Perpetual what? Injury, Sovereignty and a Cosmopolitan View of Immigration
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00892.x |
| Published date | 01 March 2012 |
| Author | Inés Valdez |
| Date | 01 March 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Original Article |
Perpetual What? Injury, Sovereignty and
a Cosmopolitan View of Immigrationpost_89295..114
Inés Valdez
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Can Kantian cosmopolitanism contribute to normative approaches to immigration? Kant developed the universal
right to hospitality in the context of late eighteenth-century colonialism. He claimed that non-European countries
had a sovereign right over their territory and the conditions of foreigners’ visits.This sovereign prerogative limited
visitors’ right to hospitality. The interconnected and complementary system of right he devised is influential today,
but this article argues that maintaining the complementarity of the three realms involves reconsidering its appli-
cation to contemporary immigration. It situates Kant’s Perpetual Peace within the context of debates about conquest
and colonialism and argues that Kant’s strict conception of sovereignty is justified by his concern in maintaining
a realm of sovereignty that is complementary with cosmopolitanism and his prioritization of mutual agreements in
each of the realms, particularly in a context of international power asymmetry. In Kant’s time, European powers
appropriated cosmopolitan discourses to defend their right to visit other countries and it was necessary to
strengthen non-Europeans’ sovereign claims. The strength and hostility of the visitors made limited hospitality and
strong sovereignty act in tandem to keep away conquerors, expanding cosmopolitanism. Today, individuals from
poor countries migrate to wealthier ones where they are subject to a sovereign authority that excludes them.
Sovereignty and cosmopolitanism no longer work complementarily, but rather strengthen powerful state actors
vis-à-vis non-citizens subject to unilateral rule. Maintaining the pre-eminence of the right to freedom, the article
suggests that only through the creation of ‘cosmopolitan spaces’ of politics can we reproduce today the comple-
mentarity that Kant envisioned.
Keywords: Kant; political cosmopolitanism; sovereignty; immigration; hospitality
Discussions of immigration frequently rely on Kant’s cosmopolitanism to assess the justice
of existing arrangements. Often,scholars suggest that his conceptualization is too restr icted,
given the parallel reassertion of state sovereignty that characterizes his political writings.
This article demonstrates, however, that existing interpretations of Kant’s cosmopolitanism
fail to address how the intellectual and historical context influenced the derivation of
cosmopolitan right. In the context in which it was written, Kant’s assertion of sovereignty
enhances respect of cosmopolitan right and is coherent with the spirit of complementary
realms. This effect is lost when Kant’s prescriptions are applied without attending to how
the present context prevents the intended complementarity between realms and thwarts the
role of cosmopolitanism in protecting individuals from foreign governments. As a conse-
quence, in order to preserve the principles of Kant’s theorization, it may be necessary to
rethink the institutional foundations of the interconnected system of right.
Kant’s Perpetual Peace intervenes in debates about colonialism, Eurocentrism and eco-
nomic cosmopolitanism. In the process, Kant expands the cosmopolitan community
beyond Europe and recognizes the effects of an unequal distribution of international power.
The right to hospitality that he grants is only unconditional if the visitor r isks death and
is otherwise regulated by a charitable contract. This prescription follows from extending
cosmopolitan right to the population of exploited countries and contesting the leg itimating
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00892.x
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2012 VOL 60, 95–114
© 2011The Author.Political Studies © 2011 Political Studies Association
use of cosmopolitan principles by European powers.We often think of hosts as hospitable
(or hostile) and visitors as subjects of hospitality (or hostility), yet Kant repeatedly refers to
the visitors’ hostility.While we consider cosmopolitan right as a right that would protect
visitors presenting themselves on foreign shores, its derivation in Perpetual Peace protects
hosts from the exploitation of conquerors. As such, sovereign right and the charitable
contract strengthen cosmopolitan right by imposing sovereignty-backed coercion against
European conquerors, which are only guaranteed benevolence. Once we have traced the
context and structure of Kant’s argument, in particular his emphasis on the complemen-
tarity between realms of right, we can amend Kant’s cosmopolitanism to theorize the rights
of contemporary migrants.
Immigrants currently living in foreign lands are the most vulnerable to abuses of
cosmopolitan right, and the governments of host countries the most likely to incur
violations of this right. The dictum that in a cosmopolitan community ‘a violation of rights
in one part of the world is felt everywhere’(PP, p.108) alerts us to the irony that today abuses
take place in the midst of host countries, rather than in distant colonial lands.1The disavowal
of the rights of immigrants is justified on the pre-eminence of sovereignty over other
prescriptions, including cosmopolitanism, yet such pre-eminence was favored by Kant due
to the complementarity that existed between the two realms of right in his time. The realm
of ius cosmopoliticum is predicated on the fact that individuals and states coexist ‘in an
external relationship of mutual influences’ and institutional arrangements should be altered
as this configuration evolves historically (PP, pp. 98–9n). If the theoretical relevance of
historical transformations is ignored, maintaining the pre-eminence of domestic sovereignty
and a restricted right of hospitality results today in the negation of both the interdepen-
dence among individuals who share a dwelling space and contemporary immigrants’ right
to freedom. This in turn negates the innate and inalienable rights of a portion of the
community by refusing to recognize their equal claim to freedom, detaching the fate of the
included from that of migrants and abandoning the principle of a ‘single common legis-
lation’ of republican constitutions (PP, pp. 98–9).
Today, just as during colonialism, members of weaker countries are more likely to have
their cosmopolitan rights violated, although this happens while they take the role of visitors.
Conversely, countries that used cosmopolitan principles in order to leg itimize their expe-
ditions are keen today on emphasizing the exclusive rule of sovereignty when it comes to
discussing immigration. Just as the nature of economic organization transitioned from a
colonial model based on conquest and resource extraction towards a model based on
offshorization, trade and low-wage immigration, principles of sovereignty and cosmopoli-
tan right should adapt accordingly.Without this adaptation,histor ical transformations result
in the inversion of the effect that sovereignty and restricted hospitality right jointly have in
the Kantian system of right. While in Kant’s account both work to protect individuals
whose government was taken over by European powers, today they leave migrants without
access to political and legal tools to assert a right to freedom.
In the next sections I develop and support this argument. First, I focus on the intellectual
context within which Kant wrote. In this section I examine how Kant’s concern with
inequality in the international sphere explains his departures vis-à-vis traditions of natural
law, economic cosmopolitanism and a Eurocentric or hierarchical cosmopolitanism.
96 INÉS VALDEZ
© 2011The Author.Political Studies © 2011 Political Studies Association
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2012, 60(1)
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