Globally, the population of the African continent is increasing at the highest rate, and intracontinental migration is also increasing. Africans are moving more frequently inside their own continent for social, political, medical, and economic reasons and sometimes safety. Given the significance of intracontinental mobility, the African Union has suggestedan open border or borderless Africa with seamless intracontinental migration. Therefore, in this paper, I seek to advance the arguments that question the viability of open border migration in Africa. My task follows two main lines of reasoning. (1) Using Bernard Matolino and Wenceslaus Kwindingwi’s views on Ubuntu, I seek to show how the issue of xenophobia that many Africans encounter on the continent would prevent the goal of openborder mobility from being successful. In light of the various xenophobic atrocities in South Africa, I question the relevance of Ubuntu, which stands for shared, reciprocal humanness and a strong sense of community that is also welcoming to migrants. In response, I question Ubuntu’s significance amid these xenophobic attacks and its utility once the open border policy is put into place. (2) I seek to question the merits and benefits of open borders for immigration to some African nations that are experiencing (ethnic) conflicts and wars. I will show that even if open borders for migration are made possible, many migrants’ lives will be lost and many nations will be in disarray (if not destroyed) if the continent fails to adequately address and provide practical solutions to xenophobic attacks, (ethnic) conflicts, and wars.
According to a common argument in defense of border control, legitimate states have a right to exclude on grounds of collective self-determination. I argue that the value of self-determination can also serve as a basis for criticizing states’ immigration policies. Specifically, I contend that the externalization policies of states in the Global North often undermine the self-determination of peoples in the Global South. I identify five pathways by which externalization policies undermine self-determination. I conclude by tentatively suggesting some potential implications of this argument for broader debates about the governance of migration.
The two major distinction lines in global justice are the relational approach and the non-relational approach. The relational approach is associative, that is, it is member-based. It emphasises that the common relationships that bind moral agents of justice together have moral significance. While the non-relational approach denies that justice is based on any special relationship. It asserts that justice is based on our common humanity and common human factors such as natural prerogatives, basic needs, and so on. This article argues that neither the relational approach nor the non-relational approach can resolve problems of recent and current migration, from former colonies to former colonizers, that are partly conditioned by colonial historical relationships. Due to colonial historical relationship: Contra the relational approach, although citizens of a former colony are non-citizens of their former colonizer, they may have certain right claims against their former colonizer and the former colonizer may owe them certain duties of justice; nevertheless, contra the non-relational approach, other non-citizens of the former colonizer who do not have such colonial historical relationship with the former colonizer do not have such right claims against the former colonizer and the former colonizer does not owe them such duties of justice.
This paper situates its discussion of the relationship between botho (ubuntu) and migration in South Africa after 1994. It asks whether botho (ubuntu) can respond to the vulnerability migrants face in South Africa after apartheid. It claims that botho (ubuntu) has potential to address the vulnerability migrants face but only if the underlying assumptions informing freedom after apartheid find orientation away from rational calculation to nature. When nature informs the understanding of freedom, botho (ubuntu) appears as a new hospitality that counters state conferred forms for hospitality. The consequence of this is the orientation of freedom to care for those the crossing of borders makes vulnerable.
There have been deliberate mob attacks allegedly led by the anti-immigrant activist group Operation Dudula, which led to the death of Elvis Nyathi, a Zimbabwean citizen, in South Africa. These attacks prove the loss of important Ubuntu ethical values, such as interpersonal relationships characterised by identity and solidarity, a value recurrent to the people of sub- Saharan Africa. This paper contributes to the discourse on intra-African migration by suggesting practical ways to achieve effective migration and peaceful coexistence of African migrants within the African continent. I use the experiences of migrants in South Africa as a referent. I submit that the xenophobic attacks in South Africa, specifically targeting black people of African descent, are one of many issues that indicate the current loss of Ubuntu values, such as interpersonal relationships of identity and solidarity within African consciousness. As a result, this and other issues threaten intra-African migration. I conclude by providing prescriptive measures to strengthen the aforementioned values and enable a peaceful coexistence between migrants and South Africans.
Review of Global Justice and the Biodiversity Crisis: Conservation in a World of Inequality by Chris Armstrong
The fear of trade-offs is a major concern when the challenges of migration are critically engaged. Who gets what, at the expense of whose works, what sacrifices have to be made, what do immigrants owe the host countries in terms of duties and obligations, and who is responsible for the lives of the immigrants? These among many other questions point to the complexities of migration ethics. This article defends the idea of being seen as an important ethical dimension of migration discourses. To be seen has often been considered and explored from the intellectual position of recognition, and, in some cases, misrecognition. More than these interpretations, there are ontological implications in the idea of being seen. This article harnesses various accounts of ubuntu in order to show what it means to be seen in sub-Sahara African societies. This will be followed by a philosophical exploration of the ethical implication of being seen for migration ethics. This article is novel in that it does not mere apply the idea of being seen to migration, but also interpreting ubuntu as including the idea of being seen.
