Maria Christofidis (KCL) - 2025-26 Students
maria.a.christofidis@kcl.ac.uk

On the Moral Permissibility of Irregular Migration

Are prospective migrants morally obliged to comply with immigration law? Each year, hundreds of thousands of prospective migrants act in contravention of states’ immigration law. While failing to comply with a state’s immigration law is, of course, legally impermissible, little philosophical attention has been paid to the question of whether or not prospective migrants are morally required to comply with immigration law. In this thesis, I argue that irregular migration is morally permissible, and explore the practical and philosophical implications of this conclusion. Significantly, my arguments apply to prospective migrants in general, and not only to refugees and other forced migrants.
I begin by demonstrating that prospective migrants lack moral obligations to comply with immigration law (defined as that body of law regulating entry into a given state), and that irregular migration is thus morally permissible. I then examine the practical implications of the moral permissibility of irregular migration, for both matters of individual ethics and for public policy. I argue, for one, that irregular migrants are not, in virtue of their status as irregular migrants, appropriate objects of reactive attitudes such as blame and resentment. I also explore what the moral permissibility of irregular migration entails for the moral permissibility of a state’s members helping prospective migrants to enter the state via irregular channels, e.g., by engaging in (non-exploitative) people smuggling or participating in sham marriages, or to remain in the state, e.g., by forging work permits. Finally, I investigate whether the moral permissibility of irregular migration renders immigration law unjust or illegitimate.

Principal Supervisor: Prof. Andrea Sangiovanni