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10551. The Rights of Irregular Migrants

Author:
Joseph H. Carens
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
This article considers the question of what legal rights should be possessed by those who reside and work in a democratic state without the legal authorization of the state, given the background assumption that the state is morally entitled to exclude such migrants. I argue that irregular migrants are morally entitled to a wide range of legal rights, including basic human and civil rights, but also rights to wages, workplace protections, and even rights to public education for their children. In order for these rights to be realized in practice, I argue, states ought to create a firewall between those charged with protecting and enforcing these rights and those charged with enforcing immigration laws.
Topic:
Law

10552. The Elusive Rights of an Invisible Population

Author:
Christina Boswell
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
This is a rich and stimulating piece, which—characteristically of Joseph Carens's work—challenges us to rethink certain suppositions about appropriate responses to migration. Of particular interest is Carens's suggestion for a so-called firewall protecting irregular migrants' basic rights. This suggestion, which I would like to term the "dualist" position, requires the state to guarantee certain rights of unauthorized migrants while at the same time retaining its prerogative to deny such migrants legal residency. While I find this prima facie a compelling idea, I will suggest that it creates serious problems of coherence and feasibility for the legal and political systems of host countries. I shall also question whether it is ethically tenable on liberal universalist grounds. The key problem for the dualist position, I shall argue, is the basic contradiction between guaranteeing access to rights while denying a right to be present to access such rights.

10553. Irregular Migrants: An Alternative Perspective

Author:
David Miller
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Professor Carens's paper displays all of the qualities that make him one of the most interesting applied political philosophers writing today. It is unfailingly lucid, engages with a significant issue in real-world politics, and does so from a liberal and humane perspective that makes it hard to dissent from many of his practical proposals for the treatment of unauthorized immigrants. I wonder, nevertheless, whether he has framed the issue in quite the right way, and whether there are not deeper questions of political philosophy that go unaddressed. At any rate, I shall try to suggest an alternative perspective that would make some practical difference at the level of policy, although it would not mean rejecting all of Carens's concrete proposals.

10554. Migrants and Work-related Rights

Author:
Bridget Anderson
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Professor Carens is concerned with finding a way to move beyond the intensely politicized and apparently irreconcilable positions that characterize much of the discussion on the rights of "irregular migrants." These migrants tend to be cast either as victims or as villains: victims of unjust immigration laws and exploitative employers, or abusers who "play" the system to their advantage. In order to overcome this dichotomous approach, Carens begins by accepting the premise that states have a right to control entry into their territories, and goes on to explore whether, this being the case, it is morally acceptable to deny certain types of rights to this particular group of residents. While this approach is useful for his discussion of human rights, it is somewhat more problematic when Carens turns his attention to work-related rights.

10555. Immigration Policy and "Immanent Critique"

Author:
Marit Hovdal Moan
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Professor Joseph Carens, in his thought-provoking and eloquently written essay "The Rights of Irregular Migrants," defends the view that irregular migrants have a moral claim to a broad range of rights in a liberal democratic state that goes beyond their claim to basic procedural and liberty rights. I want to reflect here on the method that Carens uses to extract the reasons that may support, or ground, this assertion—namely, that of immanent, or internal, critique. This is an approach to normative ethical reasoning that grounds moral prescriptions on the not yet realized normative purpose of the institution or practice for which change is sought—in this case the immigration policies of liberal democratic states.

10556. Expanding the Boundaries of Transitional Justice

Author:
Fionnuala Ní Aoláin
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Transitional justice is a field of ever-expanding scope. While the character of the field remains broadly the same—defined by an interaction of national and international political concerns, as well as the core tension of dealing with the human rights abuses perpetrated by a previous regime—transitional justice is moving beyond its early preoccupation with criminal trials or the alternative truth-commission format. The field has expanded over the past few decades to encompass issues of legal reform, the reshaping of political structures, minority and group rights, reparations, vetting, and cross-cutting questions about gender parity in societies experiencing profound change.

10557. International Legitimacy and World Society

Author:
Jennifer Mitzen
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Ian Clark's International Legitimacy and World Society is an ambitious companion to his Legitimacy in International Society (2005). The earlier book laid out an argument for how legitimacy principles gain consensus among states, noting that these principles can come from sources outside the norms and institutions that states them-selves share as members of international society. This volume builds on that insight, adding the puzzling notion that international society increasingly adopts norms that seem to undermine the states system, especially norms that privilege individuals. Such norms, Clark argues, can come from world society, ''the realm of the individual, of the non-official group or movement, and of the transnational network of non- governmental agents''.

10558. Bioethics and Armed Conflict: Moral Dilemmas of Medicine and War

Author:
Frances V. Harbour
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Bioethics and Armed Conflict is a book that people interested in ethics and international affairs will want to have on their shelves. It is important as an analysis of some of the least-discussed dilemmas related to warfare: the ethics of battlefield medical triage, the role of physicians in interrogational torture, weapons research, and peacemaking. The book's value, however, extends beyond its novel subject matter to include its innovative methodology. Michael Gross uses four key principles of bioethics— autonomy, right to life, dignity, and utility (p. 17)—to analyze moral dilemmas of armed conflict. Master's students in my class on ethics and international security loved this book for its real-world issues and systematic arguments.
Topic:
War

10559. Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right: Who Owes What to the Very Poor?

Author:
James P. Sterba
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right is a very impressive volume. All the contributors share the view that freedom from poverty is a basic human right, but they differ in how best to argue in its support. In general, there are two ways: One is to ground the right in a negative right of noninterference. On this view, poverty is the result of interference with the poor, and the cessation of that interference would put an end to poverty. Thomas Pogge adopts just such a view in the first essay of the volume. The other way is to ground the right in a positive right; that is, a right to receive from others the basic resources that one needs for a decent human life. Tom Camp-bell defends this view, while other contributors, such as Elizabeth Ashford, find both approaches to be equally useful.
Topic:
Human Rights

10560. A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy

Author:
Martin Bunzl
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
When people learn that I am an academic philosopher interested in climate change they often become effusive about the dire need for more talk about ethics in the discussions of global warming. I usually respond that talk is cheap; action is what we need! But the engaging thesis (at least for a philosopher) of J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley C. Parks's A Climate of Injustice is that if we want action we need to talk about fairness first. Their book fairly bristles with theses and prescriptions, but their core argument goes like this: (1) The only way to stop the looming climate crisis is to stem the prospective growth of carbon outputs by the developing world (the ''South''); (2) the South will cooperate in such a plan only if an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect can be built with the developed world (the ''North''); (3) such trust and mutual respect can grow only if the North acts fairly in the eyes of the South when it comes to climate issues; and (4) such fairness will require the North to take on the burden of its historic role in causing the problem.
Topic:
Environment