Joseph H. Carens. The Ethics of Immigration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 384 pages. ISBN 9780199933839. US$35 (Hardback).
When philosophers and political theorists turn their attention to migration, they often prioritize general normative commitments, giving only secondary concern to whether these commitments are reflected in policy. As a result, pressing issues affecting the status, rights, and life-chances of immigrants can get lost in abstract debates over the right of states to exclude individuals, or the rights of individuals to associate with whomever they like. Joseph Carens's new book, The Ethics of Immigration, inverts this tendency by focusing first on existing immigration control practices, examining their normative justifications, and then pushing them in the direction of justice. For much of the book, this ‘political theory from the ground up’ approach allows Carens to elucidate moral guidelines for evaluating and reforming even the most concrete policy choices (9). Nevertheless, Carens does not disparage abstract theorizing, and the book ends with a revised version of his well-known ‘utopian’ argument for open borders (255). These two different approaches reflect the book's different but related aims. With the majority of the book, Carens aims to show that in an international order where sovereign states have the prerogative to control immigration, they are nonetheless significantly morally constrained in how they can exercise this control. With the open-borders argument, however, Carens aims to challenge the very assumption that sovereign states ought to have discretionary control over immigration in the first place. The book succeeds admirably on both accounts, although at least one central claim deserves further argumentation in future work.
The Ethics of Immigration is divided into two parts. Part I (Chapters 2–8) examines the ways that immigrants become members of democratic societies. According to Carens, social membership is distinct from citizenship. One becomes a member of a society by residing there for an extended period of time and forming an identity, interests, and personal attachments in that society, regardless of whether one pursues, or is granted, legal citizenship (50, 160). This is the situation of many immigrants currently living in democratic states, including legal permanent residents, temporary workers, irregular (undocumented) migrants, and settled refugees. Devoting separate chapters to each of these groups, Carens argues that social membership itself, rather than citizenship, generates moral claims to a robust array of rights that include security of residence, access to public education, and limited welfare benefits. These ‘membership-specific’ rights surpass the minimal protections of basic human rights but fall short of the privileges reserved for full citizens. However, Carens also argues that after a sufficient period of social membership, non-citizen immigrants should be granted access to full citizenship. Although the specifics of his arguments vary depending on which class of non-citizens he is discussing, all of the chapters of Part I build toward the overarching claim that there is no consistent justification for denying a robust array of rights, and ultimately citizenship itself, to de facto members of society.
In Part II (Chapters 9–13), Carens shifts from questions about the status of admitted immigrants to questions about whether and how democratic states ought to control admissions. Here, his aim is to show that democracies are significantly morally constrained in their ability to turn away potential immigrants. For instance, he argues that they cannot exclude individuals on the basis of their race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation, and they are obligated to admit refugees, at least temporarily (174–5, 195–6). These arguments connect to Part I in an important way: if democratic states are obligated to give up some discretion over admissions, then they must also relinquish some control over who can become a member of society and, ultimately, who is eligible for citizenship. However, Part II is split by two different approaches to this general argument for political inclusion. In the first half (Chapters 9–10), Carens examines current immigration policies and argues that their own moral rationale demands that they be made more open and inclusive. This technique is consistent with the detailed, non-ideal theorizing of Part I. In Chapters 11–13, Carens breaks from non-ideal theory to challenge the ‘conventional view that states are morally entitled to control admissions’ (225). Without attempting a full-fledged ideal theory of justice, Carens argues that the conventional view is wrong, and that ‘our deepest moral principles require a commitment to open borders (with modest qualifications) in a world where inequality between states is much reduced’ (288). For many readers in philosophy and political theory, this new elaboration of Carens's familiar open-borders argument will be the highlight of the book.
As in previous versions of the argument, Carens claims that open borders are necessary to facilitate the right to free movement that all individuals possess by virtue of their self-directing autonomy and equal moral worth.Footnote1 Noting that the freedom to move within borders is well established as a basic human right, Carens explains that free movement is both an intrinsic and instrumental good—it is a vital liberty in itself, and it is a necessary condition for realizing equal opportunity and distributive justice (227–8). Carens then ‘cantilevers’ these intuitive claims by arguing that there is no principled justification for restricting free movement to the interior of states. For all the reasons that we acknowledge a right to move freely within borders, we ought to acknowledge a right to move freely across borders as well (237–52). By maintaining closed borders and discretionary immigration control, states deny this right and, in the case of democracies, violate their own basic commitments to individual freedom and equality.
Of course, this might be acceptable if closed borders can be justified by the very democratic commitments in question—for instance, if free movement, equality of opportunity, and distributive justice are moral claims that arise only within political communities. This ‘bounded justice’ view is a widely held presupposition in philosophy and political theory, and Carens devotes much of Chapter 12 to refuting it. This is where followers of liberal political theory's open/closed borders debate will find the most new material.Footnote2 Taking aim at Michael Walzer, David Miller, and John Rawls, Carens argues that the bounded justice view provides only ‘some contingent and self-limiting arguments that justify restriction on immigration under certain circumstances’ (287). However, theories of bounded justice offer nothing that can justify current practices of border closure, and they provide weak (at best) support for the conventional assumption that states are entitled to discretionary immigration control. Viewed in the light of Carens's argument, political theory's widespread assumption that state boundaries inscribe the appropriate site of justice is revealed to be just that—an assumption. When we recognize that closed boundaries coerce individuals, violate freedom, and perpetuate injustice, we ought to discard this assumption as a harmful prejudice.
