Domination and border control: a restatement

This paper makes two interventions in the literature on the ethics of migration. First, drawing on empirical evidence about the externalisation of border control, I argue that this increasingly pervasive phenomenon requires that normative assessments of the global migration regime recognise that migrants are subject to the power of coalitions of states. Second, invoking the republican theory of domination as vulnerability to arbitrary interference, I argue that recognising the coalition dynamics of the global migration regime allows us to formulate a compelling normative critique of the power sustaining that regime. I demonstrate that this critique is not vulnerable to the objections that have often been raised against republican treatments of migration, and I show that it is plausible in its own right. In particular, I argue that my diagnosis of coalition-based domination casts light on underappreciated ‘anti-powers’ held by citizens of states in the Global North.