Philosophy in the Contemporary World 28:2 (2022), 70-95.

Open Access Link

There is a growing movement advocating for using closed border policies as a tool for solving the climate crisis. On this view, which I call the green border argument, fighting climate change requires drastic reductions in the global population and/or per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, immigration into high-income countries—particularly from low-income countries—increases per capita emissions while leaving the population untouched. Therefore, the green border theorist argues, we should limit entry into high-income countries. I explain why this is a mistake and why the political left should embrace a pro climate and pro migrant politic.

First, the argument significantly overstates the impact of immigration on global GHG emissions. Second, the progressive green border argument is normatively incoherent. It advocates for closing borders and eliminating poverty and other rights violations in sending countries. However, given the relationship between emissions and income, this argument would require rejecting all poverty reduction strategies—a conclusion the progressive theorist wants to avoid. Third, the argument is counterproductive. An open border politic better promotes climate justice. A key reason is that high-income countries perceive immigration to be one of the most serious short- and medium-term costs of climate change. Whereas closure allows them to avoid this “cost,” open borders would force them to eliminate push factors, incentivizing global adaptation and mitigation strategies. Moreover, a closed border politic creates divisions between those affected, undermining cross-border solidarity and contributing to the perception that environmentalism is a white, middle-class movement.

Journal of Social Philosophy 53 (2022), 595-613.

JOSP Readable Link

Within the immigration literature, most philosophers have found race, gender, and religion to be impermissible criteria for exclusion. While any given non-refugee from among these groups might be justly excluded, policies that exclude on these bases are invidiously discriminatory. They exacerbate extant status harms, communicating to the excluded—and citizens who share the relevant traits or identities—that they are less desirable because of their traits or identities. However, skill-selection has generally been seen as acceptable. It is, on the dominant view, respectful of the moral equality of those excluded—as well as relevantly similar citizens—and is in pursuit of legitimate state interests.

I argue that this is a mistake. In this paper I present two reasons why generalized skill-selection is pro tanto unjust. First, such policies exacerbate extant biases and status harms regarding low-SES citizens. The traits selected against track the features of low-SES citizens that construct their social inequality. Second, the need for skilled immigrants ordinarily depends upon failures of fair equality of opportunity (FEO) and reinforces these failures going forward. Rather than being a benign policy that benefits the domestic economy, skill-selection contributes to the denigration of low-SES citizens and perpetuates domestic economic injustice.

Essays in Philosophy 22:1-2 (2021), 66-84.

Many supporters of open borders argue that restrictions on immigration are unjust in part because they undermine equal opportunity. Borders prevent the globally least-advantaged from pursuing desirable opportunities abroad, cementing arbitrary facts about birth and citizenship. In this paper I advance an argument from equal opportunity to global freedom of movement. In addition to preventing people from pursuing desirable opportunities, borders also create a prone, segregated population that can be dominated and exploited. Restrictions on mobility do not just trap people in bad opportunity sets—they help create bad opportunities by isolating the negative externalities of production and foreign policy. Freedom of movement can play a vital role in spreading risks and burdens, incentivizing their mitigation. Using an analysis of feudalism, segregation, and the transnational economy, I illustrate the centrality of space and mobility, showing why freedom of movement is a necessary tool for preventing political and economic oppression.

Radical Philosophy Review 26:1 (2023), 135-140.

Review Link

Review of Chandran Kukathas’ Immigration and Freedom

Within liberal political philosophy, the immigration debate often begins—and largely ends—with an analysis of rights. What primarily matters is whether states have a sovereign right to control their borders, communities have a fundamental right to decide with whom they associate, or individuals have basic rights to freedom of movement. In Immigration and Freedom, Chandran Kukathas fruitfully sets such questions aside, asking instead whether immigration control is compatible with a commitment to freedom and equality. The result of this focus is a powerful—and, I think, successful—argument that internal immigration enforcement is incompatible with the deep commitments of liberal democratic societies.

Throughout the book, Kukathas paints a picture of how the desire to control borders leads, all-but inevitably, to a freedom-sapping control over domestic society. This freedom is not merely lost for would-be immigrants, those who wish to associate with them, or the undocumented who are pushed into the shadows. Rather, the loss of freedom is, Kukathas argues, throughout society. And importantly, we continue suffering this loss even when control over us is not being actively wielded. It induces a change in our character, one where we grow accustomed to the unfreedom of ourselves and those around us, willingly exchanging the right to govern our lives unhindered and un-surveilled for an imperfect solution to a manufactured problem. Having been made to fear the immigrant other, “we have tried to erect a fortress” but instead “managed to build a prison.”

