Does justice require open borders?

In a world in which citizenship is equivalent to medieval feudal status, and in which state borders are heavily patrolled and human movement criminalised, the idea of open borders seems far from achievable. However, open borders are more than desirable from a liberal egalitarian view of justice.

Joseph Carens has been one of the most influential proponents of open borders from a liberal egalitarian perspective. Liberal egalitarianism sees all human beings as free and equal moral persons, and considers freedom of movement as a crucial prerequisite for the fulfilment of other rights such as equality of opportunity. Liberal egalitarianism does not require one to deny the importance of freedom of association: we should generally be free to choose our associates, as long as the resulting associations do not lead to unjust, oppressive agreements.

The strand of liberal egalitarianism known as luck egalitarianism seeks to reverse all inequalities that are due to brute luck, and thus holds that an individual's place of birth should not influence his/her life prospects. The importance of freedom of movement and the arbitrariness (and significance) of one’s place of birth make a strong case for open borders, at least according to this view of justice. Open borders could thus be seen as the requisite response to the enormous economic inequalities between countries.

Many have argued against these claims. Christopher Wellman has pointed out that equality demands that we address those inequalities that render people vulnerable to oppressive relationships, not necessarily requiring open borders. An extreme version of this claims is that of sufficientism, which rejects equality altogether and sees the fulfilment of people’s basic needs as a sufficient condition for justice. However, it is unclear what these basic needs are and, moreover, there is an implicit assumption in sufficientism that everyone has the same needs as everyone else.

Relational egalitarianism has provided another criticism to the luck egalitarian case for open borders. Relational egalitarians hold that true egalitarianism is not about people having equal amounts of good but about people relating to other as their equals, with mutual respect. For relational egalitarians, relationships matter more than luck. Wellman has used the ideas of relational egalitarianism to argue that we should not necessarily worry about inequalities across countries because people’s relationships across countries are much weaker than the relationships amongst people of the same country. However, Wellman’s argument is extremely vague: why do the relationships between fellow citizens matter that much? And in what precise way are the relationships across countries weaker than the relationships amongst people of the same country, specially in view of economic globalisation, international trade and he legacies of colonialism? Finally, why precisely should this matter morally?

A third criticism to the luck egalitarian case for open borders has been that of the Purely Domestic Poverty Thesis, or PDPT. Proponents of the PDPT hold that the luck egalitarian case for open borders would not hold if we consider that some severe poverty if not due to brute luck, but to bad choices (those of a bad government). The credibility of the PDPT has been however highly questioned by theorists such as Pogge, and it seems unlikely that severe poverty is merely due to domestic factors when one considers non-indigenous determinants of poverty worldwide such as the prevalence of international briberies or the international resource and international borrowing privileges.

The major criticism to the luck egalitarian case for open borders has come from feminist theory, which holds that justice is not merely about enforceable rights but also requires the fostering of an egalitarian social ethos. Although justice may require open borders, open borders are not enough to achieve justice. Global justice requires a combination of measures that respect both an individual’s right to migrate and her right to stay. This means helping countries where severe poverty is more acute but relieving them from some of their duties or by helping them to carry those duties adequately. Open borders and foreign aid are not incompatible.

Kieran Oberman is right when he argues that the human right to stay and the human right to immigrate entitle people to make their own migratory decisions, and the Rawlsian consensus affirms that fundamental liberties should not be restricted for the sake of achieving improvements in the distribution of people’s material resources once basic needs have been secured. Ultimately, one has to challenge the original question and ask whether distributive justice is the only thing we should think about when it comes to immigration restrictions and open borders. Individual freedoms such as the rights to property, free movement and freedom of association are also relevant when discussing the case for open borders. The determination of aliens and guests by an exclusive band of citizens claiming jurisdiction over a territory is not communal freedom but oppression. Our goal must be a world in which everyone is free to migrate but no one is forced to do so.