Ethics Without Borders

One organization which I have been interested in learning more about ever since I first heard about it is Ingen människa är illegal (No one is illegal). The name is, in my opinion, extremely well chosen, and each time I hear it I can’t really shake it off. It gets to me.

IMäI is a network for people who believe in open borders, that everyone should have a right to live anywhere they choose ‘with the same social, political and economic rights’. It has chapters in four cities in Sweden. IMäI helps refugees that hide from the authorities in fear of being sent back to the country from which they fled, by helping them with food, clothes and rent.

IMäi’s ground principle is, as I said, that borders should be open. The network doesn’t believe in the notion of nations and claim to lack moral obligations to uphold them. They don’t see why anyone could have a right to close borders and classify anyone as an ‘illegal immigrant’. Until all borders are open, they will help refugees to hide from the authorities.

This is a clear case of civil disobedience, which I did not particularly like in my entry about Planka.nu. However, this network might have a point. They won’t obey by the rules (in this case, laws) because it would hurt people. Their reasoning is obviously ethical in some way; they aren’t just choosing not to follow rules because they don’t want to.

So, what sort of ethics do the members of this network abide by? I would deem it some kind of utilitarianism, most likely preference utilitarianism. They want people to be able to live where they choose to. Another view would be to classify it as hedonistic utilitarianism, as they want to make people happy. The reasoning then would be that the happiness of the people who get to stay in their new countries by far outweighs the unhappiness of anyone else.

I am, as I wrote earlier, all for following rules in most cases. I think that it’s my moral obligation to follow the laws that we all, in a way, decided on together (also some form of preference utilitarianism – if we decided on the law together, a majority of the people would be happy if I followed it). But in this case, I am willing to rethink that. Ok, I don’t think that a world without borders is a viable option, but I also think that the immigration policies in Sweden and most other countries are pretty messed up. Sometimes, the people working for the authorities have made the wrong decision, and I won’t be the one to judge people who try to help fellow human beings.