Work in Progress

John Rawls’s difference principle (DP) is often deployed in its simple form, with the focus solely on inequalities in wealth and income. Using this version of the DP, there reaches a point after which reducing inequality becomes irrational. After all, if the DP demands that inequalities in wealth and income be to the greatest possible advantage of the least-advantaged, then any further reduction would constitute a leveling down—an envy-based decision to diminish the resources held by all in order to diminish the gap between classes.

In this paper I consider the implications of using the general form of Rawls’s DP. In this version, inequalities in the powers and prerogatives of office (PPO) and the social bases of self-respect are included. I first note that under our current system, those who perform work that offers the least in terms of wealth and income—what I call indirect compensatory goods—also offer the least in terms of PPO and the social bases of self-respect—what I call direct compensatory goods. There are overlapping inequalities, where the least-advantaged class performs work that is less intrinsically desirable and is paid the least for doing so.

In order to satisfy the general DP, I argue that two steps must be taken. First, work that offers the least by way of direct compensation must be restructured to maximize its desirability. This involves restructuring workplace hierarchies, ensuring autonomy is available at work, etc. Second, to the extent that some inequalities in desirability are ineliminable, the economic system much be restructured so that these positions pay the most. This will reduce inequality. But, as noted above, it will also reduce efficiency, affecting the resources available to both the privileged and marginalized.

Work in Progress

High-income countries, and the transnational corporations (TNCs) originating within them, have participated in and benefitted from the exploitation and domination of low-income countries, undermining their sovereignty and economic security. This has been used as a jumping-off point for criticism of John Rawls’s Law of Peoples (LoP). How, his critics ask, can we reconcile the realities of liberal interference and economic oligopoly with Rawls’s sanguine analysis of liberal decency in the LoP? Principles presupposing the tendency towards reciprocity and the ability of all parties to enter, exit, and control their participation in global markets seem doomed to failure.

In this paper I develop Rawls’s ideal theory and show how the LoP can be modified in response to these concerns. First, I consider the common threads tying these criticisms together. Because the idealizations of well-ordered peoples and a Westphalian practice are badly used, the principles permit the exploitation and domination of the least-advantaged. Second, I develop Rawls’s method of ideal theory, highlighting the perspective of citizens (or well-ordered peoples). From this perspective, principles must help create the conditions for them to exist and be instituted such that they ensure stable cooperation between them. Badly used idealizations fail to do one or both of these. Third, I discuss the importance of working out the likely threats to stability and the development of persons within the practice. The global economy involves deeply integrated markets of transnational production and distribution, and hence poses novel and predictable problems that must be addressed in ideal theory. Fourth, I evaluate three threats to persons and stability that are likely to persist in ideal theory: the effects of specialization in less dynamic segments of the global economy, inequalities in bargaining power, and global climate change. And fifth, I propose five principles that can help render the utopian promise of the LoP realistic.

Work in Progress

The brain drain involves a sizable percentage of skilled workers—particularly health workers—immigrating from low- to high-income countries. This is (purportedly) a problem for three reasons. First, low-income countries have poured considerable resources into their education. Second, these are skills that the state depended upon in order to meet the needs of other citizens. And third, such professionals are vital for the push for infrastructural growth and political stability.

Philosophers have begun to evaluate the moral culpability of emigrating healthcare workers, using this as a way of determining the legitimacy of coercive state responses. However, I argue that approaching the brain drain through individual morality both leads to unpalatable implications and struggles to identify the target of such duties. To know why the debate focuses on emigration (rather than non-productive labor or retirement) or medical professionals (rather than all skilled professionals) requires analyzing the incentive structures and bargaining power that leave low-income countries prone, unable to prevent the predictable exodus of skilled professionals and thereby unable to secure domestic justice.

A more promising lens—for identifying the problem, allocating blame, and developing solutions—is Iris Marion Young’s conception of structural injustice. High-income countries and skilled immigrants are acting according to predictable incentive structures. Their behavior is compatible with international law and common morality. And the brain drain depends upon the disproportionate bargaining power of high-income countries. The result of these individual decisions, against the backdrop of considerable power and resource differentials, is the systemic exodus of skilled citizens from low-income countries. This is untenable. Low-income countries must have some lever of power to wield in defense of domestic justice against the appropriation of skilled labor by high-income countries. Absent other viable solutions, this provides reason to reconsider targetedand limited coercive restrictions on emigration.