Republicanism and the legitimacy of state border controls

ABSTRACT

A number of recent articles have invoked the republican ideal of non-domination to justify either open borders, and/or the reduction of states’ discretionary powers to unilaterally determine immigration policy. In this paper, I show that such arguments are one-sided, as they fail to fully account for the deep ambiguity of the very ideal which they invoke. In fact, non-domination lends just as powerful support to maintaining state border controls as it does to dismantling them. There are only two exceptions to the rule. It is well established that promoting non-domination demands, one the one hand, that refugees be admitted, and second, that all migrants have a right to contest decisions concerning their own admission. But aside from these things, the policy implications of the ideal are unclear. In itself, therefore, it is insufficient to justify either open borders, or the reduction of states said discretionary powers. Such arguments will have to rely on other, additional moral criteria.

KEYWORDS:

• republicanism
• non-domination
• freedom
• immigration
• ethics of migration
• free state

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ The combining is sometimes done implicitly (at least in part). But even where Pettit’s control-based approach is not invoked explicitly, the idea that for an interference to count as non-arbitrary it needs to be controlled by those affected by it is nevertheless explicitly there.

² I identify two root causes behind the indeterminacy of the non-domination ideal. However, I do not rule out that there may be further possible causes.

³ Of course, issues regarding border-situations on the one hand and integration on the other need to be distinguished. For instance, even if it were established that the non-domination ideal supports state border controls, it still might be the case that it also supports the integration policies discussed.

⁴ Not all republicans need face this particular challenge. Arguments based on the value of non-domination alone do not for instance. Only arguments that embrace the republican political outlook more holistically to include the concern for virtue cultivation also. However, it is an open question whether support for non-domination qualifies an argument as republican or if the label applies only if support for non-domination is coupled with additional elements of the political outlook historically associated with republicanism.

⁵ This is not a policy Hoye supports. He merely states that it is a possible solution that follows from the empirical assumptions shared in the literature he examines.

⁶ This is a theoretical argument. Indeed, in most developed countries, migration has had a positive effect on the economy (d’Albis, Boubtane, and Coulibaly 2018). Notable exceptions to this rule are the extensive welfare states of Scandinavia (Nannestad 2007, p. 527–28).

⁷ The evidence regarding the extent of the differences in values held by natives and non-Western immigrants in Europe is mixed (see Alexander and Welzel 2011; Fuchs, Fan, and von Scheve 2020; Norris and Inglehart 2012; Tausch 2016).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Nemzeti Kutatási Fejlesztési és Innovációs Hivatal [PD-143603]; Nemzeti Kutatási Fejlesztési és Innovációs Hivatal [FK-138367].