Beyond Borders: Towards the Ethics of Unbounded Inclusiveness

ABSTRACT Borders remain vitally important features of our political world. Throughout the Global North, the common response to the broad challenges and the multiple overlapping crises has been to regress to state-centric thinking and nationalist agendas and revert to ad-hoc border closures. We have witnessed a consistent drive for ever stricter border and migration policies, which are not limited to the mere border management, but become an inherent part of a wide range of polices and societal practices. The premise assumed herein is that borders do not only divide physical space, but are also used increasingly to sort people according to the degree of their belonging. The question under scrutiny here is that how to balance the calls for the freedom of movement against the right to freedom of association? I seek to unravel this conundrum by addressing the arguments used to support these, which might appear as inherently, opposite stands. In advocating for unbounded inclusiveness, I seek to challenge the widely accepted notion that people are from a certain territorially demarcated place, and their rights, duties – and opportunities in life, ought to remain based on their arbitrary fact.


Introduction
The recent drastic events in the global scene have once again given further prominence to the role and function of borders. Borders have come to be commonly seen as having a critical role as interfaces between domestic concerns and wider interstate and intercultural pressures. European, but also more global media accounts and narratives following the 2015 "refugee crises," and the more recent Covid-19 pandemic, confirm this trend. Despite the various ongoing processes of globalization, the role of borders as barriers to undesirable influences and threats has gained momentum. The logic of the debate on the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the related concerns has indeed telling similarities with the recent migration (management) crisis. In both cases the perceived threat has become commonly depicted as something foreign, external to "us" and our life in "here." Borders, the logic posits, function fundamentally as protective, yet vulnerable, defenses against various external "ills" seeking to infiltrate and paralyze the very body of the "national" societies insulating the inside and keeping it safe, secure, and healthy. From this perspective borders appear as both frontiers of fear (d 'Appolonia 2012) and a protective skin (Cash 2017) that help to maintain a secure and healthy interior.
Throughout not only Europe, but largely the entire Global North, the initial response to these challenges has been to regress to state-centric thinking, nationalist agendas and revert to ad-hoc border closures. Anti-immigrant sentiments are no longer at the margins of society but have found their way to the heart of politics worldwide (Norris and Inglehart 2019). Under pressure, a number of governments have opted for the end-of-pipe solution of closing their borders in an attempt to restrict the incoming or transiting movement of people (Laine 2018, 288), some succumbing to the knee-jerk reaction to build walls and fences, and undermining in so doing the moral, legal, philosophical, as well as economic accounts of limiting the movement of human beings at borders (Jones 2019). We have witnessed a consistent drive for ever stricter border and migration policies, which are not limited to mere border management but become an inherent part of a wide range of polices and societal practices. In addition to the famous promises by the former US President Donald Trump to build a wall on the US border with Mexico to keep the unwanted immigrants out, immigration worries and the related perception of losing control can be seen driving the United Kingdom's referendum vote to leave the European Union (EU). Hungary's right-wing government shut the main land route for migrants into the EU leaving migrants stranded and criminalizing solidarity towards them, while the "stop the boats" campaign by the Australian government's Operation Sovereign Borders has implemented a "zero tolerance" posture towards what it now terms "Illegal Maritime Arrivals" 1 to the country. Many other equally oppressive examples would be listed.
The closure of borders and a hardening attitude towards migrants have hit those already most vulnerable the most. The prolonged Rohingya crisis serves as sad testimony of an ethnic cleansing, whereby a refusal to accept this population as a minority Indigenous to Myanmar, and the subsequent forcible displacement, have come with a devastating human toll. Similar, even if less severe and thus less reported, persistent ethnic conflicts exist in many border regions. These are but few examples of the nationalistic, nativistic and protectionist agendas of the political right sweeping across the globe, 2 leaving xenophobic hatred in its wake. While the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has now caught the world's attention, the existing trends and tensions fueling migratory flows and forcing people from their homes have not disappeared anywhere, butif anythinghave become further exacerbated. Crossing borders has evidently become more challenging than what it used to be for everyone, yet particularly so for those who were already in the most precarious positions. Further closures and restrictions have forced larger numbers of refugees and asylum seekers to wait in limbo for extended periods of time in camps and temporary settlements in filthy and harsh conditions (see, e.g. Liem et al. 2020;Laine 2020a).
