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Colloquium paper
Duty to Emigrate (2991 words)
Abstract (150 words)
This paper argues that citizens have a duty to emigrate if their presence increases the
costs of stopping their state from violating human rights. States are required to impose
sanctions or conduct military operations against rights-violating states. The principle of
proportionality says that the benefits must outweigh the negative effects. But the more
citizens stay, the higher the potential for the relevant negative effects is. Consequently,
foreign states must implement measures that may cost more to them. I argue that citizens
ought to emigrate to reduce these costs on other states. However, this duty is not absolute,
and the paper explains its limits. It also clarifies that the duty to emigrate exists even though
an individual’s departure seems to make no difference, that this duty does not imply a right to
immigrate and it discusses this duty’s relation to the citizens’ own duty to stop their states’
human rights violations.
Synopsis (664 words)
This paper argues that citizens have a duty to emigrate if their presence increases the
costs of stopping their state from violating human rights.
States have a global responsibility to protect fundamental human rights, which
sometimes requires imposing sanctions or conducting military operations against rights-
violating states. According to the principle of proportionality, such actions are impermissible
if their negative effects outweigh the benefits. The presence of people on the state’s territory
can increase the potential for negative effects from sanctions and military operations, thereby
affecting their proportionality.
The more people stay, the more limited the range of permissible sanctions and
military actions becomes. This may leave few low-cost and effective means to stop human
rights violations. In such cases, foreign states have to implement more costly measures that
minimize harm to innocent people. To reduce the burden on other states – and their citizens –
of protecting human rights, citizens of the right-violating state ought to emigrate, even at
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significant personal cost. Emigration thus becomes a matter of fair distribution of the costs
associated with protecting human rights.
Nonetheless, the duty to emigrate is not absolute. No one is required to emigrate if it
involves risking their life, and even below this threshold, the costs of emigration may be too
high relative to the expected benefits to be a duty. But when emigration creates the possibility
of imposing low-cost and effective sanctions that would otherwise be disproportionate,
people have a duty to emigrate, even if it requires selling their property and moving to any
country willing to accept them.
Healthcare professionals and teachers present a special case. But as more people
leave, the need for these services decreases, so they too ought to emigrate. But some
professionals still have a duty to stay that they owe to those who cannot leave. This is
because so because while it is unfair for other states to bear the costs of ensuring that people
can stay at home, but it is not unfair to bear extra costs to ensure access to essential services.
In such cases, staying at home is necessary for doctors and teachers to provide these services.
This paper addresses three objections to the claim that citizens can have a duty to
emigrate. The first says that since the departure of a single person cannot make any
difference, it cannot be required. I argue that this objection confuses the unpredictability of
whose individual decision to leave will make a difference with the impossibility of anyone’s
decision making a difference. For instance, if the departure of 300 residents from a region
would make a previously impermissible military operation permissible, each person's
departure may turn out to be 300th, in which case it would have a significant impact on which
military actions are permissible.
The second objection argues that the duty to emigrate implies a right to immigrate,
yet, as many believe, we do not have this right. So, it follows that we do not have a duty to
emigrate. However, the normative assumption behind this objection is false. To see this,
consider the following example: one can have a duty to develop their talents as a promising
violinist, but this does not imply the right against any teacher to give music lesson. By
analogy, a duty to emigrate even if there is no corresponding right to be admitted by another
state.
Finally, some argue that instead of emigrating, one has a duty to prevent their
government from violating human rights. However, there is no contradiction: modern
technologies allow for effective resistance and mobilization from outside the country.
Moreover, the duty to emigrate is separate from political duties to stop one’s state from
human rights violations. This is why it applies even to those who are not members of the
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political community. So, it is consistent to assert a duty to emigrate alongside a duty to stop
human rights violations, and not everyone within a state that violates rights has a special duty
to prevent those violations.
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Start of the paper
Duty to Emigrate (2991 words)
Introduction
It is widely accepted that people have a moral right to stay in the country of their
citizenship.1 It is a matter of debate whether people have a right to enter the territory of
foreign states or if there are limits on their right to leave their state. Yet the right not to move,
to stay in one’s country, is typically taken to be unlimited and has not been questioned in the
literature on migration.2 But are there situations where not leaving one’s state is morally
wrong? Do we ever have a duty to emigrate? This paper argues that the answer is yes.
Citizens have a duty to emigrate if their presence increases the costs of stopping their state
from violating human rights.
