Prominent political philosophers — including David Miller at Nuffield College, Oxford, and Joseph Carens at the University of Toronto — outline an account of “social membership” in receiving societies. This process unfolds over five to 10 years of work, everyday life, and the development of attachments. As Carens writes in Who Should Get In?(2003), after a period of years, any migrant crosses a “threshold” and is no longer a stranger. This human experience of socialization holds true for low-wage and unauthorized migrants, so a receiving society should acknowledge that migrants themselves, not only their economic contributions, are part of that society.

Carens and Miller apply this argument to the moral claims of settled migrants at risk of deportation because they are unauthorized or because the terms of their presence are tightly limited by work contracts.

 

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