The Ethics of Immigration: Veit Bader

The Ethics of Immigration
Veit Bader
Migration, Immigration, and Practical Philosophy Migration, the geographical movement of people in order to settle in other places for longer periods of time, has extensively been analyzed by historians and social scientists, but philosophers have thought little and said even less about it. This gap is quite astonishing if one considers the fact that migration policies involve highly contested normative judgments in all phases. Yet historically, moral and political philosophers and political theorists have rarely discussed migration; none developed a coherent ethics of migration. Only in the past thirty years have theorists begun to think about the issue, but still we do not have any comprehensive and systematic treatment. Two main reasons may help explain this astonishing gap. First, predominant political thought after World War II has been preoccupied with finding general principles of justice under ideal conditions. Hence it has almost completely neglected the separateness of (nation-) states, the normative relevance of state membership, and broader issues of international justice.1 Second, any ethics of migration is particularly broad and complex. Migration involves many phases: emigration (root and intermediate causes), immigration or actual first admission, and the different stages of incorporation. Seen from the perspective of affluent state-societies with liberal-democratic constitutions, the normative issues can be grouped accordingly: Do their governments and (organizations of) citizens have duties to fight the root causes of migration in order to make it possible for people to stay where they have been born and raised? Do people not only have a right to emigrate but do governments also have an obligation to let the different categories of migrants refugees, asylum seekers, family members of current residents, economic and cultural migrants in? Do the broadly recognized principles of state-sovereignty and non-interference imply that states are free to exclude all or to select freely to admit some and exclude others? What, if any, would be morally legitimate and what are morally impermissible criteria of selection in first-admission policies? If people have passed this first gate of entry,2 ought the rights and duties of permanent residents (denizenship, the second gate of entry) resemble, or might they legitimately differ from, those of citizens? Do states have an obligation to naturalize all permanent residents (third gate of entry into full citizenship), or may they refuse some? If so, what are morally legitimate criteria of exclusion? Finally, what are minimal moral
Constellations Volume 12, No 3, 2005. Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
332
Constellations Volume 12, Number 3, 2005
requirements with regard not only to legal incorporation of permanent residents and naturalized citizens but to a broad range of economic, social, and cultural policies of incorporation? All these interrelated questions are hotly contested.3 Even a short overview of all these debates is, obviously, beyond the scope of an article. For two reasons, I focus on immigration, i.e., migration across state borders and corresponding first-admission policies. First, immigration and first admission are, in my view, even more contested in politics and in practical philosophy than incorporation. Incorporation policies compatible with minimal moral requirements of liberal-democratic constitutions include a common core increasingly recognized by competing traditions in practical philosophy but strongly contested recently in practical politics: permanent residents increasingly have the same civil and social rights as citizens and, in the EU, they even have some political rights;4 long-term residents, particularly second-generation immigrants, are increasingly being naturalized even in states like Germany, and naturalization requirements are becoming more moderate;5 even dual or multiple nationality seems less objectionable. Defensible incorporation policies require not only legal and political equality, but also some minimal economic and social equality, and cultural minorities are less likely to be expected to assimilate or to be segregated. These sea-changes in the moral landscape are at least partly also affirmed by defenders of moderate particularism in practical philosophy. The hard core of more exclusivist policies is therefore first admission, and it is here that opinions of universalists and particularists in politics and practical philosophy most obviously clash. Second, first-admission policies are not only the most contested issue of migration policy, they are also the least developed aspect of an ethics of migration. The aim of the article is thus to present and critically discuss the relevant arguments favoring opening or closing of borders. I will employ a problemdriven rather than a theory-driven approach for two reasons. First, most theoretical paradigms are neither systematic nor consistent. This results, especially given the general problem of indeterminacy of general principles, in quite divergent views on whether borders should be (more) open or (more) closed. Second, arguments in favor of open or closed borders are often shared by, and developed within the same, e.g., egalitarian liberal, theoretical approach. Consequently, I have chosen to contrast universalist arguments in favor of (more) open borders (II) with particularist arguments in favor of (more) closed borders (III).6 In my conclusion, I discuss the main reasons why it is so difficult to balance these arguments, why practical philosophy is in so much trouble, and what should be done to overcome this. And I present my own view of what a contextualized practical philosophy requires, why I think we should reject the conventional restrictive view, based on principles of fairly unlimited state sovereignty, selfdetermination, and non-intervention, and why we should opt for fairly open borders.7
2005 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Ethics of Immigration: Veit Bader I. First Admission and Traditions of Practical Philosophy
333
Practical philosophy has always been deeply embedded in contexts. Membership regimes in the city-states of classical Greece were severely restrictive and this was declared legitimate by Aristotle in his Politics, initiating a long tradition of republican exclusionism. The subsequent decline of the city-states and the rise of the Roman Empire saw unprecedented freedom of movement and multiple citizenship.8 The first waves of cosmopolitanism in the western world were advocated by a diverse group of thinkers, including Democritus, Antiphon, Diogenes, the Cyrenaics, Epicureans, and Stoics like Cicero, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius, which started a long tradition of moral inclusiveness. Modern state-formation and modern capitalism have been facilitated by the new notions of absolute sovereignty and property, and principles of sovereignty and non-intervention were firmly established in international law after the Treaty of Westphalia (1648). Modern political philosophy has focused on the constitutional limitation and democratization of government. Matters of state membership, of exit and entry, were merely taken for granted. But not completely so. Liberal consent theories seem to require not only that government be based on consent, but also membership in the polity. John Locke best exemplifies the transition from ascriptive subjectship to consensual citizenship: every adult man is at liberty what Government he will put himself under; what Body Politick he will unite himself to. This seems to base the right to leave and even the right to enter a polity completely on express and ongoing consent. Locke, however, severely restricts the implications of voluntary membership by mixing choice with ascriptive criteria, allowing for tacit consent, restricting the right to leave, and neglecting issues of entry.9 The same unresolved tensions are also characteristic of the great international legal theorists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Grotius, Pufendorf, Wolff, and particularly Burlamaqui and Vattel), who allowed ascriptive birthright citizenship alongside consensual citizenship and restricted the natural right to leave, though Emmerich de Vattel defended an absolute right to renounce his country in cases in which it is impossible to attain subsistence there, in which a country fails to discharge its obligations towards its citizens, or if a majority changes the terms of the national contract without his consent.10 Even Vattel held that no other nation had an absolute duty to admit those who had left their homelands due to exile, banishment, or some other pressing cause.11 The imperfect natural right to seek residence elsewhere is countervened by the sovereignty of each nation to judge, whether it is, or is not in a proper situation to receive this stranger. This sovereign right of nations to decide on admission has been defended explicitly and with less reluctance by all modern republican democratic consent theorists, from Rousseau onwards. The unresolved tension between individual and collective rights,12 between a universalist, inclusionary, liberal tradition stressing the natural rights of all human beings irrespective of ascriptive criteria, including nationality, and a more
334
particularist, exclusionary, republican tradition, also lies at the bottom of the American Revolution and American law.13 The right which nature has given to all men of departing from the country in which chance, not choice has placed them14 has only rarely and inconsistently been accompanied by the recognition that openness of borders to aliens and ease of immigration and naturalization are the logical corollaries of a fundamental right to leave ones country and settle elsewhere.15 Immanuel Kants essays with a cosmopolitan intent restrict Weltbrgerrecht (ius cosmopoliticum) to the conditions of general hospitality.16 His Recht der Wirtbarkeit should not be misconceived as a Gastrecht, let alone as a right to stay; it is a right to visit that can be refused when it can occur without his demise (wenn es ohne seinen [des Fremden, V.B.] Untergang geschehen kann). Despite the rise of nationalism, the nineteenth century (18151914) has been characterized as the century of free movement and fairly unlimited migration. Classical political economists had criticized mercantilist restrictions and celebrated free competition and free movement of commodities, capital, and labor; only a minority criticized the inherent power asymmetries of British Free Trade Imperialism (List) and of exit of capital compared to exit of labor (Marx). Apart from utilitarianism, practical philosophy did not reflect upon issues of membership and migration. Henry Sidgwick published the first systematic treatment of issues of membership, exit, and entry.17 The right to leave is, compared with earlier consent theories, more restricted by arguments of expediency (225, 213, 247) and emigration is governed by the military and population policies of empires (213ff, 247). Sidgwick rejects an individual right to entry and all attempts to impose upon states as an absolute international duty, the free admission of immigrants (309f, 248): a state must obviously have the right to admit aliens on its own terms, imposing any conditions on entrance or any tolls on transit, and subjecting them to any legal restrictions or disabilities that it may deem expedient . . . it may legitimately exclude them altogether (248). However, the right to exclude them altogether confronts us with the general conflict between the cosmopolitan and the national ideals (309). The rigor of exclusion might be limited by distributive justice (255) and be mitigated by the practical allowance of free immigration (255): the free admission of aliens will generally be advantageous to the country admitting them (310, 306f). After World War I, most states clearly judged that free movement was disadvantageous and consequently severely restricted the admission of immigrants, political refugees, and asylum seekers. After the experiences of genocide and World War II, the legal duty and procedure for determining refugee status and the legal duty of non-refoulment have been generally accepted (Geneva Convention 1951, 1967 Protocol) and continuous efforts have been made to guarantee a legal right to leave.18 A more general discussion of membership and legal and illegal migration only emerged with the usual time lag after the changes in American immigration law in 1965 and after western European states grudgingly
Ethics of Immigration: Veit Bader
335
came to realize that postcolonial and guest-worker immigration had turned them into immigration countries. Michael Walzer was the first to break the deafening silence in contemporary practical philosophy,19 and from then on we find an increasing stream of publications on an emerging ethics of immigration. Many attempts have been made to distinguish different theoretical traditions or paradigms.20 I think it is helpful to distinguish roughly between universalist (or moral cosmopolitan, globalist, impartialist) and particularist approaches.21 Universalist approaches can be divided into (i) utilitarianism focusing on happiness, utility, or, more recently and promisingly, welfare or basic needs.22 In the attempt to derive moral rights and duties from prudential obligations, its consequentialism differs from realist approaches23 and from rational choice or mutual advantage contractarianism. (ii) More deontological approaches, stressing different varieties of equal rights of all human beings, like libertarian property or natural rights or the different varieties of egalitarian liberalism or basic rights.24 (iii) More duty- and virtue-oriented approaches like ONeills.25 Particularist approaches are also highly diversified and range from liberaldemocratic or moderate patriotism (Nathanson, Fletcher) and liberal nationalism (Whelan, Miller, Tamir, Kymlicka) to defenders of social-democratic welfarestates (Walzer, Fllesdal, Offe, Streeck) to tougher communitarianism and more exclusive patriotism (MacIntyre), neo-Hegelianism (Frost), and extreme or nasty nationalism.26 These theoretical approaches are also internally divided: the indeterminacy of principles and practical judgment explains why practical philosophers in the same tradition have argued for or against fairly open borders or international redistribution.27 This is the reason I have chosen a problem- or argument-driven presentation instead of a theory-driven presentation. On the other hand, however, it is obvious that universalist approaches favor freedom of movement and international redistribution while more particularist approaches clearly oppose these policies. Even for my limited aims, difficult questions have to be answered, and no impartial, consensual answers are available: (i) Do universalist and particularist approaches have to be combined and, if so as most practical philosophers think how? Where to start, and what does this imply for the contested issue of priority of competing obligations? (ii) Practical judgment is complex and practical reason involves moral, ethico-political, prudential, and realist arguments.28 The moral ought requires to treat all human beings as free and equal irrespective of all ascriptive criteria. The ethico-political ought requires to further our particular notions of the good life, in our case the specific ethos, ways of life, or culture of the ethno-political community of the nation-state. The prudential ought requires us to do what is in our well-informed, rational, long-term interest. Realist arguments do not, of themselves, point in any specific direction: whatever one ought to do for moral or ethico-political reasons, one should always take into account
