• Reconceiving Parental Responsibility in a Burning World
    Australasian Philosophical Review. forthcoming.
    How should we conceive of parental responsibility in a burning world? In this essay, I engage with Danielle Celermajer’s work and suggest that climate change requires us to break from institutional norms and conceptual frameworks that apply to the family qua institution. This requires prospective procreators and parents to think much more critically about the role the family plays in upholding norms and practices that produce climate change and its devasting impacts. In this context, parental ed…Read more
  • In this essay, we address an important problem in the ethics of cultural engagement: the problem of giving a systematic account of when and why outsider use of insider cultural material is permissible or impermissible. We argue that many scholars rely on a problematic notion of collective ownership even when they claim to be disavowing it. After making this case, we motivate an alternative framework for thinking about cultural exchange, which we call the core interests framework. We conclude wit…Read more
  •  20
    Care for a Profit?
    Perspectives on Politics 21 (2): 625-639. 2023.
    We vindicate the widespread intuition that there is something morally problematic with for-profit corporations providing care to young children and elders. But instead of putting forward an empirical argument showing that for-profit corporations score worse than not-for-profits when it comes to meeting the basic needs of these vulnerable groups, we develop a philosophical argument about the nature of the relationship between a care organisation, its role-occupants, and care recipients. We argue …Read more
  • Given the link between over-population and climate change, and the high levels of consumption in affluent societies, several scholars have recently raised scepticism that there is a human right to decide the spacing and number of one’s children, or even that there is a human right to procreate at all. In this chapter, I depart from this philosophical trend and explain why there is a human right to choose to procreate and to have multiple children. I argue that philosophical accounts advocating f…Read more
  •  9
    Parenting and the Goods of Childhood
    Oxford University Press. 2023.
    What gives someone a moral right to parent? What role should the liberal state play in the creation of families? Are prospective parents allowed to create a child in a world facing a changing climate and full of parentless children? In this book, Luara Ferracioli defends a new theory of the moral right to parent by focusing on the special role of parents in creating the conditions for the flourishing of their children irrespective of whether there is a biological connection between them, and by …Read more
  •  14
    The values of freedom and equality are at the heart of what it means for liberal states to do justice to their citizens. Yet, when it comes to the question of whether liberal states are capable of realizing the values of freedom and equality while controlling their borders, many philosophers are skeptical that liberalism and existing immigration arrangements can in fact be reconciled. After all, liberal states often deny entrance to prospective immigrants who are fleeing extreme forms of violenc…Read more
  •  12
    Temporary Migration and Children’s Rights
    Philosophy and Public Issues - Filosofia E Questioni Pubbliche 11 (1): 29-48. 2021.
    Download.
  •  6
    Morality in Migration: A Review Essay
    Global Justice : Theory Practice Rhetoric 5. 2014.
    Review: Christopher H. Wellman and Phillip Cole’s discussion in Debating the Ethics of Immigration Ryan Pevnick’s Immigration and the Constraints of Justice
  •  679
    Carefreeness and Children's Wellbeing
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 37 (1): 103-117. 2019.
    In this paper, I investigate the relationship between carefreeness and the valuable goods that constitute a good childhood. I argue that carefreeness is necessary for children to develop positive affective responses to worthwhile projects and relationships, and so is necessary for children to endorse the valuable goods in their lives. One upshot of my discussion is that a child who is allowed to play, who receives an adequate education, and who has loving parents, but who lacks the psychological…Read more
  •  342
    Liberal Citizenship and the Isolated Tribes of Brazil
    Public Affairs Quarterly 32 (4): 288-304. 2018.
    Since 1987, the Brazilian government has implemented a no-contact policy, which prevents contact between isolated indigenous tribes in the Amazon and members of the general public, including state officials. The government justifies this policy on the grounds that contact would expose members of isolated tribes to dangerous illnesses as well as violate their right to determine their own life processes. In this essay, I bring liberal theory to bear on the question of whether Brazil's treatment of…Read more
  •  330
    Citizenship for children: By soil, by blood, or by paternalism?
    Philosophical Studies 175 (11): 2859-2877. 2018.
