Abstracts

Michael Blake | Migration in a Time of Darkness: Liberal Justice, Borders, and the Practice of Philosophy

The rise of right-wing populism has made both the theory and the practice of liberal democracy more difficult. This difficulty is particularly acute at the borders of the state; faced with an increase in asylum claims, citizens in a variety of states – including Germany, Australia, and the United States – have shown a willingness to endorse right-wing radicalism, instead of living up to the demands of liberal political morality. These facts, I believe, create tragic dilemmas for both the liberal state and for liberal political philosophers. The state, I argue, must choose between two unpalatable options: it must refrain from giving migratory rights to some of those who deserve them, or it must grant those rights and accept that it has laid the groundwork for profoundly illiberal political reform at both the local and the global level. The liberal political philosopher, in face of this renewed public acceptance of illiberal norms, must choose between two unattractive paths: she must continue to say what liberal politics demands, and thereby risk becoming either irrelevant or actively useful for illiberal politicians – or she must restrict her philosophy to what can be of use in the fight against the rise of right-wing populism, which risks abandoning some of what has made the practice of philosophy attractive. I believe both of these dilemmas are genuinely tragic, which means that there is no course to be chosen that does not risk profound wrong. I suggest, however, that philosophers of migration might benefit from engaging with some themes dealt with in the philosophy of race – including the thought that those who work for justice in a deeply unjust world must often weigh the relative importance of self-respect and institutional change. Philosophers of race, I argue, have often noted that there is no road towards racial justice that does not risk the sacrifice of significant values. I believe philosophers of migration, as well as politicians keen to do whatever justice at the borders, might benefit from understanding their tasks in similar terms.

Leah Boustan | Lessons from Closing the Border in the 1920s

Last year, the Trump administration proposed a drastic reduction in the slots for legal immigration via the RAISE Act. I plan to discuss new research on the most comparable moment in US history, the closing of the border through the Emergency Quota and Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924. After these quotas were enacted, immigration fell from more than 1 million entrants a year to 150,000. The new policy favored immigrants from the UK and Germany, while migration from Southern and Eastern Europe was substantially reduced. Cities and rural areas that had large settlements of quota-restricted immigrants faced a sudden reduction in inflows while otherwise similar locations did not. We find that cities quickly replaced immigrant inflows with new personnel but many of these new workers, particularly blacks from the rural South and Mexicans, were not the beneficiaries that policy makers had in mind. In contrast, once immigrants stopped arriving, the native-born population did too.

William Galston | Rethinking US Immigration Policy after the Backlash

The conventional wisdom is that our current impasse over immigration defies solution. In fact, I will argue, substantial evidence suggests that with appropriate presidential leadership, a comprehensive agreement consistent with both public opinion and defensible public values is within reach. I will use history, survey research, and public policy to bolster this claim. The solution cannot be found at the extremes. Relatively few Americans support open borders and an end to immigration enforcement. Relatively few support family separation and mass deportation. A just, generous, and far-sighted policy can be consistent with national sovereignty and the integrity of borders. The evolution of the Canadian immigration system over the past three decades offers an instructive example of what is possible in circumstances not entirely unlike our own.

Justin Gest | Demographic Change and Backlash

What determines the nature of social and political relations in states subject to transformational demographic change? This question has grown in salience as the politics of the United States and Western Europe convulse at the prospect of increasing shares of immigration-origin populations. However, little is known about how societies govern significant demographic change in the course of global history. So that we may anticipate this phenomenon and accompanying policy responses today, I undertake a comparative historical analysis of six states where the one-time majority lost their numerical advantage.

Javier Hidalgo | The Bias Argument against Immigration Restrictions

States heavily restrict immigration. Are these immigration restrictions morally acceptable? My argument is that states systematically balance the reasons for and against immigration restrictions in the wrong way. They ignore or discount the moral reasons to allow immigration and exaggerate the reasons in favor of restrictions. Because of this bias, states restrict immigration more than they should. We can infer from these claims that actual immigration restrictions are unjust. I’ll also explore some implications of this conclusion for the individual ethics of immigration—how individual actors should respond to the injustice of immigration restrictions.

Chandran Kukathas | Immigration and Freedom

Immigration is frequently identified as a danger to western liberal democracies because it threatens to undermine fundamental values, most notably freedom and self-determination. This paper argues that the greater danger is not immigration but immigration control. In reality immigration control is not merely about controlling outsiders moving across borders. Immigration control is about controlling what outsiders do within a society. It is about controlling their freedom to work, reside, study, set up businesses, or participate in the life of domestic society. Controlling outsiders—immigrants or would-be immigrants—necessarily requires regulating, monitoring and sanctioning insiders—citizens and residents—who would otherwise hire, house, enroll, trade with or generally associate with outsiders. The more seriously immigration control is pursued, the more closely do citizens and residents come to be controlled and the more is freedom diminished. The search for compliance threatens freedom directly, but also weakens the values upon which it relies, notably equality and the rule of law. The alleged gains from efforts of control are illusory since they bring neither economic benefit nor social solidarity. Nor does immigration control mean self-determination since the apparatus of control is an international institutional regime that increases the power of states and their agencies at the expense of citizens. That power includes the power to determine who is and is not an insider—to define identity itself.