Borders are not only markers of difference but they also maintain it. The extent to which enhanced border security actually makes people feel safer remains debatable, yet what borders do effectively secure is global inequality and its exploitation. While the richest continents in the world seem to be struggling to host refugees, much higher numbers are being welcomed by individual developing countries with challenges of their own. Immigrants, minorities, as well as other outsiders and deviants of sorts, have been used as convenient scapegoats for all things wrong and cynically exploited to distract attention from our own inadequacies, and to evade the burden of blame and responsibility. The drivers of antagonistic attitudes fueling deterrent politics, that is, stem from something much deeper. As Kenwick and Simmons (2020) assert, the ubiquity of these policies cannot be said to be driven by any clear scientific consensus about their utility, but rather reflecting their palliative impact on societies predisposed to express concern about that which is foreign in times of crisis. Despite the lack of clarity about their actual applicability, these ideas reinforce the collective spatial imaginary of division between a safe "interior" and an insecure exterior, "outside," reminiscent of the medieval concept of the fortress (Benedicto and Brunet 2018, 8). The promise of a strong nation state as a solution for the multiple overlapping crises and the resultant perceived chaos has resonated well with the resulting public discourse demanding order to be restored. These demands have become widely and deliberately politicized by charismatic, yet often unscrupulous, right-wing populist leaders with strong anti-migration platforms feeding xenophobic far-right readings of the situation with hopes to harness fears to advance their own agendas and domestic political objectives (Laine 2020b, 227). As Krasteva (2020, 687) wittily puts it, based on her study on Bulgaria, "if borders did not exist, Euroscepticism would have invented them." Whereas policies put in place to deal with these concerns remain caught in matters of national jurisdiction, contradictions between global developments and persistence of territorial modes of national jurisdictions keep piling up. In what follows, I address the links between border politics, bordering practices, and their ethical concerns in seeking to fashion more sustainable modes of governance and more inclusive societies. The central claim advanced here is that the topographical modes of jurisdiction and reasoning fail to address the topological modes of activityboth challenges and opportunitieswhere, following Dalby (2019), long-distance connections and indirect consequences are what matter. While high moral value continues to be assigned to national borders and state sovereignty, the respect for the lawful and protected principle of self-determination of accountable states cannot be detached from the realities of today's interconnected world. Borders carry considerable moral weight in determining ethical responsibilities towards those who are not considered to belong, and our moral obligation to make borders more permeable does not stem only from the humanitarian principle but is also based on the fact that we are no longer simply part of isolated national communities. By virtue of our transnational interactions in today's networked world, developments even in distant places may come with multiple bearings.
Borders remain vitally important features of our political world, and no attempt is made here to claim that the challenges we face would be solved by removing them. However, the recent events make it strikingly clear that borders are increasingly unevenly porous. Borders do not only divide physical space, but they are used increasingly to sort people according to the degree of their belonging to certain ethnic, cultural, political, and social groups. Borders are not either static or mobile, but both at the same time. They function and impact on one's mobility differently, and it is this realization I wish to explore further in this paper. In order to do so, it is crucial to acknowledge that borders are no longer mere lines of demarcation separating distinct sovereign entities, but through various processes of bordering diverse spaces have become insurmountable for those judged to be undesirable. The ethical inquiry into whether or not the world should be divided by territorial borders in the first place is utterly grounded in different ontological premise than the moral reasoning behind the arguments for and against open borders; i.e. admission of migrants and cutting of asylum. The question thus is how to balance the calls for the freedom of movement against the right to freedom of association and how much relative weight should be assigned to each? That is, whose rightsor wrongsmatter the most? It is this conundrum that I wish to unravel by addressing the arguments used to support these, which might appear as inherently, opposite stands. In what follows, I shall first address the ethics of territorial borders and border regimes, and then move on the fundamental issue of whose rights are most important, those of citizens or of humans. This leads to a suggestion on unbounded inclusiveness, with which I seek to challenge the widely accepted notion that people are from a certain territorially bounded place, and their rights, dutiesand opportunities in life, ought to remain based on their arbitrary fact.

Examining the Links between Borders and Ethics
Territorial borders remain among the most fundamental features of our political world occupying a strong, often unquestioned ontological position in understandings of international relations. The present discussion assumes, however, a premise that crediting the prevalence of borders to mere sovereignty motives is both inadequate and misleading. Controlling and coercive practices, while persisting at nodal points where traditional sovereignty still operates in order to control space and borders in the name of safety and security, have given way to mediation and negotiation (Tucci 2016). This has not only broadened the bordering practices in use but also allowed them to be increasingly selective. While governance techniques seldom rule out anyone in principle, they include selectively according to criteria that may vary depending on the purposes for which government action has been programed (Tucci 2016). As Mbembe (2018) notes, the capacity to decide who can move, who can settle, where and under what conditions is increasingly becoming the core of political struggles over sovereignty, nationalism, citizenship, security and freedom. Far from any final waning, borders have become re-articulated at multiple levels and scales that are both intertwined, but at the same time possess dynamics of their own, leaving them porous and flexible, yet still regulated and fixed (Laine 2016;Tucci 2016). Above all, the symbolic power of borders remains immense. This may have more to do with questions of belonging and identity than sovereignty and self-determination. "Borders are to distinct countries," Hanson (2016) explains, "what fences are to neighbors: means of demarcating that something on one side is different from what lies on the other side, a reflection of the singularity of one entity in comparison with another." From this, he deducts, a world without boundaries is a fantasy. Indeed, borders continue to play a fundamental role for many. "We're a sovereign country," stated U. S. Senator for Florida, Marco Rubio, in a Fox News interview in 2013 and continued to explain that "every sovereign country in the world has a right to protect its borders and who has access to the country. Every country does that. Why would we be expected not to do that?" Rubio's statement reverberated Thomas Jefferson famous dictum that "a country with no border is not a country" and is illustrative of the way the states' right to control their borders; i.e. entry and settlement of non-citizens in their sovereign territories, is still often taken as for granted and widely considered as a legitimate aspect of the sovereign states' self-determination as dictated by modern international law.
