Beyond lockdown? The ethics of global movement in a new era

ABSTRACT A collection of recent works offer a route into rethinking the ethics of borders at a time when the rules and practices of global mobility have been called into question by the coronavirus pandemic. What counts as a legitimate justification for the closure of borders and who gets to decide? Who has responsibility for the protection of refugees? Just how practical is the ideal of ‘open borders’ and is there a trade-off between justice in immigration and the stability of a liberal political order? While some commentators have claimed that the coronavirus pandemic sounded the death knell for the ideal of open borders, its true import is to highlight our mutual vulnerability and the need for effective global co-ordination of migration and asylum. The four contributions I discuss provide vital moral arguments and conceptual distinctions relevant to thinking about the contours of a post-pandemic regime of global mobility. While they differ on the question of who the liberal state may justifiably exclude, and on the desirability and practicality of cosmopolitan reform, they converge in assigning states a far greater role in protecting the human rights of vulnerable non-citizens and in their condemnation of a cruel and repressive status quo.