Essays on Migration and Legitimacy: Towards a Cosmopolitan Statism

Abstract

This thesis contributes to a central debate in the political philosophy of migration over the legitimacy of the imposition and enforcement of exclusionary immigration policies. It consists of five chapters, which develop arguments that stand on their own but also contribute to a broader account of the legitimacy of immigration restrictions.

In Chapter 1, I introduce the debate between statists and cosmopolitans over the question whether states have a right to exclude prospective migrants from their territory, and I outline my central contribution to this debate. I distinguish a justice-dimension and a legitimacy-dimension of this debate, and I explain how I conceptualize the legitimacy of immigration restrictions. Next, I outline my account of the legitimacy of immigration restrictions, and locate this account in the literature. I describe my account as a "cosmopolitan statism", as it draws inspiration from Kant's theory of "cosmopolitan law" and combines elements of statist and cosmopolitan views in a novel way.

In the chapter "Claiming Authority across Borders", I defend the central tenets of my account of the legitimacy of immigration restrictions. This account constitutes a novel intermediary position in the long-standing debate between statists and cosmopolitans, which is why I describe it as a "cosmopolitan statism". My central thesis is that states can legitimately enforce immigration restrictions, but only if they claim that migrants are required to obey their immigration laws, and if these claims are actually valid. In contrast to many cosmopolitans, I argue that migrants are often required to obey foreign immigration laws, so that states can routinely make valid claims to legitimate authority vis-á-vis prospective migrants. But in contrast to many statists, I argue that states subject migrants to their political rule once they expect them to obey their immigration laws, and that the political subjection of migrants grounds additional obligations towards them that are substantially more demanding than statists usually acknowledge.

My defense of the legitimacy of immigration restrictions assumes that individuals do not have a moral right to global freedom of movement. But this assumption is controversial, as prominent open borders advocates defend such a right. In the chapter "Rights, Interests, and the Problem of Generality", I develop a constructive critique of the methodology that informs the most influential arguments for a moral human right to immigrate, the interest-based approach to the justification of moral rights. The critical part of my discussion revolves around a methodological challenge that I call the "problem of generality", which undermines most interest-based arguments, including the arguments for a human right to immigrate. The constructive part of my discussion shows that the problem of generality can be solved, although this solution significantly complicates interest-based arguments.

The notion of enforceable moral duties plays a central role in discussions of justice and of political legitimacy. My account of the legitimacy of immigration restrictions also invokes this notion, as I argue that migrants have enforceable moral duties to accept their exclusion if states have the authority to impose morally binding immigration laws. However, we still lack a convincing philosophical account of the phenomenon of enforceable moral duties, which is why a recent contribution diagnoses a "puzzle of enforceability". I address this puzzle in the chapter the "The Bundle Account of Enforceable Duties", where I argue that duties are enforceable just in case they are embedded in specific bundles of Hohfeldian moral positions. The puzzling question why certain duties are enforceable therefore dissolves into smaller non-puzzling questions concerning the justifiability of specific moral positions.

In the Chapter "Resistance at the Border, Self-Defense and Legitimate Injustice", I respond to an influential argument in the migration literature, according to which unjustly excluded migrants can always resist their exclusion in self-defense. I respond to this argument because it implies that unjust immigration restrictions are generally also illegitimate, as legitimate exercises of political power normally do not justify defensive resistance. I show that this argument fails because states often have a liberty right to rule over their borders, even when they exercise this liberty right to enforce substantively unjust immigration policies. This result then also informs my cosmopolitan statist account of the legitimacy of immigration restrictions.

A widely held view in the migration literature holds that all migrants whom states admit territorially must be put on a path to citizenship within a reasonable time frame. This view is typically based on the assumption that denizens – resident non-citizens – will be subjected to domination and will be deprived of the social basis of self-respect unless they are fully included in the democratic process. In the chapter "Denizenship and Democratic Equality", Suzanne Bloks and I argue that the original citizenship of some denizens can function as a substitute for their full democratic inclusion, as it can effectively protect them from domination, and provide them with the social bases of self-respect. We accordingly conclude that a politically passive guest status for denizens can, even in the long-run, be fully democratically legitimate, at least for denizens who are themselves citizens of democratic polities.