Luck Egalitarianism and the Rights of Immigrants

• Author: Nils Holtug
• Date: 01 June 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/raju.12149
• Published date: 01 June 2017

Luck Egalitarianism and the

Rights of Immigrants

NILS HOLTUG*

Abstract. This article considers the implications of luck egalitarianism for a range

of issues relating to international, South-North migration. More specifically, the

implications of luck egalitarianism fo r the question of wheth er receiving societ ies

are justified in ex tending to immigr ants a less compreh ensive set of right s than

that enjoyed by other members of society are considered. First, are voluntary

migrants respons ible for their migra tion in such a way that re ceiving societi es are

justified in extending to them a less comprehensive set of rights than if, say, they

had been involuntary migrants, or citizens of the destination country? Since luck

egalitarianism aims to redistribute only for inequalities for which individuals are

not responsible, there is an issue of whether it will hold individuals responsible

for their choice of mig ration in such a way that it may justify asymmetrical sets of

rights between voluntary immigrants and other members of society. Second, it

may be possible to allow access for a larger number of disadvantaged migrants if

they are granted acce ss to a less extensive p ackage of rights when they reach the

destination country than if they were granted access to a more extensive such

package. If so, may not the less extensive package of rights turn out to have a

greater positive impact on global equality? Both these arguments are critically

discussed and it is concluded that neither justifies extending to immigrants a less

comprehensive set of rights.

1. Introduction

According to luck egalitarianism, it is unfair for some individuals to have lower

levels of advantages than others, through no responsibility of their own. In this

article, I consider the implications of luck egalitarianism for a range of issues relat-

ing to international migration. I focus on South-North migration, because this raises

some particularly important and interesting questions of justice, both in light of the

* For commentson an earlier version of thispaper, I would like to thank ChrisArmstrong, Rich-

ard Arneson, Gustaf Arrhenius, Ben Bradley, Roger Crisp, Marc Fleurbaey, Klemens Kappel,

Nana Kongsholm, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Jeff McMahan, David Miller, Mathias Risse,

Shlomi Segall,Peter Vallentyne, and in particularKieran Oberman. Furthermore, I wouldlike to

thank audiencesat the University of Antwerp2013, the University of Copenhagen2013, the Uni-

versity of Oxford,and the ISUS conference in Yokohama 2014.

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gross inequality in individual advantage levels between the global North and the

global South, and in light of the religious and cultural differences to which such

migration will often give rise in destination countries.

More specifically, I consider the implications of luck egalitarianism for the ques-

tion of whether receiving societies are justified in extending to immigrants a less

comprehensive set of rights than that enjoyed by other members of society. Even

more specifically, I consider the following two questions. First, are voluntary

migrants responsible for their migration in such a way that receiving societies are

justified in extending to them a less comprehensive set of rights than if, say, they

had been involuntary migrants, or citizens of the destination country? Since luck

egalitarianism aims to redistribute only for inequalities for which individuals are

not responsible, there is an issue of whether it will hold individuals responsible for

their choice of migration in such a way that it may justify asymmetrical sets of

rights between voluntary immigrants and other members of society.

When answering this first question, I consider the implications of what we may

call “domestic” luck egalitarianism. According to domestic luck egalitarianism, the

scope of the luck-egalitarian principle is restricted to particular nation-states in the

sense that it is only inequalities between members of the same state that are unfair

(provided, of course, these inequalities are not linked in the relevant way to

responsible agency). According to global luck egalitarianism, on the other hand,

luck egalitarianism has global scope in the sense that inequalities between individ-

uals are unfair independently of their nationality, citizenship, ethnicity, race, and

the like (again, provided these inequalities are not linked to responsible agency).

The reason why I focus on domestic luck egalitarianism in relation to the first ques-

tion is that the responsibility-based argument for not extending a full set of rights

to immigrants usually assumes such a narrow scope. That is, it is presented as an

argument for why immigrants need not have access to all the rights that citizens of

their destination society have.

My second question pertains to the fact that whereas egalitarians (and many

others) often object to various asymmetries in the rights held by citizens and (at

least long-term) immigrant residents, there is a question as to whether global luck

egalitarianism can motivate such an objection, or at least motivate it as well as

domestic forms of egalitarianism can. This is because while presumably such

domestic asymmetries increase domestic inequality, it is not so clear that they also

always increase inequality on a global scale. One reason for this is that it may be

possible to allow access for a higher number of disadvantaged migrants if they are

granted access to a less extensive package of rights when they reach the destination

country than if they are granted access to a more extensive such package, where

the less extensive package of rights may turn out to have a greater positive impact

on global equality.

I should emphasize that my concern here is only with the implications of luck

egalitarianism for migration. Thus, there are a number of further political princi-

ples that have implications for immigration and that some theorists may wish to

combine with luck egalitarianism, that I nevertheless ignore. Finally, for simplicity,

when I refer to “immigration” in the following, it is a reference to the migration of

worse-off individuals from the global South to liberal democracies whose members

are (on average) much better off, unless otherwise stated.

128 Nils Holtug

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