336
that ought implies can. Realist arguments imply specifically negative normative statements directed against moral oughts: one should not do what morality requires. In the case of first admission, realism seems, at present, completely linked with the particularist perspective of (nation-) states and is nearly indistinguishable from prudential or ethno-political arguments for closed borders.29 In an imaginable ideal world these four components of practical judgment may complement each other harmoniously, but in the real world of first-admission policies their tensions are sharp and visible. Should all these different oughts count, count equally, or should there be priority rules? How can they be compared and weighed? I belief that all productive practical philosophy has to deal with the tension between the universalizing trend of moral principles and the particularizing trend of institutions, cultures, and practices in order to avoid two dangers. First, the danger of abstract, merely stipulated universalism, of an imaginary moral view from nowhere; and second, the danger of unreflective particularism, of an uncritical acceptance of our particular institutions and practices as false necessities or as morally right or at least as defensible first approximations.30 In our case, the institutional international status quo and the existing firstadmission policies may turn out to be not first or second best, but fifteenth best or worse.31 Obviously, there has to be some critical, reflexive disequilibrium, some back and forth connecting our moral intuitions always intuitions of a historically and socially situated moral community to more universally shared moral principles. If institutional settings and policies are seriously wrong from a moral point of view, one needs to gain critical distance and widen the gap between principles and practices, between an ideal world and the real world, before trying to bridge it.32 However difficult it may be to compare the four types of ought, at least in cases of serious moral wrongs moral arguments have to trump competing ethicopolitical, prudential, and realist ones (the common conviction of all egalitarian liberals); otherwise morality would be practically toothless. We should therefore start our inquiry with universalist moral arguments. A plea to start with moral arguments does not resolve two other problems: the problem of moral pluralism (that we live in a world of competing moral principles and rights and that we have good reasons not to fix them in contextindependent hierarchies) and the problem of the underdetermination of our practical judgments (e.g., what would Rawlsian justice require regarding free movement and redistribution?). In such conditions it may not only be a virtue that citizens should seek the rationale that minimizes rejection of the position they oppose; economizing moral disagreement may also be advisable for practical philosophers.33 My theoretical strategy in favor of fairly open borders will thus be, in section II, morally and strategically minimalist; I do not claim that moral, ethico-political, prudential, and realist arguments favoring closure (III) are pointless or lack normative significance and power.
Ethics of Immigration: Veit Bader II. Arguments in Favor of Open Borders
337
Moral theories compatible with the constitutions of liberal democratic welfare states and international treaties on human rights share a common core of universalist egalitarianism.34 The egalitarian principle of equal liberties criticizes all ascriptive privileges. It is incompatible with the strong exclusionary effects of citizenship in a world of several (nation-)states. Citizenship laws combine criteria of descent (jus sanguinis) and territory (jus solis), which are prima facie morally no more defensible than sex, age, language, religion, or social class. The universalism of the moral point of view, even in its considered and weak versions, does not allow prima facie moral privileges for the members of particular (nation-) states and criticizes restrictive membership approaches of equality.35 Broadly, two different, analytically distinct universalist arguments in favor of open borders can be distinguished. First, free mobility is an important moral principle in itself and should be recognized not only as a basic moral, but also as a legal human right independent from issues of poverty or distributive justice (II.1). The second argument tries to show that states have a moral and legal obligation to let people in as long as and to the degree that they do not live up to their minimal moral obligations to guarantee basic human rights to safety and subsistence for all human beings irrespective of nationality (II.2). The two approaches are often not clearly distinguished,36 and they can be seen as mutually reinforcing: free movement can be seen as a reduction of political, social, and economic inequalities and open borders are morally required to the degree that severe international inequalities persist.37 Yet others object that they are bound to conflict as soon as one asks whether affluent countries should give . . . priority to those who are poorest and most in need, if all who wish to enter cannot be admitted.38 II.1. Free Movement Free movement has played an important role in economic utopias of completely free markets (free exit and entry of all commodities, capital, and labor) and corresponding free trade policies by many classical political economists and in standard neo-classical theory of free trade. They are said to guarantee the optimal allocation of all factors of production and, consequently, to benefit all, at least in the long run.39 Chang provides excellent prudential arguments for liberalized immigration based on an equilibrium theory from three different perspectives: particularist national economic welfare, the welfare of immigrants, and global economic welfare.40 In addition, recent demographic developments and projected difficulties to finance pension-schemes contribute to a remarkable shift in the prudential balance sheet. On the basis of such arguments a strong case can be made against the remarkable and persisting inconsistency in neoliberal regimes and policies which stimulate free exit and entry of capital but restrict free entry of workers.41 Two inherent flaws of standard theories, however, have been pointed
338
out by institutionalist critics. First, capital, particularly financial capital, is more flexible, mobile, and footloose than labor: workers are relationally and culturally more rooted and less mobile.42 Second, free exit of capital, combined with free entry of workers, structurally weakens the organizations and power-positions of labor and tends to undermine the thicker legal regulations and institutions of welfare states (see below III.4). Defenders of free movement of labor against exclusionary politics of Big Labor like Roberto Unger have to address these problems in order to avoid the double counterproductive effects of weakening labor within affluent states without strengthening it globally (thus making all workers worse off).43 If institutionalist critics are right regarding this highly contested prudential and realist issues, if defending the weak would require particularist closure, then the need for a moral defense of free movement of people would be more obvious. Freedom of movement is presented as a basic moral right of natural persons, unlike commodities or capital, mainly for two reasons. First, from Hobbes on, it is seen as an important liberty in itself, sometimes even as the first and most fundamental of mans liberties.44 Second, it is (more instrumentally) seen as (i) a vital prerequisite for other freedoms, like autonomy, personal self-determination from which it gains its fundamental importance in comprehensive liberal theories of morality or human rights to marriage and family life; (ii) as a condition of meaningful equality of opportunity; and (iii) as a condition of more substantive or material equality or an instrument of distributive justice.45 Freedom of movement across state borders implies both a right to leave a state temporarily or permanently (right to exit) and a right to enter another state (right to entry). The exit right is based in liberal and democratic theories of consent (see above). As a right to escape from oppressive or otherwise unresponsive states, it is an important mechanism for making governments more democratic and responsive: exit, voice, and loyalty.46 Increasingly, it is legally recognized that the right to emigration and voluntary expatriation includes the right to stay (proscription of expulsion and involuntary expatriation) and the right to return (distinguishing emigration from banishment).47 The freedom to leave imposes three correlative, demanding duties on states: not to hinder emigration (by refusing papers, unfair impositions etc.), to make return possible, and to further admission elsewhere, because a right to leave without being able to enter somewhere is actually ineffective.48 A general legal right to entry, however, does not exist and even in the case of the right to refuge, asylum, and family re-unification, the corresponding duties of states are imperfectly and badly allocated. Before discussing and evaluating the arguments for such a general moral right to entry, however, we should take into account the limitations of a moral right to freedom of movement recognized by its defenders. There are no absolute rights and the presumption of free movement, like other basic individual rights, can be overridden. The above mentioned rights shall not be subjected to any restrictions except those which are provided by law,
339
are necessary to protect national security, public order, public health or morals or the rights and freedoms of others, and are consistent with the other rights recognized in the present covenant.49 Most defenders of the moral and legal right to exit accept that it can be overridden not only by other basic rights, but also by other special moral and legal obligations. The right to exit does not legitimize evading punishment for serious crimes, payment of debts, compulsory universal military or civil service and, as some argue, even paying back public costs for higher education. Obviously, these limitations can be interpreted very restrictively or very extensively, and the margins of discretion get even wider when it comes to national security, public order, public health or morals. Even defenders of as liberal as possible a right to exit do not, in principle, deny the moral legitimacy of some of these limitations.50 Equally, the right to internal free movement and settlement is seen to be legitimately limited by other basic individual rights, and also by indigenous peoples collective land and autonomy rights, and by prudential and realist arguments avoiding congestion, necessary regulations of space (traffic, building, city- and regional planning, and so on) and other important values (e.g., protection of wildlife, nature), which can be interpreted in such an extensive way that little actual freedom is left. At present, state laws and international law do not guarantee a universal human right to international free movement and residence. These liberties are explicitly restricted to everyone lawfully within the territory of a State, excluding illegal immigrants, and hold only within that territory, excluding a general right to entry.51 Why should there be such a general moral right to free entry, strong enough to generally outweigh competing moral rights, particularly democratic self-determination?52 To be plausible, such a view should explicitly reject the ideas that each right is a trump in itself (unrestricted freedom of movement as the most basic human right), that all rights (the long list of often competing civil, political, social, and cultural human rights) are equally compossible, and that rights cannot be limited by other normative arguments. The main issue, then, is the weight of a moral right in balancing all relevant normative arguments. The weight of freedom of movement alone without referring to other basic rights or to principles of equal opportunity or distributive justice is contested. In balancing rights, reference to basic human needs seems particularly convincing, and many practical philosophers agree that security and subsistence are the paramount basic needs. Even among liberal universalist rights theorists, only a few seem to defend the claim that free movement has the same weight or status. Indicative is the ambiguity of John Rawls in this regard. At one point, he lists (presumably internal) free movement as among the basic liberties of citizens, but in his Theory of Justice it is not explicitly included.53 The argument by analogy that international free movement should be treated exactly like internal free movement54 is not convincing: it either neglects moral principles of democratic self-determination completely, or it neglects the importance of democratic states among other units in emerging democratic multi-level
340
