This article examines how exile voices are epistemically displaced in global public discourse during moments of authoritarian political rupture. Drawing on discourse studies, social epistemology, and exile scholarship, the manuscript introduces and defines exilic epistemic displacement as a patterned social and discursive process through which interpretive authority is relocated away from individuals with lived experience of authoritarian repression (i.e. exiles) and towards external actors positioned at a privileged and safe distance from its consequences (i.e. outsiders). Rather than proposing exilic epistemic displacement as an entirely new type of epistemic injustice, the article identifies and theorizes it as a recurring pattern through which multiple forms of epistemic injustice are organized in exile-outsider encounters. Through situated narrative encounters and discourse-analytic examples, the analysis illustrates how exiles' emotional responses - such as relief, hope, or cautious optimism - are frequently corrected, moralized, or dismissed by outsiders who lack experiential proximity to repression yet assert interpretive and moral authority. These dynamics reproduce testimonial, hermeneutical, and expressive forms of epistemic injustice by rendering exile knowledge suspect while privileging abstraction, ideological fluency, and moral distance. Conceptualizing exile as an epistemic condition rather than a legal or identity category, the article argues that struggles over political interpretation are also struggles over credibility, recognition, and authority. The manuscript concludes by reflecting on the implications of exilic epistemic displacement for public discourse, exile studies, and social epistemology in transnational political debate.
This contribution explores an argument for the deepening of citizenship as political membership through the blurring of the boundary between the ‘us’ of the citizens and the ‘them’ of the non-citizens. The argument is based on a vision of ‘cosmopolitanism from within’ and on a reinterpretation of national citizenship as a status that simultaneously entails belonging in a national community and belonging in humanity at large. This double capacity of the national citizen entails a norm of mutual reflexive recognition between the citizen and the ‘other’ migrant, or else non-citizen. The article focuses on three logics through which this norm of reflexive recognition may apply in the context of the national demos and facilitate, on the part of the citizen, the embracing of the interests and positions of ‘others’ as the citizen’s own. The three logics are sharedness, analogy, and reflexivity. After weighing possible objections to this argument of deepening citizenship as political membership through the operation of these three logics, the article considers the implications of the argument for broadening citizenship as legal status. It hints in this respect to a possible ‘third model’ of migration regulation, where citizen-regardingness complements security- and rights-based strategies for migration governance.
Much of the original philosophical literature on immigration focused on the general question of whether borders should be open. More recently, more specific questions regarding immigration have come to the fore. This article considers an important attempt to show that consideration of one of these more specific questions, the ethical limits on the enforcement of immigration law, leads to an answer to the general question of whether borders should be open. On this indirect argument for open borders, even if we assume that states have the right to exclude, the ethical limits on the means used to enforce this right imply that borders should be open. In early 2026, with President Trump using novel tactics to enforce immigration law and anti-immigrant sentiment on the rise in many countries, it may seem that this indirect argument is correct. However, using the United States’ Chinese Exclusion Cases as an example, I argue that the ethical limits on the means used to enforce the right to exclude do not imply that borders should be open.
In this article I advance the inquiry of democratic citizenship in the digital age or ‘digital citizenship,’ for short, through an ideology critique of what I refer to as the ideology of digital empowerment. According to this ideology, which was prevalent from the early 1990s until the early 2010s, digital technologies would effectively contribute to democratic citizens’ political empowerment. Following the introduction, I explain the basic ideas I explain the basic ideas of such an ideology critique and distinguish between its empirical, genealogical, functional, and normative levels of analyses. Then, I identify Aristotelian, Machiavellian, Hobbesian, and Kantian understandings of this ideology to show its past existence across a broad range of conceptions of democratic citizenship. Following that, I empirically analyse these understandings, showing for each of them that the reality of digital citizenship did not hold up to the ideology’s promise. Subsequently, I provide a genealogical analysis of how the ideology came into being by describing the crisis of democratic citizenship at the end of the 20th century, and I complement this analysis by identifying the belief management mechanisms that supported the ideology’s dissemination. In the penultimate section, I pursue a functional analysis of the cultural, psychological, and social conditions that explain why citizens kept endorsing the ideology despite it being erroneous. Finally, I conclude by sketching, from today’s perspective, a normative analysis that addresses the technological oligarchs’ damage to democratic citizenship which this ideology facilitated.
