Abstract

Chapter 9 examines another kind of property-like right claimed by modern states: the right to control movement across state borders. The chapter discusses the connections between the idea of national self-determination and states’ border rights. Recent arguments for open borders employing both the arbitrariness of nationality and rights of free movement are critiqued. Appeals by functionalists to states’ rights to self-determination as a justification for a robust right to exclude aliens are rejected. Similarly, appeals by nationalists to the idea of cultural self-determination are found inadequate. The chapter concludes by arguing that Lockean voluntarism in fact yields the desired balance between the rights of legitimate states to exclude and the rights of aliens to consideration.