Westphalia, Migration, and Feudal Privilege

Harald Bauder
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Harald Bauder: Department of Geography & Environmental Studies, Ryerson University, Canada

Migration Letters, 2018, vol. 15, issue 3, 333-346

Abstract: Most people acquire citizenship at birth; and modern liberal states regulate the migration of non-citizens as a matter of their sovereignty. Do contemporary border and migration controls based on citizenship therefore enforce the continuation of feudal birth privilege? In this paper I interrogate this question by examining the role of migration controls in the Westphalian Treaties, which define a milestone in the development of territorial state sovereign. I find that the Treaties assumed that a sovereign’s subjects are not free to cross territorial borders, and that migration controls continue to enforce birth privilege. However, while feudal sovereigns ruled by bondage, modern liberal states rule by exclusion.

Keywords: Westphalian Treaties; sovereignty; feudal privilege, migration; territory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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