Topics Justice

Question Should there be a human right to freely move where people want to, including crossing over into other sovereign territories, provided that this right does not infringe on the rights of others?

Accepted:
February 21, 2008

Comments

In a word, yes. The extent to which states prohibit people from exercising the liberty to live where they wish troubles me. In fact, it's funny you raised this question just now, as just the other day my son found himself reeling when, after announcing to me that he planned to emigrate to Scotland or Greece when he grew up, I informed him that doing so might not be possible unless the governments of those nations gave him permission. It was painful to see him come to terms with the extent we live at the discretion of others.

Now, having said that, it is also important to recognize that migration, like many transactions in life, does need to be regulated. Why? Well, because unregulated migration can, in fact, as you put it, "infringe on the rights of others." It can because people are not simply individuals but social-collective beings, and sudden or overwhelming migrations of large numbers of people can disrupt and arguably undermine various social collectives--e.g. national cultures.

Of course, there's no reason national cultures or other collectives should be preserved at all costs--just as there's no reason "all white" or "all Protestant" neighborhoods in a city should be thought of as eternal. Nations, cultures, religions, and cities come and go. But it would also be wrong to allow a culture, a people, a language, a religion, or a nation to perish or suffer severe diminishment just because another is more prolific--especially if the immigrating population's growth is morally indefensible. In a world of increasingly scarce resources, it's not morally defensible for either individuals or collectives to reproduce or grow without limit. In fact, if you ask me there are already way too many people on the planet. Those who have learned the virtues of containing population growth shouldn't be punished for it. Of course, many who've learned to control their birth rates haven't yet learned to control their rates of consumption. And their failure to do so, may provide some grounds for constraining their right to restrict immigration. The extent to which a collective's contemporary and historical misconduct has compelled the immigration into its domain may also militate against its right to refuse it.

So, the ethics of migration, it seems, must achieve a sort of balance. On the one hand people should maximally enjoy the liberty to live where they wish. But their doing so will be affected by considerations related to the control of population growth, the control of consumption, environmental impacts, the rectification of historical and contemporary wrongs that force migration, and the stability and security of valuable social collectives.

Question Should there be a human right to freely move where people want to, including crossing over into other sovereign territories, provided that this right does not infringe on the rights of others? Accepted:February 21, 2008

Question Should there be a human right to freely move where people want to, including crossing over into other sovereign territories, provided that this right does not infringe on the rights of others?

Accepted:
February 21, 2008