Article: The Burdens of Jurisdiction and the Alleged Right to Exclude Unwanted Migrants

Arash Abizadeh. "The Burdens of Jurisdiction and the Alleged Right to Exclude Unwanted Migrants." Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, forthcoming.

Burdens of Jurisdiction & Right to Exclude.pdf

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Abstract: Joseph Carens is well known for his defence of a general human right to freedom of interstate migration. Michael Blake, by contrast, has argued that, precisely because of the existence of human rights, states have the presumptive right coercively to prevent migrants from entering their territorial jurisdiction; as such, there is no human right to migration. Blake argues that, because states have a moral obligation to protect and fulfil the human rights of all persons in their territory but not elsewhere, when migrants enter a state’s territory, they impose new obligations on it that it did not previously have. He argues, moreover, that because to impose obligations is to impose new burdens, we have a right to refuse to have new obligations imposed on us without our consent. I show that Blake’s argument misconstrues the logical structure of conditional human-rights obligations, and that, once properly construed, it becomes clear that immigrants do not impose new human-rights obligations on states in virtue of their entry.

Image: Polish Refugees in India 1941