The main argument goes as follows. The states have a responsibility to protect
fundamental human rights all over the world. In some cases, this requires imposing sanctions
or conducting military operations against states that violate them.3 According to the principle
of proportionality, sanctions and military operations are impermissible if their negative
effects outweigh the benefits.4 The presence of people in a state increases the potential for
negative effects from sanctions and military operations, thus affecting their proportionality.
The more people stay, the more limited the choice of permissible sanctions and
military actions is. As a result, there may be no low-cost and effective means of stopping
violations of human rights. So, foreign states must implement sanctions or conduct military
1
For a defense of the right to stay, see Valeria Ottonelli, “The Right to Stay as a Control Right,” in Oxford
Studies in Political Philosophy, ed. David Sobel, Peter Vallentyne, and Steven Wall (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2020), 6: 87–116.
2
In this literature, the right to stay is often invoked to explain what is wrong with the deportation of migrants
who have developed ties to their new place of residence. See, e.g., Joseph Carens, Immigrants and the Right to
Stay (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010). The right to stay is also mentioned in the discussion of “brain drain,”
i.e., the emigration of skilled workers, especially healthcare workers, typically from poor states. The right to
stay explains the reason why local professionals have a duty to stay, yet foreign professionals do not have an
analogous duty to come. See, e.g.: “Because people’s strongest attachments, such as their friends, family, and
community, tend to be situated within their home country, forcing people to leave is less likely to prove a
proportionate response to brain drain than forcing people to remain.” (Kieran Oberman, “Emigration in a Time
of Cholera: Freedom, Brain Drain, and Human Rights,” Law, Ethics and Philosophy 4 (2016): 87–108, p. 103.)
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For a defense of the duty to impose sanctions, see, e.g., Cécile Fabre, Cosmopolitan War (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2012), ch.5. For a defense of the duty to impose sanctions see her book Economic Statecraft:
Human Rights, Sanctions, and Conditionality (Harvard MA: Harvard University Press, 2018).
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For simplicity, I will consider only the negative effects on innocent people, i.e. people who have done nothing
to be liable to any harm. In the ethics of war, it is referred to as the principle of wide proportionality. See Jeff
McMahan, Killing in War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), ch.1.
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operations that cost more to them if they cause less harm to fewer innocent people. In this
kind of cases, I believe citizens have a duty to emigrate, even at significant personal cost. By
leaving, they reduce the burden on other states – and ultimately, their taxpayers and military
personnel – of protecting human rights that their state violates. Emigration becomes a matter
of fair distribution of the costs associated with protecting human rights.5
In the next section, I will clarify the meaning of the two central terms used in the
paper: citizenship and emigration. Following that, I will elaborate on two central cases – wars
and sanctions – and defend the normative premises of the argument. I will then discuss the
conditions under which citizens ought to leave their state and conclude with a brief discussion
of potential objections to my argument.
Part I. Citizenship and emigration
The concept of citizenship is often seen as distinctly legal and political.6 This is a
formal status, a bundle of rights (e.g. right to hold public office) and duties (e.g. duty to serve
in the army) that all members of the political community should have. However, there are
also non-political aspects of citizenship that are particularly relevant to my argument.7
The state of one’s citizenship is generally where one’s home is. Thus, emigration
represents a permanent departure from one’s home.8 Except for dual citizens and holders of
permanent residence permits in other countries, citizens generally have no alternative homes
to go to. Leaving the state means severing ties with familiar surroundings to which many
people are deeply attached, making even voluntary emigration is a painful process that
“necessarily involves profound forms of loss.”9 This is why we may think that emigration,
given its high price, can never be morally required.
5
James Pattison discusses the fairness in the distribution of costs of sanctions between innocent parties,
including those who impose the sanctions and citizens who are negatively affected by them, in “The Morality of
Sanctions,” Social Philosophy and Policy 32 (2015): 192–215. In this article, however, he does not discuss the
question of what the citizens ought to do in order to reduce the costs of sanctions for other agents. Pattison’s
goal is different from mine. He wants to show that the fact that some sanctions have negative effects on innocent
people is not a reason to prefer more targeted military interventions that would spare innocent people from those
effects.
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See, e.g., A. John Simmons, Moral Principles and Political Obligations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1979).
7
The distinction between political and non-political aspects of citizenship is mine. It is different from, for
example, Linda Bosniak's often cited distinction between status, rights, political engagement and identity
aspects. See Linda Bosniak, The Citizen and the Alien: Dilemmas of Contemporary Membership (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2006).
