crispp migration article Parvin.pdf (105.78 kB)
Idealism, realism, and immigration: David Miller's Strangers in Our Midst
David Miller’s Strangers in Our Midst is an important contribution to the debate among political philosophers about how liberal democratic states should deal with the issue of migration. But it is also a thoughtful statement concerning how best to do political philosophy and, as such, contributes also to the growing debate within Anglo-American political theory
about the relative merits of ‘ideal’ versus ‘non-ideal’ normative theorising.
Miller’s argument in the book builds on his earlier published work in suggesting that political philosophy should be ‘for Earthlings’: it should not be understood as a process of ideal theorising which ignores political reality. He argues that normative theorists should seek to resolve complex
political problems by taking seriously the political context that makes these problems complex, rather than putting aside that context in the interests of deriving first principles. This is a controversial approach, which requires political philosophers to take more seriously than they often do the expressed concerns of citizens living in democratic states and the practical problems associated with applying normative principles in ways which actually help address the issue at hand. This piece discusses some of these themes, and the issue of migration more generally, in order to help frame the debate which follows.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Politics and International Studies
Published in
Critical Review of International Social and Political PhilosophyCitation
PARVIN, P., 2016. Idealism, realism, and immigration: David Miller's Strangers in Our Midst. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 20 (6), pp. 697-706.Publisher
© Taylor & FrancisVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Acceptance date
2016-08-27Publication date
2016Notes
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy on 20 September 2016, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13698230.2016.1231678.ISSN
1369-8230eISSN
1743-8772Publisher version
Language
- en