Global Citizenship: The Case of
Migrants and Residents
By
Raffaele Marchetti
Migration: A Political Issue
Migration constitutes a particularly challenging paradox of the
globalizing age. On the one hand, migration is facilitated by a number of
developments including easier international transports, increased IT
technologies, and higher financial capabilities. Accordingly, individuals
nowadays can travel easily, know more about the destination countries, and
have (relatively) more money to pay for their movement. On the other hand,
however, migration is constrained by normative, political, and legal barriers
erected by receiving countries. Principles of political communitarianism,
nationalistic and racist feelings and the legal privileges of national citizenship
prevent individuals from moving to the richer countries of the global north.
Economic reasons are played out in both directions equally to attract
working force when needed, and to repel labour competition when under the
threat of unemployment. Hence global practical possibilities are constrained
by national normative limits.
The kind of global vs. local tension underpins the (non)-
management of the issue of migration at the international and global level.
While international migration is increasing putting under pressure the current
institutional framework, the kind of response that is given to it remains
within the limits of national policies. Beyond the exceptional case of the
Geneva Convention on Refugees (created in a very different international
context for a very specific category of migrant), there is no effective and
comprehensive international institution dedicated to the issue of migration.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) has during the years elaborated
a number of conventions but they remain depressingly unattended. Limited
cooperation is achieved within the General Agreement on Trade and Services
(GATS) for what concerns high-skilled workers only. Also, limited
cooperation is developing through a number of UN conventions on illegal
migration, human smuggling and trafficking. Regional cooperation, such as
the case of the European Union, is more significant, though being
territorially delimited it reproduces the logic of state management writ large.
All in all, the general and more quantitatively significant case of economic
migrants is left to the free will of national policies, with no international
regime emerging for its collective management.
The Case of Migrants and Residents 56
Two practical considerations related to the power position of
receiving countries explain why the issue of migration is stuck in such a
desolating stalemate (Zolberg 1992; Koslowski 2004). From an economic
point of view, the economies of the rich countries can collect working force
from poor countries whenever they need, for foreign labour is in abundant
supply globally speaking. Consequently, states do not need to commit to any
long-term inter-governmental agreement for they can always—bilaterally or
unilaterally—open up their borders and immediately fill the labour gaps in
their domestic economic system. Instead, from a political point of view,
receiving countries are continuously under pressure from an electorate that is
often threatened by (real or perceived) menaces generated by the inflow of
foreigners. Employment, national culture and even public institutions are
usually depicted by (not exclusively right-wing) political parties as destabilized
by the integration of alien members.
In this paper, I develop a normative argument with the intent of
providing a better defense of the idea of a world migratory regime by
bridging two different discourses. Normative arguments based on the ideal
of cosmopolitanism will be used to prove the case for the re-thinking of the
notion of citizenship and global democracy. In particular, this paper will
begin by setting the definitional characteristics of the migratory phenomenon
and of the political concept of citizenship, and will proceed to a survey of
current policies regarding migration. The core argument about the
cosmopolitan interpretation of migration and citizenship will then be
introduced. Finally, some political institutional recommendations will be
offered on the cosmopolitan governance of migration.
Migration: A Matter of Citizenships
In a sociological sense migration occurs every time one moves from
the original community (defined, among other, by a net of social relations
with reference to a defined territory) to another one. Local migration has
always been a constitutive phenomenon of human history. Although the
main character of societies has been their permanency, there has always been
collective displacement of people. Moreover an important, often unregulated,
feature of socio-economic systems was movement of specific groups of
people such as merchants, slaves, soldiers, artists, scientists, and those
escaping from dangers and looking for a better fate. The conquest of the
‘new world’ gave a strong impulse to long-distance migratory fluxes towards
the North and the South American continents from Europe and Africa. In
the following centuries up till this day, both voluntary and forced movements
of people had increased substantially thanks to the new opportunities offered
by the technological progress of the industrial revolution applied to the
means of both communication and transportation. The linguistic
heterogeneity present in almost every idiom is probably one of the clearest
evidence of the continuous and persistent relationship between peoples
throughout human history.
