Transnational Capitalism and Feudal Privilege: Open Borders as a Tool for Non-Domination

Joseph Carens famously described the current system of divided and highly unequal citizenships as a modern form of feudal privilege. This system, he claimed, traps people into arbitrary positions of inequality, with the wealthy protecting their unearned privileges through borders lined with gun-wielding guards. I will argue that while this conclusion is correct, Carens failed to identify why the current system is morally akin to a feudal caste system.

In this post I will first reconstruct Carens’ feudal privilege argument, providing stronger grounds for the comparison. Second, I will illustrate how the injustices of both feudalism and the current regime of border control involve domination-for-exploitation. Finally, I will explain why open borders can serve as a solution to this kind of injustice.

There is much to be said for Carens’ analogy. As he notes, where we are born is a matter of luck. However, it has radical impacts on our life prospects. For example, according to Branko Milanovic, roughly half of our income is shaped by the country in which we live. And since migrants make up less than 4% of the global population, for most of us this means our country of birth. Therefore, where we are born—an arbitrary fact—significantly shapes our lives and opportunities.

When people seek to escape these luck-based inequalities, they are met with coercive and deadly borders. In 2020, while many of us were safely riding out the COVID-19 pandemic inside our homes, 3,174 people died seeking to immigrate. Many died fleeing poverty, violence, and political instability in their country of birth, factors clearly beyond their control. Borders cement these arbitrary inequalities, forcing people to choose between poverty and human rights violations at home, or risking their lives in costly and often fruitless attempts at gaining access to high-income countries.

However, the analogy misses a vital reason why feudalism was so deeply unjust. Lords did not merely use force to prevent serfs from accessing luck-based privileges, as if these existed by chance. Rather, control over movement—in space and across social positions—was used so that serfs could be more easily exploited. Preventing them from moving across physical space ensured that they did not leave feudal relationships, to seek wage labor in nearby towns. And trapping into a system of hereditary serfdom—preventing them from moving across social space—protected the inherited privilege of the nobility while maintaining a steady population of laborers. Restrictions on mobility were therefore vital for creating and maintaining the unequal positions held by serfs and lords alike.

This suggests that both the accuracy and the normative force of the analogy are lacking. Coercively preventing people from accessing luck-based privileges is uncaring, perhaps even cruel. But it is unclear that doing so is always unjust, let alone on par with feudalism.

However, what happens if we extend the analogy? If the current regime of border control does not merely protect luck-based privileges, but is also a vital tool for exploiting members of low-income countries, then both the analogy with feudalism and the injustice of divided citizenships is much more easily illustrated.

To further illustrate the analogy with feudalism—to show how restrictions on mobility facilitate the exploitation of members of low-income countries—I will draw on two main areas of research. First, I will briefly discuss the republican literature on domination and migration. Here, more than liberal political philosophy, there has been a clear development of the ways in which restricting mobility affects power and permits oppression. Second, I will explain how the current era of transnational capitalism involves transnational corporations dominating low-income countries so that they can better exploit their residents. Finally, I will synthesize these two threads, showing how the current regime of border control facilitates this domination-for-exploitation by transnational corporations. 

Although domination is a contested concept, Cécile Laborde and Miriam Ronzoni note that most definitions share three common elements. First, an imbalance of power between two persons or groups. Second, a dependency on the relationship, where those dominated either cannot leave or face unacceptable costs for leaving. And third, an arbitrary exercise of power, lacking effective or appropriate constraints.

While domination need not have an economic motivation—parents can dominate their children, someone can dominate their spouse, and a teacher can dominate their students without any direct connection to their economic interests—domination is often vital for, and explained by, economic oppression. The relationship between lord and serf, for example, fits this model. Lords exercised control over serfs, determining when, where, and how they labored, as well as what they received in return. Restrictions on mobility prevented serfs from exiting the relationship. And lords were largely free to exercise unilateral control over them. This relationship of domination was cultivated and maintained in order to derive reliable benefits from a prone population.

Iseult Honohan has identified two main ways that migration controls dominate the excluded. First, border control contributes to the domination of people by their home country insofar as it undermines their exit options. This is particularly true for nonwhite migrants from low-income countries who find most borders closed to them. Facing a series of walls, lined with gun-wielding guards, their exit options are limited. Their choices are often, at best, other low-income, unstable, or war-torn countries much like their own. This leaves them without any real ability to leave oppressive domestic relationships.

