Can Political Liberals Deal with the Issue of Economic Refugees?

• In Event: Democracy, Borders, and Immigration

Abstract

It has long been argued that liberal states are obliged to admit the maximum number of political refugees, while leaving the treatment of economic refugees totally at their discretion. However, it seems necessary to reconsider this assumption, since most economic refugee claims are rejected simply because they are “economic,” even in the middle of the refugee crises. This paper attempts to seek for a just policy for refugee protection that establishes a proper, non-exploitative relationship between refugees, formal immigrants, and formal citizens. It contends that Rawlsian political liberal principles are quite useful for guaranteeing stronger rights and status for economic refugees. It does so by engaging in critical dialogue with recent literatures on migration.

This paper begins with the discussion of working definition of refugees by outlining traditional understanding of major thinkers such as Michael Walzer and Will Kymlicka, which requires mandatory admission only for political refugees who suffer from severe persecutions. It then challenges this understanding by comparing the cases of political refugees who suffer from non-physical mild forms of oppression with those of economic refugees who are starving to death due to civil war or climate change. It also compares political refugees with economic ones who lost formal status due to sudden introduction of restrictive visa policies. This paper contends that these economic refugees have more urgent needs for admission and inclusion than the political ones, and argues that liberal states should admit both economic and political refugees who are at the margin of their lives at no fault of their own.

This paper continues to seek for a tenable theoretical position that provides adequate justification for admission and inclusion of economic refugees by examining existing literatures. It begins by outlining mutual agreement theory represented by David Miller and Sarah Song, which admits economic refugees to the extent that their admission is supported by the mutual agreement between refugees and the majority of the recipient society. It contends that this position is vulnerable to the objection of collective bargaining, which points out that the interests of refugees are easily neglected because of the lack of political agents who represent refugee’s interests in the political arena of the recipient society. This paper then examines freedom of movement theory represented by Joseph Carens and Kieran Oberman, which argues that all human beings including refugees possess freedom of movement exercised beyond borders. It contends that this position is subject to the objections of self-determination, which argues that the unconditional freedom of movement will infringe the right of self-determination on the part of formal citizens who have stakes in selecting their own fellow residents. This paper finally presents an alternative theory of economic refugees based on Rawlsian political liberalism. By re-interpreting the Rawlsian ideal of a well-ordered society which typically regulates the relationship between formal citizens, this paper contends that Rawlsian liberal states require a fair scheme of social cooperation that establishes non-exploitative relations between its participants, regardless of their formal citizenship status. It contends that liberal states should speak for authorized and unauthorized economic immigrants who make significant civic and economic contributions without gaining due returns from the cooperative scheme of the recipient country.

This paper further attempts to consider three major cases in which economic refugees can make stronger claims for admission and inclusion under political liberal principles. First, this paper examines the case of economic refugees who are forced to work under exploitive conditions because of their lack of bargaining power. It contends that these economic refugees are entitled to the claims for basic rights, such as rights to security, freedom of expression, and work-related rights. Second, it examines the case of economic refugees who are deprived of their formal status at no fault of their own because of the sudden changes of visa policies of the recipient country. It contends that economic refugees are entitled to recover their formal status. Finally, it examines the case of low-skilled economic refugees who are rejected because of the selective admission policy that admits only high-skilled economic migrants. This paper concludes that refugees can demand the abolishment of such brain drain policies because they strengthen exploitative relationship by neglecting the significant contributions that low-skilled immigrants usually make within the cooperative scheme.

Author

• Fumio Iida, Kobe University