polities (see below III.1 and III.3). If it is accepted that states still are important loci of democratic self-determination, it cannot show why limited sovereignty should be regularly overruled: the prudential and realist reasons limiting internal freedom of movement may be much stronger in the case of free entry.55 Sociological and historical arguments that try to show that the development of capitalism, the modern state, and modern society require internal free movement and nowadays referring to globalization global free movement, are empirically highly contested and lack normative force.56 The argument pointing to the asymmetry of exit and entry opens up a more promising avenue. The recognition of the right to refuge and asylum presupposes that state sovereignty and self-determination have to yield in cases of wellfounded fear of being persecuted or, in another language, that the basic right or need to security is strong enough to outweigh other rights and competing ethicopolitical, prudential, and realist arguments. Evidently, the refugee definition in the Convention is today very inappropriate: it is highly individualistic (focused on activists and targets rather than on victims,57 it does not cope with the protection needs of women, children, those fleeing civil war or generalized violence58), and it does not recognize ecological catastrophes, famine, and other reasons for flight and forced migration. Morally motivated proposals for reform of the Refugee Convention start from the insight that threats to security cannot be neatly and easily separated from threats to subsistence, but even then not all reasons for leaving a state count equally and are serious enough to outweigh all arguments to restrict entry (in Zolbergs proposal it is still well founded fear of violence and flight, not all other reasons people may have to leave a state59). Most people feel that freedom from want and fear are more basic than many other rights and freedoms. Freedom from fear, however, is not only recognized in the set of civil rights protecting basic security but also in corresponding duties, whereas freedom from want or basic rights to subsistence and the declaration of the respective economic and social human rights is not accompanied by an adequate allocation of the corresponding duties. This points to a serious gap between broadly recognized moral requirements and recent international law. Prudent defenders of a free right to entry recognize the weakness of arguments based on free movement alone. They recur to other arguments either more basic rights to security and subsistence, or more demanding principles of international equality of opportunity or distributive justice to add urgency to the moral claims for open borders. A considered right to free entry, then, has to be part of a more complex normative argument. II.2. Poverty and/or Global Inequality Compared with arguments from free movement, arguments in favor of open borders based on moral requirements of basic subsistence or international distributive justice seem to have obvious disadvantages. They are not direct and
341
straightforward, they do not imply a strong individual right to immigration, and they do not hold even in an ideally just world. Still, critics of closed borders have linked the moral permissibility of closure to issues of poverty and distributive justice.60 The analogy to threats of basic security is striking: a basic right is violated, challenging the moral standing of the system of states; direct policies to prevent violations are preferable (in this case to fight poverty or gross international inequality), but if they are not feasible or effective, we have an indirect moral obligation to help the victims.61 The nature of the link between poverty or global inequality and open borders, though, is rarely clarified: it may be remedial, causal, or moral. Free immigration is not an effective remedy for poverty because the proportion of the worlds poor that might be helped in this way would be very small. The relief provided by open borders would be imperfectly distributed because those who can afford to migrate are usually not among the worst-off. Moreover, free migration could lead to a brain drain, leaving the worst-off even worse off. Finally, such an approach could weaken pressures on governments to address problems of poverty where they emerge.62 As an anti-poverty strategy, immigration is at best one strategy among several; it may not even be a second-best stopgap.63 Poverty is only one of the many motivational causes of migration. It cannot by itself explain why people migrate, let alone when and where they move. Nevertheless, poverty is along with and increasingly interrelated with violence the most important structural cause of forced migration. The perceived threat of hundreds of millions refugees and migrants serves as the main argument to close borders. The counterargument, which stresses the states obligation to maintain open borders, is intended, firstly, to show that closure is impermissible as long as poverty or gross inequality exists and, secondly, to undermine standard arguments in political rhetoric and practical philosophy favoring closed borders. The link is specifically a negative, indirect, and moral one. The aim is to argue that, if arguments for international distributive justice are valid and if rich countries do not want to give generously of their money to meet the demands that those arguments impose, then they are morally obliged to pay instead in a currency that they hold even dearer . . . to admit substantial numbers of immigrants from the poorest countries.64 The argument puts the finger on the festering sore of poverty or serious inequality and urgently asks for effective remedies: Open your wallets or open your borders! Whatever their inherent value may be, closed borders can only be morally permissible if, and to the degree to which, states fulfill their minimal moral obligations following from humanitarianism or distributive justice. Under conditions of rough, complex international equality, normative arguments in favor of closure (be they ethico-political, prudential, or realist) would gain in practical legitimacy because closure would lose its sting. If citizenship in rich and safe states ceased to be a privilege, exclusion would be less a prima facie moral wrong. This if has two aspects. The first is temporal: as long as measures to fight
342
poverty are not taken or as long as they are not really effective, we (individuals, organizations, states in affluent societies) have no moral right to close borders. The second is gradational: to the degree that affluent states do not live up to their international moral obligations, they have no moral right to close borders. This double if makes all other arguments conditional upon the prior fulfillment of our moral obligations with regard to safety and subsistence. For sake of brevity, I call this the Global Moral Obligation (GMO) proviso. Two theoretical strategies should be distinguished. First, moral obligations to fight poverty and the corresponding allocation of duties and policies (II.2.1). These arguments are more minimalist, and are shared by all theorists defending universalism even in its thin, most moderate varieties.65 The required moral limitations of sovereignty and self-determination thus have to be accepted by all defenders of moderate patriotism. The required sacrifices and policies (aid) are also less demanding. Second, moral obligations to fight global inequality and the corresponding allocation of duties and policies (II.2.2). These arguments are more demanding, require a stronger universalist though not an extreme universalist foundation and may seem less convincing to moderate patriots. They require stronger limitations on sovereignty and self-determination, more sacrifices and more demanding policies (redistribution) and are, expectably, more contested, although they can be grounded in a morally minimalist argumentation shared by all varieties of egalitarian liberal theories of distributive justice. II.2.1. Poverty and Aid The basic argument includes three steps. First, some hardly ever contested rockbottom facts. About one billion people live under conditions of severe poverty, whichever standards one uses.66 Extreme poverty is all-encompassing: it concerns all aspects of life in mutually reinforcing vicious circles. It is permanent, not simply momentous, and the prospects of the poor of changing their predicament on their own are utterly bleak. And finally, relative poverty, the huge gap between affluence and poverty, is growing globally as well as inside some affluent states, notably the US. Secondly, almost all approaches to moral theory accept that those who are able to help, without supererogatory sacrifices (cut-off for heroism), have a moral duty and in some countries also a legal duty to help.67 Help is not an act of charity or generosity but a moral obligation.68 Thirdly, this moral duty is indiscriminately addressed to all those who are able to help: rich individuals, organizations, states. Tackling the problems of this imperfect allocation of duties requires, minimally, adding institutionalist or collectivist policies (Shue, Goodin, Elfstrom, Jones) to an overly individualist approach (Singer, P. Unger).69 Postponing contested answers to urgent questions like: how much aid is minimally required? what would be adequate institutions and policies for fighting poverty effectively?, this strategy has the obvious advantage of not asking too
343
much. It does not require maximizing utility or welfare, but focuses on basic wants, basic needs, or basic rights fighting malfare.70 II.2.2. Global Inequality and Redistribution Extreme poverty is not an unalterable state of nature or the human condition. At least in our times, it can and should be prevented. However, poverty is not described or explained in relational terms and is therefore not seen as a severe injustice. The second strategy tries to make plausible that the worse-off are worse off because the better-off are better off. Such a causal connection between poverty and affluence constitutes more demanding moral duties to avoid and prevent gross inequalities. The second strategy is thus more demanding and more contested both in a descriptive and explanatory regard and from a moral perspective. It starts from a richer interpretation of the egalitarian universalism of the moral point of view, connecting equal liberties with issues of distributive justice: (i) Citizenship and exclusion: state membership is, in the present situation of gross inequalities among states, one of the crucial mechanisms that guarantee and sanction these inequalities.71 Citizenship in Western liberal democracies is the modern equivalent of feudal privilege an inherited status that greatly enhances ones life chances. Like feudal birthright privileges, restrictive citizenship is hard to justify when one thinks about it closely.72 (ii) One of the basic assumptions of recent moral theories is that people should not benefit or suffer from morally arbitrary natural and social contingencies like natural talents or handicaps or the good or bad luck to be born of rich or poor parents. A radical membership approach to equality73 restricts the scope of the argument to contingencies inside states and neglects natural and social contingencies among states, whereas moderate patriots, moderate and extreme universalists recognize that (a) nobody deserves to be born into a rich or poor country, (b) the distribution of natural resources among states is a natural lottery, and (c) the moral legitimacy of the inheritance of all other advantages of national economies must also be very limited.74 Depending upon the degree of radicality, these arguments should be able to overrule sovereignty, national self-determination, and priority for compatriots under circumstances of serious global inequality (see below III.1). Theories of distributive justice are particularly contested if they try to picture models of ideally just societies, but the degree of dissent can be considerably diminished if one starts from the opposite end of severe injustice, gross inequality.75 Three argumentative strategies try to link poverty to gross inequalities. Their descriptive and explanatory claims are fairly minimalist and it is possible to find much overlapping consensus among rival traditions in order to reinforce and strengthen the resulting moral duties of redistribution.76 (i) The rich and the poor live in a global economic and political order with one system of common institutions for which we are morally responsible. The structure of this system reproduces gross inequalities and there are better and practically feasible
344
alternatives. (ii) Even if states were completely self-contained entities, as those rejecting (i) try to show, there is a strong case for GMOs in situations where the distribution of natural resources among states is radically unequal. The betteroff have a moral obligation to compensate the worse-off because the natural resources should be the joint possession of humankind. (iii) The starting positions of the better- and the worse-off are a result of massive crime, force, and fraud, and the history of conquest, colonialism, and imperialism implies for all particularly for retrospective theories of justice strong moral claims for restitution. Each of these three lines of argument is in itself sufficient to show that gross global inequalities constitute severe injustice and each invites us to allocate our moral duties. These approaches need not be mutually exclusive. Often, but not in all cases, they reinforce each other. This is not the place to discuss feasible moderate or more radical alternative policies and institutions better able to fight poverty and injustice.77 Thomas Pogge is correct when he asserts that our first moral priority ought to be projects that address poverty and global injustice directly, instead of fully opening our borders. However, policies to eradicate poverty directly and policies of fairly open borders are not mutually exclusive alternatives.78 The problem is that affluent states do not succeed and will not succeed in the near future in alleviating the terrible conditions that make them want to come here in the first place.79 As long as this is the case, our moral and political projects still have to include moral criticism of policies of closed borders. We cannot, counterfactually, presume that policies to address poverty and global injustice will be successful in the long run and close our eyes in the meantime. III. Why Closed Borders? Borders should be closed, so it is said, (i) because moral priority should be given to compatriots, and because states have an important role in the allocation of duties; (ii) because fundamental civil and (iii) political rights (including democratic political culture and virtues) can only be guaranteed in this way; (iv) because social rights and welfare arrangements have to be defended; and (v) because ethno-national cultures have to be protected. These moral, ethicopolitical, and realist arguments are often mixed. They are presented in strong or in weak forms.80 They need not be thinly veiled welfare chauvinism and should not, in my view, be dismissed per se, but they have to be balanced in practical judgment against moral and prudential arguments for open borders. III.1. Priority for Compatriots and the Moral Standing of States Two conflicting perspectives, the universalist view and the bounded view, seem to tear any coherent view of moral philosophy apart. The extreme universalist
