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Review Essay: Recent Works In The Political Theory Of Migration, Alexander Sager
Review Essay: Recent Works In The Political Theory Of Migration, Alexander Sager
Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations
Thirty-five years ago, Joseph Carens published “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders” in the Review of Politics. It is only a slight overstatement to say that this article created the subfield of political theory of migration. Today, the field is flourishing. Migration continues to be one of today's most politically fraught and morally urgent issues. An estimated hundred million people have fled violence and persecution. Hundreds of millions more cross international borders every year. States have responded with highly restrictive policies, in which people need to resort to perilous routes, often in the hands of smugglers, to …
Methodological Nationalism, Migration, And Political Theory, Alexander Sager
Methodological Nationalism, Migration, And Political Theory, Alexander Sager
Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations
Political theorists of migration have largely operated within a conceptual scheme that treats the nation-state as the natural political unit for analysis at the expense of transnational, regional, and local analyses. Migration is discussed in the contexts of nation-building or in an international framework of autonomous, sovereign states. I show that this paradigm of “methodological nationalism” ignores transnational networks, associations, and organizations and global social and economic structures. This in turn, blinds political theorists to questions of agency and structure and to causal relations that entail moral responsibilities. My aim is to show how debates on migration and distributive justice …