States of Violence and the Right to Exclude

Abstract

ABSTRACTDo states have a right to exclude immigrants? The conventional view is states have some authority in restricting its borders. Others reject this and argue for open borders. Two restrictionist perspectives are critically evaluated: Wellman’s (2011) and Macedo’s (2007). The former deontological view argues because legitimate states have a right to self-determination and freedom of association is integral to political self-determination therefore legitimate states have a right to exclude. The latter offers an iteration of the threats to the public order argument, namely, that because high levels of immigration contribute to the creation of poverty and increase levels of unemployment then the U.S. should restrict immigration. This paper thinks though some of the ways of avoiding the limits of the political ontologies undergirding their idealized notions of states which inform their analyses of political self-determination and the way immigrants get cast as causes of poverty (i.e. threats to the economic order of a state). As a way of opening up a more realist conceptual path that can reorient discussions in the ethics of immigration I suggest attention be given to the colonial histories that constitute the making of the borders circumscribing states. When colonial considerations are taken into account of discussions in the ethics of immigration I argue states should be conceived not so much in terms of thinly nonconsensual coercive institutions but in terms of states of violence.