-
Migration and the Politics of Life
- Theory & Event
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 19, Issue 2, April 2016
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
This paper argues that migration controls not only harm migrants, but they also limit the vitality and hence freedom of receiving states. To do so it draws on Esposito’s theories of immunization and biopolitics, grounding them on a concept of life as impersonal becoming that rejects the use of borders to exclude people, and that highlights the life-and freedom-enhancing effects of unfettered mobility. This concept of life thus leads to the obligation to dismantle multiple barriers to becoming. In relation to migration, this obligation includes the duty of unconditional hospitality, which in turn requires open borders.