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A mid-level perspective on the ethics of immigration policies
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1743-8772; 1369-8230
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Critical review of international social and political philosophy, 2025, OnlineFirst
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BAUBÖCK, Rainer, A mid-level perspective on the ethics of immigration policies, Critical review of international social and political philosophy, 2025, OnlineFirst - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/78302
Abstract
This paper considers various aspects of Joseph Carens’s argument in The Ethics of Immigration. It discusses, first, his analogy between internal and international free movement. I argue that it does not sufficiently take into account the different conditions for self-government of municipalities and provinces nested within independent states and those of states within the international political system. Second, the paper argues for expanding international free movement as a citizenship right (through international agreements, regional unions and acceptance of multiple citizenship), whereas the claims of economic migrants on grounds of global distributive justice should instead be addressed through regular migration that is subject to immigration control. The common denominator of these policies is a strategy of ‘internalizing’ claims to territorial admission in democracies so that they can also be perceived as promoting a liberal conception of the common good. Third, a similar approach can also be applied to the liberal international order. Here, I take issue with Carens’s analogy between citizenship in the global order and membership in feudal estates and propose instead to build on egalitarian, pluralistic and cooperative norms that are already enshrined in international law when promoting progressive reforms in the international arena. The paper concludes with a discussion of Carens’s distinction between real-world and ideal-world presuppositions. As an alternative to Carens’s ‘shifting presuppositions’ strategy, I suggest that action-guiding normative approaches should position themselves at a mid-level where they promote transformations of liberal democracies and the international order towards more open borders.
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Published online: 13 April 2025