eSocSci Migration research network: Fair borders: Migration policy and the idea of fairness
Channel: e socsci
Date: 2018-05-01

Normative political debates over migration policy tend to focus on the framework of closed borders–open borders–no borders. This paper explores instead the idea of fair borders; that is, an explicitly ethical conception of migration policy that is governed by ideas of fairness. On this approach, the structure of borders is determined by what fairness does and does not allow. By taking this approach, this paper presumes that borders will remain a feature of social reality, but questions whether contemporary forms of borders are consistent with considerations of fairness, as defined in ordinary language and conceptualised by philosophers such as John Rawls and Joseph Carens.

David Hall is Senior Researcher with The Policy Observatory, AUT. He has a D.Phil in Politics from the University of Oxford with research interests in ethics, migration policy and climate change policy. He is editor of the BWB Text, Fair Borders: Migration Policy in the Twenty-First Century (2017).