Issues of immigrant political incorporation and transnational politics have drawn increased interest among migration scholars. This paper contributes to debates in this field by examining the role of networks, partnerships and collaborations of immigrant community organizations as mechanisms for immigrant political participation both locally and transnationally. These issues are addressed through an ethnographic study of the Hispanic Development Council, an umbrella advocacy organization representing settlement agencies serving Latin American immigrants in Toronto, Canada. Analysis of HDC’s three sets of networks (...) (at the community, city and transnational levels) from a geographic and relational approach demonstrates the potentials and limits of nonprofit sector partnerships as mechanisms and concrete spaces for immigrant mobilization, empowerment, and social action in a context of neoliberal governance. It is argued that a combination of partnerships with a range of both state and non-state actors and at multiple scales can be significant in enabling nonprofit organizations to advance the interests of immigrant, minority and disadvantaged communities. (shrink)

Seeing language barriers as a significant threat to the health of patients calls for a response from health-care institutions and providers at all levels. Failing to respond allows an arbitrary soc...

Volume 24, Issue 11, November 2024, Page 1-3.

In this article, I broadly sketch out the current philosophical debate over immigration and highlight some of its shortcomings. My contention is that the debate has been too focused on border enforcement and therefore has left untouched one of the more central issue of this debate: what to do with unauthorized immigrants who have already crossed the border and with the “push and pull” factors that have created this situation. After making this point, I turn to the work of (...) Enrique Dussel and argue that his philosophical approach offers some insights that can help overcome these shortcomings. In particular, Dussel’s commitment to a social critique and transformation that begins with the material grievances of the most excluded and oppressed in a community. Under this type of approach, the immigration debate would begin with the grievances of the victims of immigration polices and reform (i.e. unauthorized immigrants) instead of with concerns for how to better enforce borders. Lastly, I point out that this type of approach is consistent with the current Immigrant Rights Movement in the United States. (shrink)

Unlike natural-born citizens, many immigrants have agreed to undertake political obligations. Many have sworn oaths of allegiance. Many, when they entered their adopted country, promised to obey the law. This paper is about these agreements. First, it’s about their validity. Do they actually confer political obligations? Second, it’s about their justifiability. Is it permissible to get immigrants to undertake such political obligations? Our answers are ‘usually yes’ and ‘probably not’ respectively. We first argue that these agreements give immigrants political obligations. (...) We then argue that getting immigrants to undertake such obligations is morally wrong. This is because it makes immigrants’ political obligations more burdensome than those of natural-born citizens. We conclude that the practice of getting immigrants to undertake such obligations should be abolished. (shrink)

José Jorge Mendoza argues that the difficulty with resolving the issue of immigration is primarily a conflict over competing moral and political principles and is, at its core, a problem of philosophy. This book brings into dialogue various contemporary philosophical texts that deal with immigration to provide some normative guidance to immigration policy and reform.

The mass movement of people across the globe constitutes a major feature of world politics today. -/- Whatever the cause of the movement - often war, famine, economic hardship, political repression or climate change - the governments of western capitalist states see this 'torrent of people in flight' as a serious threat to their stability and the scale of this migration indicates a need for a radical re-thinking of both political theory and practice, for the sake of political, social (...) and economic justice. -/- This book argues that there is at present a serious gap between the legal and social practices of immigration and naturalisation in liberal democratic states and any theoretical justification for such practices that can be made within the tradition of liberal political philosophy. How can liberal states develop institutions of democratic citizenship and at the same time justifiably exclude 'outsiders' from participating in those institutions? The book examines various responses to this contradiction within the liberal tradition, and finds none of them satisfactory - there are no consistently liberal justifications for immigration control and this has serious implications both for liberal practice and theory. (shrink)

"The Politics of Social Cohesion considers in greater detail the impact of immigration on social cohesion and egalitarian redistribution. First, it critically scrutinizes an influential argument, according to which immigration leads to ethnic diversity, which again tends to undermine trust and solidarity and so the social basis for redistribution. According to this argument, immigration should be severely restricted. Second, it considers the suggestion that, in response to worries about immigration, states should promote a shared identity (...) to foster social cohesion in the citizenry"--. (shrink)

