jobs, the welfare system might collapse, or democracies would decay. There are many concerns, but several of them might be construed as detrimental effects on the very institutions and collective assets that communities need to sustain themselves well.
Negative economic impacts
One concern is that an influx of migrants might lead to economic deterioration. Much turns on the point at which one believes such economic decline would set in, and it is possible that states could in fact afford to open their borders to large numbers of migrants before that point is reached. By contrast, others argue that the entry of large numbers of migrants can assist the growth, innovation, and dynamism of an economy, resulting in considerable mutual gains for both migrants and receiving countries. Some also argue that most affluent countries need high levels of migration to sustain prosperity (such as by providing a strong workforce and tax base), given their significantly aging populations and the fact that older populations need more service sector workers.
Concerns over the economy often ground arguments for the right to exclude immigrants. Citizens often believe that immigrants displace poor citizens in certain job sectors such as those that are less skilled. They also assume that immigrants are overly burdensome on welfare systems and are an overall drain on public finances. There is much empirical evidence to review on these issues, and here I highlight only a couple of points concerning displacement of local workers. In the section below, Strains on the welfare state and negative effects for compatriots, and in later chapters (e.g. 7 and 8), I address others. For now, it is sufficient to note that many of these beliefs and assumptions are false. Large influxes of newcomers do not necessarily inflict negative consequences on others, as we see in cases such as the Mariel Boatlift from Cuba to Miami in 1980 that did not have negative effects on the wages of less-skilled native workers (Card 1990; Sumption and Somerville 2010). Similarly, large immigration shocks in Israel in 1990 and 1991 (effectively a population increase of 7.6%) did not create downward pressure on local wages (Sumption and Somerville 2010). A key issue is how movement is managed and the complementary policies the state may enact to realize the positive potential of new citizens.
The requirements for a robust democracy
Democratic institutions have certain prerequisites that must be met if they are to function well. Individual members of a society need a certain sense of themselves as a team so that they will be willing to work together in sustaining the community. For instance, they need to be willing to make sacrifices for each other in the name of the community’s wellbeing. We need to trust our compatriots, to be willing to engage appropriately in deliberation and to make compromises where appropriate. Some argue that shared identity is necessary for creating and sustaining such connections. Some worry that immigration will threaten these prerequisites (or “social capital”), for instance by corroding national identity in detrimental ways (Banting and Kymlicka 2017b). This connects us again with the concerns about protecting the culture that undergirds national identity. Let’s look at these concerns in a bit more detail.
How does the concern that a large influx of migrants might threaten culture and solidarity go? The idea is that large numbers of migrants who have different cultures may, over time, erode the recipient country culture as newcomers choose not to sustain the destination country culture but rather support different practices. The fear is that this change in culture will affect national identity and the social capital that it generates and requires to sustain robust democratic deliberation. Now, while very rapid migration and completely unmanaged migration may have such effects, these results are not inevitable if sufficient complementary policies to protect recipient cultures are in place. Well-designed institutions can foster the relevant identity and trust in contexts where there is a high level of diversity (Abizadeh 2008; Wellman and Cole 2011). Furthermore, immigrants are often eager and highly motivated to belong, and keen to embrace the national identity in efforts to integrate. This concern also raises issues about whether a single national public culture or identity is necessary to achieve desirable levels of social capital or solidarity, a topic I explore further in later chapters.
Strains on the welfare state and negative effects for compatriots
Many ordinary citizens fear that increased migration puts pressure on publicly provided goods such as education, healthcare, or law enforcement. People are concerned about longer wait times to receive services such as healthcare, or that the quality of services will deteriorate. In short, compatriots worry that a higher number of migrants will present more competition for scarce resources, raising the price of housing, increasing congestion on the roads, putting downward pressure on wages, and so on. And they worry especially that with all these added demands on the welfare state, this will erode the solidarity and social capital we need to sustain such institutions.
Does immigration undermine the social trust needed to sustain a welfare system? Some important empirical evidence “suggests that support for the welfare state depends primarily on features of institutions rather than on characteristics of the population” (Pevnick 2009: 149). As Cole (2011) argues, social trust can be created; we do not have to rely on its already being in the community. So welfare institutions can create social trust, rather than the other way around. We return to many issues concerning consequences of migration in chapters 7 and 8, among several others.
2.2 Arguments for obligations to allow free movement across borders
2.2.1 Joseph Carens: feudalism, convergence, and freedom
The feudalism analogy
Joseph Carens famously argues for a position that is more open to permitting immigration, and this position is standardly characterized as an argument for open borders. In his classic argument, there is little justification for keeping out the many poor and oppressed people who wish to move to high-income countries. His view is that “borders should generally be open … people should normally be free to leave their country of origin and settle in another” (Carens 1987: 251). He has several lines of argument for this position.
In one line of argument, he invokes a provocative analogy. He compares citizenship in western liberal democracies to feudal privilege in being “an inherited status that greatly enhances one’s life chances. Like feudal birthright privileges, restrictive citizenship is hard to justify when one thinks about it closely” (Carens 1987: 252). In feudal societies, one inherited a certain station in life. The landowners took themselves to be born into a world in which they were entitled to live off the labor of serfs. Being designated the position of serf or lord was determined by these accidents of birth – by who one’s parents happened to be. Now consider how being born into an affluent country is something we cannot be said to deserve in any strong sense, but is rather a matter of sheer good fortune, given that opportunities for good lives track countries of residence. Similarly it is a matter of bad luck if one is born into a country suffering civil war where (for instance) poverty and associated ill-health are widespread. So in these ways country of residence is somewhat arbitrary from a moral point of view. And yet so much of how one’s life will go can be traced to this matter of sheer brute luck. A similar system of entrenched advantages for those fortunate to be born to positions of privilege rules our current global order. Those who live in affluent countries can expect a reasonably comfortable and secure life, and they guard their privileges by keeping out those who are born in countries where opportunities which are prevalent in high-income countries are not readily available.
The convergence line of argument
In another line of argument, Carens shows that
