Problema. Anuario de Filosofía y Teoría del Derecho

Bonds, Boundaries and Bundles: The Normative Role of Citizenship

Enrique Camacho Beltrán — Tue, 30 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Revista completa

Problema Anuario de Filosofía y Teoría del Derecho — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Montero Olmedo, J. Alberto (coord.). (2021). La filosofía de los derechos humanos. Tirant lo Blanch; UNAM.

Javier Saldaña Serrano — Tue, 30 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Lazos, límites y muéganos: el papel normativo de la ciudadanía

Enrique Camacho Beltrán — Tue, 30 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Jürgen Habermas. Baedeker of his Legal Proposal

Rodolfo Moreno Cruz — Tue, 30 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Habermas has developed a legal Theory based on his communicative action philosophy. Without moving away from the traditional foundations that sustain the Rule of Law, he has innovated a position of legitimation of the law and its exercise, even offering new conceptual tools for the judicial function as it's the case with what could be called the adequacy that replaces to the well-known proposal for the weighing of rights. This article aims to serve as a guide to get inside the territory of his discursive proposal.

Constitutional Fictions. Introductory Elements for the Study of Legal Fictions in the Constitutions of the New Latin American Constitutionalism

Édgar Hernán Fuentes-Contreras, Luz Eliyer Cárdenas Contreras — Tue, 30 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Law, as a language, fulfills different communicational functions that it achieves, largely, through the use of narrative tools and devices. Among them, legal fictions stand out, which, far from portraying reality, seek to create a legal truth. In the case of constitutional fictions, these are often misinterpreted, leading to their degeneration. In this text, beyond offering a conceptual approach to the figure of constitutional fictions, an introductory analysis is offered as to how this has occurred in the context of the new Latin American constitutionalism.

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Everybody Hates a Tourist: World-Traveling, Epistemic Labor, and Local Citizenship

Michael Blake — Tue, 30 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Prior to the pandemic of 2020, global tourism accounted for over ten percent of global GDP, for a total of $9.6 trillion USD; one in every four jobs created that year, across the globe, was in the travel and tourism sector. And yet the figure of the international tourist is often regarded with an attitude ranging from bemusement to outright contempt so much so that a series of books exists to guide tourists on how to avoid looking or acting like tourists. Why, though, is the figure of the tourist —especially the international tourist— so disreputable? Given the sheer number of such tourists (over 1.4 billion, in 2018 alone) it seems odd to think that there is something shameful or problematic about tourism as a practice. What accounts for our seeming disdain for the tourist, even as so many of us engage in tourism ourselves?
There are, of course, many obvious answers to this question. The tourist —especially the international tourist— is often a figure of some wealth and privilege; that tourist is likely to be clumsy, at best, in his or her navigating of a foreign society; and he or she is often likely to be less careful in her caretaking of the physical and social spaces into which she travels, given the fact that she is as it were on vacation. These facts may be enough to engender some antipathy towards the tourist especially one who, as Jarvis Cocker noted thirty years ago, regards the local inhabitants as somehow amusing. Tourists are likely to be —as the British aphorism had it about American GIs— oversexed, overpaid, and over here. In this paper, though, I want to suggest a slightly different story for our ethical disquiet with the figure of the tourist. I will argue that the practice of international tourism raises two distinct sorts of ethical worries —both of which reflect the fact that international tourism requires a local industry in which cultural difference is curated and made consumable by the foreign tourist—. This fact may lead to ethical disquiet, I argue, because it can represent a site at which there is a maldistribution of the benefits and burdens of intercultural conversation; the local who works in the tourism industry must become adept at performing his or her culture for the outsider, while that outsider gains the benefits of intercultural conversation without bearing a similar burden of epistemic labor. A second reason for concern, however, stems from the ways in which this demand for epistemic labor can end up deforming and destabilizing local forms of citizenship and political agency. Those who spend their days performing a debased and simplified version of their cultural identity for outsiders may be, I believe, marked by that effort and their own ability to engage in political conversations with fellow local members may be made more difficult as a result. International tourism, in short, may be a site from which both distributive and political injustices might emerge. These concerns, I should note, may exacerbate already objectionable relationships reflecting colonial legacies of oppression; but they may exist even in the absence of any history of colonialism. The mere fact of a market in the curated experience of cultural difference may be enough to raise these worries; and international tourism, I believe, often involves exactly this form of market.

Democratic Confederalism: An Alternative for Facing Tensions Between Global Citizenship and Localist Citizenship

Luis Xavier López-Farjeat, Tatiana Lozano Ortega — Tue, 30 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This article explores the tensions between different conceptions of “citizenship.” On the one hand, we point out the virtues and limitations of cosmopolitan citizenship in the terms in which Seyla Benhabib understands it in The Right of Others…; on the other hand, we delve into another notion of citizenship, namely, the localist, in a version that could be at odds with some cosmopolitan values, that is, localism as understood by some Mexican autonomous communities, particularly the Zapatistas. Although Benhabib’s cosmopolitan federalism is inclusive in spirit, it is conceived within a preponderantly global perspective and ends up being asymmetrical. While her proposal has some positive aspects, it faces some difficulties in the case of Mexican autonomous communities. In this article, we shall introduce the notion of democratic confederalism as a form of sociopolitical organization that seeks to strengthen the self-organization of social actors and to recognize the practice of citizenship in the terms in which autonomous communities exercise it. We propose that democratic confederalism could be an alternative for decreasing tensions between global citizenship and the idea of citizenship within autonomous communities.

