This is

This is Philosophy Bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

This episode of Philosophy Bites was sponsored by the Examining Ethics podcast

from the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePaul University.

You can subscribe to examining ethics on iTunes or listen to episodes at examining ethics.org.

States have borders and they police who comes in. The ability to determine who is allowed into the country is, on the face of it, a fundamental right of the state. Indeed, around the world

politicians are often under pressure from citizens to tighten immigration

control. But do states really have the right to keep people out? It's a widespread

assumption which Sarah Fine of King's College London asks us the question.

Sarah Fine. Welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Thank you very much for having me.

The topic we're going to talk about is the right to exclude.

What do you mean by the right to exclude?

I'm interested in the question of whether states have something like a moral right to exclude people who want to come in,

and in particular, non-citizens who want to enter their territory,

potentially settle in that territory and indeed eventually perhaps become citizens of that

state. Most people assume that states do have that right, they do have some kind of moral authority in saying you can't come in.

That's right, I think a lot of people do assume that states have such a right, and

states certainly act as though they have this right, but there is a question as to whether

they really do have such a right.

So what might be the grounds for this kind of right?

So the way that I look at this particular question

...