Stephen Macedo | Immigration, Populism, and Premature Cosmopolitanism

In the US, the UK, and elsewhere, populism has been (to borrow a phrase from Jane Mansbridge) democracy’s way of shaking elites up. The domestic losers from globalization have asserted themselves – in the cases of Brexit and Trump – in ways that justifiably shock enlightened opinion: nativism and demagoguery threaten both democracy and human rights. Yet elites have paid too little heed to the domestic distributive impact of high immigration and globalized trade. The challenge now is to find the most reasonable ways of addressing this new politics of resentment: ways that recognize that egalitarian liberalism and social democracy are national projects, while also acknowledging our interconnections, and our duties and moral obligations to those beyond our borders.

Kieran Oberman | Backlash or the Backlash Argument: Which Should We Fear the Most?

The backlash argument for immigration restrictions holds that while, in principle, further immigration might well be welcome, the opposition it is likely to generate would create such severe costs that restrictions are nevertheless justified. The backlash argument is especially appealing to people on the left since it seems to offer an argument for restricting immigration – which seems politically popular - without reliance on the kinds of ideas and values associated with the right: cultural conservatism, national security, law and order, preference for the in-group and outright xenophobia. Indeed, the backlash argument is sometimes used to support a position we might term “Left Restrictionism”: one that couples support for refugees, skilled migration, non-discriminatory admissions, and internal inclusiveness with restrictions on economic migration and family reunification. Left Restrictionism might seem to offer an humane alternative to current restrictions while responding to political realities.

The backlash argument deserves close critical examination. Can backlash really justify restrictions? If so, under which conditions? We can certainly imagine conditions under which the backlash argument could prove successful, but there are also conditions under which the argument would prove not only false but dangerous. It is far from clear that the argument succeeds under current conditions. Contrary to what is often assumed, we cannot be sure that there is, in fact, a backlash against immigration, that immigration causes backlash or that restricting immigration will prevent it. Nor does Left Restrictionism offer a humane alternative. In fact, once we dig deeper, we find that Left Restrictionism offers only false promises and moral inconsistencies, reproducing most of the worst aspects of current restrictions: border deaths, split families, discrimination and abandonment of those in need.

Liav Orgad | The Ethics of Majority Rights (OR “How to Deal With Declining Majorities?”)

Tensions between minority and majority rights are among the most pressing issues of our time. The changing patterns in global migration reconfigure the cultural landscape of societies and shift the dynamics between cultural groups within the state. On one side, the backlash against multiculturalism and the reemergence of majority nationalism raise new concerns over the tyranny of the majority. On the other side, fears over the erosion of majority groups’ culture appear due to the accelerated pace of migration and the creation of new minorities. All these challenges call for a reexamination of fundamental assumptions in human rights law and liberal theory. I will discuss the rise of majority nationalism and ethical dilemmas involved in “cultural majority rights” in the immigration policy.

Peter Skerry | Taking Backlash Seriously: the Revolt against Neoliberal and Multicultural Elites

While the negative, material impacts of immigration over the past forty years have been greatly exaggerated, neither have they been nil. Nor have complaints about such impacts been driven primarily by “racism,” the most overused word in today’s political lexicon. In large part, the animosity toward immigrants that Donald Trump has been able to exploit is a response to how our political elites have, for more than a generation, framed the ongoing wave of migration to the United States. A good deal of pro-immigration rhetoric has appealed to our legitimate self-understanding as “a nation of immigrants,” with variations on Ellis Island imagery appropriate to migrants arriving from south of the border or from across the Pacific. But equally strong has been the frame celebrating this wave of migration as “transforming America into a minority-majority society.” These and similar multicultural tropes have effectively frightened large numbers of Americans into believing that their way of life is not only being disrespected but fundamentally threatened and undermined. Meanwhile, the very real, if relatively minor grievances and inconveniences attendant upon this continuing migratory wave have been dismissed (by liberals and Democrats) or ignored and side-stepped (by establishment conservatives and Republicans). The challenge now is to think of ways not only to reform the size, nature, and provenance of future migration flows, but also to address the various anxieties — real and imagined -- that have been aroused by forty years of neglect and denial on the part of our political and policy elites.

Anna Stilz | Mitigating Conflicts of Interest in Migration

Due to a perceived conflict between the domestic working class and low-skilled migrants, a more liberal immigration regime is becoming increasing politically infeasible for wealthy Western societies. Low-skilled immigrants have become scapegoats for politicians who wish to deflect the legitimate anger of working-class people against the liberal state for its complacency in the face of rising inequality and its embrace of policies that leave them lacking basic social goods and protections. While the current grievances of the domestic working class are arguably due more to liberalized international trade than to immigration, it is clear that low-skilled migrants do not benefit domestic workers very much: most of the gains from liberalized migration go to the migrants themselves and to the employers who benefit from the cheap labor they provide. To overcome this growing domestic opposition, we need migration policies that can restrain domestic inequality and ensure that the gains from migration are redistributed more broadly across society, including to the domestic working class. What policies might fulfill this function? I examine various contemporary proposals from this perspective, including status-quo unauthorized migration, proposed guestworker programs, and a skills-based points system.