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1. Introduction
1.1 Research background
Since the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, it has led to severe humane crisis. A huge influx of migrants attempted to cross borders to Europe. It is said that people who attempted to emigrate to the European countries (especially Germany or the Scandinavian countries) are not all refugees. Some of them are those whose lives were not threatened; therefore, they could simply be called economic immigrants who seek for better life quality. However, if we take a closer look, these classifications of immigrants apparently reveal the fact that we think there are different levels of urgency and different standards may be applied when it comes to accepting immigrants. It is not a surprise that the huge influx of immigrants and various political positions with regard to immigration issues have caused political turmoil to some of the European countries. Many right-wing parties have sprung up and taken part in the decision-making process. In 2016, British people even voted to leave the EU, hoping to detach from the European immigration chaos. Nevertheless, according to the result of the referendum, people who voted for Brexit only won by a very small margin.1 It indicates the extreme political positions are very likely to generate even more cracks to the society.
Across from the Atlantic Ocean, a similar situation also took place in the United States.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, the immigration issue was obviously a battlefield. One of the most sensational manifestos among the candidates was proposed by Donald Trump. He made his anti-immigration position clear, argued that he would build a wall at the borders between the United States and Mexico, and Mexican government would pay for it. This has obviously caught so much attention from media and people worldwide. Plenty of people were shocked at the result of the election that he became the president of the United States; however, it was also the result that motivated people to deeply reflect the genuine reasons behind the phenomenon. He successfully appealed to people’s resentments or worries that immigrants took over their jobs and brought insecurity to the country. These thoughts are probably similar to the British people who
1 “The remain side” got 48.1 percent while “the leave side” got 51.9 percent. The gap is only less than 3.8 percent.
(The Electoral Commission 2019)
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were voting for Brexit in terms of hoping to separate the immigration policies from the European Union. What is interesting is that people who voted for Brexit and Donald Trump share similar backgrounds. Most of them are politically conservative and male with lower education degree from rural areas (Dos-Santos and Henrique 2017, 541). Just as Brexit, Donald Trump also won the presidential election by a small margin.2
Both incidents have piqued my curiosity about the immigration issues although there are still differences between the cases. People who have risked their lives to cross the Mediterranean Sea to seek shelter and people who cross the borders to look for jobs with higher salary undoubtedly cannot be weighed the same. It also means that states have to give different considerations to the different cases. However, what I would like to focus on this thesis is the case of economic immigrants instead of refugees since the latter are usually covered by asylum regulations. I do not mean that all the asylum regulations are flawless. As what I have mentioned above, people hold different standards toward refugees and economic immigrants. Refugees, by definition, are people whose lives are under threat while the economic immigrants leave their countries in hope to enjoy higher standard of living with the current basic needs being satisfied.
Therefore, to be willing to accept refugees does not necessarily mean to be willing to accept economic immigrants, for it may be out of humanitarian concern to accept people whose lives are being threatened while people find no moral obligation to help those who want to enjoy better living quality especially when it implies that their own living quality will possibly be downgraded.
The question that I outlined also revealed clearly in the refugee crisis in Europe. People who refused refugees from Syria to enter their borders usually stated that they were actually economic immigrants who pretended to be refugees; therefore, they should be kept outside of the borders.
My aim of this thesis, as a result, would be to examine the ethical aspect regarding the relationship between free movement of economic immigrants and open borders. I wonder if the citizens of a state can decide to open their borders and to choose what kind of immigrants they want. If this is the case, then what are the justifications for them to do so? I will analyze both sides of the arguments of open borders and closed borders using the EU and Brexit as illustrations. I shall present my research questions in detail in the next section.
2 The candidate of Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton actually won 48.2 percent which is higher than the 46.1 percent Donald Trump got. However, Trump won 304 electoral votes which is higher than 227 votes that Clinton got. (State Elections Offices 2017)
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1.2 Research questions
The main purpose of this thesis is to apply the existing literatures with regard to open and closed borders to the cases of the integration of the European Union and Brexit, and to see what reveals in these cases through different perceptions of morality. In this way, we will be able to see the immigration issue in a more concrete manner, and to see what problems arise when applying the theoretical foundation to the status quo. The EU represents the belief that open borders will bring peace and prosperity to the region while Brexit is the opposite power indicating that to be a sovereign state and independent from the external regulations would bring more good. It is through the analysis of real cases can we fully grasp the comprehensive understanding of the relation between abstract concepts and the concrete situations. The foundation of the EU was to fulfill the ideal that a diverse region can unite as an integrated organization so that it enjoys the economic prosperity, lasting peace and justice. In order to achieve these goals, one of the most crucial values is free movement. With it, people who were born in a relatively worse off area can have accesses to more resources and opportunities. Countries in need of labors will also be able to acquire labor force required for economic growth. As Joseph Carens argues, the western birth citizenship is like a privilege (Carens, Aliens and Citizens 1987). People who were born in a better off country will be highly likely to enjoy more economic advantages than those who were born in poorer countries.
From the standard that every human being should be given the equal moral worth, freedom of movement will assist to resolve the issue of unequal distribution of resources globally, and thus give those people who are in relatively disadvantaged positions more chances to achieve self-fulfillment. What is more, freedom of movement also facilitates to break geographical barriers so that people from different regions will have a better chance to understand one another, and to break stereotypes which often lead to discrimination and conflicts. I will explore in full in my thesis the concept of freedom of movement including its instrumental and intrinsic values. I will also argue that the free movement within the EU has truly led to its original goals such as the economic prosperity and the long-term peace.
