The claim that states have an unfettered sovereign right to control their borders and exclude non-citizens from their territory is accepted everywhere without contestation. Yet it is anything but a self-evident truth. While taken for granted today, the assumption that control over migration is the “last bastion of sovereignty” represents a radical departure from the norm of freedom of movement (for some, not others, namely, white, “civilized,” Christian men) that defined international law's earlier approach. What avenues for reform, resistance, and recalibration open when we revisit the legal foundations and contemporary consequences of the dominant understanding according to which states have near-absolute authority to regulate migration as an incident of sovereignty? In the spirit of asking big questions and addressing topics of lasting relevance, this symposium seeks to problematize the view that each state has unfettered discretion to control its territory and decide who it admits “upon such conditions as it may see fit to prescribe.”1 With a surge of nationalist-populist anger and anti-immigrant sentiment rising across the globe and the corresponding shrinking of rights and protections afforded to those on the move, there is added urgency to challenge the view readily expressed in public debate that migration is an “existential threat to be managed with the full and legally unregulated power of the sovereign state.”2 This view has emboldened governments, operating alone or in concert, to invest unprecedented amounts of resources, political capital, and institutional capacity to “take back control” over borders and migration—as the Brexit slogan memorably put it. With voters across the globe naming immigration a top concern, governments are recalibrating their policies in an increasingly restrictive direction, shutting the gates of admission to would-be migrants and asylum seekers.3 The deep-seated assumption that states have inherent power over migration provides legal cover for such acts, despite the immense human toll, erosion of rights, and denial of the basic protection and dignity of those who are caught in the increasingly sweeping dragnet of ever-expanding borders and migration control regimes.4 Laws, regulations, and declarations about the urgency to “sort out the border management situation to ensure that the porous borders are addressed in a way that protects the sovereignty of our state” are nowadays proclaimed as a matter of course by public authorities in established democracies as well as autocracies, spanning the gamut from former imperial powers to post-colonial states.5 Exploring what has been forgotten or pushed underground with the triumph of the dominant understanding that states have an inherent sovereign right to control their borders—a view so prevalent that we rarely notice how it impairs our ability to imagine alternatives—is the kernel of this inquiry.

Initially portrayed as the “great equalizer,” the COVID-19 pandemic has proved anything but. This essay recounts the sobering social disparities and vulnerabilities that the pandemic has exposed, especially when it comes to the inequalities that are baked into existing membership regimes, before turning to narratives of hope and democratic renewal. My discussion shines a spotlight on the relationship between borders, (im)mobility, and struggles for recognition and inclusion that have long been central to the practice of citizenship. Focusing on pathways to the acquisition of full membership status for those who are currently denied it, I will deploy logics and policies that have already begun to take shape in different parts of the world, with the goal of amplifying their effects and multiplying their scale. I identify three possible trajectories for postpandemic recovery, two of which offer ways to enhance equality of status and public standing by enlarging the circle of membership: first, through contribution (or what I will term “jus contribuere”), and second, by highlighting what we might call “solidarity in place.” The third reaction, which we might call the “stratification of membership,” pulls in the opposite direction by sharply redrawing the lines—legal, economic, social—that have distinguished insiders from outsiders, and exacerbated patterns of stratification and inequality of status and opportunity that predate the pandemic.

In today's age of restrictionism, a growing number of countries are closing their gates of admission to most categories of would-be immigrants with one important exception. Governments increasingly seek to lure and attract “high value” migrants, especially those with access to large sums of capital. These individuals are offered golden visa programs that lead to fast-tracked naturalization in exchange for a hefty investment, in some cases without inhabiting or even setting foot in the passport-issuing country to which they now officially belong. In the U.S. context, the contrast between the “Dreamers” and “Parachuters” helps to draw out this distinction between civic ties and credit lines as competing bases for membership acquisition. Drawing attention to these seldom-discussed citizenship-for-sale practices, this essay highlights their global surge and critically evaluates the legal, normative, and distributional quandaries they raise. I further argue that purchased membership goods cannot replicate or substitute the meaningful links to a political community that make citizenship valuable and worth upholding in the first place.