Research project: The Ethics of Migration

Is there a right to exclude or a duty to admit immigrants? A widespread use of surveillance-based migration control, has made this a highly relevant question for discussion. Increasingly, sophisticated surveillance technologies are used to: control borders, differentiate between authorized and non-authorized migrants and continuously monitor migration flow.

Technologies employed for those purposes range from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), biometric based identification systems, infrared sensors, binocular thermal imaging systems, GPS-equipped bracelets, to the networking of vast databases like the Schengen Information System (II), the EURODAC fingerprint database and the Visa Information System. Importantly, technology with the capacity to trace and track individuals can harm fundamental human rights. Surveillance-based control systems make us of as well as produced potentially privacy sensitive personal data. Surveillance systems used to sort migrants into categories may also be used in discriminating ways.

This research project has two main objectives: (1) to analyze under what conditions, if at all, restrictions on migration can be ethically justified and (2) to evaluate the ethical acceptability of surveillance-based migration control. By analyzing these aspects, a well-founded basis for ethically defensible migration control can be identified.

In the first part, fundamental ethical questions related to migrants - regular and irregular, and migration, borders and border control are examined. Arguments for and against immigration restriction as well as rights and duties between nation states and migrants will be systematically analyzed. Examples of questions to be explored are:

• To what extent, if at all, are nation states in their right to restrict immigration?
• What rights and duties hold between migrants and nation states?
• And, in particular, what rights do irregular migrants have?
• How should the fundamental human right to seek asylum be understood and protected?

In the second, more applied part, ethical implications of particular surveillance devices and prevailing surveillance conduct are analyzed. Irrespective of whether one believes that nation states should be in their right to restrict immigration or not, one may still wish to minimize harmful consequences of surveillance-based migration control, e.g. to reduce the privacy invasive impact. Surveillance devices and systems in use (or under development) will be evaluted, such as for instance emerging biometric passports.

Areas of interest: Social and Political philosophy, Surveillance studies, Applied Ethics.