Indeed, bordersand the fights to keep themare as old as agricultural civilization (Hanson 2016). What is, however, less discussed is that the desire to challenge these borders has also deep roots. Socrates considered himself not just an Athenian but instead "a citizen of the cosmos" (see, e.g. Kang 2013, 54), even though by that he may have meant the Stoic doctrine of living in agreement with the right reason rather than simply considering himself as a resident of the something territorially broader than Athens. Marx and Engels (1848) urged the "workers of the world, unite!" and, in his science-fiction novel The Shape of Things to Come, H. G. Wells (1933) envisioned borders eventually disappearing as transnational polymaths enforced enlightened world governancenot to mention Kenichi Ohmae's (1990) more recent ground-breaking bestseller The Borderless World, in which he claims that national borders are less relevant than ever before for new globally interlinked economy. These arguments have all had profound impacts in their specific contexts, yet many generalizations drawn from them have missed the mark in failing to differentiate between the persisting importance of territorial borders and calls for increased border enforcement and the barring of asylum. The one does not necessarily imply the other, but the underlying rationale for the mere existence of borders differs markedly from that used to support either their openness or closure.
The era that we are living in is characterized by the increasing complexity of the border concept. Borders have very different impact on and meaning for different processes, practicesand people. The unmaking of borders, as Western (2019) calls it, and the related dismantling and loosening of border regimes, removes obstacles and creates radical new possibilities and opportunities for some, whilst it can be threatening to others. Despite the heightened globalization and the array of transnational processes, the politics of the line endures, as Walker (2010) notes, and if anything, has become only more stringent. In the era of multiple ongoing crises, a strong nation-state is being offered as a medicine for chaos, and many are also ready to receive it. Much of the political and public debate has become rather partial, at times openly so, depicting borders in a black-and-white manner, as either good or bad, without acknowledging their multifaceted nature.
While it is difficult to support the increased securitization and discriminatory exploitations of borders (see Jones 2019), together with the official regimes, regulations, policies that maintain them, it is almost equally difficult to agree with Nussbaum's (2002) earlier somewhat naïve claim that borders would be morally irrelevant. Her work has however gained many followers (e.g. Mitropoulos 2010; Anderson et al. 2012;Walia 2013;King 2016), who have put forth far-reaching, yet appealing arguments. These devotees of the "no border" perspective take a radical attitude toward the state form and advocate for the elimination of borders "both in an epistemological sense and in a political sense." This is in contrast to an open border politics that does not do away with the state, which would continue to subject people to categorizations (Mitropoulos 2010). Surely, the Westphalian system with its rigid understanding of borders is utterly flawed and often irrelevant in grasping the logics of various border transcending global processes of the contemporary era. It would, however, be quite a leap to derive from this that a world without borders would somehow be a better solution and not come with defects of its own (cf. Heller et al. 2019, 58). Here, of course, we are not talking about the ethics of merely the territorial border per se, but also that of the entire international system.
Much of the academic examination in this respect has focused on the tensions between the deeply etched Westphalian notions of sovereignty and the universalist claims about humanity and human rights. While the former maintains that the states system remains as an order-generating structure allowing co-existence and diversity under conditions of anarchy and plurality, the latter puts forth an idea of an emerging "world society" based on a cosmopolitan ethos and the recognition of common feelings of humanity. As both positions claim to be promoting higher ethical goals, such as order and justice (Williams 2006, 50-1), the apparent problem herein is how to choose the correct way to move forward? Would a world society be inevitably more just than the current system of unjust borders? Eckersley's (2017) connected notion of geopolitan, as opposed to cosmopolitan, in recognition of the mutual enmeshment of humanity and the rest of the earth system, provides a viable way forward in that it relies on the understanding that humans are interconnected profoundly, not just with each other, but also with both the biosphere and the growing technosphere in the earth system (cf. Haff 2014).
In contemplating these questions, I chose to stand back from the concept and practices of sovereignty, that have commonly been placed in the spotlight with inquiries into the status and roles of territorial borders. The aim here is not to offer a clear-cut answer, but to argue that rather than approaching the question from either side only, a more pragmatic middle ground must be sought between the two fundamentally incompatible positions. The logic here is, building on Williams (2006), that it can enable better ways of thinking about bordering a social practice, and the role that bordering plays in ethical thinking. The middle ground may also be the way forward, as it is exactly the call for a higher ethical purpose that makes it impossible to consider one without the other.
