Abstract
Large-scale immigration and the refugee crisis have caused many states to adapt ever stricter civic selection processes. This paper discusses the challenges arising from civic selection from the perspective of recognition theories. The argument is that recognition theories provide good conceptual tools with which to critically analyze civic selection and immigration. However, the paper also aims to highlight that many current institutional practices are problematic from the perspective of recognition. In the context of civic selection, it is helpful to understand recognition as something that comes in two analytically distinct modes: horizontal (or interpersonal) and vertical (or institutional). Many rights depend on institutionally given statuses (skilled worker, refugee, permanent resident, etc.). For a person to have a relevant social standing, she needs to be recognized by a relevant governmental institution. However, in vertical relationships, immigrants are faced with a lack of reciprocity. They need to one-sidedly recognize the institutions, which, in turn, have full power to withhold recognition. Migrants also face challenges in the interpersonal horizontal spheres of recognition. Institutional status being granted does not guarantee interpersonal solidarity or care. As recognition is tied to a particular institutional setting and a particular lifeworld, large-scale immigration sets two challenges. The first is the challenge of multiculturalism and recognition of diverging cultural practices of esteem. The second is the challenge of integration and obtaining recognition from the pre-existing cultural context. It is argued here that from the perspective of esteem-recognition, this is very much a question of working rights and providing opportunities for contributing in the new context. From the perspective of care-recognition, in turn, rights to healthcare and family unifications are central. Thus, achieving meaningful personal relationships is not guaranteed by giving rights, but it is nevertheless dependent on institutional recognition.
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For Hegel recognition goes even deeper, as it is constitutive of self-consciousness and freedom (see master-slave dialectics in Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel 1999).
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What is offered here is merely an overview of the Honnethian forms of recognition. The importance of these forms of recognition for modern humans is taken as granted. I also leave open the exact definition of “full personhood.” In my view the concept of personhood is both political and historical in the sense that its exact contents and limits are constantly under debate. For example, it is not clear if there is any strict metaphysical standard for what rights or what opportunities (or freedoms) a person ought to have.
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It is of course contestable whether markets really function according to merit and achievements. However, even if the achievement principle is not an accurate empirical description, people still tend to understand the markets as if they should normatively be based on merit (Miller 1992).
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It is debatable if this horizontal-vertical distinction should be taken literally or as a metaphor for role-fulfillment. It could be claimed that vertical recognition toward institutions does not make sense as recognition is supposed to refer to interpersonal relationships – relationships between persons – and institutions are not persons. However, vertical recognition can also be taken to mean strongly role-bound and rule-mediated recognition. In this sense, vertical recognition denotes those cases where someone is filling a role or acting from the perspective of institutional reasoning. Horizontal recognition, in this interpretation, would be more “spontaneous” and not strictly tied to any institutional roles.
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These normative expectations are not something that states necessarily commit to, but they seem to be the cornerstones of Western tourism and non-settling movement between different nations.
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This intuition comes up easily in the case of, for example, sports teams. It seems reasonable that my local ice hockey team does not have to accept me as a member – especially if the purpose of the team is to play at a competitive level. However, it is less clear how this applies to more encompassing groups and institutions like a nation-state. One line of thinking is that limiting membership is acceptable if it does not restrict opportunities too strongly and if there are alternative options. I can play ice hockey in a different team (on a lower level of competition) or I can play football with my friends instead. With a state it is not as evident if there are as clear second options.
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For example, in Finland it was possible to tighten the screening of refugees from certain areas like Iraq and Syria through an administrative decision of interpretation of local rules, although the broader international commitments remained the same.
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Although protectionism might be seen as recognition for the current citizens, here esteem has already shifted from achievement to belonging. As far as we think that the principle of desert or the principle of achievement is a good principle – or at least better than “inheritance” or “nationalism” – to distribute esteem, then we should be wary of protectionist lines of thinking and try to find solutions to the obviously harmful race to the bottom from other directions.
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In Honneth’s model love as a recognitive attitude is limited to close interpersonal relationships, and perhaps it is indeed the case that we cannot be expected to feel unconditional sympathy for everyone. However, it is also clear that there are institutional solutions for providing fundamental care.
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Although here cultures are discussed as if they were unified entities, they should not be understood as too rigid or stationary. As Tariq Modood (2013, 90) points out, cultures are neither fictions nor essences but more akin to family-resembling collections. They consist of changing norms, practices, and recognition claims that require interpretation, affirmation, and acting-out on the part of their individual carriers.
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Shifting value horizons raises the question: what if the new value horizon is worse? Also, what normative benchmark should we use to judge value horizons? The fact that immigrants might want recognition for their own cultural practices does not in itself guarantee that all these cultural practices would be morally acceptable. Following Honneth’s (1995) ideas, we can state that recognition theories should be open to various ideals of a good life (and thus open to various value horizons). However, recognition does set a normative framework in the sense that moral progress can be identified with expansions of spheres of recognition as well as through eradication of non-recognition and misrecognition. In short, if any cultural practices lead to increased personal and social suffering, there seems to be good reasons to not accept them outright.
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Here I focus only on esteem and respect as the claims for both of them are explicitly public claims.
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Being treated equally in the civic selection process is not the same as achieving full vertical state recognition. It is equal treatment in the ready-set normative framework and not respect in the full sense of all the affected parties being co-authors of the norms of the institution itself.
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Hirvonen, O. (2021). Recognition and Civic Selection. In: Schweiger, G. (eds) Migration, Recognition and Critical Theory. Studies in Global Justice, vol 21. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72732-1_9
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