Open Borders: Absurd Chimera or Inevitable Future Policy?

Abstract

In the current climate of security concerns, the movement of people across borders is becoming increasingly criminalised. Yet there is a parallel political and economic reality in which borders are opening and the movement of people is being liberalised: zones of free movement such as the European Union expand; other bilateral and multilateral agreements include provisions for more fluid cross-border movement; international trade negotiations seek to facilitate the flow of those providing goods and services; developing countries' push for greater access for their citizens to the labour markets of the industrialised world; and a new class of ''gold collar'' professionals moves with increasing ease around the globe. This paper explores the possibilities of universal open borders as a future policy option. The author accepts realpolitik and understands that the free flow of immigrants is currently impossible, but also maintains that open borders are an inevitable long-term consequence of globalisation, as well as a policy option for addressing North-South inequalities and a moral touchstone for the global extension of human rights. The paper does not advocate for more migration, but instead explores the paradox that the creation of the conditions that would allow for the opening of borders is likely to reduce the incentives for emigration. The paper explores the policy changes needed to achieve open borders.

Sending and receiving: The ethical framing of intra-EU migration in the European press

“…A number of authors have applied these ideas to develop liberal arguments for open borders, questioning the right of states to limit immigration (e.g. Carens, 1987), or exploring the possibility of a borderless future (Casey, 2009). Table 1 draws from these debates to construct a typology of different communitarian and cosmopolitan positions on immigration controls.…”

Jus Domicile: In Pursuit of a Citizenship of Equality and Social Justice

“…Although both perspectives are not always conceptually compatible, they have led me towards a common conclusion. While I recognize that it may be impossible to immediately implement the ideas presented in this article, given contemporary real-political circumstances (Casey 2010;Carens 2000;Kostakopoulou 2008), I believe these ideas are important for envisioning the possibility of an equitable and socially just future 'around which social action could converge and rotate' (Harvey 2011: 20).…”

“…Mobility restrictions spatially lock workers into countries with low wage and labour standards where they are readily available for exploitation (Sassen 1988). Even classical and neo-classical economists agree that economies function most efficiently under conditions of complete labour mobility (Casey 2010). Yet, national immigration policies are typically designed to skim the international labour market for desired human capital and keep undesired labour out (Bauder 2003).…”

The Black, continental African presence and the nation-immigration dialectic in Canada

“…As globalization continues to weaken the nation state with the unbridled cross-border movements of goods, services, capital, and information, many countries are using immigration as the last bastion of their sovereignty, assertively regulating the flow of people across their borders (Casey, 2009;Dauvergne, 2007). Invariably, national identity plays an important role in determining who gets into which country, just as immigration shapes a nation's identity in what the Ryerson University geographer Harald Bauder (2011) calls the nation-immigration dialectic.…”