In recent times, some African countries have responded to calls to dismantle the world of visible and invisible borders, exclusion, insider versus outsider division, strangeness, xenophobia and Afrophobia. While these calls have not been really effective, especially due to the inability of African leaders to systematically resolve or minimise the consequences of the quilt work of colonialism/neo-colonialism and its effects in post-colonial African societies, the understanding of borders in African societies require a new appraisal that challenges the rubric, foundations and intended goals of the lines that divide and the walls that exclude. This special issue features theoretical and multidisciplinary interventions in the discourse of migration from African perspectives. It also explores how various philosophical and related frameworks shed light on migration in ways that reveal past and present forms of violent exclusion and marginalisation. Ultimately, the goal of the five articles in this special issue is to add and hopefully augment existing debates, concerns and challenges on migration in Africa, and how these bear on the increasing exclusionary measures currently being implemented in global anti-immigration policies.
In one of the most recent climate litigation cases, Duarte Agostinho and Others v. Portugal and Others, the European Court of Human Rights asked the responding states to consider whether their inaction concerning climate change affects the applicants’ rights under article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights (i.e. the prohibition of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment). What makes the invocation of article 3 distinctive is that it involves a very narrow set of absolute rights; that is, the rights that are not subject to the proportionality test, and which correlate with legal obligations that are non-derogable and non-negotiable even in times of war or other public emergencies. Therefore, finding that anthropogenic climate change violates the rights against torture, or inhuman or degrading treatment may have potentially significant legal consequences and accordingly, may further strengthen the human rights approach to climate change. Finding the violation of said prohibitions, however, is easier said than done since there are many hurdles some of which relate to human rights in general, and others that are distinctive of the said prohibitions, including the lack of specified normative foundations. In the paper, I focus on developing the normative foundations of the prohibition of inhuman treatment and applying this to the context of climate change. I argue that the right not to be subjected to inhuman treatment protects the fundamental interest in autonomy understood as the ability to develop and pursue long-term plans. Inhuman treatment then is about a substantial limitation of autonomy through the significant diminishment of the range of options previously available to the victim. I argue that anthropogenic climate change poses a new threat to the interest in autonomy by undermining the ability to make and pursue long-term plans, and also by threatening to remove future-oriented options from the range of options to choose from. I further develop the idea that present generations are dependent on the future ones since the value and meaning of many of our activities today depend on the existence of future generations, whoever they may be (Heyd 1992; J. O’Neill 1993; Meyer 1997; Davidson 2008; Scheffler 2018; 2021). As opposed to these previous arguments, I argue that this interest is sufficiently important to ground the right of present people against substantial diminishment of options to choose from and the correlative duty not to significantly decrease the number of available options, including future-oriented ones.
Since their recognition and institutionalization in the aftermath of World War II, human rights have been understood as protecting the fundamental interests of human beings worldwide against serious threats. Although the range of threats can be very broad, international human rights law has tended to focus on those that originate in actions or omissions of states concerning those who find themselves under their jurisdiction. It will come as no surprise, then, that the major international human rights instruments, including the International Bill of Rights, make no references to environmental threats, which are often transboundary in nature. This special issue, comprising five contributions, sheds light on different aspects of such human rights evolving in response to the distinctive threat of anthropogenic climate change. The contributions address the range of issues that have been overlooked in philosophical and legal debates.
Human rights arguments have been successful before several domestic courts across Europe in imposing more ambitious action in cutting greenhouse gas emissions upon governments. Yet, the integration of climate justice concerns in those judicial decisions have been insufficiently studied. This paper seeks to contribute to such endeavor by analyzing the cases of Urgenda v. The Netherlands, Klimaatzaak v. Belgium and Neuebauer v. Germany against the climate justice framework. In Part One we set out our analytical framework. A climate justice approach acknowledges that climate mitigation, like the effects of climate change itself, is distributional in nature. In particular, climate justice highlights the unequal distribution of burdens and benefits across three dimensions: international (justice between states); intergenerational (justice between generations); and intragenerational (justice between social groups along socio-economic, racial and gender determinants). In Part Two, we offer a close reading of three key rights-based mitigation decisions to evaluate how judges have accounted for the various dimensions of climate justice. Detailing the contrasted approaches of climate justice in those decisions, we also point to a common reluctance to engage in intragenerational justice reflected in the failure to fashion rights-based obligations which take into account the inequalities across communities and social groups.
The global affluent are contributing to and benefiting from the systemic cause of economic misery and ecological unsustainability. Some philosophers have invoked this relational point to discuss the responsibility of the affluent because by doing so, they assume, one can formulate a more compelling argument than non-relational arguments. This paper supports this relational strand by drawing upon David Miller’s theory of ‘remedial responsibility.’ Although Miller himself seems to deny the said relational point, this paper shall defend it based upon critical economic studies. The first section summarises Miller’s non-relational argument. The second section assesses it, and in the process develops what can be described as a ‘relational remedial theory of global justice.’ The third section discusses a few significant problems that this theory would encounter. Specifically, it argues that the establishment of a ‘cosmopolitan democracy,’ which would facilitate dialogues among global citizens, may serve to overcome those problems.
