Duties Beyond Borders

Can moral behavior exist in a world of states? Under what conditions? Where if at all, do norms for moral behavior, considerations of right and wrong, fit int the relations between states? Drawing upon many historical examples, Stanley Hoffmann examines the complex questions of whether or not ethical action is possible in international politics and, if it is, what are the obstacles and constraints? Duties Beyond Borders tries to answer these questions and to suggest a course of “ethical politics” based on a pragmatic, realistic approach to international politics.

Can moral behavior exist in a world of states? Under what conditions? Where if at all, do norms for moral behavior, considerations of right and wrong, fit int the relations between states? Drawing upon many historical examples, Stanley Hoffmann examines the complex questions of whether or not ethical action is possible in international politics and, if it is, what are the obstacles and constraints? Duties Beyond Borders tries to answer these questions and to suggest a course of “ethical politics” based on a pragmatic, realistic approach to international politics.

This book offers a first overarching look at the relationship between states and their citizens abroad, approached through the concept 'Duty of Care'. How can society best be protected, when increasing numbers of citizens are found outside the borders of the state? What are the limits to care – in theory as well as in practical policy? With over 1.2 billion tourists crossing borders every day and more than 230 million expatriates, questions over the sort of duty states have for citizens abroad are politically pressing. Contributors explore both theoretical topics and empirical case studies, examining issues such as as how to care for citizens who become embroiled in political or humanitarian crises while travelling, and exploring what rights and duties states should acknowledge toward nationals who have opted to take up arms for terrorist organizations. This work will be of great interest to scholars in a wide range of academic fields including international relations, international security, peacebuilding, ethics and migration.

This volume argues that normative and legal developments to regulate and govern the behaviour of transnational businesses represent a new frontier in the struggle for human rights.

States have long denied basic rights to non-citizens within their borders, and international law imposes only limited duties on states with respect to those fleeing persecution. But even the limited rights previously enjoyed by non-citizens are eroding in the face of rising nationalism, populism, xenophobia, and racism. Beyond Borders explores what obligations we owe to those outside our political community. Drawing on contributions from a broad variety of disciplines - from literature to political science to philosophy - the volume considers the failures of law and politics to guarantee rights for the most vulnerable and attempts to imagine new forms of belonging grounded in ideas of solidarity, empathy, and responsibility in order to identify a more robust basis for the protection of non-citizens at home and abroad. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

As globalization has deepened worldwide economic integration, moral and political philosophers have become increasingly concerned to assess duties to help needy people in foreign countries. The essays in this volume present ideas on this important topic by authors who are leading figures in these debates. At issue are both the political responsibility of governments of affluent countries to relieve poverty abroad and the personal responsibility of individuals to assist the distant needy. The wide-ranging arguments shed light on global distributive justice, human rights and their implementation, the varieties of community and the obligations they generate, and the moral relevance of distance. This provocative volume will interest scholars in ethics, political philosophy, political theory, international law and development economics, as well as policy makers, aid agencies, and general readers interested in the moral dimensions of poverty and affluence.

When are borders justified? Who has a right to control them? Where should they be drawn? Today people think of borders as an island's shores. Just as beaches delimit a castaway's realm, so borders define the edges of a territory, occupied by a unified people, to whom the land legitimately belongs. Hence a territory is legitimate only if it belongs to a people unified by a civic identity. Sadly, this Desert Island Model of territorial politics forces us to choose. If we want territories, then we can either have democratic legitimacy, or inclusion of different civic identities--but not both. The resulting politics creates mass xenophobia, migrant-bashing, hoarding of natural resources, and border walls. To escape all this, On Borders presents an alternative model. Drawing on an intellectual tradition concerned with how land and climate shape institutions, it argues that we should not see territories as pieces of property owned by identity groups. Instead, we should see them as watersheds: as interconnected systems where institutions, people, the biota, and the land together create overlapping civic duties and relations, what the book calls place-specific duties. This Watershed Model argues that borders are justified when they allow us to fulfill those duties; that border-control rights spring from internationally-agreed conventions--not from internal legitimacy; that borders should be governed cooperatively by the neighboring states and the states system; and that border redrawing should be done with environmental conservation in mind. The book explores how this model undoes the exclusionary politics of desert islands.

Controlling national borders has once again become a key concern of contemporary states and a highly contentious issue in social and political life. But controlling borders is about much more than patrolling territorial boundaries at the edges of states: it now comprises a multitude of practices that take place at different levels, some at the edges of states and some in the local contexts of everyday life – in workplaces, in hospitals, in schools – which, taken together, construct, reproduce and contest borders and the rights and obligations associated with belonging to a nation-state. This book is a systematic exploration of the practices and processes that now define state bordering and the role it plays in national and global governance. Based on original research, it goes well beyond traditional approaches to the study of migration and racism, showing how these processes affect all members of society, not just the marginalized others. The uncertainties arising from these processes mean that more and more people find themselves living in grey zones, excluded from any form of protection and often denied basic human rights.