees and argue that EU countries must do at least at much as they can do at little cost, and perhaps even more.

The paper explores the basis of the responsibilities we owe to refugees. That we have such responsibilities is a very widely shared intuition: the need of those fleeing from persecution seems to call out for a response on our part. But what exactly are our obligations to such people? Who are they owed to and why do we have them? The paper argues in favour of a human rights approach to refugee protection that includes the requirement of the implementation (...) of a burden sharing scheme. DOI 10.17879/95189441435. (shrink)

Calls to recognize a right of return are a recurring feature of refugee crises. Particularly when such crises become long-term, advocates of displaced people insist that they be allowed to return to their country of origin. I argue that this right is best understood as the right of refugees to return, not to a prior territory, but to a prior political status. This status is one that sees not just any state, but a refugee's state of origin, take (...) responsibility for safeguarding their welfare. This entitlement I characterize as an institutional right: a right that presupposes, and is a necessary feature of, a particular institution. The institution of which the right of return is an indispensable part is the international political system that sees authority exercised by sovereign states. The institutional argument for a right of refugee return presupposes two basic factual claims about states: they play a central role in safeguarding rights and they pursue exclusionary policies of border control. Importantly, the institutional view presupposes only that states do perform both functions, not that they are justified in doing so. On a purely normative level, the institutional account assumes little more than the moral equality of human beings. (shrink)

Through engagement with key informants and review of ethical theories applicable to refugee policy, this paper examines the ethical and policy considerations that policy-level stakeholders believe should factor into setting the refugee resettlement ceiling. We find that the ceiling traditionally has been influenced by policy goals, underlying values, and practical considerations. These factors map onto several ethical approaches to resettlement. There is significant alignment between U.S. policy interests and ethical obligations toward refugees. We argue that the refugee (...) ceiling should be restored to historical norms, and that there exists a corresponding obligation to counter negative public perceptions about refugees and the costs of resettlement. (shrink)

Discriminatory attitudes towards Muslim refugees are common in liberal democracies, and Muslim citizens of these countries experience high rates of discrimination and social exclusion. Uniting these two facts is the well-known phenomenon of Islamophobia. But the implications of overlapping discrimination against citizens and non-citizens have not been given sustained attention in the ethics of immigration literature. In this paper, I argue that liberal societies have not only duties to discontinue refugee policies that discriminate against social groups like Muslims, but (...) remedial duties to citizens who are in these social groups to adopt a more welcoming stance towards the groups that they are in. Further, I argue that a fitting way of adopting this more welcoming stance is to give refugees in these groups preferential treatment in asylum and resettlement. (shrink)

One of the main challenges confronting Humean accounts of natural law is that Humean laws appear to be unable to play the explanatory role of laws in scientific practice. The worry is roughly that if the laws are just regularities in the particular matters of fact (as the Humean would have it), then they cannot also explain the particular matters of fact, on pain of circularity. Loewer (2012) has defended Humeanism, arguing that this worry only arises if we fail to (...) distinguish between scientific and metaphysical explanations. However, Lange (2013, 2018) has argued that scientific and metaphysical explanations are linked by a transitivity principle, which would undercut Loewer's defense and re-ignite the circularity worry for the Humean. I argue here that the Humean has antecedent reasons to doubt that there are any systematic connections between scientific and metaphysical explanations. The reason is that the Humean should think that scientific and metaphysical explanation have disparate aims, and therefore that neither form of explanation is beholden to the other in its pronouncements about what explains what. Consequently, the Humean has every reason to doubt that Lange's transitivity principle obtains. (shrink)

Abstract: The refugee, migrant and human rights crisis ravaging the African continent through the Libyan coast is one that is self-inflicted, due in part and primarily so, a result of bad governance on the part of the African leaders who have not made the management and welfare of her citizens a primary and a going concern. Ethnic conflict and wars on resource control have also led to the forceful migration of some of these citizens from their homes. Thus, having (...) been frustrated and uncared for, dreams dashed and hope in the leaders lost, the average African citizen, in a bid to achieve their natural given potential have decided to seek alternative means to do so in other climes other than their home countries, no matter the cost. Using the documentary method of data collection and expost facto research design, the study found that the current crisis in Libya is largely a product of neglect by African leaders of their citizens and their seeming cluelessness in the ordering and direction of the lives of their citizens for individual, collective and societal growth. Apart from determining if the dearth of leadership was responsible for the current human rights crisis in Libya, the study also found that the average living conditions of African citizens was a probable cause. Thus, to properly understand the philosophical reason for the exodus of Africans out of their home countries, the study adopted the Neoclassical Migration Theory. The study finally recommends that African leaders should address the structural imbalance in their various domains that have sparked both internecine and genocidal conflict across the continent, and also ensure the implementation of the tenets of good and inclusive governance. (shrink)

