In this first DynamiTE lunchtime seminar, Kim Angell will be presenting the paper “States, Cities, and the Admission of Refugees: Do Sub-State Collectives Have a Right to ‘Take Up the Slack’?”
Kim is associate professor at the Department of Philosophy, UiT–The Arctic University of Norway.
Abstract: While statists and cosmopolitans disagree strongly on what an ideal world looks like, they may agree that states currently do far less than they should to resettle refugees. One need not be very cynical, however, to expect that many will continue to drag their feet. Whether other states then have a duty to ‘take up the slack’ is controversial. Some defend such a duty. Others argue that non-slacking states need do nothing more than their initial fair share. What concerns me is whether a sub-state collective has a right to take up the slack from other states, even when its own state has done its fair share. I shall argue that sub-state collectives, in particular cities, which are willing and able to receive and integrate an additional quota of refugees beyond the encompassing state’s fair share, have a (‘direct’ or ‘indirect’) right to receive and integrate them. The paper proceeds as follows. I first present some data on the willingness and capacity of cities to resettle refugees. I then outline a prominent philosophical defense of states’ border control rights, roughly: that such rights should remain (fully) in the hands of states for reasons of collective (territorial) self-determination. Drawing upon some recent work by Bell and de Shalit, I then argue that the same concern for collective self-determination on a territory may ground a claim to enhanced intra-state autonomy for cities. I then develop two lines of argument from that claim about enhanced intra-state autonomy. First, I argue that cities might cash out the increased autonomy claim in terms of a ‘direct’ right to admit additional refugees. Alternatively, I argue that they might have an ‘indirect’ right to admit additional refugees, via a claim to increased taxation rights. The paper then discusses several objections to my analysis, before I conclude.
P.S: Those who wish to attend via zoom can subscribe to the DynamiTE lunchtime seminar mailing list, by sending an email to alejandra.mancilla[at]ifikk.uio.no
