Jos Elkink

There are a number of topics I have been wanting to blog about for ages, but I never get around to it. Some because I just don’t have had the time or the right priorities to get it written, some because it would actually require a lot of research to be a reasonable blog post. So let me just mention them for future reference or for if anyone knows about any existing ideas / publications / etc. that are relevant. The first one is on territorial rights:

I find it very difficult to see why people born in a particular location inherit significant rights to that territory, such as to be able to exclude outsiders from this section of the planet. So how do Western states have the right to exclude others from access to their countries? Why does the coincidental fact that I was born in the Netherlands give me access to almost all over the world, while someone who is similarly incidentally born in Indonesia has much more limited access? And thus, by extension, what gives the Netherlands the right to decide that restrict employment rights in the Netherlands to EU citizens only (with exceptions)? So basically two questions follow:

• Is there a moral / ethical basis for territorial group rights?
• If not, what would be the practical / pragmatic consequences for present day politics?