Introduction

The main themes of the book are introduced, and in particular the relation between immigration, identity, social cohesion, and egalitarian justice is highlighted. The progressive’s dilemma is explained, as is the idea that social cohesion may require a shared identity at the societal level. The notion that the investigation relies on an implausible form of methodological nationalism is rejected. Also, the content of the individual chapters is summarized. Furthermore, the methodology employed in the book is explained and argued for. This methodology relies on the distinction between ‘basic levelʼ and ‘regulativeʼ justice, and it is explained how the book operates at both levels. Finally, alternative methodologies, including Rawlsian ideal theory, political realism, and various forms of contextualism, are critically discussed.

Distributive and Relational Equality

This chapter develops the expressive perspective on justice on which the overall argument of the book for liberal relational equality is based. It shows that the way social and political institutions treat individuals and groups is of irreducible importance to justice, and that this consideration cannot be satisfactorily accounted for by more traditional distributive theories of egalitarian justice, which focus on according individuals equal shares of justice-relevant goods; paradigmatically goods such as resources, (opportunity for welfare), or basic capabilities. It makes a case for the special relevance for justice of the attitudes expressed by institutions in the treatment of those subject to their power, as that expression constitutes its meaning. That meaning is particularly salient where the treatment gives rise to, or shores up, power and status hierarchies between different individuals and groups.

Treaties and re-setting the colonial relationship: Lessons for Australia from the Treaty of Waitangi

Colonial hegemony distinguishes relationships between the Australian state and Indigenous nations. British government was violently established and there was no accommodation with the Indigenous populations to allow settlement to proceed, as occurred through treaties in Canada and New Zealand. Indigenous arguments for treaties in Australia are, however, well established. Notwithstanding some Commonwealth and state and territory governments considering such agreements over the past 40 years, none have been concluded, and more modest forms of recognition have been alternatively proposed. In 2015, following extensive Indigenous advocacy, the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition appointed a Referendum Council to consult on an amendment to the Commonwealth Constitution to recognise Australia’s first peoples. The recommendation of a Voice to Parliament and a Makarrata Commission to oversee truth telling and agreements to allow ‘coming together after a struggle’ suggested a transformative ambition beyond the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition’s expectations. Makarrata does not stipulate treaties as an ideal form of agreement, but in raising the possibility, the Council added to the concept’s political momentum. This article discusses the place of treaties in contemporary Australian discourse, including treaty negotiations that are in progress in Victoria, Queensland and the Northern Territory. It uses examples from New Zealand’s Treaty of Waitangi to discuss their possibilities and limits in Australia. From these examples, two overarching arguments are made. Firstly, that treaties are potentially transformative, not because they may settle historical grievances, but because their required mutual recognition of each party’s enduring political standing means that they define ongoing, just terms of association. Secondly, the substantively different political arrangements that they presume mean that they are not merely instruments of egalitarian justice and are instead concerned with the distribution of political authority – Indigenous authority over their affairs and through a distinctive and culturally contextualised state citizenship.

The Significance of Solidarity

This chapter argues that bringing about egalitarian justice under neoliberal circumstances requires being disposed to solidarity with others who are also subject to unjust institutions. When unjust institutions cross state borders, people should regard others who are subject to those institutions as potential partners in efforts to resist them. Seeing these others as partners means that people should be alert to appeals to act from those they rely on, open to hearing out claims that they have misperceived their political status, and ready to understand the robustness of their freedom as partly dependent upon theirs. Such solidarity is mutually beneficial because people have a common interest in the removal of some shared obstacle to freedom. The advantages of the view are shown through comparison with rival accounts by Iris Marion Young, Sally Scholz, Avery Kolers, and others.

Differential Voting Weights and Relational Egalitarianism

Two prominent relational egalitarians, Elizabeth Anderson and Niko Kolodny, object to giving people in a democratic community differential voting weights on the grounds that doing so would lead to unequal relations between them. Their claim is that deviating from a “one-person, one-vote” scheme is incompatible with realizing relational egalitarian justice. In this article, I argue that they are wrong. I do so by showing that people can relate as moral, epistemic, social, and empirical equals in a scheme with differential voting weights. I end the article by showing that from the perspective of relational egalitarianism, it is sometimes true that differential voting weights are more just than equal voting weights.

