I will first offer a general understanding of the flavor of libertarianism I will be using as the foundation for my argument for open borders. Then, I will summarize the argument put forth by Joseph Carens in “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders,” which consummates the importance of open border policy in maintaining the efficacy of property rights. After, I will supplement an additional argument to Carens’s in order to strengthen it. In this section, I will interpret Robert (...) Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia such that it informs the importance of the enforcement of a right of free movement and I will furthermore detail how border restrictions directly violate that right. In the final section of this paper, I will address criticisms made both by libertarian and liberal thinkers against the enforcement of a right of free movement. One of the liberal criticisms, in particular, will serve as a jumping-off point for a conversation highlighting the ways in which libertarian arguments for open borders differ from liberal arguments for open borders. These differences, I contend, illuminate how disparate these philosophical traditions are, especially in the manner that they conceive of rights. (shrink)

1) Introduction. 2) The key libertarian insight into property and orthodox libertarianism’s philosophical confusion. 3) Clearer distinctions for applying to what follows: abstract liberty; practical liberty; moral defences; and critical rationalism. 4) The two dominant (‘Lockean’ and ‘Hobbesian’) conceptions of interpersonal liberty. 5) A general account of libertarianism as a subset of classical liberalism and defended from a narrower view. 6) Two abstract (non-propertarian, non-normative) theories of interpersonal liberty developed and defended: ‘the absence of interpersonal proactively-imposed constraints on want-satisfaction’, abbreviated (...) to ‘no proactively imposed costs’; and ‘no imposed costs’. 7) Practical implications for both main abstract conceptions of liberty derived and compared. 8) How this positive analysis relates to morals. 9) Concluding conjectures: the main abstract theory of liberty captures the relevant interpersonal conception; the new paradigm of libertarianism solves the old one’s problems. (shrink)