Second, restrictions on immigration dominate would-be migrants. The state being petitioned for entry can unilaterally decide whether to accept them, and, if need be, can use coercion and violence to enforce this decision. And while they can avoid this relationship by not requesting entry, the cost is, for many, exorbitant. They are forced to choose between remaining in unbearable conditions or seeking to cross one of a series of increasingly similar borders, most of which are designed to exclude people like them.

Moreover, many would-be migrants are already in a relationship with high-income countries that serves to benefit the latter at the expense of the former. The current system of divided citizenships, combined with borders that are open to the movement of capital but (largely) closed to the movement of low-wage labor, is a vital precondition for global capitalist development. It creates a reserve army of labor that can be tapped as needed, providing the capitalist core with, among other things, low-cost products.

High-income countries benefit from this asymmetry in mobility. They can exclude would-be migrants when doing so is politically and economically expedient and can selectively admit when the domestic labor market needs an influx of foreign labor. As Honohan notes, this creates a relationship of dependency between high-income countries and potential migrants in low-income countries—one from which individuals cannot easily escape. This makes the relationship of domination more severe and of greater normative concern.

The regime of border control—particularly in the current era of transnational capitalism—facilitates the domination of would-be migrants by their home countries and by the high-income countries that benefit from the system of selectively closed borders. However, it also enables a third relationship of domination: the domination by residents of low-income countries by transnational corporations.

According to William Robinson, we have reached a qualitatively distinct stage of capitalist penetration. The previous era, which he calls the World Economy, was marked by domestic production and global trade. If corporations needed additional supplies of labor, it often had to be brought to them. However, under the current Global Economy, corporations have become untethered from the nation-state. Production has become fragmented and broken down across state borders. And transnational corporations can now shop around for more profitable conditions for production, including lower wages, weaker environmental protections, decreased workplace protections, and corporate-friendly tax policies.

The increased mobility of capital has had several implications. First, it has given capital greater power over countries. According to George Lipsitz, the mobility of capital generated by global fragmentation has made it “more difficult to ‘trap’ capital in any one place long enough to regulate its practices or tax its profits.” Peter Dietsch and Thomas Rixen have argued that even if the mobility of capital does not create a global race to the bottom—with countries downwardly competing for transnational corporations—it still undermines fiscal self-determination. That is, countries are losing power over their own socioeconomic policies and can no longer unilaterally set tax or redistributive policies without suffering considerable costs from outside actors.

Second, it has exacerbated what Robinson calls the flexibilization of labor. Workers become “increasingly treated as a subcontracted component rather than a fixture internal to employer organizations.” This involves heightened precarity, as work becomes temporary and replaceable. This also helps diminish worker power—including the power of collective bargaining—stunting the growth of, or even lowering, wages.

Third, it has eliminated much of the need to develop and promote infrastructure and education alongside sites of production. Subcontracted labor, focused primarily on assembling already produced goods, can be increasingly de-skilled, with education and training becoming less vital to productive efficiency. And integration with the rest of the economy—building roads, highways, and railways that tie sites of production to the rest of the country—becomes an unnecessary cost. The result is that low-income countries receive less of the benefits, and more of the costs, of a global economy.

The flexibility of transnational corporations provides them with increased bargaining power—particularly over low-income countries in the global south. Free to shop around, bargaining for the most favorable conditions, they can exercise control over wages, taxes, the conditions for labor, and environmental standards. Untethered from the nation-state, they no longer must contribute to education or the development of national infrastructure.

This fits the conditions for domination described above. First, there is a clear exercise of power by transnational corporations over low-income countries and their residents. Second, the relationship cannot be easily exited by those dominated. Countries have become dependent upon the wages offered and meager taxes paid by by transnational corporations. And individuals—especially low-wage, nonwhite workers—are largely unable to immigrate into high-income countries where their economic rights have some semblance of protection. Third, there are, at present, little or no institutional checks on corporate power.

Without the free mobility of capital, transnational corporations would be unable to shop around and bargain for more favorable conditions. And absent inequalities between countries—particularly in terms of wages, unemployment, domestic markets, and global integration—they have less of an incentive to do so. This relationship of domination-for-exploitation, therefore, depends upon present facts about the power of transnational capital as well as unequal development between countries.

However, I argue that it also depends upon the current regime of border control. Borders enclose the costs of low-wage production, environmental externalities, and foreign policy decisions. But, most importantly, they prevent residents of low-income countries from “voting with their feet” if conditions become unbearable, keeping them trapped in place and prone in their relationships with global capital.

J. Matthew Hoye has argued that open borders can serve as an anti-power against domestic domination. In brief, an anti-power is an ability or right possessed by those subject to domination that changes the balance of power, permits them to avoid dependence upon dominating agents, or places constraints on the exercise of power over them. Freedom of movement serves as an anti-power against domestic domination by allowing people to exit oppressive relationships, thereby ending their dependency on the state and changing the balance of power within it. The threat of mass emigration can change incentive structures, as emigrants take their labor power, purchasing power, and tax revenue with them. I argue that open borders not only serve as an anti-power against domination by the state, but it also can serve as an anti-power against domination by foreign capital.

Absent the current regime of border control, mass-migration would be a normal result of war, destabilizing regime change, local climate crises, or highly exploitative low-wage labor. Moreover, as noted in the literature on World Systems Theory, the migration caused by exploitation would likely involve movement into high-income countries. Market penetration changes cultures, incentivizes a consumer-heavy lifestyle, gives workers the skillset needed for work in a high-income country, and creates the material and technological connections between low- and high-income countries needed to facilitate regularized migration patterns. This phenomenon is exacerbated when, as is often the case, transnational corporations connect once colonizing countries with their former colonies. Thus, absent a regime of border control, high-income countries would likely experience considerably higher rates of migration from low-income countries.

Open borders could help change the incentive structure of the three sets of actors with power to push back against the exploitative practices of transnational corporations: high-income receiving countries, low-income sending countries, and transnational corporations themselves. First, control over borders helps high-income countries avoid the costs—social, political, or economic—of high rates of migration. Absent the ability to coercively control movement, and faced with a significant increase in migration, they would instead be motivated to work towards regulating—or, at least offering incentives to change—the behavior of transnational corporations.

Second, the threat of a highly exploited population emigrating can change the incentive structure of their home countries. As noted by Thomas Pogge, low-income countries are often incentivized to cater to foreign capital rather than the interests of their own citizens. After all, the former constitutes both a large and fickle revenue source, whereas the latter often forms a more stable but low-paying tax base. One reason such citizens are a stable tax base is that they lack viable exit options—the borders of high-income countries are selectively closed to low-income workers from low-income countries in the global south. With open borders, however, highly exploitative, demeaning, and dangerous working conditions would generate higher rates of migration. This not only threatens the labor supply that draws in transnational corporations, but it also removes a reliable tax base. Therefore, opening borders can provide low-income countries with an incentive to shift their attention from the interests of foreign capital to the interests of their citizens, pressuring transnational corporations to improve conditions to a point that sustains their present population.

Finally, open borders can work to directly change the incentive structure of transnational corporations. At present, the asymmetry in mobility between capital and labor maintains a prone, reserve army of labor. Poverty, capital-friendly labor laws, and a lack of exit options combine to guarantee that residents of low-income countries will work under highly exploitative and demeaning conditions. Ending restrictions on movement from low- to high-income countries, however, provides the global labor force with the power to leave. This can give transnational corporations an incentive to regulate their own behavior.

Open borders can, therefore, serve as an anti-power, protecting the global labor force from domination by transnational corporations by directly changing their incentive structure, as well as by motivating sending and receiving countries to work towards the regulation of global capital. Just as the domination of would-be migrants by coercive borders is a vital precondition for the domination-for-exploitation of the global labor force by transnational corporations, so too can the dissolution of the regime of border control help end the exploitative domination of those in low-income countries by global capital.

Thus, a more careful analysis of the injustice of feudalism, as well as how control over movement can serve as a vital tool for the domination-for-exploitation of a prone workforce, helps vindicate a modified version of Carens’ feudal privilege argument. The current regime of border control functions much like the regulation of mobility within a feudal system. In each case, domination in the domain of mobility is vital for the domination-for-exploitation of a prone labor force. This also helps explain why the current regime of border control and divided citizenships is, like feudalism, morally repugnant. Neither involves the mere hoarding of luck-based privileges. Instead, each involves controlling the movement of a labor force in order to perpetuate and exacerbate their exploitation. Finally, this explains why the appropriate response is open borders. In each case, freedom of movement serves as an anti-power against domination-for-exploitation, permitting a previously prone population to exit oppressive relationships.

Michael Ball-Blakely

Michael Ball-Blakely is a PhD candidate at the University of Washington. His research is focused on the intersection between migration justice and global economic justice. Current projects investigate: skill-selection and domestic status harms; the justice implications of the internal brain drain; and the relationship between freedom of movement and equal opportunity.