Fluent Essays

Memo 1 : due January 22 (topic 3 – 1/24-29)Michael Walzer contends that liberal states have the right to restrict migration acrosstheir borders. Summarize one of Walzer’s arguments. Then explain how he modifies the case for restriction to accommodate the influx of refugees. Drawing on Alexander Betts’ article, summarize at least one other reason to admit refugees.For the short memos, I would like you to respond to each question with a coherently organized, logically argued essay of 300-500 words in length. Each question can be adequately answered, relying on assigned readings and lectures; no outside reading is required. However, please make sure to accurately cite any source that you use. walzer_spheres_of_justice_pp._31_63.pdf betts_the_normative_terrain_of_the_global_refugee_regime.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview ! Membership . Members and Strangers The idea of distributive justice presupposes a bounded world within which distributions takes place: a group of people committed to dividing, exchanging, and sharing social goods, first of all among themselves. That world, as I have already argued, is the political community, whose members distribute power to one another and avoid, if they possibly . can, sharing itwith anyone else. Wheri we think about distrib~tive justice, we think about independent cities or countries capable of arranging their own patterns of division and exchange, justly or unjustly. We assume an established group and a fixed population, and sO we miss the first and most important distributive question: How is that group constituted? I dont mean, How was· it constituted? I am concerned here not with the historical origins of the different groups, but with the decisions they make in the present about their present and future populations. The primary good that we distribute to one another is membership in some human community. And what we do with regard to membership structures all our. other distributive choices: it determines with whom we . make those choices, from whom we require obedience and collect taxes, to whom we al10cate goods and services. Men and women without membership anywhere are stateless persons, That condition doesnt preclude every sort of distributive relation: .markets, for example, are commonly open to all comers. But .non:.members are vulnerable and unprotected in the marketplace. Al-. 31 SPHERES OF JUSTICE though they participate freely in the exchange of goods, they have no part in those goods that are shared. They are cut off from the commu~ nal provision of security and welfare. Even those aspects of security and welfare that are, like public health, collectively distributed are not guaranteed to non-members: for they have no guaranteed place in the collectivity and are always liable to expulsion. Statelessness is a condition of infinite danger. But membership and non-membership are not the only----or, for our purposes, the most important-set of possibilities. It is also possible to be a member of a poor or a rich country, to live in a densely crowded or alargely empty country, to be the subject of an authoritarian regime or the citizen of a democracy. Since human beings are highly mobile, large numbers of men and women regularly attempt to change their residence and their membership, moving from unfavored to favored environments. Affluent and free countries are, like elite universities, besieged by applicants. They have to decide on their own size and char- . acteL More precisely, as citizens of such a country, we have to decide: Whom should we admit? Ought we to have open admissions? C~n we choose among applicants? What are the appropriate criteria for distrib~ uting membership? The plural pronouns that I have used in asking these questions suggest the conventional answer to them: we who are already members . do the choosing, in accordance with our own understanding of what membership means in our community and of what sort of a community we want to have. Membership as a social good is constituted by our understanding; its value is fixed by our work and conversation; and then we are in charge (who else could be in charge?) of its distribution. But we dont distribute it among ourselves; it is already ours. We give it out to strangers. Hence the choice is also governed by our relationships with strangers~not only by our understanding of those relationships -but also by the actual contacts, connections, alliances we have established and the effects we have had beyond our borders. But I shall focus first on strangers in the literal sense, men and w0I!len whom we meet, so to speak, for the first time. We dont know who they are or what they think, yet we recognize them as men and women. Like us but not of us: when we decide on membership, we have to _consider them as well as ourselves. I wont try to recount here the history of Western ideas about strangers. In a number of ancient languages, Latin among them, strangers and enemies were named by a single word. We have ,come only slowly, through a long process of trial and error, .to distinguish the two and Membership to acknowledge that, in certain circumstances, strangers (but