Abstract
According to what Joseph Carens calls the conventional view, states have a right to exercise discretionary control over immigration. However, this right is not without limits. Extending Carens’s own suggestions, we claim that people who are harmed by historical injustices have a strong moral right to immigrate. We draw on the discussion about historical injustices to clarify that there are obligations towards those who suffered historical injustice – our central example is the genocide of the Herero people. One way of responding to these obligations is to admit immigration. Finally, we argue that it should be up to the victims to decide in which way reparation should be paid.
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Notes
- 1.
The enumeration of both mental and physical shape is not intended to suggest any metaphysical distinction.
- 2.
We will concentrate on the assessment of the German genocide. It would also be possible to look at the broader picture (colonialism as such), but this would lead us too far from our focus. Kant, Maine, and Diderot on the one side and Mill and Tocqueville on the other side would be worth reading in this regard.
- 3.
Historically one could also mention ‘The Report On The Natives Of South West Africa And Their Treatment By Germany’, the so called Blue Book, which was commissioned by the English Empire. But since it was also used as propaganda in the First World War we will not take it into consideration, only mention its existence.
- 4.
The qualifier ‘still’ has therefore two dimensions. Firstly, it expresses the causal connection and secondly, it emphasizes the continuity of the experienced harm.
- 5.
It might be added: if they do fulfil any criteria of exclusion.
- 6.
We owe this argument by and large to Matthias Hoesch.
- 7.
The question of how the plausibility of accusations can be validated is more of an empirical question and not our concern for the time being.
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Schwabe, B., Urselmann, J. (2020). Obligatory Admission in the Light of Post-Colonialism. In: Hoesch, M., Mooren, N. (eds) Joseph Carens: Between Aliens and Citizens. Münster Lectures in Philosophy, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44476-1_9
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