Jonathan Seglow

The Ethics of Immigration

This review essay examines recent work in political theory on the ethics of immigration admissions. It considers arguments put forward by Michael Walzer, Peter Meilaender and David Miller, among others, for state control of borders. Such arguments tend to appeal to the value of political communities and/or the exclusion rights of democratic associations, and I argue that neither of these are successful. Turning to work by Joseph Carens, Phillip Cole, Michael Dummett and others who advocate open or much more open borders, the article considers various arguments that would support this stance, including appeals to freedom of movement, utilitarianism and social justice. I argue that rights to immigration need embedding in global principles of resource redistribution. In the conclusion I sketch a cosmopolitan approach to immigration by which impartial criteria such as population density and gross domestic product would determine how many migrants states have a duty to admit.

Rights, Contribution, Achievement and the World: Some thoughts on Honneth's Recognitive ideal

This article explores Axel Honneths theory of recognition as the most worked out account of recognition available to political philosophy. I argue that Honneth over-estimates the degree to which rights deliver recognition; faces internal problems if his theory is extended to evaluate global injustice; and shows an ambivalence over the criterial basis for esteem. I go on to argue that the institutional fabric of everyday life has a more significant role in delivering recognition than Honneth acknowledges — a point which partially resolves some of the problems identified.

Introduction Recognition: Philosophy and Politics

In 1992 two hugely influential works on recognition were published.1 These are Charles Taylor’s essay ‘The Politics of Recognition’ and Axel Honneth’s more overtly philosophical The Struggle for Recognition.2 Both works inaugurated new paradigms for assessing injustice in contemporary liberal democracies, and both were the subject of much commentary, criticism and debate – the theory of recognition being revised and reconstructed in the process. These debates, however, largely advanced along parallel lines, producing little constructive interplay between them. Taylor’s work is central to the communitarian critique of AngloAmerican liberalism, while Honneth’s is firmly located within the critical theory tradition. The aims of this collection are to compare these two frameworks of recognition, to explore the relationship between the philosophical theory of recognition and its political aims, and to take an overview of the debate just over 15 years on.3 Here we briefly explain the main protagonists’ concerns and outline some key themes which animate the examinations of the philosophy and politics of recognition which follow. Taylor’s striking narrative of the emergence of the politics of recognition as a reaction to the oppressive assimilationism of Enlightenment universalism did much to set the terms of the debate within Anglo-American political theory about the politics of multiculturalism.4 According to Taylor, the Enlightenment ideal of a world ordered by the notion of equal respect, or dignity, successfully undermined the rigid feudal status order. In doing so, however, it also entrenched a deep-seated antagonism within our modern conceptions of citizenship, between those universal features which are common to humanity, and those particular features which distinguish us from others. The universalist paradigm accords the latter, at best, no moral significance, and, at worst, regards them as threats to the status of equal citizenship, threats which must be suppressed in the name of equality. Taylor argues that the sort of identity politics which began to emerge in the

Immigration justice and borders: towards a global agreement

Is there an unconditional right to immigrate? Few politicians think so, but recently a number of political theorists have argued that there is. They have argued for a world of open borders where people have an absolute right to settle where they wish. But how can open borders be philosophically justified—let alone accepted by ordinary people—in a world of sovereign states? Other theorists have argued for continued state discretion in deciding migrant admissions, and in doing so have defended the legal status quo. They have provided a convenient theoretical backdrop for rich western states to keep out millions of poorer peoples of the world who would benefit from moving there. Somewhere between the idealism of open borders and the realism of fairly closed ones, however, there may be a via media. My aim, in this article, is to explore and defend a middle way. Global migration is a complex phenomenon where different sorts of migrants move for different sets of reasons between states that have their own circumstances. In order to arrive at a normative account theory of the ethics of admission, we shall have to simplify this complexity. In the explanatory literature on migration, two models predominate. Rational-choice explanations for migration focus on ‘push factors’, such as poverty or population growth that cause individuals to leave their homes, and ‘pull factors’, such as jobs and higher living standards that draw them elsewhere. By contrast, structuralist paradigms explain migration through globalized labour markets and richer states’ and firms’ economic power. What both these models have in common, however, is an economic analysis of why people migrate: they do so to improve their economic well-being. To be sure, an economic analysis does not explain all migration—it excludes forced migrants, return migrants and refugees, among others, and, most important, it does not accommodate those who migrate to rejoin their families. No doubt it also fails to explain all the motivations of economic migrants: most migrants’ choice of destination state is influenced significantly by cultural, linguistic and/or historical ties. But, on the whole, these factors have more influence in informing the choice of destination state rather than the decision to migrate as such. In what follows, therefore, I will work with an economic model of migration in the belief that this does not exclude large numbers of migrants or distort reality too much. I shall have nothing to say about refugees who, according to one estimate, comprise no more than 10% of total migrants, and who in any case raise distinct claims of justice. I will assume, by contrast, that the need for

