Migration, State System Legitimacy and Differentiated Rights: When the Kind of Citizenship Matters

Even though the rights differentiations debate in normative political philosophy entail various types of ethical dilemmas, it has only been explicit about one of them, namely status differentiation—i.e. comparative rights’ differentiations between citizens and immigrants. However, in state practices, there is a second type of comparative rights’ differentiations among immigrants of different citizenships. For example, a Swiss citizen has the right to immigrate to Belgium and work there, whereas a Haitian citizen does not. Such variations stem from the nature of state migration policies. By a single gesture, states determine both territorial admission as well as access to various rights, such as social assistance, job markets, the ability to get married, and political rights in the domestic sphere. What justify such practices of token citizenship differentiations? More importantly, how should we conceive of an adequate justification process for both types of differentiations? This article offers a conceptual map of these two types of ‘citizenship-based rights’ differentiations’. It argues that a justification process adequately assessing them should consist of a two-step, the first paying attention to the normative requirements of a legitimate state system and the second paying attention to domestic requirements. I argue that migration policies in a legitimate state system should be acceptable to everyone and explore its implications for the real-world differentiated rights’ regimes in host states. One striking implication in this perspective is even transitional token citizenship differentiations are in principle not justified, an egalitarian position that goes beyond the existing arguments for equal citizenship.