    Do states have a right to exclude prospective immigrants as they see fit? According to statists the answer is a qualified yes. For these authors, self-determining political communities have a prima facie right to exclude, which can be overridden by the claims of vulnerable groups such as refugees and children born in the state’s territory. However, there is a concern in the literature that statists have not yet developed a theory that can protect children born in the territory from being exclude…Read more
  •  571
    International Migration and Human Rights
    In Ferracioli Luara (ed.), Oxford Handbook of International Political Theory., Oxford University Press. 2018.
    In this chapter, I bring non-ideal theory to bear on the ethics of immigration. In particular, I explore what the obligations of liberal states would be if they were to attempt to implement migration arrangements that conform to liberal-cosmopolitan principles. I argue that some of the obligations states have are feasibility-insensitive, while some are feasibility-sensitive. I show that such obligations can have as their content both the inclusion and exclusion of prospective immigrants, and tha…Read more
  •  331
    Philosophical discussion about citizenship has traditionally focused on the questions of what citizenship is, its relationship to civic virtue and political participation, and whether or not it can be meaningfully exercised at the supra-national level. In recent years, however, philosophers have turned their attention to the legal status attached to citizenship, and have questioned existing principles of citizenship allocation and withdrawal. With regard to the question of who is morally entitle…Read more
  •  556
    On the Rights of Temporary Migrants
    The Journal of Legal Studies 47 (S1). 2018.
    Temporary workers stand to gain from temporary migration programs, which can also benefit sender and recipient states. Some critics of temporary migration programs, however, argue that failing to extend citizenship rights or a secure pathway to permanent residency to such migrants places them in an unacceptable position of domination with respect to other members of society. We shall argue that access to permanent residency and citizenship rights should not be regarded as a condition for the mor…Read more
  •  142
    Educating for Autonomy: Liberalism and Autonomy in the Capabilities Approach
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 17 (3): 443-455. 2014.
    Martha Nussbaum grounds her version of the capabilities approach in political liberalism. In this paper, we argue that the capabilities approach, insofar as it genuinely values the things that persons can actually do and be, must be grounded in a hybrid account of liberalism: in order to show respect for adults, its justification must be political; in order to show respect for children, however, its implementation must include a commitment to comprehensive autonomy, one that ensures that childre…Read more
  •  673
    Morality in Migration: A Review Essay (review)
    Global Justice: Theory Practice Rhetoric 5 120-129. 2012.
    Book review of Pevnick (2011) and Cole & Wellman (2011).
  •  177
    The Appeal and Danger of a New Refugee Convention
    Social Theory and Practice 40 (1): 123-144. 2014.
    It is widely held that the current refugee Convention is inadequate with respect to its specification of who counts as a refugee and in its assignment of responsibility concerning refugees to states. At the same time, there is substantial agreement among scholars that the negotiation of a new Convention would lead states to extricate themselves from previously assumed responsibilities rather than sign on to a set of more desirable legal norms. In this paper, I argue that states should ultimately…Read more
  •  219
    Can Withdrawing Citizenship be Justified?
    Political Studies 64 1055-1070. 2016.
    When can or should citizenship be granted to prospective members of states? When can or should states withdraw citizenship from their existing members? In recent decades, political philosophers have paid considerable attention to the first question, but have generally neglected the second. There are of course good practical reasons for prioritizing the question of when citizenship should be granted—many individuals have a strong interest in acquiring citizenship in particular political communiti…Read more
  •  510
    Immigration, Self-Determination and the Brain Drain
    Review of International Studies 41 (1): 99-115. 2015.
    This article focuses on two questions regarding the movement of persons across international borders: (1) do states have a right to unilaterally control their borders; and (2) if they do, are migration arrangements simply immune to moral considerations? Unlike open borders theorists, I answer the first question in the affirmative. However, I answer the second question in the negative. More specifically, I argue that states have a negative duty to exclude prospective immigrants whose departure co…Read more
  •  400
    Procreative-parenting, love's reasons and the demands of morality
    Philosophical Quarterly 68 (270): 77-97. 2018.