Urban residents have the potential to play a key role in helping to facilitate ecological resilience of wilderness areas and ecosystems beyond the city by helping ensure the migration of nonhuman climate refugee populations. Three ethical frameworks related to this issue could determine whether we have an ethical duty to help nonhuman climate refugee populations: ethical individualism, ethical holism, and species ethics. Using each of these frameworks could support the stronger view that policy makers and members of the (...) public have a moral duty to mitigate the impacts of climate induced migration, or the weaker claim that these impacts should be taken into account when making land-use and planning decisions in urban contexts. (shrink)

David Armstrong accepted the following three theses: universals are immanent, laws are relations between universals, and laws govern. Taken together, they form an attractive position, for they promise to explain regularities in nature—one of the most important desiderata for a theory of laws and properties—while remaining compatible with naturalism. However, I argue that the three theses are incompatible. The basic idea is that each thesis makes an explanatory claim, but the three claims can be shown to run in a problematic (...) circle. I then consider which thesis we ought to reject and suggest some general lessons for the metaphysics of laws. (shrink)

The ongoing refugee crisis is described as the most important concern since the Second World War, which has caused a great displacement of people. Many of these immigrants have been departing towards Mediterranean countries, as first-line states, seeking for a chance to enter Europe. This situation has created a challenging condition for many refugee accepting cities as well as for the migrants to get integrated within the new society. This fact has had a great influence on the sustainability (...) condition while the rapid and uncontrolled inflows can overwhelm the host countries' capacities to integrate new arrivals. In this regard, some European countries including Germany and Italy are coming about with strategies for accommodation and integration of these refugees in their countries. This paper aims to study and analyze two of the current case studies reflecting adaptive reuse strategies in European context for providing refugees' temporary housing facilities. In the context of this research, using the existing building stock introduced as the dominant strategy which can provide refugees with a proper shelter and also while providing the chance for their urban integration can contribute to revitalization of urban areas with the newcomers' participation. By analyzing the Berlin's largest refugee shelter inside Tempelhof Airport as the first case study, the major policies in Germany for providing refugee housing in national and local levels have been investigated. However, the second case study -Ex-Moi in Turin, is characteristically different from the case of Tempelhof airport of Berlin; since the refugees occupied the abandoned facility of the Olympic Village and settled down there. Regarding the fact that there is an urgent need for long-term policies and sustainable approaches to cope with the current refugee crisis, this research tries to shed a light on the path towards providing temporary housings by analyzing the challenges and opportunities of two different current case studies in Germany and Italy. (shrink)

Rohingya refugee children in Bangladesh are forced into labour both inside and outside the camps for a wide range of reasons. This article examines this situation in relation to the access to education for those children living in the camps in Cox’s Bazar. Being informed by several perspectives concerning child labour and access to schooling in developing country contexts, this research work has adopted a qualitative approach to study various factors working behind this pressing issue. After collecting data by (...) means of qualitative methods, including non-participant observations and semi-structured interviews, the researcher has analyzed the findings with these informed perspectives. Results show that lack of formal identity, limited access to the formal labour market, absence of social sanctions against child employment, lack of aspirations, household composition, and substandard living conditions are some of the key factors that drive children to engage in various forms of labour, especially outside the camps. They often work in small workshops as labourers and in the host community households as domestic workers. Undocumented children are also reported to become victims of bonded labour, sex trade, and trafficking in the region. The author argues that a lack of formal education has compounded this issue into a severe humanitarian crisis which calls for immediate support and actions from local and international agencies. (shrink)