The Case of Migrants and Residents 57
In this paper, however, another kind of definition of migration is
used. Reference is made rather to the political than to the anthropological
meaning of movement. While the sociological interpretation refers to
phenomena that are almost as old as society itself, their political reading is
more recent and is concerned with admission into foreign political society. A
strict definition of immigration, in fact, needs to rely on the modern concept
of citizenship and therefore of the nation-state. A conventional and symbolic
date, which is used to signify the start of a new nation-state model of active
membership, is considered to be August 26 1789, the Declaration des droits
de l’homme et du citoyen. It is, in fact, from the period of the formation of
the modern nation-state, that the distinction between e-migration and im-
migration and all the relative discriminations arise, which marks the
difference between political communities today. More recently, at the
beginning of XX century, another concrete and equally relevant event was
the introduction of the passport as a compulsory means of trans-border
travel. And finally, in recent decades a continuous tightening of the
admission requirements has brought about the current state-centered
apparatus (Torpey 2000; Salter 2003).
In this context, citizenship is understood as the set of entitlements
that allows the acquisition of a full community membership that is the central
element of any democratic political theory. Membership as the right to
participate in the collective exercise of self-governance is also the core
principle of most of the contemporary constitutions nowadays in force.
Conventionally, three different sets of rights can be distinguished according
to their scope: civil, political, and socio-economical rights (Marshall 1950).
Two major principles of citizenship have been adopted throughout history:
jus solii and jus sanguinis, integrated by the practices of naturalization. While
the first grants citizenship to everyone born in the territory of the country,
the second considers blood relationship as the marking element of
distinction. This formed the base of the traditional concept of allegiance,
according to which loyalty is due to one’s own country, regardless of any
other kind of secondary responsibilities extending beyond borders. This
stance is, however, increasingly under pressure both from a normative point
of view for its inconsistency with fundamental principles of impartiality, and
as a matter of fact, for the increasing number of states that recognize the
possibility of double or even multiple nationality (Habermas 1992, 2002).
The Origins and Policies of Current Migratory Institutions
Migration is commonly included in the list of the global issues, and
yet is almost exclusively managed merely by national or regional policies1.
This ‘disconnect’ reveals a fundamental normative contradiction between
claims (that are universal to all humans) and the communitarian entitlements
(upheld by mainstream political philosophy as well as national and
international laws). The most blatant example of this contradictory logic at
work is possibly Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Case of Migrants and Residents 58
adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948 concerning the right to leave
(but not to enter into) any country.
International law has played an important, and yet discontinuous,
justificatory role in keeping the legal setting of migratory policy domestic.
Although recognition of the human rights regime has grown substantially
over the last fifty years as it has slowly challenged national sovereignty in
many aspects, the alien’s right to admission is still a solid prerogative of the
state. But this has not always been the case. In the first stages of jus gentium,
which were anchored to the tradition of the Law of Nature, in fact, the duty
to admit the alien was accepted as standard; it was the expulsion of the alien
that was considered exceptional. Vitoria, Grotius, and Pufendorf all
recognize the principle of freedom of movement, together with a number of
minor limits. Minimal rational principles common to mankind supported a
legal system in which domestic and interstate relations were consistently
linked. The jus societatis et communicationis and the jus commercii were the driving
principles of the scholars of the Law of Nature regarding movement of
people (Vitoria 1539; reprinted 1917; Grotius 1625; reprinted 1925, 1, II, §
XIII and XV; Pufendorf 1672; reprinted 1934, 1, III, § III). This perspective
was accepted for a long period.