Citizenship regimes are under pressure. Decades of neoliberalism have eroded the social rights that make citizenship into a form of equal membership. Concurrently, democracies have hardened the borders of their citizenship regimes . In this paper, I contend that these two dynamics are interlinked. Based on this diagnosis, I argue that the familiar claim that democracies must choose between broadening and deepening citizenship is, in the long-term, mistaken. Deepening citizenship is necessary for broadening citizenship because economic precarity trengthens support for the far-right. Broadening citizenship is necessary for deepening citizenship because only an inclusive conception of citizenship can counter the neoliberal nationalist ideology that fuels the erosion of social citizenship.
This article defends the instrumental value of one form of activism - political organizing - to the achievement of a range of egalitarian goals. I begin by arguing that among the central aims of egalitarians in contemporary advanced capitalist nations such as the United Kingdom and United States ought to be transforming the legal status of citizenship. This should involve both deepening and broadening citizenship: expanding the entitlements the status provides to its members and removing barriers to the attainment of the status by non-members. I then highlight two pathways through which some political organizing can contribute to the realization of this transformation. Both concern how organizing can play an important role in curtailing support for inequality-promoting ideologies which inhibit the realization of expanded civic entitlements and increased access to citizenship status among non-members. This argument, I suggest, provides a presumptive case for considering some acts of political organizing taking place within unequal societies to be paradigmatic acts of good citizenship.
Under present conditions of multiple, overlapping, and mutually reinforcing crises, both the internal and external dimensions of citizenship have come under pressure. Externally, higher migration flows, growing multiculturalism, and the commodification of transnational belonging make it increasingly difficult – both morally and politically – to sustain hard boundaries between insiders and outsiders. Internally, democratic backsliding and the increasingly oligarchic character of contemporary societies weaken citizenship’s integrative function and, with it, its capacity to overcome difference and foster civic equality. This introduction to the special issue Citizenship in Times of Polycrisis argues that these interlocking transformations generate a conflict over the breadth and depth of citizenship. Growing transnational interdependence, war, climate change – and the human mobility they trigger – simultaneously pressure the membership regimes of democratic states to become more open and fuel a conservative backlash that, by intensifying fragmentation and polarization, endangers democratic resilience. Yet while the global polycrisis may exacerbate tensions and contradictions already inherent in modern citizenship regimes, it may also catalyse their radical renewal, inviting political theorists, practitioners, and ordinary citizens to rethink the apparent conflict between citizenship’s broadening and deepening dynamics. This introduction begins that work by tracing the conflict through the history of political ideas, examining its present-day intensifications, and opening a new conversation about the normative reasons and political opportunities for expanding and reinvigorating citizenship in ways that make it both more just in access and more democratically robust.
In recent decades, we have witnessed a growing mismatch between systemic interdependencies and political structures as well as political identities, calling for strategies to cope and create new systems of policymaking above and beyond the nation state. In this context, the traditional bounded concept of citizenship has increasingly been put into question. The paper asks whether multilevel conceptions of citizenship can offer a response to the double challenge of both, broadening access to rights and deepening civic practices so that democratic citizenship will assert its meaning and importance. The reflections focus on the EU context and elaborate paths for the further (federal) development of EU citizenship. Since EU citizens’ rights are (partly) decoupled from national membership, traditional unitary conceptions of citizenship must be reconsidered. While recognizing a particular tension between federal structures of decision-making and democratic self-determination the article attempts to develop democratic minimum standards for federal citizenship in compound polities such as the EU. Within this frame, a variety of democratic practices and traditions can be explored, and democratic citizenship be deepened.
Citizenship can be understood as a legal status of membership in a polity or as a practice oriented towards the common good of political communities. This paper examines how the climate crisis impacts both dimensions of citizenship and how it ought to change in response to this crisis. Since World War Two, the boundaries of citizenship as a legal status of membership in a sovereign state have been broadened through states’ responses to international migration, while citizenship as a practice has become shallower. This paper argues that, although the climate crisis will feed into migration flows within and across states, these are unlikely to generate or require structural changes of citizenship status that have not already emerged in response to migration. The exception is the case of Pacific Island states that risk losing their territory, which calls for a novel form of dual citizenship. When considering citizenship practices, the global nature of the climate crisis calls for a global deliberative demos, which can be institutionalized through citizens’ assemblies and other democratic innovations that give new depth to citizenship practices. The crucial political battles over effective climate protection unfold, however, in national arenas where cosmopolitan conceptions of political community clash with communitarian ones mobilized by nationalist populists. The paper argues that cosmopolitans should aim to convince democratic majorities that climate protection is not only a global, but also a national common good. Overall, the climate crisis requires both a further broadening of national citizenship boundaries and a deepening of citizenship practices.