The climate crisis is beset by depoliticization. Couched as an issue that experts must solve through technological or technocratic knowledge, discussion about how to address environmental degradation is not amenable to democratic action or dissensus. This paper argues that approaching climate change through a human rights framework risks reinscribing such depoliticization and that this is politically hazardous. Human rights discourse can impede the demos’ exercise of power, obscure exercises of hegemony, and, via a fixed notion of progress, discourage normative contestation. This discourse’s depoliticizing potential is further attested to by the debate over human rights’ relationship to the depoliticizing ideology of neoliberalism. Moreover, beyond the language of human rights, the larger legal phenomena of judicialization and juridification may further contribute to depoliticization. Depoliticization is risky because it can provoke politicizing backlashes likely to issue, in the case of climate change, in antidemocratically nationalistic and authoritarian responses to the environmental emergency.
Constitutional environmental rights provisions may be utilised to mitigate climate impacts either directly through climate litigation or indirectly through other types of environmental rights claims. Much of the focus in recent literature has been on climate litigation, so this article focuses on the climate mitigation prospects of the latter (i.e. non-climate cases). Examples from resource extraction, a major contributor to climate change, are used to demonstrate how this occurs through a discrete, case-by-case or project-by-project approach to address environmental harm from activities that contribute to climate change. The extent to which resource-producing nations have constitutionally entrenched environmental rights protection reveals new avenues for addressing climate change that may expand current understandings of the legal strategies that are available to public interest litigants. As this human rights-based approach gains momentum around the world, it has the potential to have a ‘snowball effect’ on a global scale that may complement other climate mitigation strategies.
According to Article 8 of the Paris Agreement, parties to the treaty recognise and commit to address, avert and minimise losses and damages associated with adverse effects of climate change. For many societies, such as Small Island Developing States, loss and damage is a matter of survival. Global warming and sea-level-rise are threatening the territories and livelihoods of vulnerable low-lying island states and thereby undermining many of the fundamental human rights and freedoms of individuals living in these societies. This paper looks at loss and damage through the concept of reparations in the context of the coloniality of climate. By studying the case of the Marshall Islands and its history with nuclear testing, the paper argues for a connection between irreversible loss and damage and the right to remedy and reparation by proposing that the nuclear legacy represents a grave violation of the human rights of the Marshallese and has led to a permanent loss of land and other severe impacts on health, culture and livelihoods, which now are exacerbated by climate change.
Book review: James Souter, Asylum as Reparation: Refuge and Responsibility for the Harms of Displacement. London: Palgrave Macmillan
Margaret Kohn has argued that fin-de-siècle French Solidarists such as Alfred Fouillée developed a “third way” between capitalism and socialism which still provides a powerful justification for “welfare state” institutions and public-goods provision. But how does Solidarism respond to the demands for environmental justice, and against environmental racism, which have emerged in the past 50 years, mostly in Women of Color-led social movements. Distinguishing three elements of environmental justice, and also pinpointing the logic of expendability at the core of environmental racism, the current article shows that Solidarism has more resources than liberal egalitarianism to challenge environmental injustice, but that, in the white supremacist state, environmental racism in particular poses an especially difficult challenge. After discussing the Solidarists’ divergent responses to feminism and Social Darwinism, the paper shows that, provided Solidarists are also in solidarity with social movements of the oppressed, their doctrine can aid the struggle for equal status.
Transgenerational political solidarity disrupts the dominant framing that identifies conflict between generations-the “problem of generations”-as the driver of social change. Political solidarity across generations offers a way of thinking about social justice movements as contributing elements to global social justice efforts through their work in acknowledging the historical rootedness of structural injustice and their commitment to continually reimagine solidarities. Attending to features of transgenerational political solidarity is useful for theorists learning from engaged work on the ground. Transgenerational political solidarity - collective movements for social change connected across past, present, and future - demonstrates the commitment to navigate through disagreement in a forward-looking manner, to find support in and echoes of the cause of past movements for social change, and to foreground the possibilities of future movements by situating collective action in relation to social justice understood in context.
When it comes to fulfilling our basic duties to distant others, we in the affluent world face a motivation gap; we consistently fall short of bearing even moderate costs for the sake of helping others secure basic minimums to which they are entitled. One response to the motivation gap is to cultivate in affluent populations a greater concern for distant others; cultivating such concern is the goal of ‘sentimental cosmopolitanism’. Two approaches to sentimental cosmopolitanism currently dominate the literature, a compassion-based and a complicity-based approach, respectively. In this paper, I argue for the promise of reciprocity as an alternative motivator of cosmopolitan concern. I further argue that a sense of obligation to distant others, grounded in our participation in an ongoing system of reciprocal exchange, can be cultivated within a thus-far overlooked sphere of cosmopolitan sensitization, namely the market. I make the case for the market as an appropriate site for cosmopolitan sensitization, and further argue that multinational corporations are, for several reasons, well-positioned to bear the political responsibility of sensitizing affluent populations to the significance of their participation in a cooperative economic scheme shared with distant others. This paper, then, makes a novel contribution to debates on cosmopolitan sentiment, as well as to the emerging literature on corporations’ political responsibilities. Keywords: multinational corporations; political responsibility; reciprocity; sentimental cosmopolitanism; trade
