Reviewed by: The Ethics of Immigration by Joseph H. Carens Maurizio Albahari (bio) Joseph H. Carens, The Ethics of Immigration (Oxford University Press, 2013), 364 pages, ISBN 978-0-19-993383-9. Joseph Carens has given us a monumental book on which he worked for a decade to complete. It amounts to nothing less than an encyclopedia on the ethics of immigration in the liberal-democratic context. The reader is not provided merely with a collection of norms and figures, but also with the tools to produce original knowledge, to inform public debate, and to speak to and with both governmental and nongovernmental actors. Carens’ lucid political philosophy speaks from within “the Anglo-American analytic tradition,” particularly as that “has been shaped over the past four decades by responses to John Rawls.”1 Carens’ theory walks us through a compelling set of argumentations [End Page 947] that ought to inform any discussion on the inescapable intersections of migration, democracy, and human rights. Carens has multiple audiences in mind. These include students of the social sciences, law, and public policy who already focus on immigration, but also those who should arguably pay more attention to the issue, precisely because thinking about immigration raises important human rights questions. His writing style and the format of the book are academic, but the author stresses the importance of reaching general readers, especially citizens in Europe and North America. Indeed, one of the overarching goals here is “to generate discussions about the challenges of exploring tensions between what is feasible and what is right.”2 That tension originates what Carens calls “political theory from the ground up.”3 The tension between what is feasible and what is right productively pervades every single page of the book, which is divided into two parts. Following a clear and concise mapping of the ethics of immigration, the author works within the “conventional view” that takes for granted states’ moral entitlement to control admissions. Chapters 9 and 10, serving as an intermezzo, explore how that entitlement is constrained by moral considerations generally acknowledged by democratic states. Chapters 11 and 12 call into question the assumption that states are morally entitled to restrict admissions. Chapter 13 succinctly overviews the preceding chapters and powerfully restates the inherent relationship between discretionary admissions, inequality, and injustice. A short conclusion at the end of each chapter clarifies Carens’ arguments and intentions. The appendix explains in more detail the theoretical choices that inform Carens’ formulation of the ethics of immigration. It again reflects the tension between what is feasible and what is right, explicated in presuppositions or theoretical frameworks privileging in turn the conventional view, the just world, and democracy. In his epistemological reflections, Carens is aware that adopting some of these assumptions rather than others has an effect on the questions we ask, on how we ask them, and on the arguments we advance. Having said that, Carens’ “primary goal” in the book is to explore “what justice requires, permits, and prohibits with respect to immigration in contemporary democratic states.”4 It is therefore important to stress that what Carens has accomplished is far more complicated than a moralist call for empathy toward victims and people we might morally identify with. In one example, Carens expresses his belief that long-term residents convicted of serious criminal offenses should not be deported.5 The tools of Carens’ endeavor are his transparent rationality, lucid logic, and a dialogical disposition that engages the reader and the literature and incorporates responses to the many collegial venues where the author has discussed his scholarship in the last decade or so.6 He is careful to qualify his intervention as concerned primarily with matters of principle. And yet the book is rich [End Page 948] with solidly grounded, empirically informed discussions on a variety of controversial issues often hijacked by simplistic rhetoric and poor knowledge. Topics include construction of mosques in Europe, dilemmas about employer sanctions, practices of positive recognition, and the role of multiculturalism in fostering socio-political membership and civic participation. Other topics of discussion are the variegated mythology of the bogus refugee, the obligation of non-refoulement and resettlement, the reformation of citizenship regimes, and the dichotomy...
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Sep 1, 2015
Meenakshi Chhabra 
Open Access