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11th Summer School in Political Philosophy and Public Policy
July 6, 2020 - July 9, 2020
The workings of Capital: Perspectives on Exploitation in Law, Labor, and Distribution
6-9 July 2020
University of Minho, Braga – Portugal + Online
Immigration is a reality of life: people are born in a country and sometimes they decide – or are forced – to emigrate. In the modern era, we witnessed religiously motivated migration to the New Continent, and then economically motivated migration to “The Frontier”. If the question of how open or closed borders should be is not an entirely new one, it happens that the political context of the question has changed. The world today is divided into territories under the jurisdiction of different states, in a fragile balance, and the preferred destinations of emigrants are liberal democracies with a social state.
Diplomats and statesmen often explain border control by resorting to the idea of state sovereignty – also forged in modern times. There is an ongoing debate between those who uphold more open borders and those who deem it justifiable to close them.
This is now, however, no longer only a theoretical debate but a reality in plain sight all over the world.
A key reason for maintaining border controls is explained by the associative nature of liberal democracies: the right to self-determination, which authorizes citizens to accept some migrants and not others, because citizens have a say in the type of society they want to live in.
Europe, however, until recently celebrated the free movement of people, but has now closed many of its internal borders, and jealously maintains its external borders.
There are reasons to think that, beyond the present situation, immigration may have an unprecedented impact in the future. This is a serious possibility that raises even more questions of public policies concerning how to face religious tolerance, even freedom of religion, and in general, the issues germane to the sharing of the burdens and benefits of life in common.