8
For a vivid description of the costs of leaving the most valuable and unmovable goods see Simmons, Moral
Principles and Political Obligations, pp. 95–100.
9
Michael Blake, Justice, Migration, and Mercy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), p.6.
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The duty to emigrate is a duty to leave one’s home, regardless of whether it involves
breaking ties with one’s political community. As a non-political duty, it applies to all
individuals whose home is located within the state, even if they are not full members of the
political community. They are all considered citizens in this relevant sense.
Nonetheless, there can be political reasons for emigration that apply to members of
the political community but not to everyone whose home is located within the state’s borders.
For example, emigration might be required as a means of expressing opposition to the
government’s policies. However, disenfranchised people who have no impact on the state’s
policy might not have political duties of citizenship, and therefore, would not be required to
leave their home on these grounds.
I mention this only to clarify the question this paper does not address. Although not
everyone, many more people have homes than enjoy the rights and corresponding duties of
citizenship. If I can demonstrate that the duty to emigrate is grounded in something more
fundamental than political duties of citizenship, the argument will have a broader scope of
application: everyone who has a place they can call home.
Part II. Costs of stopping human rights violations
I assume that states have a moral obligation to prevent foreign governments from
committing human rights violations. This should not be seen as too controversial. Even
though states enjoy sovereignty, which requires that other states abstain from interfering in
their affairs, some cases of human rights violations clearly warrant imposing sanctions or
taking military action. Among them are genocide, enslavement, and intentional starvation.
Less severe human rights violations, such as the discrimination of minorities or the
persecution of political opponents, may not justify military intervention but can sometimes
justify economic sanctions.
The obligation I describe is limited in two ways. First, states are not obligated to
impose sanctions or conduct military operations at an excessively high cost to their citizens.
Second, they are not permitted to pursue policies that, while effective and low-cost, harm too
many innocent people. This is why states can be required to implement sanctions or conduct
military operations that are more costly to them if they impact fewer innocent people. The
question is whether these innocent people – citizens of the state that violates human rights –
have any obligations to the foreign states attempting to stop human violations.10
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For simplicity and due to lack of space, I assume that citizens of states violating human rights are not
responsible for their state’s wrongful policies. This assumption is not controversial given my focus on the non-
political aspects of citizenship. For instance, citizens of a tyrannical state might be the primary victims of its
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In what follows, I will mainly focus on economic sanctions. My discussion will be
based on Cécile Fabre’s account of the ethics of economic sanctions. She defines economic
sanctions as “an interference with agent’s property rights in general and their rights to trade
in particular.”11 They include restrictions on export and import, tariffs, and freezing assets.
Two distinctions between sanctions are important for my argument.12 First, sanctions
can target single-purpose or dual-purpose goods. Single-purpose goods are those that “enable
Target [i.e. the state under sanctions] to pursue its unjust policy and serve no other purpose –
such as weapons.”13 By contrast, dual-purpose goods, such as oil and other energy sources,
can be used for both just and unjust ends.
Second, sanctions can be comprehensive or targeted. The latter are against specific
agents such as political and military leaders, who directly contribute to unjust policies as well
as against specific goods. By contrast, comprehensive sanctions affect everyone and cover a
wider range of goods or services.
Targeted sanctions on single-purpose goods (e.g., freezing personal assets of high-
ranking officials) are preferable to comprehensive sanctions on dual-purpose goods (e.g.,
banning the use of financial institutions). This is because the latter are more likely to harm
innocent people. However, it is sometimes impossible to stop human rights violations with
sanctions of the first kind alone.
Implementing comprehensive sanctions on dual-purpose goods is justified only if they
are necessary, effective, and proportionate. For example, banning the import of gas into a
country that relies on it as the main source of energy could effectively slow down the
economy for war production. However, energy is essential for the production of all goods,
including the essential that ordinary people rely on. So, such ban would have negative effects
on everyone. The more people live in that state, the less likely these sanctions would meet the
requirements of proportionality and, therefore, be permissible.