not enemies) might be entitled to our hospitality, assistance, and good will. This acknowledgment can be formalized as the principle of mutual aid, which suggests the duties that we owe, as John Rawls has written, not only to definite individuals, say to those cooperating together in some -social arrangement, but to, persons generally.! Mutual aid extends across political (and also cultural, religious, and linguistic) frontiers. The philosophical grounds of the principle are hard to specify (its history provides its practical ground). I doubt that Rawls is right to argue that we can establish it simply by imagining llwhat a society would be like if this duty were rejected2-for rejection is not an issue within any particular society; the issue arises only among people who dont share, or dont -know themselves to share,. a common life. People who do share a common life have much stronger duties. It is the absence of any cooperative arrangements that sets the context for mutual aid: two strangers meet at sea or in the desert or, as in the Good Samaritan story, by the side of the road. What precisely they owe one another is by no means clear, but we commonly say of such .cases that positive assistance is required if (1) it is needed or urgently needed by one of the parties; and (2) if the risks and costs of giving it are relatively low for the other party. Given these conditions, I ought to stop and help the injured stranger, wherever I meet him, whatever his membership or my own. This is our morality; conceivably his, too. It is, moreover, an obligation that can be read out- in roughly the same form at the collective level. Groups of people ought t9 help necessitous strangers whom they somehow discover in their midst or on their path. But the limit on risks and costs in these cases is sharply drawn. I need not take the injured stranger into my home, except briefly, and I certainly need not care for him or even associate with him for the rest of my life. My life cannot be shaped and determined by such chance encounters. Governor John Winthrop, arguing against free immigration to the new Puritan commonwealth of Massachusetts, insisted that this right of refusal applies also to collective mutual aid: As for hospitality; that rule does not bind further than for some present_occasion, not for continual residence.3 Whether Winthrops view can be defended is a questiOIi that I shall come to only gradually., Here I only want to point to mutual aid as a (possible) externalprinciple for the distribution of membership, a principle that doesnt depend upon the prevailing view of membership within a particular society. The force of the principle is uncertain, in part because of its own vagueness, in part because it sometimes comes up against 33 SPHERES OF JUSTICE ,the internal force of social meanings. And these meanings can be specified, and are specified, thrqugh the decision~making processes of the political community. We might opt for a world without particular meanings and with~ out political communities: where no one was a member or where everyone belonged to a single global state. These are the two forms of simple equality with regard to membership. If all human beings were strangers to one another, if all our meetings were like meetings at sea or in the desert or by the side of th~ road, then there would be no membership to distribute. Admissions policy would never be an issue. Where and how we lived, and with whom we lived, would depend upon our individual desires and then upon our partnerships and affairs. Justice would be nothing more than non-coercion, good faith, and Good Samaritanism-a matter entirely of external principles. If, by contrast, all human beings were members of a global state, membership would already have been distributed, equally; and there would be nothing more to do. The first of these arrangements suggests a kind of global libertarianism; the s~cond, a kind of global socialism~ These are the two conditions under which the distribution of membership would never arise. Either there would be no such st~tus to distribute, or it would simply come (to everyone) with birth. But neither of these arrangements is likely to be realized in the foreseeable future; and there are impressive arguments, which I will come to later, against both of them. In any case, so long as members and strangers are, as they are at present, two distinct groups, admissions decisions have to be made, men and women taken in or- refused. Given the indeterminate requirements of mutual aid, these decisions are not constrained by any widely accepted standard. Thats why the admissions policies -of countries are rarely criticized, except in terms suggesting that the only relevant criteria are those of charity, not justice. It is certainly possible that a deeper criticism would lead one to deny the member/stranger distinction. But I shall try, nevertheless, to defend that distinction and then to describe the internal and- the external principles that govern the distribution of membership. - The argument will require a careful review of both immigration and naturalization policy. But it is worth noting first, brieRy, that there are certain