What does the idea of freedom mean for immigration? Can a robust philosophical argument be made for border controls and limiting immigration, from a classical liberal point of view? Beyond the idea of an individual “right to move”, can we meaningfully argue for a nation’s “right to exclude”? What is a nation in the first place? Where do we draw the line, i.e. how can we, if at all, differentiate between insiders and outsiders, i.e. between natives/nationals and the rest? What does experience tell us about the side-effects to that? How could a pragmatic approach to immigration avoid the trap of identity politics? These questions and more were debated in a special NOUS Spotlight Wide Beam event on October 20, 2021, together with Chandran Kukathas (Singapore Management University, Singapore) and Margaret Moore (Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada). The event, inspired by Chandran’s new book “Immigration and Freedom” (Princeton University Press 2021), was moderated by Clemens Schneider (Prometheus Institute, Berlin, Germany). NOUS Spotlight Wide Beam events are part of the greater NOUS Spotlight family, a series of Zoom meetings for scholarly discussion around the globe organized by the international Network for Constitutional Economics and Social Philosophy (NOUS), The Wide Beam events, a cooperation with the Alliance for the Social Market Economy (ASM), are open to the public.