Conclusion: Practice and Policy

Citizenship acquisition has an ambiguous texture, both in theory and practice — an ambiguity informing and borne out in the different contributions to this book. ‘Becoming a citizen’ has a formal, legalistic sense: the point at which one is counted, by relevant authorities and institutions, among the citizenry of a country. It also has a more substantive aspect, concerned with the lived experience of the individual, their relations to others, and their orientations towards the society of which, as citizen, they are a part. Thus while the granting of formal citizenship is one thing, gaining access to what the late Bernard Crick (2001, p. 1) called a ‘citizenship culture’ is another. While the first might be categorized in black-and-white terms — through the meeting of designated requirements — the second is more slippery to identify, or establish. Individuals for whom formal citizenship is never in doubt might be less than active in the sustaining of a vibrant civil society. And vice versa: if ‘citizenship culture’ suggests an active, constructive involvement in public affairs, this is by no means simply dependent on one’s possession of a passport, or even voting rights. Yet in both senses, of course, what counts — or should count — as citizenship is a deeply contested notion. In both senses it links up with other issues and factors — political, economic, moral, legal and sociological — with which, as a notion and in practice, it has become inextricably tied up. These factors too have been addressed, from different directions, throughout the foregoing chapters.

Introduction: Egoism, altruism and impartiality

The distinction between egoistic and altruistic motivation is firmly embedded in contemporary moral discourse, but harks back too to early modern attempts to found morality on an egoistic basis. Rejecting that latter premise means accepting that others’ interests have intrinsic value, but it remains far from clear what altruism demands of us and what its relationship is with the rest of morality. While informing our duties, altruism seems also to urge us to transcend them and embrace the other-regarding values and virtues constitutive of a good life. This rather wide conception of morality may strike us today as too demanding. At the same time, however, currently popular impartialist accounts of morality can disrupt much everyday altruism in their insistence that each person’s interests are weighed precisely equally. Having sketched this problematic of altruism, the second half of this Introduction outlines the arguments of the four papers and review essay in this collection, each of which, in a different way, negotiates the difficult relationships between egoism, altruism, morality and impartiality.

Religious accommodation law in the UK: five normative gaps

Abstract This article offers a normative analysis of the state of religious accommodation law in the UK. It identifies five ‘normative gaps’ in the law where the legal discussion could benefit by employing the analytical lens of political theory. These gaps concern (i) what sorts of religious (or non-religious) beliefs should enjoy protected status; (ii) how the law should address issues of individual choice and responsibility; (iii) whether there is a genuine distinction between manifesting and being motivated by one’s beliefs; (iv) what sorts of interests count against accommodation claims; and (v) the relationship between human rights and discrimination law, the two pillars of religious accommodation law in the UK. The first half of the article sets out these issues, while the second half offers some preliminary conclusions and ways of resolving them. The Conclusion traces the contours of a satisfactory theory of religious accommodation law.

What’s wrong with establishment?

This paper examines what objections we might have to moderate religious establishment as found in a number of contemporary liberal democracies. This form of establishment respects citizen’s rights and liberties, so it is not immediately clear what if anything is troubling about it. One view is that moderate establishment is alienating for non-believers but I suggest this is either untrue or rests on contestable premises. Another view is that moderate establishment communicates an unacceptable message to those outside the faith. However, I argue that there is no clear expressive harm involved. In the final section of the paper, I defend an ideal of public reason which is exclusivist, since citizens must abjure from controversial religious premises in public political debate, but also (contrary to common assumptions about public reason) applies to the sorts of non-coercive measures moderate establishment often involves. I argue that under such a public reason framework, moderate establishment measures are often illegitimate, though not invariably so.

The Margins of Citizenship

Preface 1. The margins of citizenship: introduction Philip Cook and Jonathan Seglow 2. Citizenship and the marginalities of migrants David Owen 3. Amnesty in immigration: forgetting, forgiving, freedom Linda Bosniak 4. Workers without rights as citizens at the margins Virginia Mantouvalou 5. Luck, opportunity and disability Cynthia A. Stark 6. Citizenship and Disability: incommensurable lives and well-being Steven R. Smith 7. Voters should not be in prison! The rights of prisoners in a democracy Peter Ramsey 8. Against a minimum voting age Philip Cook 9. Marginalization as non-contribution Jonathan Seglow

Marginalization as non-contribution

This paper examines the phenomenon of marginalization through the lens of the relatively neglected concept of contribution. It argues that the opportunity to contribute positively to others’ lives is an important component of human well-being which promotes the goods of meaning, self-respect and reliance. Where individuals enjoy that opportunity, they are on that account less marginalized. Contributory practices channelled through publicly recognized median institutions (between the state and the personal sphere) are especially valuable.