345
view, defended by Godwin and Tolstoy, declares all particular, special relations morally irrelevant and consequently does not recognize any special obligations, particularly no moral obligations for compatriots. The extreme particularist view, implicit in all forms of extreme nationalism, does not recognize any transnational and global moral obligations. Both views operate with a flat world of social relations and enforce dichotomous choices between either global or particularlist obligations, making extreme universalism not only extremely demanding but also counterintuitive and extreme nationalism morally repulsive. Actually, special relations are multiple and overlapping: they range from intimate relations among partners or spouses, parents and children, or friends to relations among service providers (teachers, physicians, therapists, etc.) and clients to relations among practitioners of specific cultures, among members of cities, provinces, or states to specific transnational relations.81 Most moral philosophers acknowledge that special moral obligations can arise from these relations apart from those moral obligations we owe to all human beings. Three questions, however, are particularly contested. First, does the character or quality of the relations matter or do special obligations arise independently from the value of relations, communities, or states, as defenders of priority for compatriots often hold?82 A critical scrutiny of their arguments demonstrates that the value-independent approach is morally indefensible.83 Second, most philosophers agree that intimate relations, compatible with minimal moral requirements, create special obligations justifiable in universalist terms,84 but utilitarians like Singer or Goodin, libertarians, and extreme liberals, feminists, and socialists tend towards abstract cosmopolitanism and are reluctant to accept special national obligations. Is the argument by analogy in the defense of priority for compatriots sound?85 Three objections are valid: (i) the imagery of a morality of concentric circles suggests a ready-made answer to questions of priority of moral obligations: there is just one throw of one pebble, and the strongest obligations are the closest, getting weaker and weaker the farther away from this centre and unduly discounting trans-national and global obligations a limine.86 (ii) Modern nations are imagined communities and compatriots are strangers in the sense that we do not directly or personally interact with them. The relevant moral sentiments could thus not be love and care, like in misleading blood and family analogies, or at least not the same kinds of love and care. The adequate public morality is a morality of strangers.87 (iii) Defenders of a priority for compatriots often use a textbook model of ideally democratic and genuine nation-states.88 Actual states, however, are neither ethno-nationally or culturally homogeneous communities nor unqualified democratic communities; they are cold, hierarchical organizations based on the threat of physical violence. These are strong arguments against unqualified communitarian defenses of priority for compatriots. Do they also convincingly show that nations and democratic polities are morally irrelevant?89 Is a co-national exactly in the same way a stranger as members of foreign states, as Shue claims?90 Four arguments refute
346
this claim: (i) special relations do not only result from intimacy or direct interactions. (ii) It neglects that not only thick, shared values or cultures may create special ties and obligations, but also a common political history, common practices of contestation, and even bitter conflicts.91 (iii) If and to the degree that there exists a common ethno-national culture compatible with minimal moral requirements, this may create special obligations among those sharing these practices. This argument gains in strength if these cultures are intrinsically intermingled with the huge and morally legitimate variety of practices of liberal democracy.92 (iv) Even if states could and should be strictly neutral and antiperfectionist, as many liberal political philosophers claim, their civic relations would generate special political obligations for compatriots neglected by abstract cosmopolitans (and democratic patriotism rightly has pointed out its democratic weakness).93 Third, as a result, many liberal philosophers like Rawls and Dworkin accept even fairly unqualified versions of a priority for compatriots;94 others (like Ackerman, Carens, and Whelan) do so in a much more considered and circumscribed way. There is clearly more room between intimates and complete strangers and in this space divergent philosophical positions from moderate cosmopolitanism and moderate patriotism to liberal and democratic communitarianism and liberal nationalism can meet and find a minimalist common ground: considered priority for compatriots can play a legitimate role in a multi-layered model of moral obligations. It has, though, to be constrained by two arguments: (i) States, whether nation-states or not, have to fulfill their GMOs. This rules out any unconditional priority for compatriots (my country right or wrong). All reasonable defenders of moderate patriotism, liberal nationalism or communitarianism acknowledge this limitation (Walzer, Miller, Tamir, Nathanson, Scheffler). Under conditions of scarcity of resources, global and special obligations do not peacefully coexist but may imply serious conflict.95 Then global obligations must be strong enough to overrule national obligations. This poses unresolved questions: how can these conflicting obligations be measured and compared? How much is needed to fulfill the GMOs? How large a gap between the standards imposed by national and global obligations can be considered morally acceptable? (ii) The relevant historical and social ties are not confined to state-members. States would have to recognize special obligations . . . towards specific populations that may result from active involvement in the affairs of another country, from geographical proximity, or from historic ties.96 The domestic obligations of states extend beyond their citizens and include all residents.97 Their transnational obligations include family members of citizens, immigrants, and refugees. Their colonial history has created moral obligations towards immigrants from former colonies. Their involvement in the affairs of other states creates special responsibilities with regard to refugees fleeing
347
from those countries, etc. Their international obligations towards other states, resulting from treaties or from historical injustice, create specific obligations like restitutions, special aid programs towards ex-colonies. Supranational and global obligations create specific responsibilities for redistribution (e.g., within the EU) and for refugees and asylum seekers (e.g. minimum quotas, burden sharing, etc.). The recognition of such transnational obligations sheds new light on the contested moral standing of states and their role in allocating duties.98 Liberal statist,99 democratic, and particularly communitarian theorists accord intrinsic value to liberal democratic states (see III.3). For utilitarians, states can only be justified in a strictly instrumental (Goodin) and derivative (Elfstrom) way as means to maximize utility or basic needs, and for libertarians like Nozick as means to guarantee absolute rights of individuals.100 But even the latter have to acknowledge that states may help to address the problem of imperfectly allocated duties, which perpetuates poverty and forced migration.101 Declaring universal basic rights to security and subsistence without adequately allocating the corresponding duties is hypocrisy and fraud.102 We can clearly identify the right and its bearers, but not who has to comply with the corresponding obligations.103 States have the duty to resolve this problem within their borders by fighting poverty and preempting the reasons for forced emigration. The clear recognition and fulfillment of their trans-domestic special obligations could help alleviate the problem by reducing the number of unallocated duties, particularly if one could convincingly translate unspecified and unrelational deprivation or poverty into more specific contexts of international exploitation and oppression.104 The deserving poor out there would then be seen as people and countries whose basic rights have been violated, with known bearers of the corresponding duties to help. Yet this would not resolve the problem because the basic needs of those who cannot claim special relations or who are not covered by global schemes would still not be satisfied. It is very hard to compel states, particularly weak states and (for different reasons) the sole remaining superpower, to fulfill their domestic, transnational, and global obligations. The existing international institutions are primitive and clumsy.105 Recent humanitarian and peace-keeping or -enforcing interventions have tragically weakened international law, as in Kosovo, and increased the tension between geopolitical governance and humane governance.106 The war of the US-UK coalition against Iraq has tragically and decisively weakened already weak UN institutions. Concerted global efforts to fight poverty are lacking (see the disasters of the conferences in Monterrey and Cancn). The design of supranational and global mediating institutions, and the crafting of policies to remedy the misallocation of duties and to coordinate the required state activities, remains an urgent task. As long as no considerable progress is achieved, the moral standing of the system of several states is seriously defective and moral pressures to override
348
national obligations and state sovereignty seem legitimate, especially if one criticizes the false choice between the exclusive alternatives of either a world government or sovereign states by designing democratic multilevel polities. Obviously, the moral standing of states also depends upon the degree to which they actually fulfill their duties internally: The primary reason which can legitimate restrictions on immigration is the maintenance of a comprehensive system of civil, democratic and social rights of citizenship.107 III.2. Public Security and Civil Rights Need Closure The state owes the guarantee of civil rights not only to state members, but to all residents and foreigners on its territory because civil rights are not citizenship rights strictly speaking, but human rights allowing for a further specification of rights for tourists, residents, and citizens.108 Reasons for exclusion referring to this dimension of citizenship can only be realist reasons. One of the preferred legitimations for closing borders is that the overwhelming number of migrants would pose a threat to public order and social stability. This realist argument, if correct, would have serious moral implications because the maintenance of public order belongs to the well-allocated duties of states to guarantee basic civil rights of citizens and residents recognized even by advocates of more open borders. There are levels of immigration that cannot be exceeded without serious negative consequences for the receiving state, but these levels are highly contested and cannot be discussed without intimate knowledge and information of the demographic, economic, and socio-political conditions of each state. The black scenarios (B. Barry) of defenders of restrictive policies are clearly examples of irresponsible rhetoric especially when the presumed propensity to crime of immigrants are culturalized or racialized but it would be nave to dismiss all dangers in this regard. The potential tension between fair admission and fair incorporation policies grows as more people enter because it is irresponsible to admit people without minimally adequate employment, education, healthcare, and housing opportunities. Incorporation policies involve costs, and prudentialists have to balance them with the expected and actual benefits of immigration.109 If the threats to public security and the huge costs are not simply alarmist rhetoric, the argument would only add weight to the duty to guarantee minimal safety and subsistence for the excluded. At present, we see exactly the opposite: in most states, the overwhelming numbers of immigrants are far below any reasonable threshold and the same states that apply ever more restrictive policies do not fulfill their GMOs. III.3. Democracy Needs Closure Democratic decision-making in all polities (from cities to transnational unions like the EU) presupposes, first, well-defined and relatively stable rules of membership,
349