Describing the formation of the Polish community in Spain in the 1990s, the article focuses on the political changes in both countries: processes of democratization (and, in the case of Poland, the resulting economic transformation) and then the EU enlargement, which contributed to this new influx. Polish expatriates, though not very numerous in comparison with other immigrant communities in contemporary Spain, became quite visible, especially in some towns of the Region of Madrid. In general, they enjoy a good reputation in (...) the host country, but initially they used to work in the secondary labor sector, often illegally. The situation changed after Poland’s accession to the European Union and the resulting opening of the Spanish labor market for Polish citizens at the beginning of the new century. New Polish immigrants to Spain are young, qualified, innovative, and their purpose is not only to earn a living, but first and foremost to continuetheir studies and undergo professional training. Their mobility is increased owing to modern transportation facilities and communication systems. Individualists for the most part, they do not maintain intensive contacts with the earlier-established Polish community and its social networks and institutions. (shrink)

Self-harm within immigration detention centres has been a widely documented phenomenon, occurring at far higher rates than the wider community. Evidence suggests that factors such as the conditions of detention and uncertainty about refugee status are among the most prominent precipitators of self-harm. While important in explaining self-harm, this is not the entire story. In this paper, we argue for a more overtly political interpretation of detainee self-harm as resistance and assess the ethical implications of this view, drawing on (...) interviews with detainees from Australia’s offshore system. Self-harm by detainees is not only a medical ‘condition’ arising in response to oppression but a form of political action to lessen or contest it. We first establish how self-harm could be conceptualised as resistance. We then discuss its political purpose, noting it serves at least three functions: intrinsic, instrumental and disruptive or coercive. Viewing detainee self-harm as political resistance is a supplement to (rather than a substitute for) a medical approach. However, conceptualising self-harm this way has several advantages, namely, moving away from the idea that such behaviour is ‘maladaptive’, recognising detainees as political agents, combatting government claims of ‘manipulation’ and ‘blackmail’ and clarifying the duties of healthcare workers who work in detention. (shrink)

Over the last 20 years, the global North has witnessed the growing prominence of immigrant rights movements. This article examines how this highly stigmatized population has achieved a certain degree of legitimacy in hostile political environments. The central claim of the article is that this kind of legitimacy is initially achieved through the efforts of activists to represent undocumented immigrants in ways that resonate with the normative values of the nation. The author examines how activist networks are formed to present (...) their cases within national political fields and the effects of this process on the political identities of immigrants and their respective citizenship regimes. The process of gaining legitimacy is contradictory. It contributes to nationalizing the political identities of foreigners and reproducing the exclusionary logic of national citizenship regimes. But in doing this, it encourages those who cannot conform to national values to embrace more radical and universal conceptions of rights. The generation of competing discourses and notions of rights (national versus universal) therefore arises through struggles to make undocumented immigrants into legitimate political subjects. (shrink)

Liberals conceive of territorial rights as dependent on the legitimacy of the state, which is in turn understood in terms of the state’s protection of individual rights and freedoms. Such justifications of territorial rights have difficulties in addressing the right to control immigration, which is therefore in need of additional justification. The paper considers Christopher Heath Wellman’s liberal proposal for justifying the right to control immigration, which understands the right as derivative of a general right to freedom of (...) association held collectively by the people of the state. The paper argues that state legitimacy and freedom of political association fail to connect in the way required to justify a right to control immigration. Wellman’s argument conflates the state as an institution and the people as a political collective and elides the difference between territorial jurisdiction and associational freedom. (shrink)

(2000). Language Matters: the politics of teaching immigrant adolescents school English in the secondary school. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 61-71.

This article examines how undocumented immigrants mobilize for greater rights in inhospitable political and discursive environments. We would expect that such environments would dissuade this particularly vulnerable group of immigrants from mobilizing in high profile campaigns because such campaigns would carry high risks (deportation) and have little chance of success. However, we have witnessed many mobilizations by undocumented immigrants in both Europe and the United States over the past 20 years. This article uses the case of undocumented youths in the (...) United States (DREAMers) to examine how a group of undocumented immigrants have overcome important barriers and become a powerful voice for immigrant rights in the country. The article suggests that while undocumented immigrants faced inhospitable contexts, cracks and “niche-openings” they continued to present themselves to groups with the right set of cultural, legal, and economic attributes. Immigrants in possession of these attributes (in this case, youth) could target a niche-opening and argue that they are particularly deserving of legalization. This article also highlights an important dilemma: In contexts characterized by general closure and hostility, narrow mobilizations targeting niche-openings provide the only path to legal status for some, but they can also differentiate (discursively and legally) between “deserving” and “undeserving” undocumented immigrants. Differentiation can contribute to stratifying the immigrant population, with those deemed more deserving facing greater rights and entitlements and those deemed less deserving facing greater restrictions and repression. This carries the risk of magnifying normative and legal inequalities between immigrant groups while introducing many points of conflict within the broader immigrant rights movement. (shrink)

