Justified state partiality and the vulnerable subject in migration
According to David Miller, there exists a special relationship between migrants at the border and members of a political community that the migrant hopes to join. It is the task of a political philosophy of migration to define a state’s obligations toward individuals who are vulnerable to the state’s actions without being members of the political community. I define the vulnerability in question as lacking capacity to be autonomous for lack of options to realize one’s plan of life. I then discuss Miller’s claim that what matters is sufficiency of generic options rather than access to all options. Miller wants to say that sufficiency can be achieved by assuring the protection of human rights. This claim neglects the source of the individual migrant’s vulnerability. I therefore argue that Miller neglects the specific relationship he has identified between potential host state and hopeful migrant, and advocate instead that the potential host state has to consider the vulnerability that is due to its own poli...