Open Borders and the Claims of Community

Joseph H. Carens is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto (Ph.D., Yale). He is the author of Culture, Citizenship and Community: A Contextual Exploration of Justice as Evenhandedness (OUP: 2000) as well as three other books and more than 60 articles or book chapters. He is currently writing a book on the ethics of immigration, tentatively titled Who Belongs? Immigration, Democracy and Citizenship.

Abstract
In this paper (which is a chapter from a book manuscript on the ethics of immigration), I explore the principled challenges to open borders that grow out of concerns for community. I begin with the claim that our moral commitments to freedom and equality apply only within the boundaries of the state. Next I consider the relationship between sovereignty and immigration. I then turn to the threats that some say free movement would pose to national security, to democratic values, and to public order. After that, I consider the argument that opening borders fails to give the priority that is due to compatriots. Next, I ask whether preservation of a welfare state might make limits on immigration morally permissible. Then I consider whether the desire to maintain a shared culture can justify restrictions on immigration. Finally, I take up the argument that free movement is incompatible with communal self-determination and with the shared responsibility that flows from collective self-governance and sustains it.

Spoiler alert. I think that none of these objections succeeds in undermining the fundamental case for open borders.