The goals of this paper are two-fold: I wish to clarify the Aristotelian conception of the law of non-contradiction as a metaphysical rather than a semantic or logical principle, and to defend the truth of the principle in this sense. First I will explain what it in fact means that the law of non-contradiction is a metaphysical principle. The core idea is that the law of non-contradiction is a general principle derived from how things are in the world. For example, (...) there are certain constraints as to what kind of properties an object can have, and especially: some of these properties are mutually exclusive. Given this characterisation, I will advance to examine what kind of challenges the law of non-contradiction faces; the main opponent here is Graham Priest. I will consider these challenges and conclude that they do not threaten the truth of the law of non-contradiction understood as a metaphysical principle. (shrink)

Humean reductionism about laws of nature is the view that the laws reduce to the total distribution of non-modal or categorical properties in spacetime. A worry about Humean reductionism is that it cannot motivate the characteristic modal resilience of laws under counterfactual suppositions and that it thus generates wrong verdicts about certain nested counterfactuals. In this paper, we defend Humean reductionism by motivating an account of the modal resilience of Humean laws that gets nested counterfactuals right.

Discovering laws of nature was a way to worship a law-giving God, during the Scientific Revolution. So why should we consider it worthwhile now, in our own more secularized science? For historical perspective, I examine two competing early modern theological traditions that related laws of nature to different divine attributes, and their secular legacy in views ranging from Kant and Nietzsche to Humean and ‘governing’ accounts in recent analytic metaphysics. Tracing these branching offshoots of ethically charged God-concepts sheds light on (...) how our ethical ideals and ideas of natural order can still be valuably integrated. Early modern intellectualists valued the law-governed order of nature as a sign of divine Reason. In turn, Reason traditionally ascribed to God has now been partly reclaimed for humans, reframing the value of natural order anthropocentrically, in terms of the value of our own intelligence. Alternatively, Reason may be reclaimed for nature itself, as in an ‘objective’ idealism or metaphysical rationalism. However, beyond divine Reason, an influential voluntarist tradition in theology stressed a connection between laws of nature and God’s Power or free Will. Tracking how divine Power has been reinvested in human beings provides a broader context for instrumentalism and related lineages of empiricism. But secularization can also transfer Power from God to the impersonal natural world. In this light, current scientific interest in lawlike order may also reflect the inherent value of brute necessity or inhuman causal power in nature: this is a deeper way to reject anthropocentrism and to show our respect for the environment. (shrink)

Recent crises in Europe and beyond have renewed a longstanding debate on the status and treatment of refugees. Hannah Arendt famously questioned the limits of universalistic human rights discourse based on the widespread phenomena of statelessness and displacement that emerged during and after World War II. In this paper, we analyze recent patterns of inclusion and exclusion of refugees in Italy through the lens of Arendtian narrative and theorizing. We consider three cases of interaction between families, schools, and other public (...) institutions in light of the shifting normative framework before and during the war in Ukraine. Two major insights emerge from this analysis. From a pedagogical point of view, the most promising educational practices with refugees are those centered on enabling their agency and corresponding experiences of "natality". From an ethical-political perspective, these practices highlight a latent tension between the universalistic scope of human rights enshrined in the human rights declarations and their structural dependence on the particular norms and procedures enacted by nation states. The understanding and teaching of human rights within our political communities is inseparable from the practices that engage with refugees. In this sense, our practices of inclusion and exclusion affect the understanding of national borders as a barrier or threshold with other political communities, but also the interpretation of our own ethical-political principles. (shrink)

Any explanation of one fact in terms of another will appeal to some sort of connection between the two. In a causal explanation, the connection might be a causal mechanism or law. But not all explanations are causal, and neither are all explanatory connections. For example, in explaining the fact that a given barn is red in terms of the fact that it is crimson, we might appeal to a non-causal connection between things’ being crimson and their being red. Many (...) such connections, like this one, are general rather than particular. I call these general non-causal explanatory connections 'laws of metaphysics'. In this paper I argue that some of these laws are to be found in the world at its most fundamental level, forming a bridge between fundamental reality and everything else. It is only by admitting fundamental laws, I suggest, that we can do justice to the explanatory relationship between what is fundamental and what is not. And once these laws are admitted, we are able to provide a nice resolution of the puzzle of why there are any non-fundamental facts in the first place. (shrink)

Non-Humean accounts of the metaphysics of nature posit either laws or powers in order to account for natural necessity and world-order. We argue that such monistic views face fundamental problems. On the one hand, neo-Aristotelians cannot give unproblematic power-based accounts of the functional laws among quantities offered by physical theories, as well as of the place of conservation laws and symmetries in a lawless ontology; in order to capture these characteristics, commitment to governing laws is indispensable. On the other hand, (...) ontologies that entirely exclude some kind of power ascription to worldly entities face what we call the Governing Problem: such ontologies do not have the resources to give an adequate account of how laws play their governing role. We propose a novel dualist model, which, we argue, has the resources to solve the difficulties encountered by its two dominant competitors, without inheriting the problems of either view. According to the dualist model, both laws and powers are equally fundamental and irreducible to each other, and both are needed in order to give a satisfactory account of the nomological structure of the world. The dualist model constitutes thus a promising alternative to current monistic views in the metaphysics of science. (shrink)

Certain states in the Global North have responded to refugees seeking safety on their territories through harmful practices of border violence, detention, encampment and containment that serve to prevent and deter refugee arrivals. These practices are ostensibly justified through an appeal to a right to control borders. This paper therefore assesses whether these harmful practices can indeed be morally justified by a state’s right to control borders. It analyses whether Christopher Heath Wellman’s account of a state’s right to freedom (...) of association, which represents the most restrictive account of a state’s right to control borders available in the literature, can extend to justify current harmful practices against refugees. If not, then no available justification will be able to do so, and thus contemporary harmful practices used against refugees cannot be justified by a state’s right to control borders. (shrink)

The central aim of this paper is to use a particular view about how the laws of nature govern the evolution of our universe in order to develop and evaluate the two main competing options in the metaphysics of persistence, namely endurantism and perdurantism. We begin by motivating the view that our laws of nature dictate not only qualitative facts about the future, but also which objects will instantiate which qualitative properties. We then show that both traditional doctrines in the (...) metaphysics of persistence must take on surprising further commitments in order to vindicate our universe being law-governed in this strong sense. For example, we argue that endurantists should adopt a particular version of monism, and that perdurantists should adopt a qualitativist doctrine that dispenses with all individuals at the fundamental level. (shrink)

Properties have an important role in specifying different views on laws of nature: virtually any position on laws will make some reference to properties, and some of the leading views even reduce laws to properties. This chapter will first outline what laws of nature are typically taken to be and then specify their connection to properties in more detail. We then move on to consider three different accounts of properties: natural, essential, and dispositional properties, and we shall see that different (...) conceptions of properties also result in different views of the modal status of laws, such as the question of whether laws are metaphysically necessary or contingent. Finally, there are also important links specifically between properties, natural kinds, and laws of nature that deserve our attention. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss how Causal Decision Theory should be modified to handle a class of problematic cases involving deterministic laws. Causal Decision Theory, as it stands, is problematically biased against your endorsing deterministic propositions (for example it tells you to deny Newtonian physics, regardless of how confident you are of its truth). Our response is that this is not a problem for Causal Decision Theory per se, but arises because of the standard method for assessing the truth of (...) certain counterfactuals. The truth of deterministic laws is `modally fragile' on the standard semantics for counterfactuals: if determinism is true and you were to do otherwise, the laws would be different. We provide two ways of avoiding this problem: 1) supplement the standard semantics for counterfactuals with impossible worlds, or 2) introduce rigid designators into the description of problematic decision situations. We argue that both of these approaches are well-motivated and can be readily incorporated into Lewisian Causal Decision Theory. (shrink)

Most theorists working on moral obligations to refugees conceive of western states as innocent bystanders with duties to aid refugees if they can do so at little cost to themselves. This paper challenges this dominant theoretical framing of global displacement by highlighting for the first time certain practices of western states in response to refugee flows such as border violence, detention, encampment and containment which may make us question whether states who engage in such practices are indeed innocent. This (...) paper provides the first normative analysis of these practices by seeking to classify them as either doing or allowing harm and invoking the fundamental moral imperative central to core common moral commitments - not to harm innocent people - to suggest that certain western states are not merely failing to aid refugees and allowing harm to come to them, but are instead responding to their calls for aid by harming them. (shrink)