After its establishment in 1948 many Jews emmigrated to Israel from Arab countries, Yemen included. In 1995, a governmental committee was established to investigate the alleged disappearance of about 1000 Yemenite children from hospitals within transit camps where the new immigrants were kept in the 1950s. Interviews with Yemenites present how the bodies of new immigrants were medicalized and commodified in the transit camps during the mass-immigration period of the 1950s, and how people have come to resist it. I (...) conclude with the role of the Israeli medical profession and biomedical technologies in promoting national goals and as mediators of collective, group and individual identities. (shrink)

How is distributive justice possible with respect to immigration if political decisions about entry and membership cannot be grounded in the symmetry of a prior commonality, human or otherwise, that could guarantee reciprocal relations between members and nonmembers? This paper deals with both aspects of this question. Initially, it engages critically with Seyla Benhabib's plea for ‘dialogical universalism,’ showing why the strong discontinuity between political and moral reciprocity precludes understanding distributive justice as the process of mediating between political particularity (...) and moral universality. Subsequently, it suggests that a way out of this conceptual and normative impasse can be found in the fact that boundaries create a double asymmetry. This double asymmetry is constitutive for the ‘dia’ of the political dialogue that separates and joins members and nonmembers. This ‘in between,’ which eludes control by the parties to a dialogue, is the realm of distributive justice. (shrink)

How is distributive justice possible with respect to immigration if political decisions about entry and membership cannot be grounded in the symmetry of a prior commonality, human or otherwise, that could guarantee reciprocal relations between members and nonmembers? This paper deals with both aspects of this question. Initially, it engages critically with Seyla Benhabib's plea for ‘dialogical universalism,’ showing why the strong discontinuity between political and moral reciprocity precludes understanding distributive justice as the process of mediating between political particularity (...) and moral universality. Subsequently, it suggests that a way out of this conceptual and normative impasse can be found in the fact that boundaries create a double asymmetry. This double asymmetry is constitutive for the ‘dia’ of the political dialogue that separates and joins members and nonmembers. This ‘in between,’ which eludes control by the parties to a dialogue, is the realm of distributive justice. (shrink)

The Ethics and Politics of Immigration provides an overview of the central topics in the ethics of immigration with contributions from scholars who have shaped the terms of debate and who are moving the discussion forward in exciting directions. This book is unique in providing an overview of how the field has developed over the last twenty years in political philosophy and political theory.

This work offers a timely philosophical analysis of interrelated normative questions concerning immigration and citizenship in relation to the global context of multiple nation states. In it, philosophers and scholars from the social sciences address both fundamental questions in moral and political philosophy as well as specific issues concerning policy. Topics covered in this volume include: the concept and the role of citizenship, the equal rights and representation of citizens, general moral frameworks for addressing immigration issues, the duty (...) to obey immigration law, the use of ethnic, cultural, or linguistic criteria for selective immigration, domestic violence as grounds for political asylum, and our duty to refugees in general. The urgency of the need to discuss these matters is clear. Several humanitarian crises involving human migration across national boundaries stemming from war, economic devastations, gang violence, and violence in ethnic or religious conflicts have unfolded. Political debates concerning immigration and immigrant communities are continuing in many countries, especially during election years. While there have always been migrating human beings, they raise distinctive issues in the modern era because of the political context under which the migrations take place, namely, that of a system of sovereign nation states with rights to control their borders and determine their memberships. This collection provides readers the opportunity to parse these complex issues with the help of diverse philosophical, moral, and political perspectives. (shrink)

This article investigates how all the main quality and tabloid newspapers and the television newscasts of the main broadcasters in Czechia and Slovakia framed immigrants, what the tone of the employed frames was, and who the main framing actors were before and during the EU refugee crisis (2013–2016). Using quantitative content analysis (N = 7,910), we show that security and cultural frames are most commonly employed while the victimization frame is much less common. Whereas tabloids use the security and cultural (...) frames more often, the victimization, economic and administrative frames are more often invoked in quality media. We also show that the framing of immigrants is predominantly negative, and that the security and cultural are the most negatively valenced frames. Finally, we document a dominance of political actors and the practical invisibility of immigrants and refugees in the media coverage. (shrink)

Replying to Finlayson, I defend analytic political philosophy from the charge that, by ignoring their historical context, it fails to grasp what is really at stake in the case of issues such as immigration. I also defend my own work on that topic from the charge that it is implicitly racist by virtue of using arguments capable of being appropriated by racists.

