The End of National Borders: Thinking Ethically in the Face of Mass Migration
Luke Bretherton ABC RELIGION AND ETHICS UPDATED 21 MAY 2015 (FIRST POSTED 20 MAY 2015)

 

A Christian account of the way we think about our duty of care to our neighbours, near and far, is a more robust and realistic way of responding to the challenges posed by asylum seekers.

In debates about refugees, asylum seekers and mass migration, a crucial issue is the moral and political status of borders. Do we think borders are good or bad, a necessary evil or a moral necessity?

My contention is that those who argue for open borders under-value a sense of place and the integrity of the nation as political community, but those who argue for closed borders over-value the nation as political community.

Instead, I will suggest we need a way of valuing our particular political community in relation to other nations and ultimately in relation to God, and that such a framework will enable us to make appropriate decisions about how to respect and value existing citizens and fulfil our duty of care to the refugee and vulnerable stranger from outside our country who nevertheless who seek a new life within our country. In summary:

those who argue for opening up borders see borders as a filter to keep out the bad and corrupt but at the same time, let in any individual who seeks to live in this land;

those who argue for closing our borders see borders as a fence, a system of security and defence that protects and preserves what is inside from what is outside;

but I want to argue that borders are a face we turn to the world around us which tells them what kind of country we are and how are want to relate to those around us and whether we are hostile or hospitable.

Mass migration is a central feature and fruit of contemporary globalisation and will continue to be a central feature of social, political and economic life for the foreseeable future.

In the modern period, mass migration is not new but it is morally and politically problematic for two key reasons:

It is politically problematic because it involves crossing borders between different nation-states and therefore it involves the re-negotiation of the fundamental political and legal status of the individual concerned.

Migration is morally problematic because current immigration policies adopted by all nation-states favour the needs of the strong (the existing members of a polity) over the weak (asylum seekers and vulnerable economic migrants).

The underlying options shaping the political debate and policy response to mass migration seem unable to cope with this reality. The two basic options seem to be either we prioritize the needs of the strong and so have closed borders with very tight immigration controls and large-scale deportation of illegal immigrants in the hope that this will deter further migrants; or we prioritize the needs of the weak and have open borders.

I want to argue that a Christian account of how we think about what duty of care we owe to our neighbours, near and far, is a much more robust, constructive and realistic way of framing a response to the challenges posed by mass migration.

In arguments about how best to respond to the issues mass migration pose to a liberal democracy, three basic philosophical approaches can be discerned. On the one side are liberal utilitarian and deontologist thinkers who argue for open borders; on the other are more communitarian thinkers who argue for the moral importance of borders. I am not going to address racist and nationalist arguments for the sanctity of a particular nation as my concern here is with morally serious and philosophically cogent arguments for and against borders. I do not deny that racist and nationalist sentiments are at work in contemporary debates about immigration, but I think their plausibility feeds off a deeper confusion and a legitimate sense of threat that I will try to address through a theological account of how to think about migration.

Borders as filters

Liberal utilitarians and deontologists argue that liberal democracies, in principle, owe an equal duty of care to all humanity and by implication, that borders should, in principle, be open.

Peter and Renata Singer argue on a utilitarian basis that immigration policy in general and refugee policy in particular should give equal consideration to the interests of all those affected and where the interests of different parties conflict (namely, where the needs of existing citizens conflict with the needs of a refugee) priority should be given to those with the most pressing claim to have their needs met (the refugee or economically vulnerable).

Joseph Carens, from a deontological perspective, argues that free movement is essential for the realisation of an individual’s other liberties and thus should be considered as a basic human right with open borders a direct implication of this right.

Michael Dummett argues that the requirements of justice are such that “all states ought to recognise the normal principle to be that of open borders, allowing all freely to enter and, if they will, to settle in, any country they wish.”

However, none of these writers argue for completely open borders and all recognise limits to freedom of movement and how this freedom can conflict with other rights which may necessitate its legitimate restriction. They recognise that there is a basic problem which restricted borders are a means of addressing – that is, the need to balance the rights of existing members of a liberal democracy with the human rights of every individual to freedom of movement. They also recognise the need to keep out criminals and other destructive elements.

But for advocates of open borders, borders are in principle morally wrong even if they are necessary evil in practice. What matters to those who argue for open borders is not a particular political community, but the individual. Border controls in their view place a higher value on the existence of one particular community than on the value of an individual and their human rights. For them, borders should allow free passage of individuals from one place to another while acting as a filter for violent and criminal individuals.

Borders as filters: a theological critique

From a Christian perspective, this all might seem right and proper – we should, after all, value the image of God in all humans and respect for human rights seems a good way to do that. But there is a subtle but very important difference between what the likes of Singer and Carens argue for and a Christian view.

Those who argue for open borders are deeply concerned about how we may respect everyone’s humanity, but they abstract love and respect an individuals’ humanity from the question of what it means in practice to love and respect this particular person in this particular place. Their view is best summarised by the philosopher Liebniz’s statement that, “I am indifferent to that which constitutes a German or a Frenchman because I will only the good of all mankind.”

In short, respect for humanity is understood as overriding the respect that is owed to one’s particular community.

From a Christian view, there is no such thing as a love of humanity or humanness only a love of particular persons in particular places. This love is itself situated within concentric circles of relationship beginning with the family and ending with humanity as a whole. Truly loving relations necessarily involve particularity, limit and points of exchange at both an individual and communal level. The particularity of persons is, to a large extent, constituted by their place – that is, their social, economic, political and historical location in creation. These places and their limits form the basis and pattern of the relations of giving and receiving that constitute what it means to be human in the image of God.

Another way of putting this is as follows: while we are the same as all other creatures, we are more like some persons than others and we are also like no other person – each person is unique. This basic structure of human being is at once assumed and affirmed in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the one who is truly human. Jesus is human; Jesus is unique; and Jesus, as a historical person from a particular place is more like some than others. In short, we need others to be Other or different in order that we may all be human.

The parable of the Good Samaritan is instructive here. The parable of the Good Samaritan is often read as justifying a universalistic ethic of unconditional love – that is, that we should love anyone and everyone. However, while the parable suggests aid knows no boundaries – all may be counted as neighbours – the extension of solidarity is particular: care is given by one person to another. So proximity and location are directly relevant: the Good Samaritan responds to one he finds nearby, not some generalised or abstract bearer of rights who exists nowhere and everywhere. The one in distress is presented as a fleshly body to be hosted through costly personal involvement. To abstract or objectify this particular body and so pass on by without really encountering them is a sin.

Moreover, that the Samaritan comes from a particular place that has a particular relationship to the hearers of the story and the other characters in the parable is central to its dramatic force. Oliver O’Donovan notes:

“It is essential to our humanity that there should be always foreigners, human beings from another community who have an alternative way of organising the task and privilege of being human, so that our imaginations are refreshed and our sense of cultural possibilities renewed.”
The parable explicates, among all its hearers, both ancient and modern, precisely how someone from another place can renew our false constructions of what neighbour love consists of. As the parable suggests, while the church must uphold the worth of place, of coming from somewhere, as intrinsic to personal relations and the very fabric of what it means to be human, it must also recognise that all our human constructions of place are sinful and are under judgment.

Unlike the liberal utilitarians and deontologists who call us to love an undifferentiated “humanity,” a properly Christian view calls us to love particular persons who are located in particular places.

Thus the problem with seeing borders as filters and migration as simply a question of individual freedom of movement is that it fails to value the ongoing integrity and worth of a particular place and that migration does change places for better and for worse and that people are right to be concerned about the changes it will bring. Lack of attention to this concern and love of place makes plausible the racist’s rhetoric and the nationalist’s exclusionary nostalgia.

These leads us to question those philosophers who argue that borders are good to see whether their approach is more amenable to a Christian point of view.

Borders as fences

Communitarian philosophers argue that borders are not only necessary in practice but are morally required. Michael Walzer notes how entrance policy goes to the heart of political sovereignty and the ability of a community to sustain a common life. He argues that the primary duty of care that members of a political community owe to each other is the communal provision of security and welfare. Central to this provision is the need for community itself that inherently involves culture, religion and politics. Maintenance of security and welfare – which inherently involves maintenance of the community itself – justifies entrance policies.

In relation to the acceptance of refugees and migrants, the provision of security and welfare gives rise to a conflict, should the numbers of refugees and migrants ever threaten the provision of security and welfare; there is a strong case for refusing entry. So here the question is at what point do the numbers threaten security and welfare and thus should the fences be higher or lower in order to protect the maintenance of the existing community.

Like Walzer, Matthew Gibney sees entrance policies as a site of conflicting moral claims. The claims of migrants and refugees must be balanced against the need for states to protect the institutions and values of the liberal democratic state. Gibney goes on to argue: “liberal egalitarian principles can only be realised in communities where relations amongst citizens are characterised by solidarity and trust, relations which develop over time and can be jeopardised by large, short-term changes in membership.”

For Walzer and Gibney, a particular liberal democratic state is a good thing in and of itself that needs upholding and protecting: mass migration can threaten the existence of this good thing and so we need border controls to be fences protecting what is inside them.

Borders as fences: a theological critique

Walzer and Gibney see the common life of a nation or particular group as an end in itself. However, this needs to be contrasted with a Christian approach. The German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg argues that the cultivation and upholding of a distinctive national life cannot be an end in itself, but must be subordinated or come second to the concern for an international order of justice and freedom. However, this order can only begin in particular communities which then form unions with other nations, of which Pannenberg cites the European Union as a good example. However, like nations themselves, such unions:

“should be orientated beyond their own bounds towards the idea of an order of justice and peace that should one day include all humanity, that is, not only the world of our friends but also our present enemies. Thus this sequence of specific unions, which must have their beginnings in the internal political life of each people that is involved … points toward the universal goal of a peaceful world that encompasses all mankind.”
It is the comprehensive goals of regional and then world peace that “determines the boundary between the justifiable cultivation of distinctive national features and nationalistic exaggerations.” It should be noted that Pannenberg conceives world peace as a wholly provisional, political and penultimate form of peaceableness that is in no way equivalent to the peace of God, but is rather an echo of the Kingdom Christ inaugurates and which finds its fulfilment in that Kingdom.

Thus, in contrast to Walzer and Gibney, there is no inherent or necessary conflict between the duty of care to migrants and refugees and the duty of care to existing citizens. Rather, the duty of care to migrants and refugees must be ordered in relation to pursuit of the common good which itself must be ordered in relation to the universal and cosmic good of humanity.

The true end of humans lies in neither the family, nor a particular culture, nor a nation, nor in some kind of worldwide polity or universal society – but in communion with God. How we order the relationship between the needs of migrants and the needs of existing citizens needs to be set within this bigger picture.

Borders as a face we present to the world

To see borders as fences is to over-value the maintenance of a particular community and isolate it from how it is related to other nations and the rest of the world. Instead, we need to see borders as a face we present to the world.

A face says that I am somebody who deserves respect, I am not simply a piece of land to be bought and sold or a thing made use of for a time. I have a personality and a history and a way of doing things, but I am made for relationship and without coming into relationship with others who are different from me, then I do not grow. And ultimately, I am a face who seeks to look upon the face of God and who finds the face of God reflected not in the faces of the strong and powerful, the skilled and the economically capable but in the face of the orphan, the widow and the refugee – and this is who God bids me be hospitable to.

To think of borders in terms of the metaphor of the face reorientates us to see there is value to be placed upon the existing community, but the existing community is not an end in itself, but is only fulfilled as it moves beyond itself and comes into relationship with those around it.

Borders are a means of framing and structuring this relationship and orientating a nation to the rest of the world in a way that presents an enquiring, confident, hospitable face rather than either a closed, insular, hostile face turning away from relationship with the poor and vulnerable or a hopeless, insecure face that is used and lacks a sense of self-worth.

Luke Bretherton is Associate Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University and Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics. His most recent book is Resurrecting Democracy: Faith, Citizenship and the Politics of a Common Life.