The right to immigrate and responsibility for the past

ABSTRACT

Do past state actions, such as the American conquest of northern Mexico, the British colonization of South Asia, and the Spanish expulsion of the Sephardim and Moriscos, grant contemporary Mexicans, South Asians, and the descendants of the Sephardim and Moriscos a particular right to immigrate to the United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain respectively? In this paper I examine three theoretical models for addressing this question: retrospective responsibility for historic injustice; the principle of coercively constituted identities; and the theory of remedial responsibility. I argue that remedial responsibility best justifies a particular right to immigrate through responsibility for the past for three reasons. First, it relieves us of the epistemological task of establishing causal responsibility. Second, it lessens the normative task of identifying a theory of unjust harm to establish moral responsibility. Finally, it facilitates the normative task of ranking the claims to immigrate of different individuals.

KEYWORDS:

• Right to immigrate
• responsibility for the past
• Rogers M. Smith
• David Miller

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Universidad de Burgos, Spain and at the Association for Political Theory Conference at Haverford College. I wish to thank the audiences at those venues for their helpful comments, along with Liza Williams, and the two anonymous reviewers from the Journal of Global Ethics.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I will primarily rely on Smith’s most recent presentation of this argument in (2015). In the first two versions of this theory, Smith depicts this as a three-step argument that omits the broader, first step (2008, 145; 2010, 6). The first step is included in the four-step version provided in the latter versions of this theory (2015; 2011, 548; 2014, 385-6).

2 I wish to thank one of the external reviewers for suggesting this interpretation.

3 For a more detailed analysis of how this case challenges the normative theories of Smith and Amighett and Nuti, see James (2021).

4 Miller himself does not develop the model I am presenting. He rejects any neat algorithm for sorting out the relative weight of each of these six methods of assigning remedial responsibility, asking us to rely on our own intuitions to sort this out (107). I think the basic importance of capacity, along with the relative normative weight of the other criteria, justify the analysis I am providing.

5 For his arguments against a general right to immigrate, see Miller (2007, 204-213; 2016, Chapters 2-3).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Rabinder James

Michael Rabinder James is Professor of Political Science at Bucknell University. He is the author of Deliberative Democracy and the Plural Polity (2004), along with articles appearing in the Journal of Politics, Polity, Ethics and Global Politics, the European Journal of Political Theory, and Politics, Groups, and Identities.