similarities between strangers in political space (immigrants) and descendants in time (children). People enter a country by being born to parents already there as well as, and more ofte~ than, by crossing the frontier. Both these processes can be controlled. In the first case, however, unless we practice a selective infanticide, we will be deal- 34 Membership ing :-:ith unborn and hence unknown individuals. Subsidies for large famihes and programs of birth control determine only the size of the population, not the characteristics of its inhabitants. We might, of course, award th~ ri~ht to give birth differentially to different groups ?f p~rent~, establ~shmg ethnic quotas (like country-of~origin quotas in ImmIgration pohcy) or class or intelligence quotas or allowing right-t~-give-birth certificates to be traded on the market. These are ways of regulating who has children and of shaping the character of t~e future population. They are, however, indirect and inefficient ways, even with regard to ethnicity, unless the state also regulates intermarriage a~d assimilation. Even wen short of that, the policy would require very hIgh, and surely unacceptable, levels of coercion: the dominance ?f polit~cal power over kinship and love. So the major public policy issue IS the SIze of the population only-its growth, stability, or decline. To how ~any people do we distribute membership? The larger and philosophIcally m~re interesting questions-To what .sorts of people?, and To what partIcular people?-are most clearly confronted when we turn to the problems involved in admitting or excluding strangers. Analogies: .Neighborhoods, Clubs, and Families Admissions policies are shaped partly by arguments about economic -and political conditions in the host country, partly by arguments about the character and Udestiny of the host country, and partly by arguments about the character of countries (political communities) in general. The last of these is the most important, in theory at least; for our understanding of countries in general will determine whether particular countries have the right they conventionally claim: to distribute membersh~p for (their own) particular reasons. But few of us have any direct expenence of what a country is or of what it means to be a member. ~e often have strong feelings about our country, but we have only ?Ir~ perceptio~s o~ .it. As a political community (rather than -a place), It IS after ~n, InVISible; we actually see only its symbols, offices, and ~epresentatIves. I suspect that we understand it best when we compare It t~ other, smaIIer associations whose compass we can more easily g~asp. For we are all members of formal arid informal groups of many different sorts; we know their workings intimately: And all these, groups 35 SPHERES OF JUSTICE have, and necessarily have, admissions policies. Even if we have never served as state officials, even if we hav~ never emigrated from one coun~ try to another, we have all had the experience of accepting or rejecting strangers, and we have all had the experience of being accepted or rejected. I want to draw upon this experience. My argument will be worked through a series of rough comparisons, in the course of which the special meaning of political membership will, I think, b.ecome increasingly apparent. Consider~ then, three possible analogues for the political community: we can think of ccmntries a~ neighborhoods, clubs, or families. The list is obviously not exhaustive, but it will serve to illuminate, certain key features of admission and exclusion. Schools, bureaucracies, and companies, though they have some of the characteristics of clubs, distribute social and economic status as well as membership; I will take them lip separately. Many domestic associations are parasitic for their memberships, relying on the procedures of other associations: unions depend upon the hiring policies of companies; parent-teacher organizations depend upon the openness of neighborhoods or upon the selectiveness of private schools. Political parties are generally like clubs; religious congregations are often designed to resemble families. What should countries be like? , The neighborhood is an enormously complex human association, but we have a certain understanding of wpat it is like-an understanding at least partiallyreflected (though also increasingly challenged) in con~ temporary American law. It is an association without an organized or legally enforceable admissions policy. Strangers can be welcomed or not welcomed; they cannot be admitted or excluded. Of course, being welcomed or not welcomed is sometimes effectively the same thing as being admitted or excluded, but the distinction is theoretically impor, tant. In principle, individuals and families move into a neigpborhood for reasons of their own; they choose but are not chosen. Or, rather, in the absence of legitl controls, the market controls their movements. Whether they move is determined not only by their own choice but also by their ability to find a job and a place to live (or, in a society different from our own, to find a factory commune or a cooperative apartment house ready to take them