The "open" and "no" borders accounts both have strong merits and appeal. The liberal state cannot, consistent with its liberalism, coercively prevent outsiders from entering into that state's territory; i.e. exclude unwanted outsiders (Wilcox 2009). We cannot, however, escape the apparent fact that for many it is the very borders that come with an appeal, and the state's right to control migration seems to enjoy widespread acceptance. The most common, yet often indefensible, arguments to support this stand are premised in the alleged need to establish security, preserve culture, gain economic sustainability, safeguard the distribution of state benefits, and secure political functioning and self-determination, freedom of (non)association, and various interpretations of realism. Blake (2014, 535) argues that states can indeed engage in the practice of exclusion, yet he stipulates that the specific policies and practices they develop, however, must respect the rights of all persons to have their human rights adequately protected. His wording stipulates, "[s]tates may be allowed to exclude, but they cannot exclude very much" (Blake 2014, 535). A far stricter argument for the support of the freedom of (non)association logic stems from the idea of citizenism, to use Sailer's (2006) conversal term, which refutes the libertarian arguments about obligations to strangers and instead asserts that greater weight should be put on the rights, welfare and interests of current citizens than those outside their national borders, including immigrants as would-be citizens. For Sailer, citizenism is both about the individual ethics of voters and about the responsibilities of elected representatives. His ideas build on the long argued moral responsibilityif not obligationof a government to protect its own citizens and privilege the interest of those whom it governs, especially when security is concerned. The apparent problem with the argument, then, is that it may easily get extended to treating non-citizens as less ethically significant, as less deserving, and even denying them certain rights that wouldand shouldbe regarded as universal and fundamental, rather than specific to a particular bordered territory or citizenship.
Another traditional defense of territorial borders has been predicated on their contribution of order: borders play a role in dividing the world into smaller blocks that are easier to manage. Unless space is understood as distinct and separate, the argument goes, the human desire to own and protect property and physical space becomes difficult. Borders make sovereignty possible and without that it would be difficult for the international society to generate rules to live by (Bull 1977). For such a pluralist, an order-centered account of international society, and territorial borders as an ordergenerating structure, have ethical significance in themselves. Given the ethical diversity of human societies and the lack of any substantive consensus on the nature of justice, the order that borders reinforce also enables different ethical schemas to operate in different parts of the world. This allows for diversity within the broad ethical traditions to reflect local interpretations and social structures (Williams 2006, 64). From this perspective, borders do not create differencethey reflect and maintain it. They cannot be taken as mere matters of economic necessity or military security, but more essentially as a means of ensuring the uniqueness of one particular society and its ability to go about its own ways of life without interference from others. "Clearly delineated borders and their enforcement," Hanson (2016) predicts, "won't go away because they go to the heart of the human condition." Jackson (2000, 332-3) goes as far as to argue that existing borders represent far greater international consensus than what has been reached about ethics or justice, whereby they provide "a universally recognizable standard to live by." While he acknowledges that borders may not be just or equitable, he sees that they come with "enormous practical advantage of being determinate and predictable" (Jackson 2000). This sort of thinking has by now been criticized by many (e.g. Jones 2019) and it also highlights the bias many studies tend to have towards nation-states as an unquestioned point of reference. In the past, borders and identities were rarely defined in terms of allegiances to territories, but rather to rulers and religions, and there is no reason to expect that the now commonplace birthright citizenship could not be challenged by other membership criteria. While the human tendency to group together has a long history, the legacy of state-building and state consolidation has had a profound impact on our understandings of ("Western," in particular) history. Yet, the situation before the (in)famous "Westphalian revolution" tends to be downplayed as a subject of study. However, if the reasoning behind the persistence of territorial borders relies, indeed, merely on their pragmatic capacity to manage space and divide ownership, then should an alternative way to accomplish this be found, we could do away with the territorial borders.

Securing Global Inequality
The normative assault on the Westphalian system characteristically stems from the inequalities and injustices of the current international order (Williams 2006, 63;Walia 2013). While it tends to be the rich and powerful who build wallswhether concrete or on paperto insulate themselves, the consequences of these actions fall heavily on those who lack the money and influence to navigate around them (Laine 2020a). The survival of the most vulnerable has become further challenged by the severe shock effects of multiple crisesbe they environmental, economic, revolutionary or pandemic, thus exacerbating the already existing cleavages between the "haves" and "have-nots." This makes the international system of political borders a manifestation of inequality, discrimination and social injustice (Kolossov and Scott 2013), whereby the price to pay for sustaining this crude order-generating structure is unsustainably high. While the Westphalian model seems to be etched into our minds so deeply that coming up with a viable alternative may be a daunting task, the first step is to realize that borders do not simply exist as fixed, material (f)acts, but they are dynamic social constructions. Borders are actively maintained by a multiplicity of bordering processes and practices, not only by the state. It is this realization that urges us to re-orientate our ethical compass in order to recognize that it is indeed we human beings that are at the site of moral agency, and not the impersonal sovereign states.
The indentitary aspects of bordering have been illustrated by the recent, often deeply emotional if not ideological, debate on immigration. The interpretation provided here suggests that what fuels the debate has little to do with borders or migrants themselves. It rather stems from the deep-rooted ego defense mechanism of displacement (Freud 1936), which redirects the expression of our negative feelings to a less-threatening subject leading to consolation, even if crude, sense of affirmation and self-righteous indignation. If anything, the debate has epitomized apprehensions about disparities of wealth, peace, and political freedom across the world, and the role of borders in securing this inequality. Not everyone is free to work, live, move or even visit wherever they please. "Immigration is, literally, the poor man knocking on the rich man's door," Finne (2018) maintains "and the enforcement of borders is slamming the door shut." Yet, while at its core, inequality is about the unequal distribution of wealth and material resources, Callero (2014) demonstrates that far from being exclusively economic, power and privilege also flow from structures that are designed, decorated, and reinforced with cultural, linguistic and political interpretations as well as shared understandings of identity. A unique feature of these social structures, he maintains, is that they emerge from symbolic interaction, whereby self and identity processes are foundational to the study of inequality (Callero 2014), Borders, this article argues, are a manifestation of inequality. Inequality in all its forms, is the defining global problem and increasingly the defining political problem of our age (Phillips 2017, 444).