Later on, the dominion theory and its subsequent developments, in
exact opposition to the principles of the law of nature, formed a paramount
historical and theoretical source of legitimacy for the current exclusionary
attitude toward migration and citizenship. According to such a theory,
citizenship was originally considered a good belonging to the state, whose
right of property extends over its territory. The imperia on people, an
expression of the dominium on the territory marked by the principle qui in
territorio meo, etiam meus subditus est, granted the state absolute power over the
political and social existence of individuals within its domain. Afterward, an
important significant contractual variant was inserted into this tradition,
which substantially modified the ethico-political justification of the state, but
left intact the normative distinction between insiders and outsiders. With the
American Revolution, and, above all, the French Revolution, in fact, citizens
acquired an active part in collective decision-making and in the exercise of
sovereignty, but the fundamental power to determine civil inclusion
remained strictly the group’s prerogatives. The universalistic law of nature
coexisted with the domestic contractual framework, but a consistent and
definitive synthesis was never established.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, this coexistence was well
suited to the socio-economic circumstances. These principles, in fact,
underpinned and legitimized a situation where both the country of
destination and country of origin had a clear interest in favoring migration, as
in the case of the migration from Europe to America. When the ‘golden age’
of free trade ended and a tougher nationalistic political era took the center-
stage of international relations alongside protectionism, migration policies
changed too. Suddenly, within a few decades most countries adopted entry
limitations inspired by domestic political and economical ends. It was, in fact,
The Case of Migrants and Residents 59
the supposed protection of domestic labor markets and welfare systems that
convinced governments to invent new forms of barriers.
Thus while for many centuries a substantial trans-national flow of
people characterized both the internal and the external image of many
countries (Spencer 1993), today the situation is largely different. Current
international customary law, which is consistent with the dominium theory of
sovereignty, holds migration standards to be contrary to the original
formulation of the jus naturae. While the formal difference consists in the
switch from the moral to the legal status of law, the substantive change
concerns the legitimate criteria for entrance. An absolute right to refuse
admission is granted to the state. While sovereignty is threatened in other
respects, legislating the admission of immigrants is one of the instances in
which state prerogatives are most obviously still intact. Provided no relevant
conventions or humanitarian measures are applicable 2, the refusal to admit
the alien is never an illicit act. However, if an alien already resides in the
national territory the right of the state to remove him/her is partially limited;
accordingly, there is no absolute right to expulsion (Goodwin-Gill 1978, 136;
Nascimbene 1984, § 6). The only agent towards whom the state has an
international duty of admission, are its own citizens.
A Normative Argument
One way of re-interpreting the issue of immigration, as an historical
development of the original dominium theory (through citizenship), happens
through progressively drawing limits to state sovereignty according to
international superior laws. Usually this interpretation implies considering
migrants in the negative light as aliens, or non-citizens or non-subjects, the
state being accepted as the only agent entitled to confer such privileged status
(Nascimbene 1984, § II). This approach typically corresponds to the image of
concentric circles, according to which the starting reference is the group (or
even the family) and from there on progressive enlargements are envisaged.
This mechanism inevitably generates exclusion. By contrast, the approach
that this paper advocates is diametrically opposed to it: it is, instead,
cosmopolitan and all-inclusive from the beginning. Migrants are considered
cosmopolitan citizens entitled in certain degrees to rights which extend to
different spheres of political action, for they have as great an ultimate right to
freedom of choice and control over the decision-making processes world-
wide as do ‘permanent’ residents. In accordance with a new concept of
universal membership based on a de-territorialized notion of person’s rights,
this paper develops an argument for a consistent global democratic regime
able to grant not only civil and social, but also political rights to migrants,
through a legitimate migratory regulatory system.
