On Discrimination and Borders

[pseudomonas]

Racism has a bad image, and quite right too. It's not that it's been eliminated, but that its social acceptability is such that even the BNP pays lip service to Not Being Racist. The very existence of the phrase "I'm not racist but…" is testament to how widely everyone, even massive racists realise that racism is probably not the ideal policy to cling to in life.

But. It seems to me¹ that the lines of acceptable discrimination have been drawn such that it just so happens there's no problem at all with discriminating based on place of birth. The UK does it, just about every other country does it; the idea that it's legitimate to say "if you were born here (and/or if your parents were) you are One Of Us and you have these rights and entitlements and may come and go freely, otherwise you are a Foreigner and Not Our Problem" is fully normalised in mainstream political thought.² We happily abridge the freedoms of myriads of people because they weren't born here. This cannot be right.

I can see absolutely no principled reason for this that wouldn't also amount to an extremely racist justification. I can see many pragmatic reasons for allowing this state of affairs to continue; but working backwards from pragmatic reasoning to a principle is exactly as bad as saying "our economy would collapse without slavery, therefore let us posit that the group we are enslaving are subhuman" (if you think that's too extreme then I would argue that this is merely the most graphic and most recent example of the injustices perpetrated by the mindset).

In the short term I would prefer we accept the cognitive dissonance of saying "this policy is immoral but we will stick to it for pragmatic reasons except in cases where people absolutely require refuge" than maintain the current pretence that there is anything morally acceptable about it. In the longer term, we should work towards (minimally) fully open borders and citizenship on demand for residents of any state³. I would argue that there are pragmatic advantages to that situation too - in particular in terms of increasing economic parity between regions. But even if there were no such advantages we should pursue this goal anyway, on purely principled grounds, just as abolitionists believed in their cause regardless of its undoubted economic impact.

[I considered giving here lots of examples of how the implementations of immigration controls are evil in practice, but actually the point I'm trying to make is that the very concept is evil in principle]

¹Yes, I know I'm not anything like the first person to realise this.

²I don't even know of a word or short phrase that means "discriminating against someone based on their place of birth"; there's a lot of pernicious nitpicking by people who hold to this that "oh, it's not really racism because 'people from X' aren't a race", and yeah, OK, it's not exactly racism, but it's ALSO BAD so your argument is crap. [ETA: abigailb suggests "Nativism" which is pretty close, but I would like a word describing the phenomenon of discrimination, not its political application, so as to be able to say e.g. "Nativism is a political doctrine based on _____". ETA2: "Xenophobia" is pretty damn close and well known, so maybe we should leave it at that for now. ]


³I have no major problem with the existence of national governments - just as Leicestershire and Lincolnshire have different local governments but there is no suggestion that people born in one shouldn't be permitted to travel, reside, or work in the other.

Comments

[sunflowerinrain]

Many cheers for pseudomonas!

Indeed it needs a word, so that it can be thought about and discussed. I can think of several rather silly words for it, but that wouldn't help. Perhaps "them-and-us" translated into Latin or Ancient Greek would have sufficient gravitas. ;)

I find it difficult to answer the frequent question: "Where are you from?". I should think it's even harder for m'friend who was born on a tiny island in the Pacific because his parents happened to be there that year.

[thamesynne]

It's not even by place of birth. It's just by the fiction about the "ownership" of that place that prevailed at the time of one's birth. All of these squiggles across maps exist only to the extent that our children believe the lies we share with them.

It would be funny to hear what cats thought of the notion of nation states. Maybe this is why they adopt us as pets - to try and civilise us?

[sea_bright]

I don't actually massively disagree with your conclusion, but I have to say I don't find your initial premise as intuitively obvious as you seem to.

As well as being a UK citizen, I am a member of another social unit as a result of an accident of birth. The people with responsibility for assigning resources within that unit have favoured me, and have granted me substantial privileges which it would not occur to them to grant to people who were not born into the same social unit. The social unit in question is my family, and I don't think my parents were acting immorally by feeding and clothing and accommodating me while not doing exactly the same things for all other children.

Specific circumstances can confer particular obligations, or make particular instances of favouring certain groups appropriate, without implying anything about the absolute value of that group relative to any other. For example, I buy birthday presents for my close friends and relatives, but not for other people. That doesn't mean I think my friends and relatives are intrinsically more deserving of nice things than everyone else, but just that the relationship I have with them makes it appropriate for me to be the person buying the nice things.

Of course, it being legitimate to favour one group doesn't remove all obligations to other groups. I don't have to buy presents for strangers, but I have a basic duty to treat them decently, and probably to help in certain cases of urgent need - though exactly how far that extends is a whole other ethics essay.

I'm personally inclined to feel that the obligations national governments have to people in general (simply on the basis of their being fellow human beings) are sufficient to mean that many of the restrictions currently in place shouldn't be. But to my mind, that doesn't imply that governments favouring people born within their jurisdiction must always be the result of racism - in some cases, it may be more like parents favouring their children. There are arguments one could put forward for it falling at various points on the spectrum - but it doesn't strike me as a trivial question.

[gerald_duck]

Back in January, I made a long posting in which I posited a platinum rule, that in multipolar situations, the moral action is to co-operate rather than defect, even if superficially one suffers for doing so.

Agreed, in many senses it would be nice if there was complete freedom to migrate anywhere in the world, thereby promoting parity between people everywhere. The problem is: which nation is willing to be first to operate an open-door immigration policy?

Amsterdam, for example, is very liberal in a variety of ways. That's commendable. On the other hand, because it's the place to go if you want to smoke dope and watch women insert bananas, it's become a sleazy dive. If everywhere allowed that, Amsterdam would be a far more pleasant place. They're doing the right thing, and they're suffering. (Note that I'm not saying it's right to smoke dope and watch women insert bananas; I'm just saying it's wrong to legislate against it.)

The other problem is that we don't see very much wrong with institutions such as national parks, where there are strict controls on new development and therefore, in effect, population controls. Why, when it comes right down to it, should one person get a lovely house beside Ullswater and another a semi in Cumbernauld? The thinking is that some areas should remain "unspoiled", and it's easy to see how that thinking could extend to the national level. Bhutan as a Country Of Outstanding Natural Beauty, for example?

[chess]

If you're sufficiently poor, you will discover that it is distinctly impractical to travel and reside in a different local government area, because only the one to which you have a 'local connection' has the responsibility to house you.