Research
Deporting Democracy: The Politics of Immigration and Sovereignty (Dissertation)
Contrary to the contemporary consensus, I argue in my dissertation that it is normatively impermissible to exclude immigrants, no matter their legal status, from access to democratic politics. Immigration politics is the ‘canary in the mine’ of democratic politics: exclusionary sovereign claims and hostility towards immigrants indicate worrying overall trends regarding democratic quality. Thriving democracies need spaces of politics that facilitate the discussion and contestation of existing institutions. These are spaces that immigrants themselves will take in order to claim for inclusion, transforming them into cosmopolitan spaces of politics and challenging the legitimacy of external sovereignty from within. The growth in domestic immigration enforcement has the effect of closing off these spaces. This results in a racialized public sphere characterized by entrapment, vulnerability, and fear for certain groups.
My conception of cosmopolitan spaces of politics is derived from a novel reading of Immanuel Kant’s political writings (published in the journal Political Studies). I contrast the ways in which sovereignty and cosmopolitanism interact depending on whether the context is colonialism or mass migration. I argue that Kant’s strict conception of sovereignty is justified by his concern to maintain a realm of sovereignty that is complementary with cosmopolitanism. In the context of colonialism, achieving this complementarity requires privileging strong sovereignty. In Kant’s time, the strength and hostility of the visitors/conquerors made limited hospitality and strong sovereignty act in tandem to keep away conquerors, expanding cosmopolitanism. In the contemporary context of immigration, individuals from poor countries migrate to wealthier ones where they are subject to a sovereign authority that excludes them. Sovereignty and cosmopolitanism no longer work in a complementary way, but rather strengthen powerful state actors vis-à-vis non-citizens subject to unilateral rule.
My argument contrasts with other approaches to immigration in political theory, which either oppose the rule of sovereignty through principles of freedom of movement (Joseph Carens) or legitimate immigration regulation predominantly among citizens, either by reference to processes of deliberation, or justified by the ethical value of national culture (Seyla Benhabib, David Miller). Chapters 3 and 4 of my dissertation analyze approaches to the politics of immigration that rely on liberal or discourse theoretic principles but coincide in granting full decision-making power to formal citizens. These models posit immigrant inclusion as a benevolent extension of membership toward foreigners and erase immigrants’ political role. These arguments function as if immigrants were waiting at the door. Furthermore, they do not theorize the sources of hostility against immigrants, or the processes of dehumanization that underlie migrants’ rights violations within democratic polities.