The Case of Migrants and Residents 60
Cosmopolitan Citizenship: Weighing Residents’ and
Newcomers’ Claims
At the world level, a proper conception of political agency has to
acknowledge the need for the enlargement of the current view of political
agency. Traditional politics draws on a conception of responsibility and
vulnerability, usually pertaining to the state domain, which is too narrow to
deal properly with the ethical problems exacerbated by the increasingly global
dimension of political life. In such an interdependent political situation,
social freedom depends on the extent to which the individual can express his
consent in several political domains. In this regard, world citizenship
engenders a more consistent political means to address the phenomena
which in fact affects one’s life, and a more effective way of aligning one’s
personal with one’s political identity (Linklater 1998; Hutchings &
Dannreuther 1999; Dower & Williams 2002). Underpinning this is a concept
of complex citizenship, according to which individuals and collective agents
are entitled to a multilevel citizenship and, as a consequence, a political voice
in the decision-making process at all socio-economical levels (Pogge 1992;
Held 1995; Goodin 1996; Marchetti 2008a). This new interpretation of
political agency is particularly significant in those cases, such as that of
transnational migration, where traditional state-centric conceptions of
citizenship demonstrate an increasing inappropriateness, both moral and
political.
Two principal dilemmas centered on the notion of citizenship
challenge any normative political theory which aims to deal with the theme of
migration: how to deal with the received migrants, and if and how to admit
new would-be migrants (Schwartz 1995; Bader 1997b, 2005; Seglow 2005;
Juss 2006). Despite some recent attempts to consider migration from a wider
perspective including a more global approach―a receivers’ point of view still
dominates in the normative literature on migration. Both explicitly
nationalistic (Walzer 1981; Miller 2000; Meilaender 2001; Miller 2003) and
globalistic scholars (Carens 1987, 1989; Bader 1997b) commonly adopt the
partial perspective of the receiving countries, in as much as admission to a
country is considered the principal (sometimes the only) turning point of the
entire issue. As an alternative to this, a radical repositioning of the receivers is
developed, and the shift from the state-centric paradigm of national
membership to a truly global political principle of residency and multilevel
citizenship becomes the turning point for the renewal of the cosmopolitan
paradigm, and a unique chance for the social and political development of
the theory and practice of democracy. In opting for a different vantage point
based on an all-inclusive perspective, this paper thus deals with migration
within a larger conceptual framework that includes a further crucial element,
i.e. the institution of multilevel citizenship as inherently anchored to the
distribution of international responsibility.
With regards to the political reading of migration, the
cosmopolitanism argument on the movement of people stems from two
The Case of Migrants and Residents 61
different observations: one descriptive and one prescriptive. In factual terms,
migration is considered principally and inevitably as a global issue in that it
refers to social phenomena primarily concerning the world level of political
action and producing international effects. International inter-dependence is
utterly evident with reference to the phenomenon of migration. International
events such as the fall of the socialist regimes in Eastern Europe, the
unleashing of civil wars, or the North-South divide- all constitute powerful
international push-factors for migration. More, once migrants (are forced to)
move, they “choose” their country of destination not only for the specific
characteristics of the would-be receiving country, but very often by a
comparative assessment of the remaining countries’ rules of admission.
Asylum is, for instance, often sought in the most open counties. If a country
restricts its admission rules, the remaining countries will receive an increase
in requests of entry, as in a system of water-pumps in which when water goes
down in a container, it goes up in the other. In normative terms, instead, the
fundamental ethical postulate regarding cosmopolitan impartiality demands
the extension of the application of the norm of non-discrimination also to
the global level (Singer & Singer 1988; Goodin 1992; Marchetti 2006).
An interpretation of cosmopolitan citizenship in terms of freedom
of movement forms the core of this paper. The fundamental principle of
political justice is affirmed in the maximization of individual freedom of
choice, as a tool for the maximization of social welfare (Marchetti 2005). In
line with this universalistic and consequentialist reading of normative politics,
equal status of cosmopolitan citizenship is granted to both migrants and
receivers for what concerns individual possibility of choice. Accordingly, it
takes as a primary object of concern the capacity of individuals to modify
their personal choice possibility through changing place of residency, and
thus, to pursue control over the political system and, a fortiori, over their own
future. A cosmopolitan citizenship characterized by these entitlements
becomes a de facto crucial institutional factor in order for the individuals to
increase (but sometimes even simply to implement) their possibility of choice
among differing life options and their capability to govern the social-political
domain, by changing their place of residence. It is possible to argue that as
much as at the domestic level the right to movement over the national
territory has proved crucial in the self-realization of one’s personal projects,
an equivalent international right would be equally beneficial to the welfare of
the individual, in terms of choice opportunities and political control of one’s
own life (Nett 1971, 218).
