Reconsidering the Claim to Family Reunification in Migration
| Author | Iseult Honohan |
| Published date | 01 December 2009 |
| Date | 01 December 2009 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2008.00761.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Reconsidering the Claim to Family
Reunification in Migrationpost_761 768..787
Iseult Honohan
University College Dublin
A high proportion of legal immigration is based on family reunification. On one view, this is based on
a partialist preference towards citizens,and the universally grounded claims of refugees should be given
at least equal consideration. This article focuses on reconsidering the justification for considering family
reunification a particularly important criterion for admission and residence, without attempting to
establish how exactly family and refugee claims should be balanced. It first considers arguments for and
against giving substantial weight in migration to family members with respect to citizens and denizens,
the state and incomers. These include, on the one hand,the intrinsic value of and right to f amily life,the
possibility of integration and the agent-specific nature of the obligations involved,and, on the other,the
anachronistic nature of the family claim, the extent to which migration is voluntary, the contemporary
prevalence of transnational family relationships, the inheritance of privilege and the multiplier effect of
family reunification.It next consider s the justification for discriminating among family applicants in order
to reduce family migration numbers by restricting admission to the immediate nuclear family, and
examines whether this represents unwarranted cultural discrimination or runs counter to the fundamental
reasons for respecting family life. It is argued that family reunification is best justified in terms not of a
partialist preference towards fellow citizens,but of a universal obligation to allow those subject to the
state’s authority to maintain intimate relationships that entail agent-specific obligations of care. This
justifies very substantial consideration for at least certain kinds of family reunification. If,in order to meet
other claims, we should discriminate among family members, priority should attach to family relation-
ships of care at ‘critical times’, rather than to nuclear family membership per se.
At a time when entrance to and residence in Western states is a scarce resource,
a high proportion of legal immigration is based on family reunification. It has
recently been proposed that, rather than giving such weight to family members,
the claims of refugees should be given at least equal consideration. In The Ethics
and Politics of Asylum,Matthew Gibney argues that, on the basis of a humanitarian
duty to alleviate suffering when the costs are not excessively high,a much greater
number of refugees than at present should be admitted. He maintains that this
could be achieved without increasing overall immigration if refugees were given
at least as high a priority in entrance decisions as regular (economic) and family
migrants and by differentiating between various kinds of family applicants, in
particular between immediate and extended family members (Gibney,2004, pp.
232–4). He argues:‘If residence in liberal democratic states is a scarce good, the
distribution of which raises questions of justice, we can’t ignore the question of
how states should rank the claims of family entrants against those of refugees’
(Gibney, 2004, p. 14).
Rather than dismissing claims for family reunification entirely, he argues that
some balance needs to be struck between universal claims, based in need, and
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2008.00761.x
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2009 VOL 57, 768–787
© 2008The Author.Jour nal compilation © 2008 Political StudiesAssociation
partial claims, based in special relationships, and between impartialist views such
as utilitarianism and global liberalism that do not distinguish between individuals,
and partialist views that focus on particular relationships. He concedes that
‘Family entrants represent the partial argument at its most forceful’, while char-
acterising the arguments for family unification as based in a partialist view giving
priority to fellow citizens (Gibney, 2004, p. 243). In fact things are somewhat
more complicated, as we shall see.
In this article I examine the arguments for giving family reunification significant
consideration in claims for admission; I do not attempt to establish exactly how
we might balance or rank the claims of family members and refugees against one
another. My objective here is to address whether we should reconsider the
importance of family claims in the light of other needs and rights by analysing the
reasons why family membership may be an important claim for entry, and by
clarifying whether, and in what sense, we should see these as partialist grounds
contrasted to the impartialist grounds on which refugees are admitted. Finally I
discuss whether it is permissible or just to discriminate among family member s in
migration, and, if so, how?
The Dominance of Family Reunification in Migration
In 2005 family immigration of one kind or another accounted on average for half
of all legal immigration to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Devel-
opment (OECD) countries (SOPEMI, 2007). The proportion varies from over
two-thirds in the USA,a little less in Canada, Australia and France, just under half
in Germany,to less than one-third in the UK.1Family migration as a proportion
of total immigration depends not only, as one would expect, on the size of the
existing population of immigrants, but also on states’ policies, which vary con-
siderably. In the USA,citizens can introduce immediate family (including parents)
without restriction, and can sponsor a range of other family relationships accord-
ing to capped preference categories, including siblings and adult (non-dependent)
children.2The preference entry system also allows permanent residents to sponsor
family members (after the adult children of citizens), but this is a much slower
process, subject to considerable backlogs.3Family migration is somewhat less
dominant in European states, which tend to have a more restrictive definition of
family as spouses and dependent children.4
Refugees and other humanitarian admissions, by contrast,represented on average
one-tenth of all legal immigration in 2005, rising to as high as 16 per cent in
Canada, 19 per cent in the UK and 29 per cent in the Netherlands. The largest
number admitted in a single country was 143,000 in the USA, but this repre-
sented only 12 per cent of total legal immigration. These four countries
accounted for over three-quarters of the total numbers of humanitarian immi-
grants into OECD countries for which data are available.5
So the situation in the USA, where family migration represents a considerably
higher proportion of immigrants, and refugees a lower proportion, is rather
RECONSIDERING FAMILY MIGRATION 769
© 2008The Author.Jour nal compilation © 2008 Political StudiesAssociation
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2009, 57(4)
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