'Decolonial' Membership: A Global South Approach

It is a widely shared assumption that borders discriminate. From a descriptive standpoint, they are institutionally designed to distinguish among different categories of persons in order to define who should be given the right to stay and belong, and who should not. A number of scholars have analysed the ways in which borders have normatively reinforced - inter alia - national, class, racial and gender-based discriminations against people seeking membership (Achiume, 2021; De Genova, 2018; Briddick, 2021; Munshi, 2016). In this paper, I develop a philosophical account on why part of the Global South has legally and politically challenged that (exclusionary) assumption of the contemporary system of borders. Initially, I sketch Brazilian government’s intake policies to grant refugee and / or migratory status to (forced) migrants, regardless of their reasons for leaving the country of origin. As these statuses provide access to a similar set of rights – automatic access to public services like health system, schools and the right to legally work – (forced) migrants can choose if they want to live in Brazil as refugees or as residents. Afterwards, I claim that membership, more than merely an inward-looking formula, requires a boundary-focused approach to deal with the negative and positive rights of aliens. By doing so, I question both the assumption on the scarcity of resources for justifying the exclusion of membership and ‘refugee versus (irregular) migrant’ dichotomies in today’s world. The contribution of this paper is thus to reflect on why Southern borders might morally and politically ‘decolonise’ the international refugee protection regime.