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8Voluntary and Involuntary Migrants: On Migration, Safe Third Countries, and the Collective Unfreedom of the ProletariatEthics and International Affairs 37 (4): 427-451. 2023.The claims of those who are compelled to migrate are, in general, taken to be more urgent and pressing than the claims of those who were not forced to do so. This article does not defend the moral relevance of voluntarism to the morality of migration, but instead seeks to demonstrate two complexities that must be included in any plausible account of that moral relevance. The first is that the decision to start the migration journey is distinct from the decision to stop that journey, through rese…Read more
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11Migration and ManipulationPublic Affairs Quarterly 37 (3): 174-187. 2023.Much modern discussion of the morality of migration begins with the concept of coercion, and takes the coercive nature of border enforcement as especially salient in the moral analysis of migration policy. Much migration control, however, begins not with overt coercion, but with what I term manipulations; these are ways of making migration more difficult that do not resemble canonical cases of coercion. Examples include the alteration of the physical pathways between states, attempts to deceive …Read more
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26Sanctuary Cities and Non-RefoulementEthical Theory and Moral Practice 23 (2): 457-474. 2020.More than two hundred cities in the United States have now declared themselves to be sanctuary cities. This declaration involves a commitment to non-compliance with federal law; the sanctuary city will refuse to use its own juridical power – including, more crucially, its own police powers – to assist the federal government in the deportation of undocumented residents. We will argue that the sanctuary city might be morally defensible, even if deportation is not always wrong, and even if the fede…Read more
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41Global cities, global justice?Journal of Global Ethics 14 (3): 332-352. 2018.The global city is a contested site of economic innovation and cultural production, as well as profound inequalities of wealth and life chances. These cities, and large cities that aspire to ‘global’ status, are often the point of entry for new immigrants. Yet for political theorists (and indeed many scholars of global institutions), these critical sites of global influence and inequality have not been a significant focus of attention. This is curious. Theorists have wrestled with the nature and…Read more
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33Book Review: Immigration Justice, by Peter W. Higgins (review)Political Theory 43 (3): 412-415. 2015.
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Right-wing populism and non-coercive injustice : on the limits of the law of peoplesIn Sarah Roberts-Cady & Jon Mandle (eds.), John Rawls: Debating the Major Questions, Oup Usa. 2020.
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13In defense of citizenship testing: a reply to Daniel SharpEthics and Global Politics 15 (1). 2022.
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11Unwanted Compatriots: Alienation, Migration, and Political AutonomyEthics and International Affairs 35 (4): 491-501. 2021.In Territorial Sovereignty: A Philosophical Exploration, Anna Stilz argues that legitimate political authority requires the actual—rather than hypothetical—consent of the governed. I argue, however, that her analysis of that consent is inconsistent, in the weight it ascribes to the felt desire to refrain from doing politics with some particular group of people. In the context of secession and self-determination, the lack of actual consent to shared political institutions is weighty enough to ren…Read more
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7Why Nationalism, Yael Tamir (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2019), 224 pp., cloth $24.95, paperback $19.95, eBook $24.95 (review)Ethics and International Affairs 34 (3): 413-415. 2020.
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56What is the Border For?Journal of Moral Philosophy 17 (4): 379-397. 2020.Many discussions of the moral dimensions of borders emphasize how those borders foster and sustain a national community. In this paper, I discuss three distinct sorts of goods that might be best preserved in the presence of state borders. The first of these is decolonization; I argue that undermining colonial structures might require political institutions with the right to refuse unwanted outsiders. The second of these is social solidarity; we might find that the inability to exclude outsiders …Read more
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26Are Citizenship Tests Necessarily Illiberal?Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 22 (2): 313-329. 2019.In recent years, many philosophers have argued that it is inherently illiberal to make citizenship for migrants conditional on a test. On these arguments, liberalism itself demands either that no test be administered, or that the test be so easy as to serve merely a symbolic function. In this paper, I make two claims in response to these ideas. The first is that a citizenship test - even a difficult one - is not inherently illiberal, when what is tested for reflects the actual backdrop of knowle…Read more
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5Guest editors' introduction: Justice, the brain drain, and Africa: Introduction to a symposium on Debating Brain DrainSouth African Journal of Philosophy 36 (1): 1-3. 2017.
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22Positive and negative rights of migration: a reply to my criticsEthics and Global Politics 9 (1): 33553. 2016.
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18What should be done to address losses associated with ‘medical brain drain’?Journal of Medical Ethics 43 (8): 558-559. 2017.
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Social Justice and State BordersDissertation, Stanford University. 1998.Liberalism is premised upon moral egalitarianism, so that no arbitrary fact about persons can serve to justify a difference in the administration of justice. Yet liberalism also traditionally applies its egalitarianism only within the borders of the territorial state, so that arbitrary facts of citizenship serve to place a limit upon the range of such egalitarian principles. I argue that the current ways of solving this dilemma are inadequate; both the partialist and the Rawlsian cosmopolitan ap…Read more
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30Miller, Seumas. The Moral Foundations of Social Institutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. 382. $98.00 ; $29.99 (review)Ethics 121 (4): 820-824. 2011.
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32Geeks and monsters: Bias crimes and social identity (review)Law and Philosophy 20 (2): 121-139. 2001.No Abstract
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35Agency, Coercion, and Global Justice: A Reply to My CriticsLaw and Philosophy 35 (3): 313-335. 2016.Mathias Risse, Andrea Sangiovanni, and Kok-Chor Tan have offered some subtle and powerful criticisms of the ideas given in my Justice and Foreign Policy. Three themes in particular recur in their critiques. The first is that the arguments I make in that book rest upon unjustified, arbitrary, or contradictory premises. The second is that the use of coercion in the analysis of distributive justice is a mistake. The third is that the global institutional set represents, contrary to my arguments, an…Read more
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5Book Review: Immigration Justice, by Peter W. HigginsImmigration Justice, by HigginsPeter W.Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013 (review)Political Theory 43 (3): 412-415. 2015.
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44Equality without Documents: Political Justice and the Right to AmnestyCanadian Journal of Philosophy 40 (S1): 99-122. 2010.All modern democratic societies claim to be egalitarian. They do not agree, of course, about what egalitarianism demands; the ideal of equality is hardly transparent and can be plausibly understood to encompass any number of social arrangements and values. Thatsomeform of equality is to be prized, though, is uncontroversial. Indeed, it may be true that all political theories that have stood the test of time can be understood as specifying and interpreting the ideal of equality. Whether or not th…Read more
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4Global Distributive Justice: Why Political Philosophy Need Political ScienceAnnual Review of Political Science 15 121-136. 2012.
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14The Ethics of Immigration, Joseph Carens , 384 pp., $35 clothEthics and International Affairs 29 (2): 237-240. 2015.
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23Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny, Amartya Sen (New York: WW Norton, 2006), 224 pp., $24.95 cloth, $15.95 paper. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, Kwame Anthony Appiah (New York: WW Norton, 2006), 256 pp., $23.95 cloth, $15.95 paper (review)Ethics and International Affairs 21 (2): 259-261. 2007.
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21Collateral benefitSocial Philosophy and Policy 23 (1): 218-230. 2006.This essay attempts to identify the ethical principles appropriate to a second-order political agent—an agent, that is, whose primary responsibility lies not in the implementation of state power, but in the response to and evaluation of that state power. The specific agent I examine is the human rights non-governmental organization, and the specific context is that of humanitarian military intervention. I argue that the specific role of the human rights NGO gives rise to ethical permissions not …Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |