Justice at the edge of the liberal state: Borderlands, transnational migration, and citizenship

In a world of interdependent states that exhibit increasingly overlapping memberships, states exert jurisdiction over citizens and non-citizens. Under these borderland conditions, constructing justice focuses on the border structure of the nation-state and the ways it distributes the benefits and burdens of social cooperation.; My dissertation develops a critical perspective from within the borderlands, which depict changing conditions of social cooperation and membership within political communities as transnational contexts and relationships interact with the national state. Persons situated in borderland contexts exist between the domestic and the foreign, and negotiate their membership between alien and citizen. I focus on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, which have been patterned on transnational labor migration and historical interconnection across peoples, and argue that justice is a balance between the claims of those who are organized within domestic political communities, and those situated across them.; Persons are potential transnational actors, who reconstitute "peoples" as they relocate across borders. I argue that justice frameworks are incomplete without an accurate understanding of borders as mediating institutions whose justice is to be assessed, not assumed. I develop the perspective of the borderlands to better approximate political communities, how they interact, and how this process conditions the choices available to persons. These constraints shape their reasonable claims, and therefore what constitutes fair terms. A borderland perspective includes the "alien" as a relevant social position within Rawlian justice frameworks and modifies them to include cross border movement between peoples. I argue for an alternate institutional scheme that provides localized "borderland jurisdictions" which enable fair conditions within and between liberal states that share systemic borderlands.; A borderland jurisdiction allows localized crossings rights between spheres of governance. It recognizes a form of social association that challenges the liberal state and its integrative framework by arming smaller collective units which can challenge the legitimate use of coercive force. However, borderland jurisdictions also enable states to construct just borders that distinguish correctly between members and foreigners and determine a fair distribution of benefits and burdens by addressing the dynamics of dominance that emerge from the perennial problems states face when dealing with their borders.