Overall, The Ethics of Immigration succeeds in its main aims. However, as is to be expected in a book this wide-ranging, there are some elements that could benefit from further elaboration. In particular, Carens needs to clarify the link between social membership and political citizenship, which he invokes, but does not fully explain, at key moments throughout the book. In his discussions of temporary workers, undocumented persons, refugees, and other non-citizen immigrants, Carens convincingly argues that, with enough time, such persons become members of society and, on the basis of their membership, they deserve a robust array of rights. However, more argumentation is needed to explain why these persons should also be granted eventual access to citizenship. Even if the gap between citizen and non-citizen member is not as morally significant as is commonly thought—a point Carens argues forcefully in Chapter 5—it is not obvious why the state ought to close this gap by offering citizenship to long-term members. Granted, the state ought to recognize the social membership of long-term residents in some legal/political form, but Carens gives no strong argument as to why this recognition must take the form of citizenship. One could argue that the status of legal permanent resident, together with most of the rights that Carens believes are owed to this class of non-citizens, would be sufficient to recognize social membership. Why is more needed, and why citizenship in particular?
This is not a minor question about legally codifying degrees of political belonging. The difference between citizen and non-citizen comes down to whether an individual can participate in the formal democratic process (by voting, running for office, etc.), and The Ethics of Immigration needs a fuller argument for including long-term members in that process. This need is especially apparent regarding undocumented migrants, since detractors often argue that unsanctioned border crossing is enough to disqualify them from basic rights like free public education, let alone full participation in the demos. Unfortunately, here Carens is implicitly running up against democracy's intractable ‘boundary problem’, so a full argument is perhaps too much to expect.Footnote3 He sidesteps the issue by consistently routing his reasoning through Chapters 3 and 8, where he names two ‘distinct but related foundations’ for long-term members’ claims to citizenship: the fact of social membership itself and ‘principles of democratic legitimacy’ (50). As I have suggested, the first foundation only justifies some form of legal recognition, but not necessarily citizenship; it doesn't explain the link between membership in society and full access to the political process. The second foundation appears intended to do just that, but it remains vague. Carens seems to be appealing to a version of the ‘all-subjected’ or ‘all-affected’ principles of democratic inclusion, but these principles do not unproblematically do the work that Carens needs them to do.Footnote4 Their coherence and democratic qualities are debated by theorists, and political practice offers no clear guidance, because many states claiming democratic legitimacy in fact do not grant citizenship or voting rights to all adults, or even all adult members, who are continually subject to the law.Footnote5 Further normative argument is needed, then, to support Carens's important claim that long-term residents deserve to have their social membership recognized with citizenship and the corresponding access to formal political processes.
This issue aside, Carens generally does an excellent job outlining the normative foundations of his claims and highlighting their connection to—and tensions with—existing immigration policy. This strengthens not only his major arguments, but also two side-arguments that should not be overlooked. First, in Chapter 7, Carens argues that democracies should build a ‘firewall’ separating the enforcement of immigration law from the protection of individual rights (133–5). This argument directly opposes policies that merge immigration enforcement and policing, such as Arizona's S.B. 1070 and the U.S. Secure Communities program. Second, in Chapter 10, Carens argues that protocols for refugee resettlement should ‘break the link’ between a state's responsibility to grant asylum claims and its responsibility to provide permanent safe haven (216–17). This proposal might ameliorate the reluctance of democracies to grant asylum claims for fear of being overburdened with the responsibility for resettlement. Even on their own, these two minor arguments will be invaluable for readers working at the intersection of theory and policy. Moreover, they illustrate the qualities that make The Ethics of Immigration as a whole so successful. By embedding specific reforms within the grander theoretical project of challenging closed-border immigration controls, Carens brings together concrete policy and abstract theory in a powerful form of political criticism.
In sum, The Ethics of Immigration makes valuable contributions to the area of study that Carens himself helped to define. In its detailed and accessible examination of current immigration practices, it surpasses other texts in this area, and will be valuable not only to theorists, but also students of policy and law. In its self-styled ‘utopian’ theorizing, it furthers the closed border debate productively along lines that Carens has explored elsewhere, with new justifications for familiar claims and substantial replies to critics (255). Although some additional argument is needed in at least one area, The Ethics of Immigration succeeds in its main task of challenging readers to think critically about everyday democratic practices, and in much else besides.
Notes
1. See Carens, ‘Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders’, Review of Politics 49 (1987): 251–73 and ‘Migration and Morality: A Liberal Egalitarian Perspective’, in Free Movement: Ethical Issues in the Transnational Migration of People and Money, eds. Brian Barry and Robert E. Goodin (University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 25–47. The argument of Chapter 11 is based more obviously on the second essay, although it has been substantially updated.
2. In addition to criticizing the bounded justice view, Carens responds to a variety of potential objections concerning political self-determination, state sovereignty, national security, public order, and various communitarian commitments.
3. For the classic account of the problem, see Frederick G. Whelan, ‘Prologue: Democratic Theory and the Boundary Problem’, in Liberal Democracy: Nomos 25, eds. J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman (New York: New York University Press, 1983), 13–47.
4. The all-subjected principle states that all adults continually subject to laws should be able to participate in the procedures that create and shape those laws. The all-affected principle states that all adults affected (within a certain threshold) by political decisions should be able to participate in making of those decisions. Carens comes closest to invoking these principles on pages 50 and 58–9.
5. In the theoretical literature, Robert Goodin and Sofia Näsström raise difficulties concerning these principles. See Goodin, ‘Enfranchising All Affected Interests, and Its Alternatives’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 35 (2007): 40–68 and Näsström, ‘The Challenge of the All-Affected Principle’, Political Studies 59 (2011): 116–34. In practice, the United States (among others) does not grant citizenship to members of society on the basis of their ongoing subjection to the law, and it does not permit legal permanent residents access to the electoral process.