The growing inequality has fueled the political Right to create a rift in society along socio-cultural lines through exploiting alienation that is cultural, ontological as well as economically generated. Populist parties with charismatic leaders and strong anti-immigrant agendas are no longer at the fringe of politics but have become a force to be reckoned with in many countries worldwide (see Mudde 2016). In seeking to secure a powerful base for electoral victories, conscious efforts have been made not only to tap into divisions in society, but to increase them through monopolizing the public sphere. As Jay et al. (2019) argue, national identity consolidation is a particularly likely response to inequality allowing those who offer far-right populist rhetoric to tap into the negative social consequences of inequality by blaming immigrants, "foreign" powers, and mainstream politics for both the lack of social cohesion and reduced economic circumstances of many, which, in turn, reduces tolerance of cultural diversity. Questions of disadvantage, marginalization, alienation and exclusion are all critical to this conjunction of events and trend (Phillips 2017, 444). However, the relationship between economic inequality, the rise in populism, and anti-immigrant agendas is less clear than what is often assumed.
The idea that economic deprivation provokes tensions and intergroup hostility, thus providing "fertile soil" for populist parties and leaders with an anti-immigrant agenda remains pervasive, yet as social psychologistsand in particular social identity theorists such as Jetten (2019) have proven, anti-immigration sentiments can also surge in times of economic prosperity and be widespread among relatively affluent groups. Psychological mechanisms including status anxiety and status threat perceptions are shaped by the permeability of group boundaries and the (in)security of the held positions (Mutz 2018). While economic hardship, relative deprivation and conflict over scarce resources can trigger anti-immigrant sentiments, Jetten (2019) shows that it is not necessarily those at the bottom of the social and economic ladder who fear and oppose immigration most. Indeed, the set of experimental studies by Piff et al. (2012) reveal that higher social class actually predicts increased unethical behavior. Those who are relatively gratified and wealthy may show hostility towards minorities and others in vulnerable positions in society due to either the fear of downward mobility, resulting in subjective perceptions of relative deprivation, or because of obsession with upward mobility merged with dissatisfaction with not climbing fast enough (Jetten 2019(Jetten , 1105Jetten et al. 2020). That is, just as with the borders between states, the permeability of group boundaries also seems to be psychologically anxiety-provoking. Consequently, the widespread anxiety over immigration can be seen to stem from insecure status relations and the strains in preserving a continuous positive version of the self amidst the insecurities perceived and anxieties felt. Questioning one's self-worth leads easily to a defending action in the form of hostility towards others, glorifications of nationalist narratives, and radicalization, and misrepresentationsif not outright smearsof migrants (Laine 2020b, 222).

Contesting Common Humanity
Privileging the interest of those closest to you remains a generally acceptable practice. It is, however, more questionable to what extent the mechanism for deciding, not only who is in and who is out, but consequently who matters and who does not, needs to be made based on territorially bound citizenship. The idea that a particular state is inhabited by a particular nation, whereby citizenship gets formally connected to a territorially bordered space, has been powerful (e.g. Marshall 1973), but it has become increasingly difficult to defend, not only because it is inaccurate, but also due to its inherent logic of bordering ethical responsibility. It seems quite understandable that an individual prioritizes the interests of those closest to him/her, say, family members, relatives, and close friends, over those he/she is less familiar with. This bonda membershiphowever, is clearly something more profound than what can be said about an arbitrary categorization such a citizenship. Where one happens to be born is a morally arbitrary fact (Fine 2013, 257), yet it continues to have a huge impact on one's mobility, access to opportunities, as well as the enjoyment of basic freedoms. Carens (2009; among others have sought to challenge the view that every state has the legal and moral right to exercise the birth right, and to exclude others in pursuit of state's own national interest and of the common good of the members of its community. In his view, borders should generally be open, and people should be free to leave their country of origin and settle in another, subject only to the sorts of constraints that bind current citizens in their new country. Citizenship in Western democracies is the modern equivalent of feudal privilegean inherited status that greatly enhances one's life chancesand, as such, it is hard to justify with respect to a commitment to the equal moral worth of all human beings (Carens 2014, 556). What makes the territorial confines of ethical responsibility even more dubious is that nations are, following Anderson (1983, 6-7), socially constructed community, imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group. This is to say that in all likelihood we do not know most of our fellow citizens, but as Williams (2006, 70) notes we may be much more attached to citizens of other states and have a closer bond with them. As Sharma (2019, 82) argues, the national form of state power has thus embedded within it a set of discriminatory practices against nonnationals, and the ideas of national belonging are proprietorial in character: national citizenship is modeled after private property rights. As private property owners do, national citizens assert the right to exclude nonnationals/noncitizens from the enjoyment of what the state recognizes as theirs, that is "[w]e feel that they should not have that which we believe is exclusively ours" (Sharma 2019, emphasis in the original).
