It seems to have become a tendency to focus on the negative consequences of higher migration flows. More open borders would supposedly undermine the sovereignty of states and lead to an unfavorable...Show moreIt seems to have become a tendency to focus on the negative consequences of higher migration flows. More open borders would supposedly undermine the sovereignty of states and lead to an unfavorable lack of control over who enters the country and who does not. Yet I believe there are many good reasons to defend looser border controls and actually far fewer reasons to support strict immigration policies. The conviction with which almost every country in the world defends the right to leave a country, while they simultaneously resist to acknowledge a subsequent right to enter another country, is suprising to me. As Phillip Cole pointed out “one cannot consistently assert that there is a fundamental human right to emigration but no such right to immigration; the liberal asymmetry position is morally ethical, but also conceptually incoherent” (Cole, 2000, 46). Cole argues that in case of nation state, the right to exit one’s state is dependent upon entry elsewhere because there is no livable ‘space’ of statelessness (2011, 203-204). I share the same conviction that the notions of depart and entrance are conceptually intertwined. An analysis of the concept of rights, duties and democratic legitimacy will demonstrate that there is a moral right to leave and a subsequent moral right to enter a country.Show less
Thomas Pogge in his paper “Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty” developed an idea for global institutional reform which contributed significantly to the debate about global justice and promotion of...Show moreThomas Pogge in his paper “Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty” developed an idea for global institutional reform which contributed significantly to the debate about global justice and promotion of human rights. Pogge attempts to use a strategy that would permit him to go beyond the debate between two extreme approaches to duties, namely libertarianism and utilitarianism. The idea is to invoke strong obligations on the part of individuals by appealing only to their negative duties and not affirming positive duties. In this way, Pogge attempts to broaden the circle of responsibility for the fulfillment of human rights. This thesis will discover how succesful Pogge is in his strategy to do it. It will explore how Pogge adresses within his institutional cosmopolitanism the duties that human rights entail and reveal this way a number of weak points in the theoryShow less