Nonetheless, for this to be consistent with the multilevel
dimensionality of political life, an impartial weighing mechanism between the
claims of migrants and those of local citizens has to be simultaneously
envisaged. Having argued for a universal right to movement, it is here
necessary to point out again that such a right has to be inserted into a wider
institutional political framework, in which other different kinds of rights also
have legitimate claims. While migrants and residents are equal on the basis of
a fundamental right to the protection of possibility of choice, they may
The Case of Migrants and Residents 62
nonetheless differ in that the social performance of their relative institutional
entitlements—i.e. national citizenship—may become unbalanced. In this
vein, the institution of national primary citizenship is only warranted to the
extent that its long-term social performance consistently matches with the
demands of the institution of cosmopolitan citizenship. Accordingly,
different associative ties of the kind of national citizenship may gain a
definitive legitimacy only through a comparative assessment with the
migrants’ conflicting entitlement. Such a comparative assessment between
different citizenship-related entitlements is based on the expected capacity of
each set of rights to contribute to the maximization of personal autonomy,
intended as individual possibility of choice.
Open or Closed Borders?
A number of theoretical consequences pertaining to the status of the citizen
are generated by the re-balancing of the notion of citizenship according to an
impartial, global caliber of membership claims. The multilayered notion of
cosmopolitan citizenship by definition entails political membership at
different levels. While state membership would still remain inevitably subject
to some constraints (e.g. not all can be American citizens), second order,
global citizenship is characterized by all-inclusiveness (e.g. all can be world
citizens). In this way, consequentialist cosmopolitanism grants to individuals
civil, social and political rights in more than one country, and the complete
parity of rights related to residency between local people and migrants
(Goodin 1996, 357-62; Carter 2001, 109).
Accordingly, the state-centric point of view should be rejected for at
least two reasons, which in different ways concern the principle of non-
discrimination. Firstly, in conceding an almost absolute privilege to original
residents, state-centric policies unequally weigh the fundamentally universal
claims of individuals to equal choice opportunity. Secondly, the nationalist
orientation should be rejected for the way it intentionally discriminates
among would-be migrants, admitting only those who satisfy entry
requirements shaped on the needs of the receiving countries. In fact, it is
very often the case that current policies of admission filter the in-flow of
would-be migrants in accordance with one-sided considerations based either
on economy (their potential to contribute to domestic economy) or politics
(the cultural, social or religious affinities to national society), leaving the
remaining vast majority of would-be migrants unjustly excluded, without the
right to appeal.
The radical alternative of completely opening-borders 3 here and
now should equally be refused for a number of distinct reasons related both
to migrants and to receiving populations. Concerning the former, a policy of
open borders would be most likely self-defeating, in so far as it would
subvert the expectations of would-be migrants themselves. The motivations
to move of the would-be migrants in fact include the possibility to reach a
specific country with its distinctive cultural, social, and economic context.
The Case of Migrants and Residents 63
However, an unlimited inflow of foreign people would probably not be
sustained by the destination country without a radical reshaping of its
fundamental characteristics, thus disappointing the original objectives of the
migrants themselves. As for local residents, their expectations should also be
taken into account and with equal weight. At the moment, it is plausible to
assert that most citizens of the potential receiving countries are not willing to
accept such a universalistic policy, nor are their politicians. Where borders
suddenly and completely open, the likely result would be a disruption of
social identity and political institutions, with potentially huge social costs.
The possibly most evident case of socio-political disruption caused by open
borders was the in-flow of Jews in Palestine after WWII. With that, Arab
Palestinian context was wiped away and the new state of Israel created on
completely different grounds without much consultation of local residents.