and, second, democratic culture and trust. The fact that democracy needs membership and some form of closure, however, does not determine the design of institutions.110 It is compatible with a world of many sovereign democratic states and with a world of multi-layered and overlapping democratic polities in which conceptions and practices of sovereignty and self-determination are limited, divided, and delegated.111 It also does not determine the character of membership rules. The need for closure is compatible with the traditional mix of jus sanguinis and jus solis rules as well with rules that require short residency periods and allow easy naturalization and dual citizenship. The fact that democratic decision-making requires closure cannot, by itself, justify highly exclusionist first admission policies without appealing to democratic culture and trust. The necessity of trust and democratic culture is seen to favor closed borders in two different, interconnected ways. First, majority decisions are acceptable only under conditions of trust, meaning that citizens are sufficiently benign and reasonable as not to exploit minorities. Trust is historically linked to nation-state forms of political integration.112 This argument is mainly directed against proposals to delegate powers to supranational or global units, but it is also mobilized against immigrants who cannot be trusted owing to their lack of a common history of special relations. Second, the entry of many immigrants who supposedly lack a tradition of, or are even hostile to, civic and democratic culture like the Catholic Irish in the nineteenth century or the fundamentalist Muslims nowadays will inevitably threaten the maintenance and flourishing of democracy. The maintenance of democracy or the protection of the ongoing process of liberal conversation itself113 is a value recognized by thin liberal democrats114 and by all stronger democrats (Barber, Unger), democratic communitarians like Walzer, and republicans like David Hollinger or Michael Lind. Three remarks are minimally in order: (i) The following arguments are valid: civic/political and ethno-national culture cannot be, and need not be, completely disentangled; democratic practices are inevitably embedded in ethno-national cultures and traditions; and it takes time to learn the different morally permissible ways of doing democracy. However, ethno-political cultures vary on a scale from a fairly thin (in Canada) to a very thick ethnic core (in the French republican or the German ethnocentric model). Liberal democracy clearly favors thinner cultures, but even these may necessitate some ceiling to the admission of culturally unaccustomed newcomers, as the accommodative capacity of political societies is limited (Ackerman) and it takes time to accommodate. (ii) The legitimacy and height of these ceilings cannot be evaluated without looking at the predominant model of democracy and the specific cultures of immigrants. Yet it is unfair to confront a textbook model of a shared and vivid democratic culture among compatriots with a chaotic band of
350
anti-democratic foreigners looking to invade the democratic paradise. Different groups of immigrants may have practiced different degrees or forms of democracy in their countries of origin. Moreover, outright fundamentalist opposition to liberal democracy is, to a large extent, a reaction by immigrants to illiberal and anti-democratic practices of discrimination, exclusion, and marginalization, and especially to miserable state policies of assimilation. And states that cultivate the myth of ethnonational homogeneity and lack deeply-rooted democratic cultures, such as Germany or Japan, also use these arguments to legitimize illiberal, exclusionist admission and incorporation policies. (iii) Under conditions of rough, complex equality among states, the collective right to democratic self-determination prioritized by democratic particularists would not guarantee unjust distributions and, consequently, need not be overruled. Even morally permissible thicker ethno-political models of statesocieties defended to protect welfare (III.4) or ethnic culture (III.5) would lose their distributive exclusionary sting. III.4. Welfare, Solidarity, and Closure Maintaining adequate welfare and social rights inside states is one of the strongest reasons in favor of closure against environments in which no similar system exists. In general, three lines of arguments support this point of view. (i) Higher standards may be directly derived from the previously discussed priority for compatriots. (ii) Higher standards may derive from self-determination of democratic nation-states. Democratic self-governance may lead to a diversity of equally just social arrangements and may conflict with trans-border claims to equality.115 The claim that different standards and welfare regimes must be accepted as a consequence of the indeterminacy of principles of social justice116 and as an expression of democracy can be legitimate if it is qualified in two ways. First, no matter how high their domestic standards may be, democratic states would have to fulfill their GMOs. Second, the flourishing of political democracy requires a minimum of socio-economic equality, denied only by libertarians. It holds for all democratic states, irrespective of differences in social standards and welfare regimes. The egalitarian thrust of nationality is laudable but empirically contested.117 One should avoid widespread fallacies in conclusions from what democratic nation states should do reduce domestic inequalities to what they actually do. At present, domestic and international inequalities are growing simultaneously.118 These states cannot legitimize restrictive immigration policies by referring to their domestic duties.
351
(iii) Free mobility of labor under conditions of neoliberal market integration is seen by neo-institutionalist critics of standard economic theory to undermine domestic systems of collective agreements, co-determination, neocorporatist governance, and social services in the receiving countries.119 Supranational and global institutions of governance cannot be made democratically legitimate because there exist no corresponding people, public sphere, or trust.120 If they can develop common policies of social security and services at all, then this would necessarily mean a race to the bottom. The most fundamental reason for this is a supposedly inevitable trade-off between inclusiveness and trust, solidarity, and motivation: the more inclusive and culturally heterogeneous polities become, the less trust, solidarity, and motivation can be expected, so we are told.121 Democratic welfare states are only possible as culturally fairly homogenous nation-states. This claim is empirically implausible, as demonstrated by the examples of Australia and New Zealand.122 It is theoretically contested.123 It may be possible to transform the one big trade-off into many smaller ones.124 The argument is also somewhat unbalanced because the same authors recognize that the main threat to viable democratic welfare states comes not from immigration but from free exit of capital.125 Still, it is evident that under present conditions of neoliberal globalization and triadic supranational institutions like NAFTA, ASEAN, and the EU, free migration of labor undermines higher domestic standards without helping to raise global standards. If this is a valid theoretical and empirical claim (see section II), then it provides strong reasons why some ceilings to first admission are required. Completely open borders would make the poor and less resourceful worse off, both domestically and globally. In sum, double or multiple standards in social security and services can be legitimate. This leaves tricky questions concerning definitions, measurement, and comparison, in particular: How big a difference between the global minimum and the domestic standards is legitimate and tolerable?126 How can global justice and differences in democratically agreed-upon domestic standards be balanced? Only contextualized judgment can give plausible answers. As long as states do not fulfill their GMOs and the demands of domestic equality, all three lines of argument are morally pointless. If states actually complied with these requirements, the exclusionary arguments would become more plausible, thus lending states more democratic and social legitimacy. III.5. Ethno-national Culture Demands Closure Arguments for closure based on security, democracy, and welfare are inextricably interwoven with protection and maintenance of thick ethnic or national cultures. Civil, political, and social rights constitute the core moral and legal
352
principles of modern social-democratic constitutions, and mainstream liberalism teaches us that they are ethnically blind. Even if political cultures cannot be completely disentangled from ethno-national ones,127 a liberal-democratic state should be as neutral as possible with regard to economic and social opportunities and as even-handed as possible with regard to competing majority and minority cultures.128 Ethnocentric and nationalistic arguments for closure are incompatible with liberal-democratic principles.129 The same is true for strong communitarian or perfectionist calls for closed borders, assuming that the central purpose of the state is to protect and develop a supposedly homogeneous culture. However, not all arguments favoring fairly closed borders for broadly cultural reasons stipulate some pure, homogeneous, static, uncontested national culture.130 Recognizing important differences between liberal communitarians, liberal nationalists, and moderate cosmopolitans, it is still possible to detect a common moral and realist core in their arguments. The moral argument is based on a distinction between relatively free cultural change (including retention, accommodation, assimilation) on one hand, and enforced cultural change on the other. Inside states, ethnic and national minorities should be protected against state policies of enforced assimilation and against the unfair outcomes of the working of strictly neutral or difference-blind mechanisms, such as markets or elections. Some form of collective autonomy seems required in all cases of longstanding structural inequalities among majorities and minorities.131 On the international level, state sovereignty may legitimately protect against policies of cultural assimilation by other states. In both cases, ceilings for immigration and settlement may be morally permissible. The realist argument explains why. Cultural continuity is perfectly compatible with cultural pluralism and cultural stability includes cultural change. The core issue is not the preservation of an existing culture or an existing plurality of nomoi, but the rate of cultural change or, more precisely, the avoidance of externally enforced, excessive cultural disruption.132 The realist proviso reminds us that highly contested ceilings to immigration and settlement are required in order to avoid enforced disruption and ensure sufficiently gradual change. Again, this is a terribly open-ended formula in urgent need of context-specific delineation.133 If closure to maintain a national culture took place under conditions of rough international equality, it would clearly conflict with recent globalization, but it would cease to be a pressing distributive moral problem. In practice, restrictions on first admission that are intended to preserve cultural stability and continuity are morally legitimate only if states fulfill their minimal global obligations. The more states close their borders, the higher the moral pressure should be for them to fulfill their GMOs. That they do not recognize such a trade-off between higher degrees of cultural closure and more pressing GMOs is demonstrated by the fact that Germany devotes a mere 0.3 percent of its GDP to external development aid.
Ethics of Immigration: Veit Bader Contextualized Morality and Fairly Open Borders
353
For all their drawbacks, these five arguments for closure, combined with other realist and prudential reasons, explain why completely open borders are neither feasible nor desirable. Some degree of closure is morally permissible and ethicopolitically required. Do not, however, these same arguments add up to a convincing plea for closed borders? Does not fairly open actually mean exactly the same as fairly closed? The crucial question for practical philosophers and policymakers alike, then, is the degree of openness or closure. Practical philosophy has to take into account the complexity of practical judgment and, at the same time, to admit that it does not possess a method to exactly compare, let alone calculate, the diverging moral, ethico-political, prudential, and realist reasons. Universalist moral reasons prescribe that the right to free movement has to be balanced and that GMOs have to be fulfilled, but practical philosophy cannot tell us at exactly what points states fall below the minimally required threshold. Particularist arguments favoring a qualified priority for compatriots or a limited veto suffer from the same indeterminacy and vagueness as realist provisos of necessary ceilings not to be surpassed in order to guarantee public security, democratic or ethno-national culture, and welfare. These questions can only be productively addressed in specific contexts making use of all relevant information and practical knowledge. No generally valid answers can be expected, but this does not mean that contextualized morality would be completely opportunistic, that all judgments would be purely subjective, that anything goes, and that we would only be able to repeat that it depends. GMOs and the right to free movement should have the power to overrule other reasons in particular contexts, and the advantage of strategies of moral minimalism consists exactly in mobilizing as much overlapping consensus as possible in this regard. Contextualized approaches in practical philosophy also have to recognize that information, descriptions, and explanations by sober and critical social scientists which it urgently has to use are contested, but there are clearly better and worse ones. In both cases, good cognitive and normative judgment and educated guesses are more than simply the continuation of the battle of interests or the warfare of political ideologies in practical philosophy. The development of such a gradualist, empirically informed, and institutionally rich practical philosophy is, in my view, the most urgent task on the recent research agenda. It may be deplored that practical philosophy is unable to prescribe exactly what we have to do, or this fact may be welcomed as a condition of freedom for public deliberation and democratic decision-making informed by context-specific moral arguments and by the critical social sciences.134 I am convinced that at present the affluent states, given all important differences of degree among them, by far do not meet their GMOs. As long as and to the degree that they do not, their moral standing is deplorable. Discussion of special obligations, security, democracy, domestic welfare, and culture then only serve to hide welfare-chauvinism and to
354
