The Right to Exclude Immigrants: A Conditional Approach, by Anna Stilz

The Surrey Centre for Law and Philosophy proudly presents an Autumn Keynote Lecture on one of the most pressing issues of our time: The Right to Exclude Immigrants: A Conditional Approach, by Anna Stilz, the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics and Human Values at Princeton University.

When can states permissibly exclude immigrants? Professor Stilz focusses on migrants who are not suffering from persecution, violations of their basic human rights, or cultural or political oppression, but who seek better job opportunities, reunification with their families, association with friends or organizations, education or training, or a more congenial political and cultural environment. She argues that a state may exclude such migrants only if it can offer a plausible case that their entry would cause harm to its current residents. She will answer two key questions: First, what counts as a relevant harm? Second, how weighty is the burden of justification for restricting migration? On the conditional model Professor Stilz will propose, states have a duty to accept migrants if their entry would not set back current residents’ legitimate interests, which should be accorded a measure of priority. She concludes that countries ought to facilitate labor migration to the extent that doing so is consistent with their special obligations to their domestic poor.

Anna Stilz is one of the world's foremost authorities on questions of political membership, authority and political obligation, nationalism and self-determination, rights to land and territory, and collective agency. Professor Stilz is the author of Liberal Loyalty: Freedom, Obligation, and the State (PUP 2009), on the moral significance of political citizenship and state authority. She is currently finishing a new book on sovereign rights to control land and territory. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2005, and a B.A. from the University of Virginia in 1999.

A wine reception will follow the event for all attendees.

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