Ethics of Immigration
Winter 2025
Meeting Times: Tuesday and Thursday: 10:30AM–12:20 PM
Location: Savery Hall 155
Instructor: José J. Mendoza
Email: josejm@uw.edu
Office: Savery Hall 385
Office Hour: Thursday 3:30-5:30pm
Course Description
This course is designed as a survey to some of the principal authors, ideas, concepts, and problems found in the ethics of immigration.
Required Texts
All Texts will be available on Canvas.
Grading
Reading Quizzes (25% of course grade or 1.0 of the 4.0 total)
Three Short Writing Assignments (each worth 25% of course grade or 1.0 of the 4.0 total)
Grading Scale
(roughly each 1% increment between grades is equivalent to 0.1)
A 95% = 4.0
B 85% = 3.0
C 75% = 2.0
D 65% = 1.0
At the end of the quarter I will convert your course grade from a percentage to the UW 4-point scale using this metric: 95% and up is 4.0; 94% is 3.9; 93% is 3.8; etc. Each 1% step is a 0.1 step on the UW 4-point scale. So an 86.1%, e.g., would give you a 3.1 on the UW scale. 85.5% rounds up to 86% (and thus 3.1), but 85.49% does not. At the bottom of the scale, however, 60% also rounds up to 0.7. See image below.Reading Schedule
Unit 1: Classic Open Borders Debate
January 7: Introduction to class
January 9: Michael Walzer (1983): “Membership” (Chapter 2 of Spheres of Justice)
January 14: Joseph Carens (1987): “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders”
January 16: David Miller (2005): “Immigration: The Case for Limits”
January 21: Michael Blake (2005) "Immigration"
January 23: Christopher Heath Wellman (2008): “Immigration and Freedom of Association”
January 28: Michael Blake (2012): “Immigration, Association, and Anti-discrimination”
January 30: Continue (Blake: “Immigration, Association, and Anti-discrimination”)
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Unit 2: Immigration and Discrimination
February 4: Matthew Lindauer (2017): “Immigration Policy and Identification Across Borders”
February 6: José Jorge Mendoza (2014): "Discrimination and the Presumptive Rights of Immigrants"
February 11: Amy Reed-Sandoval (2016) "Locating the Injustice of Undocumented Migrant Oppression"
February 13: Michael Ball-Blakely (2022): “Skill‐Selection and Socioeconomic Status”
February 18: Sahar Akhtar (2022) "Race Beyond Our Borders"
February 20: Continue (Akhtar: "Race Beyond Our Borders")
.Unit 3: The Right to Remain
February 25: Joseph Carens (2018): "Who Gets the Right to Stay?"
February 27: Linda Bosniak (2016): “Wrongs, Rights, and Regularization”
March 4: Michael Blake (2010): “Equality without Documents: Political Justice and the Right to Amnesty"
March 6: Adam Omar Hosein (2016) “Arguments for Regularization”
March 11: Thomas Carnes (2020): "Unauthorized Immigrants, Reasonable Expectations, and the Right to Regularization"
March 13: Continue (Carnes: “Unauthorized Immigrants, Reasonable Expectations, and the Right to Regularization")
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