Global Mobility and Migration

Of all the possible forms that tyranny can take, perhaps none is greater than restrictions on mobility, which are a cornerstone of the nation-based world order. For the enjoyment of all other liberties depends much on the amount of mobility one has; many other rights are rendered meaningless if one cannot access them, and mobility is crucial to this access. Indeed, confining someone to a limited space is the method commonly used by society in dealing with criminals and lawbreakers, known as imprisonment. National boundaries are no different—they are imprisoning people, only on a larger scale. What crime has humanity committed to be restrained in this manner?

Migration and free movement across the earth are fundamental human rights, not a privilege granted by nationalists. There is no inherent reason why mobility across the world should be restricted; it could be fully open in both a state of nature and a world union, and boundaries are unnecessary in a world without separate states. It is outrageous that one must seek the permission of and plead from the nationalists just to move across the boundaries which they erected. In this regard the nations enforcing border control are rather like highway robbers, preventing people from travelling unless one agrees to their demands. Their only basis for doing so at present is their control of military and political force, not any fundamental entitlement on their part to control humans’ movement.

Nationalist restrictions on mobility cannot be justified on grounds of territorial ownership, for the earth’s land does not belong to any nation or subset of humanity (Fed. 20, 29). No group can have the right to fence off a portion of the global common resource of the earth’s land for its exclusive use, particularly in the arbitrary manner national boundaries exist today with no consideration for global justice. If people in a nation believe that they want to confine themselves to a specific area, then so be it; that would be their group self-regarding freedom. But they have no business excluding others from entering that territory.

The technological developments of recent decades have opened up the potential for so much mobility across the world, enabling global travel and migration for better opportunities. Air travel and high-speed rail have done much to overcome the barriers of vast distances or geographical features like mountains or oceans. Alas, the erosion of natural barriers has been countered by the erection of artificial ones, in the form of ever-tightening mobility controls. Nationalism is holding us back from enjoying the fruits of technological progress; instead, it is applying technology to imprison us further through strengthening borders. The ‘global life’ that technology promises us is right here, if only humans can shed the narrow-mindedness of group identity. The global life may be a dream under nationalism, but it will be the default under world government.

It is not to be doubted that nationalism’s stifling of mobility has also brought a lot of unnecessary complexity in the lives of millions of people, as they navigate the minefield of restrictions and regulations imposed by nations. These restrictions also represent a lucrative extortion mechanism: the hefty fees nations charge in the name of issuing ‘visas’ are no different to a highway robber demanding money to let people pass, and are as much a hindrance to human society. Yet again, these are not an immutable feature of the world, and we have the ability to drastically simplify global interactions by abolishing national borders. Freedom, rather than restriction, should be the norm.

One of the key arguments against opening borders has been that it will disrupt law and order, a theme also commonly seen in present-day anti-immigration rhetoric. But a society cannot hope to stay safe in a cocoon behind a border while the rest of the world is in chaos, as many nations have been discovering recently. Whatever the security burden is of tackling crime and radicalization amongst the human population should be shared by the globe. The solution for global law and order is to be found not in isolation but in better enforcement, governance, and prevention measures (which a world government will enable). Further, it is unreasonable to assume that everyone in the outgroup is a criminal. And part of the criminalization of migrants is because of nationalist constructs such as ‘illegal’ entry or overstay, which are hardly comparable to real crimes. The present alienation of migrants, with ghettoisation and lack of integration, is also a problem—when people have a stake in society they will be less prone to antisocial behaviour. World unity will go beyond just open borders to tackling that alienation at its root.

Behind this disorder argument is the assumption that the opening up of borders will also be disorderly. But surely all borders are not going to be thrown open immediately and suddenly, unless perhaps if there is a revolution. If we envision a gradual, orderly process of the formation of world government (Fed. 17), then the opening of borders will also be gradual and managed. For example, we could start with a removal of short visit restrictions and a liberalization of visa regimes, then open up free movement and residence, then abolish passports and border controls, and finally abolish nationality altogether.

Opponents of migration also overstate the degree to which migration will suddenly increase under open borders. After all, people all around the world have their lives, their families and social networks, and their economic ties in a place—it is not so simple for everyone to instantly leave everything behind and move elsewhere. In the long run there will likely be a tendency towards a balancing of the world’s population density—which is in fact a good thing, helping to ease pressure on the planet and on social services (Fed. 21). But in the short term, we should not expect a situation of chaos as nationalists would like to have us believe.

It is perhaps paradoxical that opposition to open borders also comes from the other end of the spectrum, the detractors of emigration. Nationalists in this group fear that the most productive, innovative, and talented people from their group would migrate out of the nation for better opportunities and quality of life. Hence they argue that open borders are more conducive to this ‘brain drain’ and would hold back the advancement of their nation. This view seems to treat individuals like an identity group’s property, to be used as the group sees fit. But individuals should have the liberty to pursue their own interests and desires, a right which a global government will guarantee but nationalist regimes heavily restrict. Free movement encourages areas of the world to improve their offering to people and attract the best individuals, spurring virtuous competition that would improve the quality of life across the world.

Alas even the supporters of reforming the international order or limited world government have been too conservative when it comes to mobility, opting to retain nationalist control rather than advocating fully open borders. Even those who advocate a world federation are often content with leaving control over mobility to national sub-units, thereby retaining one of the most insidious obstacles to world unity. Hence it is difficult to see how such a limited world government is to be successful when the people are still to be constrained to their national prisons, unable to form the bonds which mean true unity of humanity. To truly transcend the divisions of nationalism, one must at least be free of their physical constraints on mobility.

Hence global freedom of movement is something we must strive for in totality, not only on functional but also on moral grounds. In today’s world, the vastly different privileges of movement accorded to different subsets of humans, merely on grounds of national identity rather than justice or merit, have a key role in entrenching global inequality. They reinforce the idea that people should be segregated and discriminated against based on identity. But even worse, they also reinforce the idea that some people are superior to others merely based on group identity. If we as humanity believe in the equality of all as an ideal, then in its pursuit we must dismantle this apartheid-like regime of blatant discrimination in mobility.

Nationalism is dependent for its very survival on keeping people segregated into national groups, and constraining most of people’s interactions within a group, which develops ingroup favouritism and outgroup hostility. In a world of perfect mobility nations and identities would quickly be rendered meaningless. When people can travel and move around the whole planet, they will see a world which has far more in common than the narrow lenses of nationalism would have them believe. They will form bonds across borders which will overcome the nationalist imperative of being partial to one identity group. And above all they will see that there is no point to nationalist identities and segregation at all. Spatial restriction creates socio-political isolation, and spatial liberation will create global unification. Thus mobility goes hand in hand with world unity.