José Jorge Mendoza

At the University of Oregon, where I received my PhD, one of the requirements for advancing to doctoral candidacy was the completion of a History Paper. The History Paper challenges the student to bring together two philosophers from different philosophical traditions on a similar question and/or topic. The two philosophers that I chose for my History Paper were Latin American philosopher Enrique Dussel and the American philosopher John Dewey. As I began work on this project, I quickly realized that it was not so easy to find relevant secondary literature on what I thought to be an extremely rich and exciting topic. Yet, despite this setback, I remained convinced (and still am) that Dewey's notion of ..

In 2008 Robert Lovato coined the phrase Juan Crow. Juan Crow is a type of policy or enforcement of immigration laws that discriminate against Latino/as in the United States. This essay looks at the implications this phenomenon has for an ethics of immigration. It argues that Juan Crow, like its predecessor Jim Crow, is not merely a condemnation of federalism, but of any immigration reform that has stricter enforcement as one of its key components. Instead of advocating for increased enforcement, I want to suggest that just immigration reform must adhere to two standards, equality of burdens and universal protections, and that only by doing so can the potential for Juan Crow be adequately avoided.

Philosophers of the American tradition should be more proactive in their inclusion of Latino/a thinkers, even when the work of these thinkers does not directly connect back to classical tradition of American philosophy. This argument has two mterrelated parts. First, if the American philosophical tradition is committed to a social and political philosophy that begins from "lived-experience," then one area it has largely overlooked is the Latino/a experience. Second, if the contributions of the Latino/a community go unrecognized as a part of the American tradition, then the American philosophical tradition is tacitly assenting to what Chavez calls the "Latino Threat Narrative." The Latino Threat Narrative puts forth a view of the Latino/a community as inherently anti-American, not to be celebrated, and to be avoided as a perpetual threat. Following Ch

This chapter looks at the history of US citizenship and immigration law and argues that denying admission or citizenship status to certain groups of people is closely correlated to a denial of whiteness. On this account whiteness is not a fixed or natural concept, but instead is a social construction whose composition changes throughout time and place. Understanding whiteness in this way allows one to see how white supremacy is not limited merely to instances of racism or ethnocentrism, but can also include instances of xenophobia. On this account, whiteness is more analogous to a braid of three interwoven strands: the racial strand (e.g., science, biology, or phenotypes), the ethnic strand (e.g., culture, customs, or heritage), and the national strand (e.g., territory, sovereignty, and citizenship). In emphasizing one or a combination of these strands, whiteness can be granted to social groups that previously were denied full white status, while at the same time it can be rescinded from groups that at different times and different places might have been considered (if only provisionally) white. Understanding whiteness in this way is important for dealing with issues of immigration and citizenship because it lets us see how nationality and xenophobia play a role in the construction of whiteness and thereby how terms like illegal help to reify the status of certain persons, including natural born citizens, as perpetual foreigners (i.e., non-whites).

In this essay, I argue that even when they appear to help, restrictions on migration are usually only an impediment, not an aid, to cosmopolitan justice. Even though some egalitarian cosmopolitans are well intentioned in their support of migration restrictions, I argue that migration restrictions are (i) not truly cosmopolitan and (ii) will not have the kinds of consequences they expect. My argument in defense of this claim begins, in section 1, by outlining a defense of migration restrictions based on egalitarian cosmopolitan grounds. Then in sections two and three, I reply to the harms this position associates with open borders and provide some reasons as to why restrictions on migration are incompatible with cosmopolitan justice.

The social trust argument asserts that a political community cannot survive without social trust, and that social trust cannot be achieved or maintained without a political community having discretionary control over immigration. Various objections have already been raised against this argument, but because those objections all assume various liberal commitments they leave the heart of the social trust argument untouched. This chapter argues that by looking at the socio-historical circumstances of Latino/as in the United States, an inherent weakness of the social trust argument gets exposed. Giving a political community discretionary control over immigration not only fails to deliver on the promise of social trust, but it actually seems to promote its opposite, social mistrust. This suggests that a far better way of promoting the goal of social trust, and at the same time abating social mistrust, is to actually circumvent a political community’s ability to control immigration by giving priority both to socio-historical circumstances and immigrant rights (at least in a minimalist sense) in determining immigration policy.