Joseph Carens: Between Aliens and Citizens

This book offers a critical discussion of Joseph Carens’s main works in migration ethics covering themes such as migration, naturalization, citizenship, culture, religion and economic equality. The volume is published on the occasion of the annual Münster Lectures in Philosophy held by Joseph Carens in the fall of 2018. It documents the intellectual exchange with the well-known philosopher Joseph Carens by offering critical contributions on Carens’s work and commentaries of Carens as a reply to these critical contributions. With his various works on migration ethics, Joseph Carens must be seen as one of the leading academics in the political and ethical discourse of migration in the last years. The topic of migration raises questions not only regarding naturalization and citizenship but also cultural, economic and religious differences between aliens, citizens and persons whose status lies in between and calls for further determination. Such questions gain more and more importance in our globalized world as can be seen for example in the context of the refugee crisis in the European Union and the U.S.

The book covers different systematic topics of Carens’s work as can be found in his widely read book “The Ethics of Immigration” but also in further publications. It provides papers with critical discussions of Carens’s work as well as his responses to these, thus enabling and documenting the fruitful dialogue between the contributors and Carens himself. The aim of this book is to sharpen and shed light on Carens’s arguments concerning migration by offering new and critical perspectives and fine-grained analyses.

Part I: Introduction.- Chapter 1. Between Aliens and Citizens. An Outline of Joseph Carens’s Political Philosophy.- Part II: Lecture.- Chapter 2.- Immigration, Philosophy, and Political Realities. Part III: Living together in societies shaped by migration.- Chapter 3. Preserving Culture? On the Moral Foundations of a Contested Political Aim.- Chapter 4. Limits of Tolerance. A Theory of Prohibiting Cultural and Religious Practices illustrated by the Example of Muslim Minorities.- Chapter 5. Voting Rights for Residents? Revisiting Carens’s Citizenship Rights.- Chapter 6. Time, Membership, and Citizenship.- Part IV: Methodological Interjections.- Chapter 7.- Hypotheticals and Real Cases. A Metaphilosophical Investigation of Joseph Carens’s Methodology.- Chapter 8. Changing Theory or Practice? The logical structure of the contextual approach.- Part V. The Ethics of Immigration Admissions.- Chapter 9. Obligatory Admission in the Light of Post-Colonialism.- Chapter 10. Carens’s Cantilever Argument: Global Freedom of Movement, Logical Necessity and the Burden of Proof.- Chapter 11. The Open Borders Claim in a Nonideal World.- Chapter 12. Equality, Moral Incentives, and Open Borders. An Attempt to Connect the Strands of Joseph Carens’s Utopian Thinking.- Part VI: Replies.- Chapter 13. Replies to My Interlocutors.

Matthias Hoesch studied philosophy in Muenster, Salamanca and Groningen. For his PhD thesis on Kant’s philosophy of history, he received a grant by the academic scholarship foundation Cusanuswerk. Since 2013, he is postdoc researcher in the Cluster of Excellence „Religion and Politics“ (Muenster). His research interests include political philosophy in the modern era, the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, the moral philosophy of Derek Parfit, migration ethics and the justification of territorial rights. In 2016, he won the prize question "Which and how many refugees should we admit?" of the German Society for Analytic Philosophy. Since 2016, he is fellow in the promotion program for junior scholars "The Young ZiF".

Nadine Mooren studied Philosophy, English and Classical philology at the University of Cologne. She received her M.A. at the University of Cologne and her Ph.D. at the WWU Muenster. Since 2016, she is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department for Philosophy in Muenster. She works mainly in the areas of Practical Philosophy, Ethics and the philosophy of German Idealism as well as Left Hegelianism. She has written a book on Hegel’s conception of philosophy and religion: Hegel und die Religion (2018). Her current research interests include the philosophy of aging and old age.