Immigration and Freedom

by Chandran Kukathas

We have tended to view immigration from a perspective of a very particular kind: from the perspective of nationality. This model is of a world of independent nation states, made up of individuals many of whom (primarily from poorer regions) wish to move for motives that reflect their own individual or national circumstances, and whose movement is and must be managed by those states that would otherwise struggle to deal with an uncontrolled influx of people. Yet this model is seriously flawed because it assumes that the different variables in play are independent when in reality they are deeply interconnected. Borders, statuses, and rights are all equally changeable and have changed with startling frequency because the fact of immigration actually reflects not so much the separateness of people across the world but their continual interaction and their embeddedness in shared historical circumstances as well as shared political and institutional realities.