avoid that ought implies costs. Substantive policy changes are urgently needed to win the fight against global poverty and insecurity. The prospects for these changes are bleak, but they are not precluded by institutional impossibilities. Democratic and humane forms of supranational and global governance, including policies of fairly open borders, may be much harder to achieve than some of their proponents assume.135 But they are feasible and urgently required for the sake of humanity. Looking back from a possible future, the philosophical defenders of state-sovereignty, non-intervention, and restrictive admission in our day might look to those happier people like the philosophical defenders of slavery look to us.
NOTES 1. Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979); Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), ch. 1. 2. Tomas Hammar, Democracy and the Nation State: Aliens, Denizens and Citizens in a World of International Migration (Aldershot: Avebury, 1990). 3. Joseph Carens, Migration, Membership, and Morality, unpublished project proposal (2000). 4. Veit Bader, Citizenship of the European Union, Ratio Juris 12, no. 2 (1999): 155181. 5. Dilek inar, From Aliens to Citizens, in Rainer Baubck, ed., From Aliens to Citizens: Redefining the Status of Immigrants in Europe (Aldershot: Avebury, 1994). 6. See for similar strategies: Frederick Whelan, Citizenship and the Right to Leave, American Political Science Review 75, no. 3 (1981), 63653; Frederick Whelan, Citizenship and Freedom of Movement, in M. Gibney, ed., Open Borders? Closed Societies? (New York: Greenwood, 1988), 339; Carens, Migration and Morality: A Liberal Egalitarian Perspective, in Brian Barry and Robert Goodin, eds., Free Movement: Ethical Issues in the Transnational Migration of People and of Money (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), 2547; Rainer Baubck, Notwendige ffnung und legitime Schliessung liberaler Demokratien, Arch. Europ. de Sociologie XXXVIII (1997): 71103; Gerard Elfstrom, Ethics for a Shrinking World (Houndsmill & London: Macmillan, 1990); John Isbister, Are Immigration Controls Ethical?, Social Justice 23, no. 3 (1996): 5467; and Charles Jones, Global Justice: Defending Cosmopolitanism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 7. See my earlier articles: Citizenship and Exclusion, Political Theory 23, no. 2 (1995): 21146; Fairly Open Borders, in Veit Bader, ed., Citizenship and Exclusion (Houndsmill & London: Macmillan, 1997), 2860; and Practical Philosophy and First Admission, SAIS Review 20, no. 1 (2000) 3960. 8. Frederick Whelan, Citizenship and the Right to Leave, American Political Science Review 75, no. 3 (1981): 643f. 9. See sharp criticism by William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Modern Morals and Happiness (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976). 10. Whelan, Citizenship and the Right to Leave, 649; James Nafziger, The General Admission of Aliens under International Law, The American Journal of International Law 77, no. 4 (1983): 80747. 11. Peter Schuck and Rogers Smith, Citizenship without Consent: The Illegal Alien in American Polity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 48. 12. Michael Teitelbaum, Right versus Right, Foreign Affairs 50, no.1, 2159. 13. Schuck and Smith, Citizenship Without Consent. 14. Thomas Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America, in Merrill Peterson, ed., The Portable Jefferson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), 321. 15. Whelan, Citizenship and the Right to Leave, 650.
355
16. Immanuel Kant, ber den Gemeinspruch (1793) and Zum ewigen Frieden, (1795), Kleine Schriften zur Geschichtsphilosophie, Ethik und Politik (Leipzig: Meiner, 1913), 135. 17. Henry Sidgwick, The Elements of Politics, 3e (London: MacMillan, 1908); in the following cited parenthetically. 18. See Jos Ingls, Study of Discrimination in Respect of the Right of Everyone to Leave Any Country, United Nations, E/CN. 4/Sub. 2/229/Rev. 1 (New York, 1963); Antonio Cassese, On the Universal Level, in K. Vasak and S. Liskofsky, eds., The Right to Leave and to Return (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1976), 516; Frederick Whelan, Citizenship and the Right to Leave; Hurst Hannum, The Right to Leave and Return in International Law and Practice (Washington, DC: The Procedural Aspects of International Law Institute, 1985); Alan Dowty, Closed Borders: The Contemporary Assault on Freedom of Movement (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). 19. Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1983). 20. Brian Barry, Democracy, Power, and Justice (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989); Onora ONeil, Transnational Justice, in David Held, ed., Political Theory Today (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 276304; Terry Nardin and David Mapel, Convergence and Divergence in International Ethics, in Terry Nardin and David Mapel, eds., Traditions of International Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 297322; Nardin, Alternative Ethical Perspectives on Transnational Migration, in Barry and Goodin, eds., Free Movement, 267278; Barry and Goodin, The Quest for Consistency: A Sceptical View, in Barry and Goodin, eds., Free Movement, 27987; Stephen Perry, Immigration, Justice, and Culture, in Warren Schwartz, ed., Justice in Immigration (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 94135; and Jones, Global Justice. 21. See already Sidgwick, The Elements of Politics; see also Alasdair MacIntyre, Is Patriotism a Virtue?, Lindley Lecture, University of Kansas, 1994: 5f; Stephen Nathanson, In Defense of Moderate Patriotism, Ethics 99 (1989): 539; Donald Galloway, Liberalism, Globalism, and Immigration, Queens Law Journal 18 (1993): 274f; Sissela Bok, From Part to Whole, in Martha Nussbaum and Joshua Cohen, eds., For Love of Country (Boston: Beacon, 1996), 40; David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995): 49f, 78; Simon Caney, Individuals, Nations, and Obligations, in Simon Caney, David George, and Peter Jones, eds., National Rights, International Obligations (Boulder: Westview, 1996), 7; Jones, Global Justice, 15f; and M. Freeman, Obligations, Institutions and International Justice, ECPR paper, Mannheim, 2631 March 1999: 2ff. 22. Sidgwick, The Elements of Politics; Peter Singer, Famine, Affluence, and Morality, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1, no. 3 (1972): 229243; Robert Goodin, Protecting the Vulnerable (Chicago: University of Chicago University, 1985); idem., What is so Special about Our Fellow Countrymen?, Ethics 98 (1988): 663686; idem., If People Were Money, in Barry and Goodin, eds., Free Movement, 621; and Elfstrom, Ethics for a Shrinking World. 23. David Hendrickson, Migration in Law and Ethics: A Realist Perspective, in Barry and Goodin, eds., Free Movement, 213232; and Hans Morgenthau, In Defence of the National Interest (New York: Albert Knopf, 1951). 24. Libertarian property (Hillel Steiner, Libertarianism and the Transnational Migration of People, in Barry and Goodin, eds., Free Movement, 8794; Cecile Fabre, Justice, Fairness and World Ownership, unpublished manuscript, 1999) or natural rights (Anne Dummett, The Transnational Migration of People Seen from within a Natural Law Tradition, in Barry and Goodin, eds., Free Movement, 169180) or the different varieties of egalitarian liberalism (Rawls, Beitz, Pogge, Barry; Ronald Dworkin, Laws Empire (London: Fontana, 1986); Carens, Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders, Review of Politics 49, no. 2 (1987): 251273; idem., Migration and Morality: A Liberal Egalitarian Perspective, 2547; idem., Immigration, Welfare, and Justice, in Schwartz, ed., Justice in Immigration, 117; Dowty, Closed Borders; Rainer Baubck, Transnational Citizenship (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1994); Simon Caney, Human Rights and the Rights of States, International Political Science Review 18, no. 1 (1997): 2737; idem., Review Article: International Distributive Justice, ECPR paper, Mannheim, 2631 March 1999; M. Freeman, Obligations, Institutions and International Justice) or basic rights (Henry Shue, Basic Rights (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); Jones, Global Justice).
356
25. Onora ONeill, Lifeboat Earth, in Charles Beitz, Marshall Cohen, Thomas Scanlon, and John Simmons, eds., International Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); Faces of Hunger: An Essay on Poverty, Justice, and Development (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986); Transnational Justice, in Held (ed.), Political Theory Today; Justice and Boundaries, in Christopher Brown, ed., Political Restructuring in Europe: Ethical Perspectives (London: Routledge, 1994), 6988; and Towards Justice and Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 26. Moderate patriotism like Nathanson (In Defense of Moderate Patriotism, and Patriotism, Morality, and Peace (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993) or George Fletcher (Loyalty: An Essay on the Morality of Relationships (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)), liberal nationalism (Whelan, Citizenship and Freedom of Movement; Miller, On Nationality; Yael Tamir, Liberal Nationalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy, 2e (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)) to defenders of socialdemocratic welfare-states (Michael Walzer, Response to Veit Bader, Political Theory 23, no. 2 (1995), 24749; Andreas Fllesdal, Do welfare obligations end at the boundaries of the Nation State?, in Koslowski and Fllesdal, eds., Restructuring the Welfare State (Berlin: Springer, 1997), 14563; Claus Offe, Demokratie und Wahlfahrtsstaat and Wolfgang Streeck, Einleitung: Internationale Wirtschaft, nationale Demokratie?, in Streeck, ed., Internationale Wirtschaft Nationale Demokratie (Frankfurt & New York: Campus, 1998), 99136 and 1158) to tougher communitarianism and more exclusive patriotism (MacIntyre, Is Patriotism a Virtue?), neo-Hegelianism (Mervyn Frost, Ethics in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)). 27. Singer versus Sidgwick (see ONeill, Transnational Justice, 282f, for the indeterminacy of utilitarianism) or the Rawlsian Pogge (Thomas Pogge, Realizing Rawls (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1989); An Egalitarian Law of Peoples, Philosophy and Public Affairs 23 (2001), 195224); Global Justice (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001)) versus Rawls (see James Woodward, Commentary: Liberalism and Migration, in Barry and Goodin, eds., Free Movement; Nardin, Alternative Ethical Perspectives on Transnational Migration, 268f, 274ff), for egalitarian liberalism. 28. Joseph Raz, Practical Reason and Norms (London: Hutchinson, 1975); Jrgen Habermas, Justification and Application (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993); Veit Bader, Citizenship and Exclusion, Political Theory 23, no. 2 (1995): 215f. 29. Goodin, Commentary: The Political Realism of Free Movement, in Barry and Goodin, eds., Free Movement. 30. Roberto Unger, Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Jules Coleman and Sandra Harding, Citizenship, the Demands of Justice, and the Moral Relevance of Political Borders, in Schwartz, ed., Justice in Immigration, 38. 31. Mark Tushnet, Immigration Policy in Liberal Political Theory, in Schwartz, ed., Justice in Immigration, 149. 32. Charles Beitz, Justice and International Relations, in Beitz et al., International Ethics, 306; Joseph Carens, Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders, 262, and extensively Realistic and Idealistic Approaches to the Ethics of Migration, International Migration Review 30, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 15670, and Open Borders and Liberal Limits: A Response to Isbister, International Migration Review 34 (Summer 2000); Goodin, What is so Special about Our Fellow Countrymen?, 686; Barry, Democracy, Power, and Justice, 447; Pogge, Realizing Rawls, 259ff; Baubck, Transnational Citizenship, 327ff; Bader, Fairly Open Borders, 51f. 33. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Harvard, 1995), 84f. 34. Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy, 4; Robert Goodin, If People Were Money, in Barry and Goodin, eds., Free Movement, 7. 35. Donald Galloway, Liberalism, Globalism, and Immigration, 165ff; see below III.1. 36. Carens, Migration and Morality: A Liberal Egalitarian Perspective, and Reconsidering Open Borders, International Migration Review 33 (Winter 1999). 37. Carens, Migration and Morality: A Liberal Egalitarian Perspective; Goodin, If People Were Money.
357
38. Woodward, Commentary: Liberalism and Migration, 61; Thomas Pogge, Poverty and Migration: Normative Issues, in Veit Bader, ed., Citizenship and Exclusion. 39. See Paul Krugman and Maurice Obstfield, International Economics (New York: Harper Collins, 1991). 40. Howard Chang, Liberalized Immigration as Free Trade: Economic Welfare and the Optimal Immigration Policy, University of Pennsylvania Law Review 145 (1997): 11471244. 41. Robert Goodin, If People Were Money. 42. Barry, The Quest for Consistency: A Sceptical View. 43. Roberto Unger, Democracy Realized (London: Verso, 1988), 17587. 44. Maurice Cranston, What are Human Rights? (New York: Taplinger, 1973), 31; see also Dowty, Closed Borders, 12; Carens, Migration and Morality: A Liberal Egalitarian Perspective, 26ff; Baubck, Notwendige ffnung und legitime Schliessung liberaler Demokratien. 45. Carens, Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders, 255ff; Whelan, Citizenship and Freedom of Movement, 8ff for Rawlsian perspectives 46. Albert Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and the State, World Politics 31, no.1 (Winter 1976): 92. 47. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), 13.2, 14, 15; European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), 4th Prot. 1963, 2.2; ICCP 12.2. 48. Baubck, Notwendige ffnung und legitime Schliessung liberaler Demokratien, 75; Aristide Zolberg, Astri Suhrke, and Sergio Aguayo, Escape from Violence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 270. 49. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCP), 12.3. 50. Dowty, Closed Borders; Baubck Notwendige ffnung und legitime Schliessung liberaler Demokratien. 51. ICCP 12.1, ECHR (European Covenant on Human Rights) 4th Prot. 2.1 52. See James Nafziger, The General Admission of Aliens under International Law, The American Journal of International Law 77, no. 4 (1983). 53. John Rawls, Constitutional Liberty and the Concept of Justice, in NOMOS VI (New York: Atherton, 1963); Whelan, Citizenship and Freedom of Movement, 35. 54. Carens, Migration and Morality: A Liberal Egalitarian Perspective, 27, 32; Goodin, If People Were Money, 12; Dummett, The Transnational Migration of People Seen from Within a Natural Law Tradition, 173. 55. Democratic self-determination may also provide an important moral argument against free movement within federal states where federal units have substantial autonomy, though in this case it is fairly generally accepted that it cannot provide sufficient justification for restricting freedom of movement. As long as democratic self-determination even in multi-level polities (like Switzerland, Canada, or the EU) is still concentrated on the level of the nation-state, state borders are, in my view, also morally more important than borders between cantons or provinces and the analogy-argument is weakened. Hence, my criticism is a contextual, conditional one because things may change (e.g., in the EU). It does, hopefully, not conflict with my criticism of the conventional view of the moral legitimacy of the existing state system presented below. Critical comments by an anonymous referee induced me to clarify this issue. 56. Baubck, Notwendige ffnung und legitime Schliessung liberaler Demokratien, 93f. 57. Zolberg etal., Escape from Violence, 30ff. 58. Guy Goodwin-Gill, Asylum: The Law and Politics of Change, lecture, Amsterdam, 19 October 1994: 7; J.C. Hathaway, Fundamental Justice, International Comity, and the Deflection of Refugees from Canada, conference paper, Organizing Diversity, Berg en Dal, November 1995; Dowty, Closed Borders, 183; Galloway, Liberalism, Globalism, and Immigration, 171f; Reg Whitaker, Refugees: The Security Dimension, in Citizenship Studies 2, no. 3 (November 1998): 413434. 59. Zolberg et al., Escape from Violence, 33. 60. Sidgwick, The Elements of Politics, 255; Carens, Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders, 270; idem., Migration and Morality: A Liberal Egalitarian Perspective, 34ff; idem., Reconsidering Open Borders; idem., Open Borders and Liberal Limits: A Response to Isbister, in International Migration Review 34 (Summer 2000); Robert Goodin, If People Were