    Many philosophers believe that the relationship between a parent and a child is objectively valuable, but few believe that there is any objective value in first creating a child in order to parent her. But if it is indeed true that all of the objective value of procreative-parenting comes from parenting, then it is hard to see how procreative-parenting can overcome two particularly pressing philosophical challenges. A first challenge is to show that it is morally permissible for prospective pare…Read more
  •  846
    Philosophical anarchists have made their living criticizing theories of state legitimacy and the duty to obey the law. The most prominent theories of state legitimacy have been called into doubt by the anarchists' insistence that citizens' lack of consent to the state renders the whole justificatory enterprise futile. Autonomy requires consent, they argue, and justification must respect autonomy. In this essay, I want to call into question the weight of consent in protecting our capacity for aut…Read more
  •  1959
    Young on Responsibility and Structural Injustice (review)
    Criminal Justice Ethics 32 (3): 247-257. 2013.
    Our aim in this essay is to critically examine Iris Young’s arguments in her important posthumously published book against what she calls the liability model for attributing responsibility, as well as the arguments that she marshals in support of what she calls the social connection model of political responsibility. We contend that her arguments against the liability model of conceiving responsibility are not convincing, and that her alternative to it is vulnerable to damaging objections.
  •  483
    Challenging the Burqa Ban
    Journal of Intercultural Studies 34 (1): 89-101. 2013.
    Following the successful campaign to have the burqa and niqab banned from public use in France, and the continuing advocacy to have these garments banned in other Western liberal societies, I examine whether the two strongest challenges to the burqa and niqab succeed in justifying a ban on these forms of veil. Although I argue that they both fail in supporting a ban, the fact that some Muslim women may be coerced into full veiling gives liberal states a moral duty to interfere. In the light of t…Read more
  •  109
    On the Value of Intimacy in Procreation
    Journal of Value Inquiry 48 (3): 349-369. 2014.
    What is wrong with anonymous surrogacy and gamete donation? Many feminists have argued that these practices are inherently exploitative or alienating. Yet, one can easily conceive of a world where donating a sperm or egg, and getting pregnant on behalf of someone else are considered highly valuable professional services, which are highly-paid and part of well regulated industries. In this ideal world, no one becomes a gamete donor or a surrogate out of economic necessity or desperation, but beca…Read more
  •  40
    Vulnerable Populations and the Duty to Exclude
    Journal of Ethics and Global Politics 9 (1): 33501. 2016.
    How should states respond to the departure of talented individuals from the developing to the developed world--the so-called brain drain? In Debating Brain Drain, Gillian Brock and Michael Blake investigate whether restrictions on emigration can be justified in order to avoid the harmful effects of the brain drain. In this piece, I argue that the question of whether states have the right to limit the exit of their skilled citizens cannot be answered in isolation from the question of what global …Read more
  •  393
    The State’s Duty to Ensure Children are Loved
    Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 8 (2): 1-19. 2014.
    Do children have a right to be loved? An affirmative answer faces two immediate challenges: (i) a child's basic needs can be met without love, therefore a defence of such a right cannot appeal to the role of love in protecting children's most basic needs, and (ii) since love is non-voluntary, it seems that there cannot be a corresponding duty on the part of parents to love their child. In this essay, I defend an affirmative answer that overcomes both of these challenges. First, I argue that the …Read more
  •  478
    Family Migration Schemes and Liberal Neutrality: A Dilemma
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 13 (5): 553-575. 2016.
    In this essay, I argue that the privileging of romantic and familial ties by those who believe in the liberal state’s right to exclude prospective immigrants cannot be justified. The reasons that count in favour of these relationships count equally in favour of a great array of relationships, from friends to creative collaborators, and whatever else falls in between. The liberal partialist now faces a dilemma, either the scope of the right to exclude is much more limited or much broader than she…Read more
  •  283
    Primum Nocere: Medical Brain Drain and the Duty to Stay
    with Pablo De Lora
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 40 (5): 601-619. 2015.
    In this essay, we focus on the moral justification of a highly controversial measure to redress medical brain drain: the duty to stay. We argue that the moral justification for this duty lies primarily in the fact that medical students impose high risks on their fellow citizens while receiving their medical training, which in turn gives them a reciprocity-based reason to temporarily prioritize the medical needs of their fellow citizens
  •  141
    Why the Family?
    Law, Ethics and Philosophy 3 205-219. 2015.
    Among the most pressing philosophical questions occupying those interested in the ethics of the family is why should parents, as opposed to charity workers or state officials, raise children. In their recent Family Values, Brighouse and Swift have further articulated and strengthen their own justification of the parent-child relationship by appealing to its crucial role in enabling the child’s proper development and in allowing parents to play a valuable fiduciary role in the lives of children. …Read more