A mid-level perspective on the ethics of immigration policies

BAUBÖCK, Rainer

doi:10.1080/13698230.2025.2489247

A mid-level perspective on the ethics of immigration policies

dc.contributor.author	BAUBÖCK, Rainer
dc.date.accessioned	2025-04-22T07:57:42Z
dc.date.available	2025-04-22T07:57:42Z
dc.date.issued	2025
dc.description	Published online: 13 April 2025	en
dc.description.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.	en
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf	en
dc.identifier.citation	Critical review of international social and political philosophy, 2025, OnlineFirst	en
dc.identifier.doi	10.1080/13698230.2025.2489247
dc.identifier.issn	1743-8772
dc.identifier.issn	1369-8230
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/1814/78302
dc.language.iso	en	en
dc.orcid.upload	true	*
dc.publisher	Routledge	en
dc.relation.ispartof	Critical review of international social and political philosophy	en
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess	en
dc.rights.license	Attribution 4.0 International	*
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/	*
dc.subject	Migration
dc.subject	Immigration
dc.subject	Ethics
dc.subject	Citizenship
dc.subject	Pluralism
dc.title	A mid-level perspective on the ethics of immigration policies	en
dc.type	Article	en
dspace.entity.type	Publication
person.identifier.orcid	0000-0003-2336-7414
person.identifier.other	31459
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relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery	817b581a-8979-45b1-bab1-b592fd634729