The Centre of Ethnicity and Citizenship Seminar Series

Chris Bertram (University of Bristol)  

Title: Should migrants' rights be restricted if this leads to more migration and reduces global poverty?

Date: 29th November 2018

Time: 5-7pm

Venue: G1 7 Priory Rd

Abstract:

This paper looks at a recent challenge to the liberal inclusivist view that everyone on the state’s territory should have a path to citizenship. Economists have argued that giving immigrants an inferior legal status would persuade wealthy countries to admit more, with beneficial consequences for global justice. Whilst this tradeoff might seem appealing from the impersonal perspective of the policymaker it generates incoherence from the perspective of the collective of democratic citizens, since it requires them to treat their own unjust attitudes as an objective constraint. The paper also rejects the idea that a voluntary choice to migrate can be taken as consent to an inferior status.