Abstract
Carens’ book covers a wide range of issues concerning the ethics of immigration, and although he is best known as a theorist of open borders that argument takes up a relatively small part of the book, and is indeed a small part of his writing on immigration. In this essay, I examine the relationship the radical arguments for open borders, and the more contextual arguments about specific issues such as birthright citizenship, naturalisation and temporary workers which fall short of that radical position. This relationship is complex, and reveals that, although this is a highly readable and accessible book, it rests upon a highly complex method of doing political theory. I critically examine that method and look at the problems it raises for the relationship with political theory and activism. I ask what role the radical arguments for open borders are supposed to play in the public sphere, and, in the end, what role political theorists are supposed to play in that sphere.
Highlights
Joseph Carens’ The Ethics of Immigration has been a long awaited book
I will focus on two of the issues that are discussed in the first part of the book, birthright citizenship and naturalization
The Real World Presupposition constrains us to thinking about what justice demands with respect to immigration in the context of the world as we find it, both institutionally and ethically
Summary
Joseph Carens’ The Ethics of Immigration has been a long awaited book. Since the 1980s he has been the leading, and for a period probably the only, political philosopher writing about the ethics of immigration, and is still one of a small number prepared to argue for open borders. It is a tightly argued text that works as a whole, and is a valuable contribution to research and to the teaching of the subject in undergraduate and postgraduate courses While he is best known as a theorist of open borders, Carens has written a book that covers the whole range of issues that fall under the ethics of immigration, with chapters on birthright citizenship, naturalization, temporary workers, irregular migrants and refugees, as well as the chapters on freedom of international movement. Carens says he is doing political theory from the ground up. I will focus on two of the issues that are discussed in the first part of the book, birthright citizenship and naturalization
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