Migration and Political Theory. Gillian Brock
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Название: Migration and Political Theory

Автор: Gillian Brock

Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited

Жанр: Афоризмы и цитаты

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isbn: 9781509535248

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СКАЧАТЬ policy instruments that can help guide improved global migration governance in the future and why this would constitute significant progress.

      1 * Getting accurate data on migrants can be tricky because not all countries use the same definition of who counts as an international migrant. While a common account involves defining migrants as those who have changed their country of usual residence, some children who have never migrated are counted in these statistics.

      Those who argue in favor of more freedom of movement across borders often draw on two common lines of argument. One concerns massive injustice and inequality in the international sphere. Consider how people across the globe experience vast disparities in life prospects. Some states are incapable of providing even the most basic goods and services, such as clean water and safe sanitation, necessary for a decent life. Others seem to provide the essentials for a good life relatively reliably for almost all citizens. States vary greatly in the opportunities they can make available, including the opportunities for reasonably well-paid jobs, educational attainment, healthcare, and life expectancy. Those states that can offer such prospects are often thought to be desirable destinations and constitute considerable pull factors. And there are many relevant push factors as well that drive people to leave their countries of origin, searching for greener pastures. These include high levels of violence, dysfunctional or repressive governments, and civil war. So, because prospects for good lives are not evenly distributed across the world, this provides at least one dominant motivation for why some might seek to move.

      This brings us to a second common consideration in favor of opening borders, which concerns human freedom and the right to free movement. Among the important values that we often think states should respect are people’s freedoms, especially their freedom of movement. If states restrict entry to their territory, are they violating an important freedom? Would they be violating a human right that people should enjoy?

      Michael Walzer and Joseph Carens have been especially influential in debates on these issues of how open or closed our borders should be. They deserve a special focus, given that their arguments have largely set the terms for much contemporary debate, and as they offer opposing views, they will anchor the two central parts of this chapter.

       2.1.1 Walzer, self-determination and protecting the character of communities

      Walzer starts from the important idea that states are (or should be) self-determining communities and that this has considerable value. Their ability to control borders is an important right if they are to continue to be self-determining. If they are unable to restrict immigration, this might have important implications for those who are already members of the state. Perhaps it will undermine the community’s ability to provide education, healthcare, or other necessary goods to current citizens. If too many enter, this might even affect the community’s character and identity, leading to considerable cultural change, perhaps even threatening the preservation of that community’s character entirely, should enough culturally diverse newcomers settle on the territory.

      When strangers are in need, just what are our obligations? For some strangers in need, we can supply resources where they are. In the case of refugees, however, what they need is access to our territory, for instance when they are victims of political or religious persecution. In some cases, there is a causal connection between our actions and their status as refugees now. An example of this would be the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War which created a large refugee population. Following Walzer’s line of argument, the United States had a stronger obligation to admit those refugees than other nations who were not involved. The United States in fact did resettle СКАЧАТЬ