in). Ideally, the market works independently of the existing composition of the neighborhood. The state upholds this independence by refusing to enforce restrictive covenants and by acting to prevent or minimize discrimination in employment. There are no institutional arrangements capable of maintaining ethnic purity -though zoning laws sometimes maintain class segrega~ Membership tion. 4 * With reference to any formal criteria, the neighborhood is a random association, not a selection, but rather a specimen of life as a whol~., ... i~y the v~ry indifference of space, as Bernard Bosanquet has wntten, we are hable to the direct impact of all possible factors.6 . It was ~ common argument in classical political economy that n~­ bonal terntory should be as indifferent as local space., The same writ~ ers wh~ defe?de~ free trade in the nineteenth century also defended u~restncted ImmIgration. They argued for perfect freedom of contract Without any political restraint. ,International society, they thought: should take shape as a world of neighborhoods, with individuals moving fr.eely .about, seeki~g. private advancement. In their view, as Henry SldgwlCk reported It m the 18908, tht? only business of stateofficials is to maintai~ order ?ver [a] particular territory ... but not in any way to d~termme who IS to inhabit this territory, or to restrict the enjoyment of Its natural advantages to any particular portion of the human race.7 Natural advantages (like markets) are open to all comers within the limits of ~rivate property rights; and if they are used up or d~valued by overcrowdmg, p~ople presumably will move on, into the jurisdiction of new sets of offiCIals. Sidgwick thought that this is possibly the ideal of the future but he offered. three arguments against a world of neighborhoods in the present. Fust of all, such a world would not al10w for patriotic sentiment, and so the casual aggregates that would probably result from the free movement of individuals would lack internal cohesion N~igh~ors would be strangers to one another. Second, free moveme~t mIght mterfere with efforts to raise the standard of living amo~g the poorer classes of a particular cQuntry, since such efforts could not be underta~en with equal energy and success everywhere in the world. And, thud, the promotion of, moral and intellectual culture and the effici~nt worki~g of political institutions might be defeated by,the contmual creatIon of heterogeneous populations. B Sidgwick presented the~e three arguments as a series of utilitarian considerations that weigh agamst the benefits of la~or mobility and contractual freedom. But they seem to ~e to have a: rather different character. The last ~o arguments draw theIr force from the first, but only if the first is conceived in non-utilitarian terms. It is only if patriotic sentiment has some moral basis, . only if c?mmunal cohesion makes for obligations and shared meamngs, only If there are members as wen as strangers, that state offi*Th 1aws to bat ,frO,ill ~eighborho?ds cporo,u~hs, ~mages, towns) certain sorts Qf eo ~ ~ 0 f zonmg Ph P e namely, those who don t live In conventIonal famIhes-ls a new feature of our political lstOry, and I shall not try to comment on it here,s 37 SPHERES OF JUSTICE cials would have any reason to worry especially about the welfare of their own people (and of all their own people) and the success of their own culture and politics. For it is at least dubious that the average standard of living of the poorer classes throughout the world would decline under conditions of perfect labor mobility. Nor is there firm evidence that culture cannot thrive in cosmopolitan environments, nor that it is impossible to govern casual aggregations of people. As for the last -of these, political theorists long ago discovered that certain sorts of re-_ gimes-namely, authoritarian regimes-thrive the absence of communal cohesion, That perfect mobility makes for authoritariani~m might suggest a utilitarian argument against mobility; but such an argument would work only if individual men and women, free to come and go, expressed a desire for some other form of government. And that they might not do. Perfect labor mobility, however, is probably a mirage, for it is almost certain to be resisted at the local level. Human beings, as I have said, move about a great deal, but not because they love to move. They are, most of them, inclined to stay where they are unless their life is very difficult there. They experience a tension between love of place and the discomforts 9£ a particular placf;. While some of them leave their homes and become foreigners in new lands, others stay where they are and resent the foreigners in their own land. Hence, if states ever become large neighborhoods, it is likely that neighborhoods will become _ little states. Their members will organize to defend the local politics and culture against strangers. Historically, neighborhoods have turned ,into closed or parochial communities (leaving aside cases of legal coercion) whenever the state was open: in the cosmopolitan cities of mul., tinational empires, for example, where state officials ... Purchase answer to see full attachment