"A Conditional Model of the Right to Exclude" with Anna Stilz (Princeton)

The paper will be pre-circulated prior to the session, which will feature only a short summary by the speaker, so please read it in advance.

AUTHOR'S ABSTRACT

Can states permissibly exclude immigrants? I focus on migrants who are not suffering from persecution, persistent violations of their basic human rights (including subsistence rights), environmental devastation, or cultural or political oppression. Instead, the opportunity migrants of interest here seek better job opportunities, reunification with their families, association with friends or organizations, education or training, or a more congenial political and cultural environment. I argue that a state may exclude opportunity migrants only where it can offer a plausible case that their entry would cause harm to its inhabitants. In developing this view, I answer two key questions: first, what counts as a relevant harm? Second, how high is the burden of justification for restricting migration? On the conditional model as I defend it, states have a standing duty to accept opportunity migrants if their entry would not set back locals’ legitimate interests. I call this the duty to allow harmless migration. In cases where there is some threat of harm, the conditional model requires the state to balance the interests of would-be migrants against the costs to its members, with some priority given to the latter. I conclude that the implications of the conditional model require countries to allow a significant degree of permanent settlement by outsiders who desire to move to their land. States also ought to facilitate labor migration to the extent that is consistent with their special obligations to their domestic poor.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Anna Stilz is Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics and the University Center for Human Values. Her research focuses on questions of political membership, authority and political obligation, nationalism and self-determination, rights to land and territory, and collective agency. She also has a strong interest in modern political thought (especially natural law theory, Rousseau, and Kant). Her first book, Liberal Loyalty: Freedom, Obligation, and the State (PUP 2009), dealt with questions about the moral importance of political citizenship and state authority. She is currently finishing a new book on the sovereign states-system and rights to control land and territory. This project tries to articulate moral principles for demarcating state boundaries, and investigates the limits of a state’s justified power within these boundaries. She is also interested in related questions concerning the status of indigenous peoples, historic injustice, colonialism, and theories of property. She is the current director of the Values and Public Life program at the University Center for Human Values and serves as an associate editor for Philosophy and Public Affairs. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2005, and a B.A. from the University of Virginia in 1999.

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