At the other end of the spectrum, we have the cosmopolitan ideology that all human beings belong to a single community, based on a shared morality, positing people as citizens of the world rather than of a particular nation-state. While the universalist cosmopolitan ethic, based on the principle of shared common humanity and idea of universal social bonds, is certainly attractive, it comes with an array of challenges of its own. The greatest value of the cosmopolitan ethos is that it seeks to tear down the barriers dividing people into those who matter and deserve, and those who do not, in emphasizing that ethnic or national identities are never legitimate grounds for excluding people from their human dignity (see, e.g. Huemer 2010; 2019; Hollenbach 2016; Sharma 2019); that is, human rights are rooted in the universal and equal dignity of all human beings not just those belonging to particular nations, religions, or ethnicities. 3 Without a right to international freedom of movement, including a right to enter another state, the right to exit is virtually meaningless and worthless (Cole 2000). In the end, the basic interests and claims supporting freedom of movement within state borders as a human right are the same as those which support the case for likewise considering freedom of movement across state borders; there should be no morally relevant distinction between the two cases. If applying profoundly different standards to citizens and non-citizens in migration matters stands at odds with the liberal commitment to moral equality, then the self-proclaimed liberal democratic states' pursuit of this practice evidently fails to live up to the state's own regulative commitments (Fine 2013, 257). What makes the situation challenging is that any analysis advocating on one particular universal human right, instead of approaching them as a package, is prone to be a lopsided one. Can we justify and make the ethical claim, as an example, for the right to free movement (Article 13) without acknowledging, say, the right to personal security (Article 3), the right to nationality (Article 15) or the right of assembly and association (Article 20)?
From a normative point of view, an authentically cosmopolitan ethos calls for recognition that while all persons share a common humanity, showing respect for all requires also recognizing that every person has distinctive characteristics, including diverse bonds of kinship, culture, and shared citizenship (Hollenbach 2016, 152). Thus, respecting people as they are calls for not only respect for their common humanity, but also for the ways they differ from each other (Appiah 2006, xiv-xviii). One of the key differences between people is undoubtedly their belongingness; i.e. the state of being an essential or important part of something meaningful, familiar and secure. Many prefer and find it psychologically comforting to belong to something more specific than an overarching human race. Recognizing this makes Nussbaum's (2002) famous claim that nationalities and national borders are morally irrelevant sound rather simplistic and naïve (Nussbaum 2006). Whether or not, then, belongingness or even nationality need to be formally attached to a territorially bound space is another question that deserves serious attention.
It is this very question that we are faced with in contemplating how to guarantee a democratic representation of all in a world society. Democracy, Whelan (1988, 28) argues, requires that people be divided into peoples (each people hopefully enjoying its own democratic institutions), with each unit distinguishing between its own citizensunderstood in a political sense as those eligible to exercise democratic political rights hereand others, who are regarded as aliens here, although (hopefully) citizens somewhere else. This is to say that in order for democracies to function, there must be rule by the same people upon whom the rule is imposed; i.e. the people making the rules need to be bound by the outcome (Wellman 2008). Should people have the right to move and settle freely, whereby their belonging to a particular state would fluctuate, the self-determination would not occur as the "self" that made the rule in the first place would seize to match with the "self" which is bound by its application. What is unclear from Whelan's argument is that even if we were to accept that democracy cannot function properly unless people are sorted into defined groups, why is the nation state the only option considered for the purpose?
The above considerations point toward the need to think about an alternative category of belonging or membership based on some kind of connection above and beyond a mere shared sense of being human. The approach advanced here suggests that such a category needs not to be based on sovereignty motives nor does it require territorial borders. It does however recognize that the value of ethical diversity on a global scale and the fundamental human need to belong and be a part of something. Psychologists have found that belongingness requires lasting, positive and significant interpersonal relationships (Baumeister and Leary 1995), which suggests there are limits as to how vast a community can be considered as meaningful in this sense. Given that belonging means acceptance as a member or part, some have extended their search of belonging through excluding othersa logic that can be seen behind many arguments in the recent migration debate.
Apart from the political rights and obligations as suggested by social contract theory, membership of the state brings with it, what Williams (1999, 469), has labeled as rights and duties of special beneficence, which establish special moral imperatives among members of a community, over and above any which may apply universally. The appeals for the state to be this community have typically relied on the ideas of patriotism, of ties resulting from a shared history, culture and sense of identity (Walzer 1983;Cohen 1986), and nationalism (Mayal 1990). It has, however, become obvious that this kind of group based "we-feeling" has been diversifying away from the state to include other types of group identities that deserve recognition from their ethical significance (Falk 2002). There is thus a need to broaden the argument away from a focus on citizenship of sovereign states as the overriding, indeed only, identity of importance to international politics, to consider the implications for territorial borders of multiple community identities and multiple rights and duties of special beneficence (Williams 1999, 469). Belonging, be it citizenship or other type of a membership built upon an ethically significant relationship, does not need to be territorially bounded to be meaningful or to offer opportunities in life. Indeed, as Williams (2006, 72) puts it, even in cases where people may appeal to the idea of specific locations as being of vital significance to their identity, it is to this particular place, not the lines around it, that people are appealing.

