Ideology, Domination, and the Rights of Labor Migrants

Man hat Arbeitskräfte gerufen, und es kommen Menschen. If more people from poorer countries are allowed to work in wealthy ones, poverty in the former will be reduced and the global income gap will be narrowed. We have moral reasons to pursue those outcomes. Many believe they are weighty enough to justify certain controversial restrictions on the rights of migrants in host countries, when those restrictions are a political condition for more open borders (Ruhs 2013; Milanovic 2019). In this paper, I argue against accepting this “openness-rights tradeoff” (Bertram 2019). More precisely, I reject two kinds of acceptance. One is strictly normative, the other methodological. Labor migrants deserve the robust and extensive rights protections constitutive of equal standing, which appeals to citizen partiality cannot defeat. Improvements in global distributive justice should not be sought through practices of domination, if fairer alternatives are within reach. So, from a strictly normative perspective, we shouldn't swap rights for openness. The methodological point is this. Assume it's a fact of real politics that fairer alternatives are not within easy reach; they are unlikely to be adopted any time soon, given voters' attitudes in wealthy countries. Doesn't a well-defended method in political theory—political realism—counsel us to simply accept such facts as a parameter of inquiry, and so to endorse the tradeoff as the most egalitarians can reasonably hope for? No, it doesn't. Realist ambitions are served by ideology critique (Geuss 2008). We should study the ideological character of arguments supporting labor rights differentiation, especially when they enlist egalitarian principles, and try to see how the practices they defend stabilize broader relations of domination. Denying a class of workers equal consideration on account of their social identity helps accustom everyone, workers and capital owners alike, to a general structure of unequal rights, one that wealthy liberal states create and sustain, despite contrary commitments, through their management of economic power. Or so I argue. But why weave normative and methodological reasoning into a continuous argument? Firstly, because the methodological point follows from the success of a normative case against differentiated rights for labor migrants. Otherwise, nothing would be “traded”; migrants would just not be granted positive rights they don't anyway deserve. Questions of realism only arise when there is some appreciable tension between our moral reasons and the so-called “political” facts—about what is feasible, etc.—with which theorists are meant to engage, in their search for judgments about specific cases. Hence, the importance of mounting the normative argument first, to clarify what kind of realism it motivates. Secondly, the considerations marshaled in the normative case themselves bear directly on the ideological critique, the application of realism I defend here. Certain asymmetries of rights need to be stabilized if they are to go on benefiting capital owners. Why that is so, and what their dominative qualities are, is evidenced by a careful account of the reason-giving force of relations of associative equality—those in which labor migrants stand vis-à-vis citizens. The paper, accordingly, is sequenced as follows. Section 1 discusses the circumstances to which the openness-rights tradeoff is a response, and reasons to accept the tradeoff. These have to do with compatriot partiality, which is said to authorize the relevant rights restrictions; with welfare enhancement, which entices migrants to accept those restrictions; and with the equalizing consequences of supporting the practice, counterfactual with less open borders. The value in that outcome purportedly overrides whatever disvalue the restrictions have. Section 2 argues against the importance of the relevant on account of compatriot partiality is because the of that is by welfare normative force in of with for if wealthy states are to their to global egalitarian that to migrants so it that Section discusses the importance of political realism to this I defend the of Section that to the openness-rights tradeoff. The relations that capital owners the of and structure is of that unequal in the are, in this The tradeoff this Labor from to countries can their economic and of which can be to the and they as of a political and other are against the that of social and when migrants do work for which they are because of of and on the host argue that workers in countries are by to with migrants see as a of 2019). The fact that labor migrants are of the rights that of countries the to be in tension with a liberal that are to equal and by the that their structure of rights that in the rights they to labor migrants. of the of certain such as time and a and broader protections of and The have in for with rights workers be a specific with rights to other social and to the that they with that they be to their especially in have to and can be to specific economic labor have to welfare In wealthy the labor migrants in the a of the some countries the rights are this is of in for are from in not to broader political and in the political rights for are one protections in this is with migrants from poorer countries, not it is to their that the openness-rights tradeoff in the rights migrants and These on the of and of and other to such is a of are in and and These are the in host labor to of those countries are to the to accept the and and that such this is a in social is by restrictions on their and rights are certain and and to which the most have as social and political rights, especially their rights, capital owners to from a labor a in on and migrants specific the for their is The other restrictions migrants from their host These are the of income and people on account of a to The of the global of the of the and of the of countries are those of the of countries to this to the If rights restrictions are a condition on of labor they are by some to be as equalizing a to the that people in countries 2019). is the to migrants their a in the and general of in countries general can be here. 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