This chapter contains sections titled: Political Equality and Moral Equality Cosmopolitanism and Open Borders Partiality and Restrictions on Immigration Conclusion.

Carens’ book covers a wide range of issues concerning the ethics of immigration, and although he is best known as a theorist of open borders that argument takes up a relatively small part of the book, and is indeed a small part of his writing on immigration. In this essay, I examine the relationship the radical arguments for open borders, and the more contextual arguments about specific issues such as birthright citizenship, naturalisation and temporary workers which fall short (...) of that radical position. This relationship is complex, and reveals that, although this is a highly readable and accessible book, it rests upon a highly complex method of doing political theory. I critically examine that method and look at the problems it raises for the relationship with political theory and activism. I ask what role the radical arguments for open borders are supposed to play in the public sphere, and, in the end, what role political theorists are supposed to play in that sphere. (shrink)

Approximately 47 million Latinos currently live in the United States, and nearly 25 percent of them are undocumented. The USA is a very different country from just a generation ago – culturally, socially, and demographically. Its presumed core values have been transformed largely by the changes wrought by immigration and ethnicity. A multicultural society has, in 2008, elected a multicultural president. This article examines immigration discourse, framed in terms of fear and security, and the evolution of the US (...) immigration policy. Latino immigration is presented as a force that has shaped the nation's past and continues to shape the economic, demographic, and cultural future of the United States. Psychological barriers to the social integration of immigrants are also explored. This article concludes that government policy makers should encourage a more tolerant, multicultural society by integrating Latino immigrants into the social, economic, and political fabric of the nation. (shrink)

Suggests that illegal immigrants should be offered a path to citizenship.

The ethics of immigration has emerged as a topic of considerable interest among political philosophers. The subject includes normative questions related to various dimensions of global migration, including territorial admissions, admission to citizenship, and the rights and duties of noncitizen residents. The central issue in these debates is whether liberal democratic states have a moral right to restrict immigration. On one side of the issue, philosophers argue that states have a moral right to exclude immigrants in most cases. (...) On the other, proponents insist that a commitment to fundamental liberal values, such as freedom and equality, requires states to maintain mostly open borders. This chapter surveys the main lines of argument in this debate, along with recent contributions by feminist philosophers. (shrink)

Immigration is often associated with a situation in which would-be migrants and their countries of origin are put at the mercy of others’ decisions. The main objective of this article is to theorize this ‘being at the mercy’ in light of a republican definition of what freedom is about: the absence of domination. Immigration policy represents instances of domination on a wide spectrum of individuals and political communities. This article focuses on the procedural discretion claimed by states of (...) destination in their relations with would-be migrants. On the basis of a definition of the concept of ‘jurisdiction’, the article distinguishes 4 paradigmatic situations of immigration, which all display situations of domination. In each situation, the state of destination arbitrarily interferes with important interests of individuals and political communities. In light of this argument, existing mechanisms in national, transnational and international settings can be identified and justified as anti-domination measures. The argument offers a blueprint on how to further develop them in preventing domination in immigration. (shrink)

International borders concentrate opportunities in some societies while limiting them in others. Borders also prevent those in the less favored societies from gaining access to opportunities available in the more favored ones. Both distributive effects of borders are treated here within a comprehensive framework. I argue that each state should have broad discretion under international law to grant or deny entry to immigration seekers; but more favored countries that find themselves under immigration pressure should be legally obligated to (...) fund development assistance for countries that generate immigration pressure. Funding should be subject to conditions of fair and effective use in recipient countries, and should aim at a near-term target of immigration-pressure equilibrium. Equilibrium obtains between two countries when, given appropriate background circumstances, the same proportion of individuals in each manifests a preference to migrate to the other. If meeting the equilibrium target in the short term would be to the long-term disadvantage of the worst-off countries, then a Pareto-superior alternative target supersedes. It mandates development assistance at the level that yields the most favorable human development projections for the worstoff countries. An implementable set of institutions is described that can achieve the equilibrium goal in the long term without unduly sacrificing other important ends, including economic growth, political stability, cultural integrity, the political autonomy of distinct societies, and their proper accountability for policy choices. Key Words: global justice • immigration • borders • development • distributive justice • development assistance • equality • international law • cosmopolitanism. (shrink)