Towards Unbounded Inclusiveness
The discussion above has attempted to shed light on the question of whether or not we need territorial borders. What I argue is that few territorial borders seem ethically defensible. This is not, however, to say that a borderless world would inevitably be more just. Drawing on Arendt's (e.g. 1972) political thought, we must acknowledge that the fundamental human need to belong and to possess a sense of identity, necessitates people to be able to distinguish themselves somehow from the others; i.e. a membership becomes special, because it is separate. Looking at territorial borders as social practices (Paasi 1999) that are connected to but not exhausted by the practices of the state and sovereignty, opens up some critical perspectives upon them and connects territorial borders to other kinds of borders. It also enables us to think more clearly whether or not territorial borders are ethically defensible in themselves, rather than as some instrumental adjunct of something else (Williams 2006, 81).
Some of the recent work within political geography has been valuable in challenging the "taken-for-granted-ness" of international politics in suggesting that the separation or connectedness does not indeed need to follow the territorial logics. The normative Cartesian view has been increasingly challenged by a number of academics (e.g. Amilhat Szary and Giraut 2015;Popescu 2017), who postulate a world which functions according to networks, flows, hubs, and connecting nodes that are qualitatively different from the notion of space defined by territorial proximity and distance decay. The enduring gaze on the state-centric world view largely ignores the fact we have witnessed a changing geographical imagination that incorporates a more polyvalent perspective, and acknowledges the relational nature of space as well as the emergence of complementary forms of borders that depart from the norms of territorial linearity (Popescu 2017). The suggested spatial diffusion of the border transcends the Cartesian understandings of territory and makes the classic outside-inside border-based territorial distinction obsolete, because the spatial "outsiders" can be physically inside the flow belt as the dynamic spatial relations between actors are brought to the fore (Bigo 2001;Allen 2011;Amilhat Szary and Giraut 2015). This is to say that people and places have become increasingly connected across space following a "portal-like logic" that folds them into each other, in contrast to the preceding socio-spatial interaction largely mediated via territorial proximity and distance decay (Popescu 2017, 4).
While we cannot shut our eyes to the persistence of territorial borders, this kind of approach is very much needed in accentuating that the state is hardly any longer the only actor in the international society, nor is the nation-state the only conception of space to be applied in explaining human interaction (Laine 2016). Territorial borders have not disappeared as once was commonly expected, but alongside them an array of complementary forms of borders have emerged that negate the geographical idea of territorial exceptionality. These less static ways of understanding space and motion appear to be better capable of explaining, managing or alleviating the challenges we are faced with, than what rigid understanding of borders as clear-cut lines on the map can achieve. From the perspective of the current inquiry, the question, however, remains: are relational borders more just than the territorial borders? While broadening our border perspective is utterly needed to better grasp the complex phenomena of contemporary globalization, the more topological understating of space and border does not make the ethical and moral questions obsolete. A network can be equally as exclusive as a line for it also entails an in-group and an out-group.
In order to recognize what motives are behind the actions by both the states and individuals, we must look deeper into the underlying criteria based on which bordering is made; i.e. on which basis someone is considered as welcome and deserving while others are not (Laine 2018, 289). In terms of the future geopolitics of our world, Mbembe (2019) suggests, populations will be more and more treated not only in the Darwinian terms of sexual selection, but also within a utilitarian and "bio-physiologicoorganic framework." He goes as far as to argue that present-day wars on mobility seek to render as many people as superfluous as possible and, in so doing, fuel the "production on a massive scale of discounted bodies, a residual humanity that is akin to waste." As the global conditions for the (re)production of life on Earth, intensified by a new climatic regime, keep changing, "population politics at a planetary level will increasingly become synonymous with excess and waste management" (Mbembe 2019). In addition to the utility, the ongoing debate suggests that identity and values play an important role here. Much of the resistance to immigrants, for example, seems to be based on the perception that they would destabilize accustomed, comfortable culturesand our values. But are these values really territorially specificunique to Europe, for example? The "European" values are in the end rather global in their nature. For example, all the UN member countries are committed to these. Could it be that Europe, and the West more broadly speaking, have made a major mistake in presenting the values we hold dear specifically as ours, in so doing not only excluding others but also creating space for the rest to reject the policies based on these values? Having another set of norms for "us" and another for "them" is a prime example of unethical bordering that we must address (Laine 2018, 297). Freedom of movement provides a particularly fitting example from this perspective. We open borders to some, while close them off to others. State borders continue to be the focus of narratives that see them as hard lines and defenses against all kinds of "ills" affecting the body of "national" societies. The response has come in the form of policies and other deterrent actions to stop migrants from crossing borders.