This is the kind of case where, I believe, citizens have a duty to leave their state. By
staying, they reduce the range of morally permissible ways to stop human rights violations.
policies. So, they are not responsible for them. If this is so, then they should not bear the higher cost of stopping
their state’s human rights violations than other innocent agents. The only morally relevant distinguishing
features of all citizens in non-political sense is that they live within the territory of a state that violates rights,
and that they could reduce the overall costs of stopping these violations by abandoning their home, albeit at a
significant personal cost. For a recent discussion of responsibility of citizens in tyrannies see, e.g., Avia
Pasternak, Responsible Citizens, Irresponsible States: Should citizens Pay for Their State’s Wrongdoings?
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).
11
Fabre, Economic Statecraft, p. 29.
12
See Ibid., pp. 30–34.
13
Ibid., p. 33.
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Consequently, foreign states, to fulfill their obligations, may have to choose policies that cost
more and are overall less effective, as they are morally required to spare innocent people
from excessive harm caused by sanctions.
While emigration can be difficult, innocent people can be justifiably required to leave
their homes as a matter of fair distribution of the costs associated with stopping human rights
violations between all parties. If they choose to stay, they effectively add to the minimum
costs of sanctions the extra costs of protecting them from their negative effects. This is unfair
to states and their citizens who have to bear these avoidable costs.
Part III. Who has a duty to emigrate?
Even if there is a duty to emigrate in the kind of cases I have described, many
questions remain. Does everyone have this duty? Are there limits to how high the costs of
emigration must be for it to become obligatory? In this section, I will answer these questions
and outline the conditions under which citizens ought to emigrate.
Let us start with an easy case where emigration is morally required. Consider a highly
qualified dual citizen who lives near a military factory and needs medication imported from
abroad. Sanctions on financial institutions increase the costs and, thus, the availability of all
imported goods. So, the more people depend on the imported medication, the less
proportionate the comprehensive sanctions on financial institutions become.
Similarly, if innocent people live near the military factory, attacking this factory may
be overall impermissible due to its negative effects on these people. So, by choosing to stay,
the person from the example contributes to the factors limiting the range of permissible
sanctions and military actions. At the same time, given that this person is a dual citizen, they
face no legal barriers to moving to another country. Since they are highly qualified, they are
also likely to have good chances of finding a job abroad. Given all of this, I believe that this
person ought to emigrate.
Easy cases are rare. Few people find themselves in such situation. Restrictions on
immigration make it difficult to emigrate for those who do not have a residence permit or
citizenship in other countries. There are direct costs associated with emigration, including the
costs of transportation and accommodation, making it unaffordable for many people.
Additionally, some citizens have special moral reasons to stay. Among them are healthcare
personnel and teachers, as their services are essential and needed under all circumstances.
This can also be true for family members of vulnerable people who cannot leave and who
rely on their family for care and support.
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Each case warrants special discussion. Nonetheless, we can make a few
generalizations that will help specify the general conditions under which citizens ought to
leave.
Let us start with the costs associated with emigration. These costs can be too high in
two senses: absolute and relative. In the absolute sense, the costs of emigration are too high
when no one can be required to bear them, regardless of the positive effects their emigration
might bring. It is difficult to be precise about where the threshold lies, but at a minimum, no
one can be required to emigrate if it involves risking their own life.
Below the absolute threshold, the costs of emigration can still be too high when its
expected benefits are low. In the cases I have described, the relevant expected benefits are
determined by the change in the costs of permissible sanctions. To put it simply, if the
emigration of people creates the possibility of imposing low-cost and effective sanctions that
would otherwise be disproportionate and thus impermissible, then people are required to
emigrate, even if it means selling their property or settling in any country willing to accept
them, regardless of their preferences.
Next, let us consider the case of healthcare professionals and teachers. The first thing
to note is that the more people choose to stay, the higher the demand for healthcare
professionals and teachers will be. Therefore, as more people leave, the fewer teachers and
doctors have reason to stay: if all children have left, there is no need for teachers to stay.
Nonetheless, given the importance of their services, some teachers, doctors, and nurses will
have strong moral reasons to stay.
The duty to spare foreign governments from bearing the extra costs associated with
protecting innocent people from the negative effects of sanctions may not apply to teachers
and healthcare professionals given their justification for staying. It is unfair for other states to
bear the costs of ensuring that people can stay at home, but it is not necessarily unfair to bear
extra costs to ensure access to essential services. In such cases, staying at home is necessary
for doctors and teachers to provide these services. The same reasoning applies to non-
professionals who provide similarly essential care to their family.
Based on this discussion, these are the conditions under which one ought to emigrate.
Citizens have a duty to emigrate (i) when their presence increases the costs of stopping their
state from violating human rights; (ii) when the costs of emigration are not too high in an
absolute sense or relative to the expected benefits for the states trying to stop human rights
violations; and (iii) when their presence is not required to provide essential services to those
who stay.
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Part IV. Objections
In this part, I will briefly address three potential objections to my argument. The first
objection says that there is no duty to leave since the departure of one person cannot make a
difference. The second says that one cannot be required to leave without having the right to
be accepted by another state. The third says that, in the cases I have described, the duty is to
stop the state from violating human rights rather than to leave it. I will respond to these
objections in the order presented.
The presence of a single individual near a military factory is unlikely to affect the
permissibility of an attack. If it is impermissible to bomb this factory because 1,000 people
live nearby, it would remain impermissible even if there were only 999 people. So, by
emigrating, a single person does not seem to make a difference, i.e. does not increase the
range of permissible low-cost military operations. This presents a problem since, I have
argued, the duty to emigrate is based on the expectation of this effect.
While the departure of one person may not affect the proportionality calculation, the
departure of 300 might. For example, a military attack that would be considered
disproportionate and therefore impermissible if 1,000 people lived near the factory could
become proportionate and permissible if only 700 people lived there. So, the departure of the
300th resident would, to use Shelly Kagan’s term, be a triggering case.14 This way, a single
citizen’s decision to leave can make a difference.
As this analysis suggests, the objection confuses the impossibility to predict whose
individual decision to leave will make a difference with the impossibility that anyone’s
decision will make a difference. So, even though it is likely that the decision to emigrate will
not make a difference, it is also not unlikely that it will make a significant difference. This
possibility explains why everyone has the duty to emigrate.
The second objection argues that the duty to emigrate implies a right to immigrate,
yet, as many believe, we do not have this right.15 So, it follows that we do not have a duty to
emigrate. The normative assumption behind this objection is that we cannot have a duty to do
something if it is not within our power to fulfill it. Such requirements seem unfair because we
can fail to fulfill them despite our best efforts.
14
See Shelly Kagan, “Do I Make a Difference,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 39 (2011): 105–141.
15
John Rawls discusses a similar objection but to the right to emigrate as it can seem to lack “a point without
the right to be accepted.” (p. 74) His answer is that there are many such rights, e.g., right to marry without the
right to be married, and yet we do not deny that they exist. See John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
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While this assumption may seem plausible in the abstract, it is likely false. Consider
the following example. Suppose I have a duty to develop my talents. I am a promising
violinist, but to excel, I need music lessons. However, this does not imply that any music
teacher is obligated to give me lessons. The two questions – the question of duties and the
question of rights – are distinct, and the way we answer one does not directly determine the
answer to the other. So, it is consistent to argue that one has a duty to emigrate even if one
does not have a right to be admitted by any foreign state.16
Addressing the final objection, the first point to note is that there is no inherent
conflict between the duty to emigrate and the duty to prevent one’s government from
violating human rights. With the technologies available today, broadcasting accurate
information from outside the country can be more effective in mobilizing resistance against
the government than remaining inside, where this might be impossible.
Second, as I mentioned in Part I, I address the non-political duty to leave one’s home,
a duty that can apply even to those who are not members of the political community. If
individuals have a duty to prevent their government from violating human rights, this
obligation stems from their political membership, not merely from the fact that their home is
within that state. Therefore, there is either no inconsistency in asserting that one can have
both a duty to stop human rights violations and a duty to emigrate, or it is incorrect to assume
that everyone whose home is within a state that violates rights has a special duty to prevent
those violations.
Conclusion
The argument I defend in this paper suggests that our right to remain in the country of
our citizenship is limited. But this argument has no direct implications for the permissibility
of forced evacuation, deportation, or banishment. I believe that this duty, much like the duty
not to lie, cannot be coercively enforced although this question is beyond the scope of this
paper.
Nonetheless, there is a broader implication of the argument that I want to
acknowledge. If the unrestricted right to remain in one’s state is central to the status of
citizenship, and we lack this right, then we should be more skeptical about the idea that
citizenship is a distinct morally significant status.
16
Moreover, even if states have a moral right to control their borders and deny entry to foreigners, transgressing
this right may be overall permissible. So citizens leaving the right-violating state might be allowed or even
required to cross the borders of a foreign state without authorization. This would be a case of infringement of
the state’s right to control immigration, but not the case of violation of this right. On this distinction see,
McMahan, Killing in War, ch.2.