I would like to thank Dr. Gabaccia for her intriguing essay on the origins of the term "nation of immigrants." It really has helped me think about immigration with more historical richness. In my own work, I examine what goes into transnational and diasporic identities. I understand transnational identities as those operating between the loyalties of two or more countries. Going against perhaps unidirectional ways of understanding the immigrant as a foreigner entering into a country, I understand the immigrant (...) identity within a transnational framework where the immigrant negotiates between more than one country. In my larger work, I want to look at the space-between that emerges for many immigrants and. (shrink)

In philosophical debates about immigration, one of the most prominent arguments asserts that a state’s citizenry has a right to unilaterally control its territorial borders by virtue of its right to self-determination. This is the self-determination argument. The present article demonstrates that this argument is internally undermined by the Coercion Principle, according to which all persons subjected to coercive political power are entitled to an equal say in exercising that power. First, whichever way the self-determination argument identifies the relevant (...) self-determining self, it is bound to rely on the Coercion Principle. Specifying the self politically involves appealing to the Coercion Principle, as it is a core principle of democratic theory. Alternatively, specifying a pre-political self fails to circumvent this problem, as a similar issue arises further down the argumentative line, when inferring the right to unilaterally control borders from the right to self-determination. Finally, since border controls coerce would-be immigrants, this reliance on the Coercion Principle renders the self-determination argument self-defeating. (shrink)

Do states have the right to prevent potential immigrants from crossing their borders, or should people have the freedom to migrate and settle wherever they wish? Christopher Heath Wellman and Phillip Cole develop and defend opposing answers to this timely and important question.

Social media platforms have become crucial channels for radical right populist leaders to broadcast anti-immigrant views. These politicians employ various rhetorical appeals, such as pathos (emotional language), logos (logical arguments), and ethos (speaker credibility), to sway public opinion. This study considers the anti-immigrant rhetoric of prominent European populist radical right leaders across X, Instagram, and Facebook, analysing the prevalence of these rhetorical strategies across different platforms. From the perspective of mediatization theory, politicians can adjust their messages to fit with the (...) design and formats of various social media platforms. Party leaders often resort to emotional appeals on X, with its limited space for communication, as well as on Facebook, where emotional interaction buttons and discussion features can encourage emotional rhetoric as well. Logical appeals (logos) are common on platforms such as Facebook and X, which offer options to easily share information in the form of texts and links. Additionally, ethos, associated with speaker’s credibility, is common in posts on platforms that facilitate closer engagement with the party leaders’ constituents, such as Facebook and Instagram. These findings underscore the importance of considering platform design when shaping political communication strategies. (shrink)

This article explores political discourse in the context of an online-mediated 2021 rapprochement between Swedish ‘mainstream’ and far-right parties paving the way for their eventual 2022 electoral success and later joint government coalition. The article analyses specifically how the above political accord on the Swedish right – often seen as breaking the long-term cordon sanitaire around Sweden’s far right – would be legitimised via discourses that carried significant elaboration and deepening of the ‘criminality’ and ‘immigration’ connection later recontextualised into (...) the broader Swedish public discourse and public imagination. Using social media analytics and qualitative, critical discourse analysis, we explore in depth a ‘discursive shift’ wherein the focus on criminality would become a key ‘proxy discourse’, i.e., a public-wide implicature, which, while referring to and debating a potentially genuine social issue would be strategically instrumentalised to effectively pre-legitimise ‘moral panics’ around immigration and cultural diversity. The analysis highlights that the emergence as well as the later recontextualisation of the ‘proxy discourse’ in question – implicitly suggesting that criminality, immigration, and cultural diversity are ‘somehow’ inherently connected – not only supported the political mainstreaming of the Swedish far-right’s anti-immigration stance but also normalised the wider tenets of illiberal, nativist ‘politics of exclusion’. (shrink)