The international society, Wheeler (1996) once stated, has become a "global gangster" epitomized by operatives of a kind of global protection racket for states that sees huge numbers of human beings forced to live life characterized by poverty, disease, malnutrition, political repression, torture, warfare and a host of other privations. Given that many of these problems would be preventable, the ethical questions in maintaining the status quo are imminent. The state's authority over immigration is habitually coercively enforced, through the familiar apparatus of border control (Miller 2016), by which the states seek to keep out the various would-be entrants, actingmore than anything elsebased on its own preferences. While we are still far from a universally recognized human right to immigrate, it is nevertheless necessary to reconsider the moral justifications behind the states' claimed authority over the admission of migrants. Indeed, as Fine (2013; see also Fine and Ypi 2016) emphasizes, exploring the grounds for the state's alleged right to exclude is a vital task, because if we cannot find adequate justifications for this right then we need to re-evaluate the very backbone of current approaches to immigration policy.

Conclusions
With this brief discussion, I have sought to suggest a new direction for borders studies by advocating more attention to be paid to the notions of belongingness and association by looking to the borders defining these. I have sought to underline that the debate whether borders should be merely open or closed is an utterly simplistic one, and that there is an apparent need to be clearer about the link between the persisting importance of borders and the calls for free movement of people. Borders are seldom either open or closed, and it is not easy to find examples of a linear development between these two ends of the spectrum in either direction. Based on the recent events, it rather seems more reasonable to argue that when borders are opened to some, they are closed off to others. It is this realization that then urges us to take look not only at the ethics of territorial borders, but also at the various practices of border-making and the politics of difference. Under freedom of (non-)association, one has the right to unilaterally eschew certain sorts of associations with, in this case, foreign-born people. However, as Huemer (2019, 46) specifies, this does not give one the right to demand that these people would need to avoid even very tenuous "associations" with one, or not be in the same country as one. That is far too tenuous of an "association" for one to claim because it is an infringement on one's freedom. Thus, there is a need to consider alternative epistemologies and to design a system whereby diversity can find ways of co-existing on the basis of toleration. In order to do that, the exclusively territorial notions of jurisdiction and membership must be challenged and changed, and a balance should be sought so that borders are porous enough to allow the fundamental rights of all to be met. The crux of the issue thus is, whose rights are more important, those of us as citizens or of us as humans? The ethics of unbounded inclusiveness stem from the moral principles that govern a person's behavior and action yet seek to escape the conventional state-centric confines of these principles in calling for a more planetary scale to be assumed in considering the wellbeing and future of not just "us" but of humanity. 4 Following Mbembe (2017, 170), "in every human subject there is something indomitable and fundamentally intangible that no dominationno matter what form it takescan eliminate, contain, or suppress, at least not completely." In order to consider not only new ways of seeing, but also being in the world, conscious efforts must be undertaken to let go of the psychological conformity of the borders etched into our minds and open our eyes for new liberating models of community and humanity.
My aim is not to advocate for a borderless world, but a world that would be more just. A key realization towards that end is the realization that for all a commitment to equal moral worth requires also some sort of basic commitment to equal opportunity (Carens 2014). An important step in moving in this direction would be to acknowledge that mobility is a human condition and that borders are the exception, and not the other way around. Attempts to thwart this realization, that is force immobility, is what renders borders violent (Jones 2017). Thus, the ethics of unbounded inclusiveness proposed herein draws attention to the practices of externalization of, or pure inattentiveness to, legitimate responsibility. No matter how walled in, in today's interconnected world, we are no longer part of any isolated communitiesa fact unmistakably proven by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. The realities of networked societies, multiple allegiances, diaspora communities, inter alia, make it increasingly difficult to remain fixated on the territorially delimited nature of borders.
All this does not, however, instinctively mean that borders would be inherently bad and should thus be treated as such. Even if all borders would disappear that would not address all of the underlying injustices that make people want to move. Given all of their flaws, borders continue to serve a purposevarious purposes, yet perhaps more than ever before these are not likely to be the same for us all. A potential middle-ground solution for a way forward might lie in moving away from the nation state-centric form of organization and the rigid borders it continues to imply, and to consider alternative forms of belongingness in transitioning towards more inclusive societies. This necessitates channeling the centuries-old bias towards nation-states and the externally focused border orientation, which has repeatedly been reactivated in times of crises. The current Covid-19 pandemic with all the politics of bordering inherent in it provides a fitting example. While the restrictions of movement seem effective in slowing the spread of the virus, the virus itself knows no borders and its infectiveness can hardly be tied to a particular citizenship. Similar to migratory pressures, the challenge with the virus is inherently international, whereby it will not be solved by national solutions or mere border closures. In the long-term we must move towards a global model for mobility which allows the migration pressures, driven by the changing conditions for the production of life, be governed not for the benefit of the selected few, but with moral principles that recognize our broader planetary entanglement. Notes 1. The term "Irregular Maritime Arrivals" used by the previous government was replaced in 2013 with the term "Illegal Maritime Arrivals" by the Abbott Government and hence been in use ever since.
2. While the recent surge of right-wing populism began in Western Europe, and then rapidly spread across the Global North, it has since then increased across the globe with populist leaders in charge in countries such as the Philippines, India, Brazil, and Venezuela. 3. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (10 Dec. 1948), U.N.G.A. Res. 217 A (III). 4. It is acknowledged that the planetary scale is not limited only to what is human, and in order to secure the habitability of the planet Earth it is necessary to move from seeing it as simply a human domain and acknowledge the agency of also non-human "others".

Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).