Borders and Belonging

Abstract Borders and Belonging is a pathbreaking, comprehensive, and compact analysis of responses to human migration. By answering questions that are rarely asked together, this book’s approach is unique. Borders and Belonging starts with an inquiry into how countries restrict movement, rights, and privileges based on citizenship and immigration status. The book next suggests ways to think about challenges to national borders. Sometimes, people make claims based on their humanity, objecting to national borders that inflict harm that no one human being should have to endure. At other times, people make claims of a different sort—based on belonging, or being part of communities in a given country. Borders and Belonging next applies these concepts to analyze who should be able to be enter a country, and how to think about someone entering for a temporary or indefinite stay. The book next looks at responses to people without lawful status, and at enforcement. The final three chapters delve deeper, starting with ways to respond genuinely to immigration skeptics or opponents, and then discussing what it means to address the root causes of migration. The last chapter of the book explores the injustices that national borders can enable, the best ways to make decisions about immigration, and the role of history in immigration policy. The unique contribution of Borders and Belonging is its unprecedented synthesis of many ways to think about national borders and migration.