Intentional (Nation‐)States: A Group‐Agency Problem for the State’s Right to Exclude

Abstract

Most philosophical defences of the state’s right to exclude immigrants derive their strength from the normative importance of self‐determination. If nation‐states are taken to be the political institutions of a people, then the state’s right to exclude is the people’s right to exclude – and a denial of this right constitutes an abridgement of self‐determination. In this article, I argue that this view of self‐determination does not cohere with a group‐agency view of nation‐states. On the group‐agency view that I defend, a nation‐state is the kind of group‐agent that does not supervene on the intentionality of member/citizens. If we think that a nation‐state is an intentional group‐agent in its own right, then we should think that self‐determination resides with the institutions of the state rather than with the citizens. If nation‐states do not supervene on the intentionality of citizens, then it is unclear why citizens might have the right to control membership in the state as a feature of self‐determination.

Who cares what the people think? Public attitudes and refugee protection in Europe

“…While self-determination has been frequently used to justify a state’s right to control immigration, there are many difficult questions related to group-agency including what is the nature of the state and the political community, who exactly is the collective agent who makes decisions, and which collective is the self-determining one (e.g. Joseph, 2021; Kukathas, 2021). Most political philosophers who cite democratic concerns to justify the state’s right to exclude agree that this right is not unlimited and that it is constrained by an imperative to protect fundamental human rights such as the right to life and freedom of conscience (what Christiano 2017 calls an “authority-limiting principle”).…”