When democratic leaders renege on public threats to adversaries or commitments to allies, their domestic audiences can impose political sanctions: a mechanism known as democratic audience costs. Rationalist International Relations scholarship has extensively studied audience costs as an empirical phenomenon explaining crisis bargaining outcomes and alliance credibility, yet no normative account exists of the moral duties democratic audiences possess when deciding whether to sanction leaders for reneging on militarized threats or commitments. This article provides the first such normative account. I argue that democratic audience costs are morally significant because they rest on audiences’ morally grounded political rights and involve promise-breaking and trust-betrayal that harm both domestic publics and foreign allies. Building on these foundations, I propose a three-proposition normative framework: audiences have a pro tanto duty to sanction leaders who renege on public threats or commitments; this duty can be overridden when following through would create at least a moderate expected likelihood of basic human rights violations; and in such cases, audiences acquire an absolute duty to sanction leaders who fail to renege, provided this does not create even greater risks. I defend this account against objections concerning the epistemic capacities of mass publics, the moral relevance of direct versus indirect rights violations, and the justification for establishing non-reneging as the moral default. This framework bridges normative political theory and IR scholarship while providing practical guidance for democratic accountability in international disputes.
Many who defend immigration restrictions do so on the grounds that communities have a right to seek to preserve their cultures. The importance of preserving culture is said to reside in the meaningful connections that individuals form with their fellows and places. We ask what conclusions regarding immigration can be drawn from appeals to the importance of culture. We focus our argument on the search for meaning as a motivating factor prompting immigration and call migrants who do so for this reason 'cultural migrants.' We argue that human beings share the need to create meaningful relations. The 'fellow creatures ethic' that we develop thus puts culture at the centre of our argument. Contrary to critics of open borders, however, we argue that, in recognition of our shared humanity, we should show hospitality to potential immigrants and share the world with them physically. This is because such migration leaves it possible for current residents to continue developing their meaningful relationships, whereas closed borders prevent this for immigrants. We argue that the preservation of culture does not outweigh this quest for cultural meaning. Sharing the world with fellow creatures involves acknowledging the risk - indeed inevitability - that cultures continually change.
This paper explores how the methodological debate in political theory about political realism and political moralism can be reconstructed as an analytical framework that can be applied to specific cases. The realism/moralism distinction, which is often debated at a high level of abstraction, is re-examined through the lens of the concrete case of Quran burnings in Sweden and Denmark in 2023, which led to significant political and security crises. By analysing the Danish government's response to these events, this paper reconstructs realism and moralism as analytical categories and explores how they as such can be employed to understand and explain the political dynamics in the case. The paper aims to operationalize the realism/moralism distinction in concrete methodological terms, and to show its practical relevance as such in political analysis. The operationalization and application furthermore reflect back on the understanding of realism as a category of reasons and suggests that realist reasons, as reconstructed here, stand in a close relation to political power.
The impact of global warming on vulnerable peoples often presents them with a compelled choice between in situ adaptation and relocation from their homelands. Two existing philosophical approaches to this dilemma - the climate refugee approach and the territorial justice approach - pay too little attention to the cultural losses incurred when people with strongly-located cultures are forced to move. We examine in some detail three cases in which Pacific islanders have relocated from their existing lands, to show how even relatively 'successful' relocations can be disruptive of community norms and practices. We also consider the impact that new arrivals can have on the existing inhabitants of the territory they move to. How, then should adaptation v. relocation decisions be made, given that community members may have conflicting preferences? Younger members may attach more weight to gaining access to the resources of a bigger and possibly more open culture, while their elders are more concerned that their traditional culture should as far as possible be reproduced in a new setting. We favour Draper's democratic model of decision-making, which proceeds through deliberation and tries to balance the interests of majorities and minorities by proving 'effective rights of exit' to those who do not want to join a collective relocation. These may, however, pose problems for the viability and cohesion of the community as it relocates; instead, members may have a time-limited moral obligation to move to the new territory, after which they should be offered sufficient resources to move elsewhere.
Transgender individuals have systematically been discriminated against in military service, and although they have been included since 2016, a new White House executive order aims to exclude them again. In this paper, I analyse the arguments present in this executive order and argue that there are no good reasons to exclude transgender individuals from the military.
