Citizens of Nowhere? Cosmopolitan Right, Refuge, and the British Government

This paper offers a Kantian analysis of the British government’s approach to mobile peoples, particularly refugees. We ultimately argue that, from the standpoint of Kant’s political philosophy, the British government (and by extension other governments which act similarly) are failing to execute their duties and do so based on grounds which are not suitable as justification. First, we look over Kant’s political philosophy, paying particular attention to his grounding of private rights and the cosmopolitan right, to see what rights and obligations come from this for people who are attempting to migrate. We look at some unclear parts of Kant’s framework such as the responsibilities of the state is towards people who are unable to exercise their freedom, cases like refugees or those in poverty, where those concerned do not have the material conditions that would enable your exercise of freedom. In spite of Kant’s lack of specificity on what material conditions have to be fulfilled in order for a meaningful exercise of freedom to be possible we claim that, as the State exists to provide assurance of people's freedom and possible lawful relations, it has a duty to accept those who are leaving certain kinds of material conditions, who themselves have duties to try and enter into a civil condition which we take to be a duty to migrate in circumstances such as a state’s political collapse. (Kant 2001) We claim that it is the case that, morally, the state has a duty to accept refugees as citizens and not merely as guests. We then look at cosmopolitan right and our need to recognise a global ethical community in a contemporary context. Looking at recent work on Kant’s ideal of cosmopolitanism, such as Cavallar (2015) and Walla (2011/2016). Taking particular note of the claim that “we are globally interconnected, whether we want it or not” (Walla 2016: 168), we argue that contemporary stateless peoples do have rights with regards to states of which they are not citizens, as these states can and do affect their ability to exercise their freedom. We then apply our derived political analytical framework to case studies of actual cases where the United Kingdom has argued for the deportation of refugees and economic migrants into various conditions, both civil and non-civil. We look at the grounds on which the United Kingdom has argued that specific individuals ought to be deported, and we find that these grounds are, on the whole, morally insufficient and often take contingent, empirical circumstances as a reason for not fulfilling their duty to citizens of the world. Bibliography Cavallar, G. (2015) Kant’s Embedded Cosmopolitanism History, Philosophy, and Education for World Citizens. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH,. Kant, I. (1996) ‘Practical Philosophy’, in Gregor, M. (ed.) Toward Perpetual Peace. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (2001) Religion and Rational Theory. Cambridge University Press. Walla, A. P. (2016) ‘Common Possession of the Earth and Cosmopolitan Right’, Kant-Studien, 107(1), pp. 160–178.