Chapter 4 - Illegal Immigration as Resistance to Global Poverty

Summary

This chapter breaks from standard views on the right of free movement to argue that illegal migration is a form of impure infrapolitical resistance to global poverty. The argument hinges on a comparison with fugitive slaves. If these people did nothing wrong by escaping from slavery, then illegal socioeconomic migrants cannot be said to be acting wrongly. Both cases are characterised by individuals being subjected to extreme domination that they have no reasonable chance of overturning.

It then considers objections: that this is a case of someone acting on the right of necessity, but this is not convincing because it fails to consider the relationship between poverty and unjust social institutions; this does not describe the actual thought process of migrants, but this is not an ethnography of illegal immigrants so the objection is irrelevant and, moreover, it does describe the thoughts of some illegal immigrants; finally, there is an objection that the state must have the right to exclude illegal migrants otherwise institutions that people have reason to value would be jeopardised. This privileges the desires of the perpetrators and beneficiaries of injustice over the victims.