In this respect, the communitarian stance is partially right in claiming the
importance of social identity and institutional traditions (Ackerman 1980, 95;
Perry 1995, 110-24).
Since fully closed and fully open border policies are not viable in the
near future and yet the right to movement is universal in principle, the
subsequent problem then becomes, how to distribute a scarce good equally
(i.e. the right of residency in a any state). The constraints, which, drawing on
Humean terminology, I call the ‘circumstances of migratory justice’, consist
in the fact that many want to enjoy the relevant good (i.e. right of residency),
and yet such a good is not infinite at the national level. This situation is
further aggravated by the current “win-or-lose all” process that continues to
haunt the lives of many migrants everyday. Migrants refused at the border
lose everything, while those who make it through (by chance or illicit means)
win the ‘gamble’. Those migrants refused (who may well have greater ethical
grounds for wanting admittance) are excluded by a jungle system, where
physical force and social power very often decide the result, beyond any
moral constraints. The sacrifice of a few migrants (actually many lives)
represents then the tragic cost of sustaining an unjust system: a cost which
includes that of the other would-be migrants who remain at home, the legal
migrants who have already been accepted, and the local population.
The response of cosmopolitanism to the arbitrariness of the present
mechanisms for entering consists in a moralized and impartial treatment of
the distribution of the permits of residency based on a universal right to
movement embedded in an impartial global weighing mechanism. According
to this cosmo-political interpretation of citizenship, the only viable solution
to the distributive problem of admission consists in a kind of ‘regulated
openness’ (Ghosh 2000, 25) or ‘fairly open borders’ (Bader 1997a) to be
managed by an all-inclusive global institutions in charge of balancing the
conflicting claims of residents and migrants. As argued elsewhere (Marchetti
2008b), since the issue at stake is global in kind, an adequate response cannot
be other than equally global. In this regard, the establishment of international
institutional framework of migratory cosmopolitanism, migration forms an
essential component of the cosmopolitan model here envisaged.
The Case of Migrants and Residents 64
Conclusions
To the original point of contention represented by the moral
unaccountability of state migratory policies, this paper has suggested a
cosmopolitan answer. The arbitrariness of the admission criteria has been
criticized through the adoption of a radical change in political perspective,
whereby migration and citizenship has been re-interpreted as global moral
issues. The core of this cosmopolitan argument resides in a particular
interpretation of the idea of a universal right to free passage, which takes into
account the “circumstances of migratory justice”. In arguing for such a view,
the key step consists in the recognition of the necessity of ‘framing’ the
political responsibility for migratory regulation in full global terms. The
political recommendations deriving from this recognition suggest the
creation of a new system of international cooperation. The latter in
particular, entailing the adoption of a convention on migrants and the
establishment of a supra-national cooperative agency to manage migratory
fluxes.
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Notes
1 For a very recent attempt to deal collectively with this issue see (Global
Commission on International Migration 2005; United Nations 2006). However, an
effective implementation of such a proposal still seems far in the future.
2 The UN Charter; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948); the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966); the Convention Against
Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984);
the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination (1965); the UN International Convention on the Protection of the
Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (1990); and the
Geneva Refugee Convention (1951) all impose some limits on state sovereignty,
according to the principle of non-discrimination. So do, other recommendations and
non-binding documents from diverse international organisations related to the issue
of migration such as the UNHCR; ILO; IOM, and WTO. The EU system is a sui
generis institution, for while granting complete freedom of movement to its members,
it is increasingly exclusionary toward non-members. It is important to remark,
however, that these international agreements represent exceptional and external
constraints on the original state entitlement to administer membership rights. In
particular, they require the equal treatment of the aliens once they are in the national
territory. Yet, only very rarely do they comment on the admission itself, except in the
case of reunion of minors to parents and refugees.
3 (Carens 1987; Wihtol de Wenden 1999; Bhagwati 2003; Winters et al. 2003; Hayter
2004; Kukathas 2005; Pécoud & de Guchteneire 2005)
The Case of Migrants and Residents 67
Raffaele Marchetti