Since the foundation of the EU, it has gone through many crisis; nonetheless, it is undoubted that Brexit has brought profound influences to the EU. It not only affects the world economy but also shows that the values promoted by the EU had been challenged. According to a survey done after a week of the Brexit referendum, people who voted to leave the EU suggested
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that ‘sovereignty’ was the top concern, and the ‘immigration control’ was the second reason they decided to vote for ‘Brexit’.3 It has come to a sharp comparison that at the beginning, people thought that free movement would contribute to more goods but the belief apparently were severely questioned before and after the referendum. Although the propaganda might have biased people, it still implied that for some people, there are some values, at least for the status quo, outweighed the value of freedom of movement. Scholars have also argued that as a political community, it is of the essence for its members to own the authority to decide who can be its future members (Walzer 1983, 32). It is an approach to secure the safety and benefits of its citizens.
Therefore, it lies in a state's sovereignty to choose to keep its borders closed. Brexit reflects the concern that as a sovereign state, the UK cannot make its own decision since being a member state of the EU, the EU laws are superior to the national laws. One of the policies that concerns the Britons the most is free movement, for it means the UK has no other choice but to accept the immigrants from the EU. As a result, I will also explore the concept of sovereignty and other values that may triumph freedom of movement to examine if these values can justify to keep the immigrants outside of their borders.
The motto of the EU is “united in diversity”. Besides the economic integration (the EU was once the biggest economic entity and will be the second after the withdrawal of the UK), the EU is also integrated in the political and judicial fields. There are several institutions such as The European Parliament, The European Council, and The Court of Justice of the European Union which guarantee the function and realization of its ideals. From this perspective, it is united as a whole; however, there are counter force internally which doubts the European integration. The Euroscepticism has played a significant role in the Brexit campaign. With the rising of nationalism, people regard border control and limit of immigration as the solutions for a more promising future.
Nevertheless, after Brexit, the economy and society have turned into a more chaotic situation.
Many people want a second referendum and show regrets toward their decisions. After Brexit, how will the rest of the EU face the right-wing force and deal with Brexit are certainly influential to the world politics. However, what I would like to figure out is how different values reveal in the real world and how they can be reevaluated and demonstrated in public. Appealing to referendums to find a solution for considerable problems is certainly a demonstration of democracy.
3 "New Polling Reveals Shift from Immigration to Sovereignty as the Priority," http://ukandeu.ac.uk/new-polling-reveals-shift-from-immigration-to-sovereignty-as-the-priority/.
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Nevertheless, the core spirit of democracy does not lie in the outcome but the process of how public issues can be fully discussed and how people reach consensus based on sufficient understandings of the possible consequences. Even the referendum was delivered, on one hand, the British society has still struggled with different forces competing against one another, and it is predicted that the total withdrawal from the EU and the time for negotiation will still take a long period of time. On the other hand, for the EU, Brexit may be a blessing in disguise since people realize that leaving the EU does not seem as appealing as what the right-wing parties have argued.
Restricting immigrants and enforcing border control apparently will not be a panacea for the problems they face now. I argue that in the future, given the objectives of the EU, it is unlikely to reduce the openness of the free movement within the EU.
Eventually, I argue that Brexit is a counterattack to the advocacy of the European integration. But Brexit also acts as a reminder for people to think over the different values brought by open and closed borders. In addition, people realize more after Brexit that to close borders certainly brings values to them whereas the sacrifice is a lot higher than what they imagined.
Freedom of international movement, from the perspective of European integration, reflects mostly its economic value, which means that people are better off in the European Single Market rather than in a single member state. However, when facing recessions, those who suffer from the disproportion of the wealth distribution are more likely to vote for the conservative political parties to defend for border control. The problem, in my opinion, is not that people support border control but do not realize the values they want to defend cannot necessarily be preserved through border control.
1.3 Research aims
The immigration issue has been one of my most interested topics in the field of political and ethical theories, and these are also the fields that I find most interesting in philosophy. Most of the existing literatures have been focusing completely on the theoretical perspective, and therefore overlook the fact that the real impact is far greater and more complicated than the theorists have imagined. The aim of this research is to shed light on the real world problems using the principles provided by the existing literatures. By demonstrating the most-discussed discourses along with the analysis of the current global incidents, I hope the thesis will bring a more
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comprehensive understanding toward the immigration issue, and find a solution for political states to accommodate as many crucial values as possible.
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2. Literature Review
2.1 Open borders arguments (1) Joseph Carens
In Joseph Carens’s work “The Ethics of Immigration”, he has proposed the values of freedom of movement as of vital interest to human beings. First of all, he suggested that the freedom of being able to move in accordance with one’s will is itself an important value. He makes an example that if a person wants to move from New York to Los Angeles, the point is not what it is so important for that person to move from New York to Los Angeles but being able to do as long as it does not violate other people’s rights. Moving from New York to Los Angeles, apparently, is different from immigrating given it is a domestic relocation. However, what Carens tries to clarify is that international free movement can be extended from the domestic free movement. In other words, what grounds the right to freedom of movement within a country can be exactly the reasons to support the freedom of movement across borders. Carens argues that the nature of freedom is the same. As he puts it:
“The vital interest that is at stake here is not the specific move to Los Angeles but freedom itself. You have a vital interest in being free, and being free to move where you want is an important aspect of being free. ……You have a vital interest in being able to go where you want to go and do what you want to do, so long as you do not violate anyone else’s rights. Having your will matter is one important aspect of modern freedom. One of the classic ways of conceiving of freedom is in terms of not being subject to the will of another. From this perspective, it matters a lot that no political authority gets to decide whether or not it is important for you to go to Los Angeles.” (Carens 2013, 249)
Besides the intrinsic value, Carens suggests that freedom of movement is of great instrumental values as well especially on mitigating the global poverty and achieving distributive