Exploitation: Bridging Social and Distributive Egalitarianism

Social egalitarians have charged distributive egalitarianism with abandoning the victims of option luck, disrespecting victims of brute luck and misunderstanding the aim of egalitarian justice. Social egalitarians have tended to favour a conception of equality that is concerned with ending oppression and expressing equal respect for everyone. In this article, I argue that what has so far been missing from this debate is the fundamental connection that exists between distributive egalitarianism and a conception of exploitation. Once this connection is understood, we can see that social egalitarians are unfair in their criticisms. Importantly, the connection to exploitation reveals that social egalitarianism and distributive egalitarianism are not rival positions. When it comes to exploitation, the two positions are able to coordinate and identify two core wrong-making features that form part of an exploitative interaction.

Global Justice and the Role of the State

The chapter critically analyzes the role played by the state in the global justice debate. It surveys the different ways in which statists and cosmopolitans invoke the state either to justify the scope and content of their preferred principles of justice or to explain how such principles might be realized. The chapter also distinguishes between two conceptualizations of the state: as a system of institutions and as an agent in its own right. On the basis of this analysis, the authors conclude that both at the level of justification and at that of realization, the most plausible positions with respect to global justice lie somewhere in between full-blown cosmopolitanism and full-blown statism. While principles of egalitarian justice are not confined to the state, they do not extend in identical form to the global realm. Similarly, while the state—as we know it—is insufficient to realize plausible principles of justice (be they statist or cosmopolitan), what realizing justice requires falls short of the creation of a comprehensive global sovereign.

Global Equality and Open Borders

Egalitarians disagree about the extent to which states should have open borders. Sometimes, this disagreement is due to a deeper disagreement about the scope of egalitarian justice. Egalitarians holding that equality has domestic scope only may be inclined to favor restrictive immigration policies to protect the welfare state. Egalitarians holding that equality has global scope, on the other hand, may be inclined to support more open borders in order to reduce global inequality. This chapter argues that equality has global scope and then considers the implications of global egalitarianism for the issue of open borders. Furthermore, the chapter provides an argument for why (more) open borders can be expected reduce global inequality. Then some objections to this argument are considered, based on brain drain, threats to welfare states, and in-group bias. Finally, the chapter considers the suggestion that (more) open borders is not the best (or most efficient) way of reducing global inequality.

Ambedkar on the Haughty Face of Dignity

Can a concept such as dignity, with roots in hierarchy and exclusion, serve as the constitutional basis for advancing egalitarian justice within a democratic political community? This article highlights some concerns, via engagement with the work of Indian constitutional architect and anti-caste champion B.R. Ambedkar. Ambedkar strongly associates dignity with upper-caste status in Hinduism, and with dispositions to haughtiness or arrogance toward lower-status persons. His analysis has implications for recent treatments which frame dignity as a property which is possessed equally by all persons and is suitable for grounding egalitarian justice within political communities. In such accounts, dignity is shown to entail a defensive disposition and indignation against others as potential rights violators. This introduces tensions between the dignitarian foundation and in some cases very expansive social justice aims. Ambedkar offers an alternative conception of innate worth or worthiness, entailing dispositions to openness and inclusiveness, rendered as fraternity, Deweyan social endosmosis, and ultimately the Buddhist maitri. Such an approach avoids some tensions between dignity/indignation and egalitarian aims, while also offering a way to conceptualize human and non-human animal relations that avoids simply reinscribing status hierarchies.

Conclusion

This chapter identifies four ways in which the descriptive, phenomenological account of socially undocumented identity offered over the course of these chapters shifts our focus in terms of the ethics of immigration. They include (1) a focus on oppression; (2) an employment of philosophical resources for understanding how social identities operate in the pursuit of immigration justice; (3) a focus on the perspectives and organizing activities of socially undocumented people themselves; and (4) a reframing of the philosophical “open borders debate” in light of the realities of socially undocumented oppression (as discussed in Chapters 6 and 7). Second, it offers a series of proposals for combating socially undocumented oppression as a matter of relational egalitarian justice.