Does Justice Require Open Borders?

Chapter 5 examines the global distributive justice argument for open borders. It challenges two key assumptions underlying this argument: (1) that global distributive justice requires global equality of opportunity and (2) that global distributive justice requires open borders. It argues that equality and justice are fundamentally relational ideals. Our particular relationships and institutional contexts matter for the types of distributive obligations we have. This does not mean we have no global obligations. The chapter examines different forms of global inequality and identifies circumstances where global inequality does constitute global injustice, but even in such cases, an open borders policy is a limited response. Alleviating global poverty is the major animating concern of the global distributive justice argument for open borders, but it is typically not the world’s poorest who migrate and the departure of a country’s more-skilled members tends to deepen, not alleviate, global inequality.