Immigration and Global Justice: What kinds of policies should a Cosmopolitan support?

What kind of role, if any, can immigration policies play in moving us towards global justice? On one view, the removal (or reduction) of restrictions on immigration might seem to constitute great progress in realizing the desired goal. After all, people want to emigrate mainly because they perceive that their prospects for better lives are more likely to be secured elsewhere. If we remove restrictions on their ability to travel, would this not constitute an advance over the status quo in which people are significantly prevented, through tough immigration restrictions, from seeking a better life for themselves and their dependants? In particular, it might seem that a cosmopolitan must be committed to reducing restrictions on immigration. On one common account of what cosmopolitanism is, the central idea is that every person has global stature as the ultimate unit of moral concern and is therefore entitled to equal respect and consideration no matter what her citizenship status or other affiliations happen to be. It is frequently supposed that a cosmopolitan must be committed to more open borders, and that developed countries restricting entry to people from developing countries is unjust and inconsistent with a commitment to our equal moral worth. However, as I argue, removing restrictions on immigration (in isolation) could constitute a considerable step backward for global justice. In order to appreciate why this is the case, we need to review some relevant empirical evidence that our policy recommendations must take into account. As we see, considerable benefits accrue to the immigrant and host nation, but significant costs must often be born in states of origin. As one example, we consider the effects of remittances often believed to be highly beneficial to the global poor. I discuss evidence indicating that patterns associated with remittances are not always at all desirable. Migration policies need to be better managed so that they do benefit the relevant stakeholders. In section 4 I give examples of how this might work. In section 5 we investigate what kinds of policy recommendations would be best given our findings

Consumer Complicity and Labor Exploitation

Are consumers in high-income countries complicit in labor exploitation when they buy good produced in sweatshops? To focus attention we consider cases of labor exploitation such as those of exposing workers to very high risks of irreversible diseases, for instance, by failing to provide adequate safety equipment. If I purchase a product made under such conditions, what is my part in this exploitation? Is my contribution one of complicity that is blameworthy? If so, what ought I to do about such participation? I address these questions at first by applying a comprehensive account recently offered by Chiara Lepora and Robert Goodin, and analyzing the results in light of some important empirical issues

Heat, Greed and Human Need: Climate Change, Capitalism and Sustainable Wellbeing

In this wonderful book, Ian Gough shows how we can deal with climate change sensibly, by developing eco-social policy that promotes human wellbeing. The result is a tour de force. Demonstrating sophisticated knowledge of several relevant fields, Gough combines important multidisciplinary insights with his previous groundbreaking research on human needs. The result is a coherent, usable framework that has considerable value in guiding policy discussions. This impressive work is bound to become essential reading for anyone working on policy, climate change and sustainable human well-being

Global Governance: Some concerns about authentic democracy addressed

In this paper I take up a commonly voiced concern about the viability of global governance in general, and cosmopolitan democracy in particular, namely, whether genuine democracy can be achieved at the international level. Some (such as, Will Kymlicka) argue that genuine democracy is only possible within nation-states, because authentic deliberation requires common nationality or identity, which generates the trust and solidarity necessary to sustain deliberation and democracy. Through analysis of the argument and consideration of the requirements of genuine democracy, we can see that these concerns can be addressed. I go on to suggest that the major challenge facing models of global governance is not one concerning lack of common identity, solidarity, or opportunities for authentic deliberation, rather, it lies elsewhere. We can assess global governance arrangements in terms of two main variables, which are sometimes in tension: effectiveness and accountability. We want systems of global governance to incorporate both considerations. Accountability can take the form of democratic procedures but alternative forms of accountability are also possible. Furthermore, a system of governance that both effectively attends to people’s interests and is suitably accountable can certainly claim to have adequate democratic credentials on the “Responsive Democracy” view I discuss

Social mindfulness predicts concern for nature and immigrants across 36 nations

People cooperate every day in ways that range from largescale contributions that mitigate climate change to simple actions such as leaving another individual with choice – known as social mindfulness. It is not yet clear whether and how these complex and more simple forms of cooperation relate. Prior work has found that countries with individuals who made more socially mindful choices were linked to a higher country environmental performance – a proxy for complex cooperation. Here we replicated this initial finding in 41 samples around the world, demonstrating the robustness of the association between social mindfulness and environmental performance, and substantially built on it to show this relationship extended to a wide range of complex cooperative indices, tied closely to many current societal issues. We found that greater social mindfulness expressed by an individual was related to living in countries with more social capital, more community participation and reduced prejudice towards immigrants. Our findings speak to the symbiotic relationship between simple and more complex forms of cooperation in societies

Moral expansiveness around the world:The role of societal factors across 36 countries

International audienceWhat are the things that we think matter morally, and how do societal factors influence this? To date, research has explored several individual-level and historical factors that influence the size of our ‘moral circles.' There has, however, been less attention focused on which societal factors play a role. We present the first multi-national exploration of moral expansiveness—that is, the size of people’s moral circles across countries. We found low generalized trust, greater perceptions of a breakdown in the social fabric of society, and greater perceived economic inequality were associated with smaller moral circles. Generalized trust also helped explain the effects of perceived inequality on lower levels of moral inclusiveness. Other inequality indicators (i.e., Gini coefficients) were, however, unrelated to moral expansiveness. These findings suggest that societal factors, especially those associated with generalized trust, may influence the size of our moral circles