358
Money; Stephen Perry, Immigration, Justice, and Culture, in Warren Schwartz, ed., Justice in Immigration; Mark Tushnet, Immigration Policy in Liberal Political Theory, in ibid., 148ff; Michael Treblicock, The Case for a Liberal Immigration Policy, in ibid., 243. 61. Shue, Basic Rights. 62. Whelan, Citizenship and Freedom of Movement, 11ff; Carens, Migration and Morality: A Liberal Egalitarian Perspective, 35ff; Barry, The Quest for Consistency: A Sceptical View, 282; Isbister, Are Immigration Controls Ethical?, 60; Pogge, Poverty and Migration: Normative Issues,; but see the migration versus aid arguments: Whelan, Citizenship and Freedom of Movement, 12ff; Stephen Perry, Immigration, Justice, and Culture, 103. 63. Woodward, Commentary: Liberalism and Migration, 67. 64. Goodin, If People Were Money, 8f. 65. Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994). 66. Shue, Basic Rights; Elfstrom, Ethics for a Shrinking World; Peter Unger, Living High & Letting Die (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Pogge, Poverty and Migration: Normative Issues; Pogge, Global Justice. 67. Peter Singer, Famine, Affluence, and Morality, Shue, Basic Rights; Elfstrom, Ethics for a Shrinking World; ONeill, Faces of Hunger. 68. Michael Walzer, Response, in David Miller and Michael Walzer, eds., Pluralism, Justice, and Equality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 293. 69. Institutionalist or collectivist: Shue, Goodin, Elfstrom, Jones; overly individualist: Singer, P. Unger. 70. Elfstrom, Ethics for a Shrinking World, 14ff, 27; see Jones, Global Justice, 4149; Casiano Hacker-Cordn, Global Justice and Human Malfare, unpublished PhD manuscript, ch. 1: 19. 71. Charles Beitz, Sovereignty and Morality in International Affairs, in David Held, ed., Political Theory Today, 243. 72. Carens, Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders, 252. See also Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations; idem., Justice and International Relations, in Charles Beitz, et al., eds., International Ethics; idem., Sovereignty and Morality in International Affairs; Bruce Ackerman, Social Justice in the Liberal State (New Haven: Yale University Press), 93; Walzer, Spheres of Justice, 55; Schuck and Smith, Citizenship without Consent, 2; Whelan, Citizenship and Freedom of Movement, 10; Pogge, Realizing Rawls, 247; Elfstrom, Ethics for a Shrinking World, 136; Dummet, The Transnational Migration of People Seen from within a Natural Law Tradition, 171; Stephen Nathanson, Patriotism, Morality, and Peace (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993), 169; Donald Galloway, Strangers and Members, Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence VII (1): 152f; Martha Nussbaum, Reply, in For Love of Country?, 133; Baubck, Notwendige ffnung und legitime Schliessung liberaler Demokratien, 90. 73. Galloway, Strangers and Members, 165ff. 74. Barry, Democracy, Power, and Justice, 452. 75. Minimalist theories of equality are more convincing because (i) they accept an irreducible plurality of distribuenda (Amartya Sen, Equality of What?; Walzer, Spheres of Justice), (ii) they are more immune against challenges of cultural imperialism because they can easily take into account that distribuenda are not only culturally interpreted but also weighed differentially, and (iii) they are more robust concerning inherent problems of comparing and aggregating different resources and rewards. 76. See Thomas Pogge, Eine globale Rohstoffdividende, Analyse und Kritik 17 (December 1995): 200; Bader, ed., Citizenship and Exclusion for extensive references. 77. See ibid., 36ff. 78. Isbister, Are Immigration Controls Ethical?, 60. 79. Pogge, Poverty and Migration: Normative Issues, 22. 80. Jones, Global Justice, 112. 81. Veit Bader, Institutions, Culture and Identity of Trans-National Citizenship, in Colin Crouch, Klau Eder, and Damian Tambini, eds., Citizenship, Markets, and the State (Oxford: Oxford
359
University Press, 2001); Samuel Scheffler, Individual Responsibility in a Global Age, in Social Philosophy and Policy 12, no. 1 (1995): 21936. 82. David Miller, Market, State, and Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 41; idem., On Nationality, ch. 3; George Fletcher, Loyalty; Alasdair MacIntyre, Is Patriotism a Virtue? 83. Caney, Individuals, Nations, and Obligations, 121ff; see also Stephen Nathanson, Patriotism, Morality, and Peace, pt. II; Samuel Scheffler, Boundaries and Allegiances (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 84. Nussbaum, Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism, 13; Nathanson, Patriotism, Morality, and Peace; Lawrence Blum, Friendship, Altruism, and Morality (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1988). 85. Caney, Individuals, Nations, and Obligations, 126f. 86. Henry Shue, Mediating Duties, Ethics 98 (1998): 687704. 87. Goodin, What is so Special about Our Fellow Countrymen?, 665. 88. David Miller, On Nationality, 59, 70, 73. 89. Nussbaum, Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism, 5. 90. Shue, Mediating Duties, 693. 91. Miller, On Nationality; Michael Walzer, The Rights of Political Communities, in Beitz et al., eds., International Ethics; Michael Walzer, The Moral Standing of States: A Response to Four Critics, in ibid.; Galloway, Liberalism, Globalism, and Immigration, 286f; Scheffler, Individual Responsibility in a Global Age; Stephen Perry, Immigration, Justice, and Culture, 99f; Veit Bader, Reasonable Partiality and Priority for Compatriots?, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 8 (2005): 83103. 92. Veit Bader, The Cultural Conditions of Transnational Citizenship, Political Theory 25, no. 6 (1997): 783ff. 93. Nathanson, Patriotism, Morality, and Peace; Veit Bader, For Love of Country, Political Theory 27, no. 3 (1999): 37997. 94. John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); Ronald Dworkin, Laws Empire, 206. 95. Perry, Immigration, Justice, and Culture, 109; MacIntyre, Is Patriotism a Virtue?, 6. 96. Baubck, Transnational Citizenship, 315. 97. Whelan, Citizenship and Freedom of Movement; Galloway, Strangers and Members; Andrew Mason, Special Obligations to Compatriots, Ethics 107 (1997): 42747. 98. Beitz et. Al, eds., International Ethics. 99. Whelan, Citizenship and Freedom of Movement, 24f. 100. Goodin, What is so Special about Our Fellow Countrymen?, 685; Elfstrom, Ethics for a Shrinking World, 171; Steiner, Libertarianism and the Transnational Migration of People, 93. 101. Shue, Basic Rights; ONeill, Transnational Justice. 102. Shue, Mediating Duties, 695. 103. Baubck, Transnational Citizenship, 308. 104. Millers account (On Nationality, 76) is particularly disappointing in this regard. 105. Shue, Mediating Duties, 702. 106. Richard Falk, On Humane Governance (Cambridge: Polity, 1995). 107. Baubck, Transnational Citizenship, 320. 108. Luigi Ferrajoli, Dai diritti de cittadino al diritti della persona, in Danilo Zolo, ed., La Cittadinanza (Roma and Bari: Laterza, 1994); Bader, Citizenship of the European Union, 15967. 109. Michael Teitelbaum, Right versus Right; more sophisticated: Howard Chang, Liberalized Immigration as Free Trade: Economic Welfare and the Optimal Immigration Policy. 110. Baubck, Transnational Citizenship, 178ff. 111. Bader, Citizenship and Exclusion, 211f. 112. Claus Offe, Demokratie und Wahlfahrtsstaat, 105; Miller, On Nationality, 96. 113. Ackerman, Social Justice in the Liberal State, 95. 114. See Whelan, Citizenship and Freedom of Movement, 17ff, 29ff.
360
115. Fllesdal, Do welfare obligations end at the boundaries of the Nation State?, 157. 116. Jones, Global Justice, 165f. 117. Michael Walzer, Response, in Miller and Walzer, eds., Pluralism, Justice, and Equality; Isbister, Are Immigration Controls Ethical?; 118. Nathanson, Patriotism, Morality, and Peace, 178; Philippe van Parijs, Commentary: Citizenship Exploitation, Unequal Exchange and the Breakdown of Popular Sovereignty, in Brian Barry and Robert Goodin, eds., Free Movement, 164; Isbister, Are Immigration Controls Ethical?, 64; Baubck, Notwendige ffnung und legitime Schliessung liberaler Demokratien, 100; Jones, Global Justice, 169. 119. Wolfgang Streeck, Einleitung: Internationale Wirtschaft, nationale Demokratie?; Fritz Scharpf, Demokratie in der transnationalen Politik, in ibid., 15174; Paul Hirst and Graham Thompson, Globalization in Question? (Cambridge: Polity, 1998); Fritz Scharpf and Vivien Schmidt, eds., Welfare and Work in the Open Economy, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 120. Streeck, Einleitung: Internationale Wirtschaft, nationale Demokratie?, 1825; Offe, Demokratie und Wohlfahrtsstaat, 106f, 111f. 121. Ibid.; Streeck, Einleitung: Internationale Wirtschaft, nationale Demokratie?; Miller, On Nationality. 122. See vs. Walzer: Veit Bader, Reply to Michael Walzer, Political Theory 23, no. 2 (1995): 251. 123. See A. Benz, Politkverflechtung ohne Politkverflechtungsfalle, PVS 3 (1998): 55889; David Vogel, Trading Up and Governing Across, Journal of European Public Policy 4 (1997): 55671; Fritz Scharpf, Governing in Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); idem., Problem-Solving Effectiveness and Democratic Accountability in the EU, MPIfG working paper no. 1, 2003. 124. Veit Bader, Building European Institutions. Beyond Strong Ties and Weak Commitments, in Seyla Benhabib, Ian Shapiro, and Danilo Petranovich, eds., Identities, Affiliations, and Allegiances (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 125. Streeck, Einleitung: Internationale Wirtschaft, nationale Demokratie?, 33ff. 126. Note that this implies a decisive turn away from traditional conceptions of egalitarianism requiring uniform application of the same standards for all both inside states and globally. Here, differential standards in different contexts are seen as morally permissible within states (provided they guarantee to satisfy historically defined basic needs (e.g. by way of an individualized, incomeindependent GMI for all residents)), within the EU (Philippe Schmitter, How to democratize the European Union . . . and Why Bother? (Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000)) and globally (Bill Jordan and Franck Dvell, The Boundaries of Equality and Justice (Cambridge: Polity, 2003). Note also, that morally permissible is not the same as politically desirable: all radical democrats and socialists like myself have excellent reasons to strive for less inegalitarian internal and global relations. 127. Joseph Carens, Culture, Citizenship, and Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Bhikhu Parekh, Rethinking Multiculturalism (London: Macmillan, 2000). 128. Bader, Dilemmas of Ethnic Affirmative Action, Citizenship Studies 2, no. 3 (1998): 43573; idem., The Cultural Conditions of Transnational Citizenship and Religious Pluralism: Secularism or Priority for Democracy?, Political Theory 25, no. 6 (1997) and 27, no. 5 (1999). 129. Nathanson, Patriotism, Morality, and Peace. 130. Veit Bader, Culture and Identity. Contesting Constructivism, Ethnicities 1, no. 2 (2001): 27799. 131. Hurst Hannum, Autonomy, Sovereignty, and Self-determination (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990); Maurice Rickard, Liberalism, Multiculturalism, and Minority Protection, Social Theory and Practice 20, no. 2 (1994): 143170; Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship; idem., Contemporary Political Philosophy; Rainer Baubck, Why Stay Together?, in Will Kymlicka and Wayne Norman, eds., Citizenship in Diverse Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 36694; Graham Smith, Sustainable Federalism, Democratization, and Distributive Justice, in ibid., 34565.
361
132. Perry, Immigration, Justice, and Culture, 113ff. 133. Whelan, Citizenship and Freedom of Movement , 22f; Elfstrom, Ethics for a Shrinking World, 154. 134. Veit Bader, The Arts of Forecasting and Policymaking, in Bader, ed., Citizenship and Exclusion, 15574. 135. Richard Falk, On Humane Governance; David Held, Cosmopolitan Democracy (Cambridge: Polity, 1995).
Veit Bader is Professor of Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, and a member of the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies. He is the author of numerous articles on religious diversity, cultural identity, and associative democracy, and editor of Religious Pluralism, Politics, and the State, a special volume of Ethical Theory and Moral Practice (2003), Citizenship and Exclusion (1997), and co-editor of Associative Democracy: The Real Third Way?, a special volume of Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (2001).

