Academia.eduAcademia.edu

'Immigration', Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought

Caleb Yong U N C O R R EC TE Approaches to justice in immigration mainly differ according to the background conception of global justice accepted. The main division can be described in terms of the contrast between cosmopolitan liberals and social liberals (Beitz 1999). Cosmopolitan liberals typically hold that immigration restrictions must be compatible with principles of global freedom of movement, global equality of opportunity, and global egalitarian distribution if they are to be just. These latter principles are justified, so cosmopolitan liberals argue, by noting their acceptance by liberals for the domestic case and the arbitrariness of failing to extend their reach to the global domain (Carens 1987, 1992). Advocates of this approach are careful to point out that they are not calling for the immediate implementation of a policy of open borders. Instead, they see the adoption of a global regime of free movement as one part of a cosmopolitan ideal of global justice that represents the long-term goal of social and political reform. In the shorter term, when much more of the institutional status quo has to be taken as given, cosmopolitan liberals seek to establish some priority ranking between different claims for admission, all the while keeping in sight the eventual realization of the long-term goal of global free movement. Hence, advocates of this approach can accept that those persons threatened with violations of their basic rights have an especially strong claim to admission, and can therefore make sense of the widely accepted notion of a refugee (Carens 1996). By contrast, social liberals believe that global justice demands, firstly, some basic level of respect and concern for all persons, and secondly, equality or reciprocity between societies. Even in the ideal case, therefore, they reject a general principle of global freedom of movement; they deny that it is morally arbitrary to champion a basic right to domestic freedom of movement while rejecting its global extension (Blake 2005; Miller 2007). Given their minimalist commitment to universal concern for individuals, they too can accept the notion of a refugee: those whose basic rights or needs are under threat will often have overriding claims to admission. Many social liberals note, however, that the required concern for those whose basic economic needs are threatened can, in the alternative, be expressed by transfers of financial aid or other assistance in situ (Walzer 1983; Miller 2007; Wellman 2011). D Immigration PR O O FS I The Encyclopedia of Political Thought, First Edition. Edited by Michael Gibbons. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 0002095189.INDD 1 1/29/2014 1:31:29 PM immigration PR O O FS Another line of argument points to the incompatibility of immigration law as it is currently enacted and enforced with principles of democratic legitimacy. Although immigration laws are addressed to and enforced against prospective immigrants, they are denied participation in the legislative procedures which determine those laws. Whatever the value of political self-determination over immigration policy might be for particular societies, that value is in tension with the demands of legitimacy in imposing coercive restrictions on prospective immigrants (Abizadeh 2008). SEE ALSO: Cosmopolitan Democracy; Globalization; Justice References Abizadeh, A. (2008) “Democratic Theory and Border Coercion,” Political Theory, 36 (1), 37–65. Beitz, C. R. (1999) “Social and cosmopolitan liberalism,” International Affairs, 75 (3), 515–29. Blake, M. (2002) “Discretionary Immigration,” Philosophical Topics, 30 (2), 273–89. Blake, M. (2005) “Immigration.” In R. G. Frey and C. H. Wellman (Eds.), A Companion to Applied Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 224–37. Blake, M. and Risse, M. (2009) “Immigration and Original Ownership of the Earth,” Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics and Public Policy, 23, 133–66. Carens, J. H. (1987) “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders,” Review of Politics, 49, 251–73. Carens, J. H. (1992) “Migration and Morality: A Liberal Egalitarian Perspective.” In B. Barry and R. E. Goodin (Eds.), Free Movement. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, pp. 25–47. Carens, J. H. (1996) “Realistic and Idealistic Approaches to the Ethics of Migration,” International Migration Review, 30 (1), 156–70. Miller, D. (2007) National Responsibility and Global Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Risse, M. (2008) “On the Morality of Immigration,” Ethics & International Affairs, 22 (1), 25–33. Walzer, M. (1983) Spheres of Justice. New York: Basic Books. Wellman, C. H. (2011) “Freedom of Association and the Right to Exclude.” In C. H. Wellman and P. Cole, Debating the Ethics of Immigration. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 13–155. U N C O R R EC TE Apart from this special category of refugees, social liberals hold that states have wide discretion in choosing regimes of immigration control that suit them (Blake 2002). This discretion is often justified by appeal to the value of each political society’s self-determination, including its self-determination over the admission or exclusion of immigrants. The importance of this value, so some social liberals argue, can be seen from an analogy with the importance liberals give freedom of association in the domestic case (Wellman 2011). Others defend the self-determination of political societies over their immigration policy as a basic constitutive part of being a valuable “community of character” (Walzer 1983). The discretion to decide immigration policy is nonetheless subject to two constraints. Firstly, since social liberals are committed to a universal principle of basic respect for persons, a just immigration policy may not exclude on arbitrary grounds; for example, a restrictive policy must have some rational connection with a legitimate goal which the state imposing the restrictions is pursuing (Miller 2007). Secondly, a just immigration policy must be internally fair or just; for example, it may not, by selecting based on racial preferences, erode the equal standing of current citizens who belong to the disfavored race (Blake 2005; Wellman 2011). Finally, there are some contributions to the debate that run orthogonal to the main cosmopolitan/social liberal divide. One line of argument points to the moral constraints that a principle recognizing the original common ownership of the earth imposes on rights of control over territory, including control of entry into specific territorial areas. If all persons globally have a symmetrical claim to natural resources, including land, then those states which are relatively underusing the territories they control given their populations have a duty to admit immigrants from states which are, relatively, overusing their territories given their populations (Risse 2008; Blake & Risse 2009). D 2 0002095189.INDD 2 1/29/2014 1:31:29 PM immigration 3 Abstract FS Approaches to justice in immigration mainly differ according to the background conception of global justice accepted. The main division can be described in terms of the contrast between cosmopolitan liberals and social liberals. Cosmopolitan liberals typically hold that immigration restrictions must be compatible with principles of global freedom of movement, global equality of opportunity, and global egalitarian distribution if they are to be just. These latter principles are justified, so cosmopolitan liberals argue, by noting their acceptance by liberals for the domestic case and the arbitrariness of failing to extend their reach to the global domain. U N C O R R EC TE D PR O O Keywords: globalization, immigration, justice 0002095189.INDD 3 1/29/2014 1:31:29 PM FS O PR O D R R EC TE U N C O 0002095189.INDD 4 1/29/2014 1:31:29 PM