Recent advancements in artificial intelligence have intensified debates on deploying Autonomous Weapons Systems (AWS) in warfare. Proponents justify AWS on grounds of (1) enhanced military efficiency and reduced soldier casualties, (2) improved compliance with international humanitarian law (IHL) through algorithmic precision, and (3) operational necessity in high-threat environments. This paper critically examines these arguments, contending that they fail to establish the ethical legitimacy of AWS. It argues that AWS fundamentally undermine moral accountability in war, exacerbate risks to civilians, and corrode human agency in lethal decision-making. The analysis concludes that existing ethical and legal frameworks cannot adequately govern AWS, necessitating a reconfiguration of accountability paradigms.
This paper investigates the phenomenon of residential segregation, its harms and processes, and addresses the critical questions of how it contributes to capability deprivation and whether capability approaches focused on the individual level can adequately assess such deprivation. We argue that residential segregation not only creates physical barriers and erodes social bonds between communities but also disrupts important power dynamics between and within social groups in ways that lead to their reproduction. First, we articulate an understanding of residential segregation as a structural injustice. Second, we utilize the collective capabilities approach as our normative framework to pinpoint the political harms it causes. Finally, we explore how the harms of residential segregation can also give rise to and foster forms of solidarity, which can be valuable for contesting residential segregation and creating social change.
European politicians have recently considered reintroducing conscription and have offered three main reasons for this, arguing that conscription is critical for (1) military readiness and deterrence, (2) respecting the social contract citizens have with their state, and (3) teaching civic values and patriotism. This article analyses these arguments and shows that they are false. While these arguments may have succeeded historically, warfare, conscription, and societies have changed, weakening these arguments.
The belief that refugees should demonstrate gratitude is prevalent in popular culture and also noticeable in political theory, especially when questioning whether refugees are required to adhere to the laws of their host country. This paper addresses the ongoing discussion about whether refugees ought to be grateful to the state that hosts them, with some scholars suggesting that refugees have an obligation to demonstrate gratitude. Michael Rescher and Jason D'Cruz both advocate for this particular obligation, asserting that it underpins their political duties to the host nation. I show why such a duty reinforces different kinds of epistemic oppression against forcibly displaced people. This means that refugee gratitude generates diverse infringements on their capacity to utilize epistemically shared resources and contribute to the process of knowledge creation. Initially, I examine whether gratitude-based accounts of refuge produce first-order, testimonial epistemic forms of oppression, which seems not to be the case at first glance. Then, I consider second-order, hermeneutical epistemic kinds of oppression and show that refugees under obligations of gratitude lack the appropriate resources to communicate their experiences. Finally, I claim that the epistemic issues refugee gratitude raises are systemically inadequate -that is, they can only be solved if we replace this normative framework. Also, I took up the challenge of explaining why refugee gratitude can be regarded as an irreducible epistemic form of oppression-that is, one that is not intrinsically tied to social, political and historical formations, but to its epistemic system itself.
Jakob Huber’s brilliant new reading of Kant’s Doctrine of Right begins with a simple Kantian observation: human beings sharing the surface of the earth cannot avoid interacting with one another. Using this observation to frame Kant’s mature political thought, Huber illuminates Kant’s ‘grounded cosmopolitanism’, distinguishing it from earlier readings and vindicating a ‘global standpoint’ that recognizes everyone’s ‘right to be somewhere’ while obliging us to seek ‘mutually justifiable terms of co-existence’. In this essay, I survey Huber’s account and suggest some extensions to it. Limits to the application of the idea of shared earth dwellership, especially across time and between different modes of political organization, are in tension with the revolutionary implications of the Kantian notion that we are always engaged with everyone across the surface of the planet. I argue that the distinction between state and non-state peoples is used here in a way that Kant’s own argument for the ideal of universal right relation pushes against, and I argue that this account of the ideal of universal right relation points towards something even more basic than concurrent earth dwellership: shared earth dwellership across time.
This short essay elaborates two points of disagreement with Jakob Huber’s recent book and one point of commonality and admiration. First, against Huber, I argue that embracing a relational interpretation of original common possession need not preclude holding that it also grounds distributive entitlements. Second, I argue that for both textual and normative reasons, we should favour an interpretation of the right to visit that is narrower than Huber’s understanding. Third, I highlight the importance of Huber’s creative and compelling reading of the state as a cosmopolitan agent, which may provide Kant scholars with a way of resolving puzzles about international and cosmopolitan right that have long preoccupied them.