The Ethics of Immigration: Veit Bader

Transféré par

Informations du document

Description originale:

Titre original

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

The Ethics of Immigration: Veit Bader

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

The Ethics of Immigration

Constellations Volume 12, Number 3, 2005

2005 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

2005 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Constellations Volume 12, Number 3, 2005

Ethics of Immigration: Veit Bader

Constellations Volume 12, Number 3, 2005

Ethics of Immigration: Veit Bader II. Arguments in Favor of Open Borders

2005 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Constellations Volume 12, Number 3, 2005

Ethics of Immigration: Veit Bader

Constellations Volume 12, Number 3, 2005

Ethics of Immigration: Veit Bader

Constellations Volume 12, Number 3, 2005

Ethics of Immigration: Veit Bader

Constellations Volume 12, Number 3, 2005

Ethics of Immigration: Veit Bader

Constellations Volume 12, Number 3, 2005

Ethics of Immigration: Veit Bader

2005 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Constellations Volume 12, Number 3, 2005

Ethics of Immigration: Veit Bader

Constellations Volume 12, Number 3, 2005

Ethics of Immigration: Veit Bader

Constellations Volume 12, Number 3, 2005

2005 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Constellations Volume 12, Number 3, 2005

Ethics of Immigration: Veit Bader

Constellations Volume 12, Number 3, 2005

Ethics of Immigration: Veit Bader

Constellations Volume 12, Number 3, 2005

Ethics of Immigration: Veit Bader

Constellations Volume 12, Number 3, 2005

Ethics of Immigration: Veit Bader

2005 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi