SELF-DETERMINATION, POLITICAL MEMBERSHIP AND IMMIGRATION CONTROLS
SELF-DETERMINATION, POLITICAL MEMBERSHIP AND IMMIGRATION CONTROLS

Summary/Abstract: The collective right to self-determination is one of the core concepts in the political philosophy of immigration, used to justify the right of legitimate states to exclude potential immigrants. The right to exclude is seen as an essential aspect of control over membership composition, its character and future development, which are understood as essential aspects of communal self-determination. In this sense, the exercise of self-determination is viewed as largely incompatible with freedom to immigrate. This paper aims to challenge this view. It is claimed that, if self-determination is viewed as primarily serving the interest of a political community and its members to self-govern independently, control over migration is not essential for its exercise. The external dimension of self-determination entails a collective being able to choose policies and control its development without external coercion, while the internal component presupposes the existence of a political arrangement that allows some form of popular sovereignty or political participation of members of a political collective. If it can be shown that immigration is not incompatible with preservation of regimes of popular sovereignty, and if immigrants can be seen not as an external threat but as becoming a part of a political collective with mechanisms to accommodate them, then it is not clear that discretion over immigration is an essential aspect of the right to self-determination.

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