Radical Republican Citizenship for a Mobile World

Alex Sager — Tue, 30 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Migrants invariably and unavoidably experience domination under the nation-state centered concepts, categories, and institutions that structure our political thinking. In response, we need to build new forms of citizenship, including local, regional, transnational, and supranational forms of belonging, accompanied by meaningful, democratic, political power. In this paper, I examine historical and present-day alternative models of political organization as possible viable alternatives to state-centric liberal democracy. It begins the task of assessing these models using radical republican theory that grounds non-domination in the active and equal participation of people subject to power.
I have three broad aims. First, we need to break down the native-migrant dichotomy to highlight commonalities and search for solidarities among migrants and other marginalized and oppressed groups, including indigenous groups. Second, I seek to awaken the political imagination. Many people do not believe there are viable alternatives to liberal democracy centered around the nation-state. In response, we should draw attention to the ways in which the nation-state’s hegemony is fragile and fragmented and the ways in which sovereignty is complex and contested. Most importantly, we need to consider alternative models for inspiration. Third, we need tools for assessing the desirability of alternatives and for building new forms of citizenship.
In what follows, first I explain why the dominant, nation-state centered model of political organization is unable to deliver justice in today’s world, or, indeed, address the collective dangers that humanity faces. I next provide a sketch of a radical republican vision that provides normative guidance our thinking about alternative institutions. I end by using this radical republic vision to reflect on possibilities to guide efforts to remake the world.

Refugeehood Reconsidered: The Central American Migration Crisis

Stephen Macedo — Tue, 30 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The number of refugees in the world amounts to more than one percent of the entire world population. This essay is an attempt to think about this question and assess the literature that addresses it, especially from the standpoint of ethics and political theory, and a grounding in real-world problems. The paper is intended as an introductory discussion for those interested in the debates about who should qualify for refugee status, especially in light of the predicament of Central Americans fleeing from the disorder. It pays special attention to the claim that the US has reparative obligations to Central American countries owing to US interventionist policies.

Citizenship Regimes and Exclusion: Historical Analysis of Legislation on Illegalized Migration in the US

Alejandro Mosqueda, Rubén Chávez, Camelia Tigau — Tue, 30 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Citizenship regimes are institutionalized systems of formal and informal norms that define access to membership, as well as associated rights and duties. This paper studies illegalized migration as one of the major tests to assess whether citizenship regimes are fair institutions, based on a historical analysis of legislation meant to reduce illegalized migration in the United States between 1995 and 2022. We build our empirical research starting from a simple observation: despite the great number of bills introduced to reduce illegalized migration to the US, most of such initiatives fail to become law. In fact, 93.5% of all immigration initiatives did not even pass the chamber of Congress in which they were originally presented. Such a high rate of failure shows that these proposals are motivated by electoral aspirations, rather than coming from a genuine wish to help migrants or grant them citizenship. Furthermore, there is also an economic interest that justifies the maintenance of low-cost disposable immigrant labor, with no right to citizenship. Our analysis is an example of how state regulation processes seem to work to formalize, rather than alleviate or eradicate, the precarious legal statuses of illegalized migrants. We conclude that a globalized phenomenon such as citizenship requires going beyond merely institutional and formal conceptions. We need to rethink the institutional notion of citizenship, as a merely status held under the authority of a state and consider it from a cosmopolitan perspective and a multilateral basis. But as long as citizenship remains under the responsibility of states, illegalized migrants will continue to experience precarious citizenship.

Duties in an International World: The Importance of Past Residence and Citizenship

Douglas Bamford — Tue, 30 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This paper argues that international citizens can retain their obligations to past states and societies, and that this obligation has implications for their state of residence. While some people remain in the same state for their entire lives, international individuals generate relationships with more than one state. The paper presents the argument that individuals are obligated to their state for at least one reason. One particularly relevant implication of this obligation is the duty to pay taxes. In regard to international individuals, these considerations apply to states with which they had historic relationships as well as the state in which they currently reside. The paper offers a rough proposal as to how to calculate the relative relationship that an international individual has with their past and present states and societies. This can be used to determine what proportion of a person’s total lifetime tax revenue should be shared. Although the analysis here is presented in terms of the duty of the individual towards past states, the individual need not change their behaviour to discharge the duty. The duty impacts on current states, which should acknowledge the duty of their international resident, and make sure that this is discharged appropriately to the other relevant states.

Citizen Responsibility for Structural Corruption

Lucero Fragoso Lugo — Tue, 30 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The purpose of this essay is to explain what kind of responsibility citizens should assume for structural corruption. To delve into this topic, we analyze the components of a concept of structure as applied to the features of corruption, as well as the notions of guilt, responsibility and political responsibility. Thus, we argue that citizens who do not participate directly in acts of bribery are politically responsible for systemic corruption. Assuming political responsibility implies taking actions in the public sphere to combat the structure of corruption in conjunction with other citizens.

The Citizenship Rights of Veracruz’s Roosters

Luis David Reyes — Tue, 30 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The aim of this paper is to show that Mexico is leading the current trend of recognizing non-human animals as subjects of rights by acknowledging them citizenship rights. In the paper it is argued that a recent resolution by Mexico’s Supreme Court regarding a local legislation must be interpreted as conceding citizenship rights to the non-human animals living in the state where that legislation applies. The paper starts by discussing the context in which the relevant law was discussed and approved, and the judiciary actions taken against it. Then, it discusses the analysis and resolution carried out by the Supreme Court of the rights involved and the dynamics among them, the paper also includes a defense of this resolution. Furthermore, the paper argues that the protections established by this resolution must be interpreted, according to the contemporary academic theories regarding citizenship and animal rights, as rights and that these rights must also be interpreted as citizenship rights. The paper ends by replying to some objections and drawing some general conclusions.