The Casualties of the Open-Border Debate: Latinx Feminist Voices on the Ethics of Migration
Files
Publication Date
Summer 2024
Digital Publisher
Digital Commons at St. Mary's University
Collection
McNair Scholars Symposium
Keywords
José Jorge Mendoza; border enforcement; illegal social identities; feminist philosophy; dehumanization
Description
This paper considers philosophical perspectives on immigration restrictions and the consequences of the open borders debate more generally. The open borders debate within the ethics of migration consists of arguments from philosophers who justify states’ rights to restrict immigration and arguments from philosophers who believe states should have open borders. In discussing the open borders debate, I introduce Christopher Heath Wellman’s “Immigration and Freedom of Association,” where he argues that states do in fact have a right to exclude immigrants from their territories based on the state’s responsibility to keep the state’s citizens’ best interests in mind. In response, I highlight how the language and framing around migrants in works in the ethics of migration, like Wellman’s, itself does harm to migrants. While border enforcement often results in literal mass casualties among immigrants, I argue that social terms that characterize immigrants as “illegals” and “aliens” constitute another type of causality migrants face that is overlooked in the open borders debate. These terms I consider to be a casualty because its causes the “death” of a migrant’s autonomy to find their own identity. They instead battle between society’s perception of their identity and their own, two sides that are almost impossible to connect. By taking seriously Latinx feminist voices, like those of Mariana Ortega and Gloria Anzaldúa, that are often neglected within the ethics of migration, it becomes clearer to understand the immigrant experience and difficulties immigrants face due to the way in which they are portrayed in the United States.
Disciplines
Chicana/o Studies | Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Immigration Law | Latina/o Studies | Migration Studies
Format
MOV
Medium
video
Size or Duration
16:25 Minutes
City
San Antonio
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
