Joseph H. Carens

The Integration of Immigrants

This paper considers normative questions about the integration of legally resident immigrants into contemporary liberal democratic states. First, I ask to what extent immigrants should enjoy the same rights as citizens and on what terms they should have access to citizenship itself. I defend two general principles: (1) differential treatment requires justi.cation; (2) the longer immigrants have lived in the receiving society, the stronger their claim to equal rights and eventually to full citizenship. Second, I explore additional forms of economic, cultural, social, and political integration. I argue that the integration of immigrants depends upon a process of mutual, but asymmetrical adaptation and that it is precisely because the immigrants have to adapt more that the receiving society bears a greater responsibility to take steps to promote equality between the immigrants and the existing population.

Realistic and Idealistic Approaches to the Ethics of Migration

There are two approaches to morality. The realistic approach wants to avoid too large a gap between the ought and the is and focuses on what it is possible given existing realities. This approach, however, inhibits us from challenging fundamentally unjust institutions and policies. The idealistic approach, in contrast, requires us to assess current reality in light of our highest ideals. Its weakness is that it may not help us answer the question of how to act in this non-ideal world. Discussions about the ethics of migration require a full range of perspectives using both approaches.

A Contextual Approach to Political Theory

This article explores the advantages of using a range of actual cases in doing political theory. This sort of approach clarifies what is at stake in alternative theoretical formulations, draws attention to the wisdom that may be embedded in existing practices, and encourages theorists to confront challenges they might otherwise overlook and to think through the implications of their accounts more fully.

Liberalism and Culture

Will Kymlicka’s new book makes important conceptual, methodological, and substantive contributions to contemporary discussions of multiculturalism. Nevertheless, Kymlicka’s attempt to construct a defense of special rights for minority cultural groups on the basis of his conception of “societal culture” entails implications that are both too radical and too restrictive with regard to the kinds of minority claims they support. In particular, Kymlicka’s account undermines the claims of immigrant minorities to the sorts of special rights that Kymlicka thinks they are entitled to demand.

Open Borders and Liberal Limits: A Response to Isbister

I appreciate John Isbisters willingness to take up the challenge of offering a liberal argument for border controls because I hope responding to his account will enable me to state more clearly than before my reasons for thinking that any liberal defense of border controls rests upon presuppositions that are ultimately problematic from a principled liberal perspective (however sensible they may be for policy purposes). I admire Isbisters contributions to the discussion of immigration, and in many respects I agree with what he says in this volume. I do not think that a commitment to equal moral worth always requires equal treatment in any narrow sense. I agree that the members of a political community have stronger obligations to fellow members than to non-members. And I share Isbisters concern for the least well off in the affluent liberal states. Nevertheless, I do not think that these views can provide a foundation for a liberal case for border controls at least not in any fundamental sense nor do I believe they weaken the force of the argument for open borders rightly understood. Let me start with some general comments and then move to the specifics ofIsbisters position. The primary motivation for my open borders argument is my sense that it is of vital importance to gain a critical perspective on the ways in which our collective choices are constrained, even when we cannot do anything to alter those constraints. Social institutions and practices may be deeply unjust and yet so firmly established that, for all practical purposes, they must be taken as background givens in deciding how to act in the world at a particular moment in time. For example, feudalism and slavery were unjust social arrangements that were deeply entrenched in places in the past. In those contexts, there was no real hope of transcending them in a foreseeable future. Yet criticism was still appropriate. Even if we take such arrangements as givens for purposes of immediate action in a particular context, we should not forget about our assessment of their fundamental character. Otherwise we wind up legitimating what should only be endured. Of course, most people in liberal states think that the institutions they inhabit have nothing in common with feudalism and slavery from a normative perspective. The social arrangements of liberal states, they

An overview of the ethics of immigration

This essay discusses the ethical issues raised by immigration to rich democratic states in Europe and North America. The article identifies questions about the following topics: access to citizenship, inclusion, residents, temporary workers, irregular migrants, non-discrimination in admissions, family reunification, refugees, and open borders. It explores the answers to these questions that flow from a commitment to democratic principles.

AN INTERPRETATION AND DEFENSE OF THE SOCIALIST PRINCIPLE OF DISTRIBUTION

For this collection entitled “After Socialism,” we were asked to reflect upon such questions as what rectifications (if any) to present market capitalist systems might be desirable and whether there is any viable remnant in the socialist ideal that ought to be preserved. My basic answer to the latter is that the socialist principle of distribution “From each according to abilities, to each according to needs” remains a compelling moral ideal, superior to the resigned, complacent, or enthusiastic acceptance of economic inequality that is offered by defenders of conventional capitalism and by many versions of liberalism. And so, my answer to the former is that the rectifications to present market capitalist systems that would be desirable would be to reduce the deep injustices and social malformations of these systems as much as possible by moving their distributive outcomes in the direction of the socialist ideal.

Immigration, Democracy, and Citizenship

In this chapter I want to explore some of the ways in which our thinking about democratic citizenship ought to be affected by the movement of people across political boundaries. My goal is to create some borders of my own. I want to map out the limits that morality sets to acceptable conceptions of democracy and citizenship when it comes to the treatment of people who have crossed political boundaries to live in a state in which they are not citizens. Justice prohibits certain kinds of policies toward immigrants and requires others, at least in any state that claims to be a democracy. Within the borders set by these prohibitions and requirements lies a range of morally permissible policies whose merits will depend on context and on the democratic will of particular communities. I will focus on these prohibitions and constraints, but I will also try to say something in general terms about the content of this range of morally permissible alternatives.

Islam, immigration and group recognition 1

Islam generally, and Muslim immigrant communities in particular, have recently been targeted for criticism by Western academics and in popular Western media. This article explores the substance of these criticisms and weighs them against the beliefs and practices of Muslim immigrants in Western liberal democracies. The article addresses three distinct questions. First, what sorts of cultural adaptations is it reasonable for liberal democratic states and societies to expect immigrants to make, and what kinds of adaptation is it unreasonable to demand? Second, how vulnerable are Islamic beliefs and practices to the criticisms commonly leveled against them in the name of liberal democracy and gender equality? Finally, how strong are the parallels between the claims for political recognition and accommodation that issue from immigrant cultural communities and the claims for recognition and inclusion that issue from groups that have historically been marginalized within liberal democratic societies? Although t...

Fear versus Fairness: Migration, Citizenship, and the Transformation of Political Community

In what ways might we reasonably ask immigrants to adapt to us when they join our community? In what ways might immigrants reasonably ask us to adapt to them?