Borders, Immigration, and the Prism of Private Property in Catholic Social Teaching

Catholic Social Teaching (CST), as well as the tradition of thought preceding and informing it, typically considers questions of territorial sovereignty, border control, and immigration analogically through the lens of its reflections on the merits and purpose of private property. Most recently, in his 2020 encyclical Fratelli tutti, Pope Francis made this association explicit, asserting,

nowadays, a firm belief in the common destination of the earth’s goods requires that this principle also be applied to nations, their territories and their resources. Seen from the standpoint not only of the legitimacy of private property and the rights of its citizens, but also of the first principle of the common destination of goods, we can then say that each country also belongs to the foreigner, inasmuch as a territory’s goods must not be denied to a needy person coming from elsewhere.[1]

Here the pope highlighted the ‘common destination of goods,’ a principle which recognizes that the goods and territories of the earth (even if held privately or communally) are ultimately oriented to the common good of all creation. As such, the validity of borders and nation-states’ capacity to exclude strangers are always relativized by how well they serve the common good of the world community. The pope’s choice of words, boldly asserting that “each country also belongs to the foreigner,” may be taken as an appeal to the traditional ‘law of necessity,’ under which strangers in extreme material need may legitimately lay claim upon goods and territory ostensibly belonging to another. With this in mind, this paper will consider how appropriately CST’s reflections on private property have been transposed on to its reflections on territorial sovereignty and immigration regulation.

The use of goods, whether privately or commonly owned, has been a sustained preoccupation of modern CST, which has considered this matter over more than a century with, at times, apparently contradictory emphases. Such competing emphases have enriched CST’s reflections on the ownership and use of created goods and, in turn, its approach to immigration and the rights and duties of states towards migrants. Predominately, CST holds that the very division of the earth into separate jurisdictions and private holdings of goods has generally fostered the more efficient use of goods for the benefit of all, thereby paradoxically promoting the common destination of goods.

Longstanding Catholic approaches to private property, which have informed CST, distinguish between the ‘right’ to hold private property and its proper ‘use.’ This has enabled CST to creatively consider private property a particular right that is simultaneously subject to social duties in its use. This key distinction sets the Catholic approach to private property well apart from prevailing modern conceptions that describe private property in absolute terms, as being under the arbitrary control and use of property owners. CST places the onus of responsibility on possessors to discern the appropriate balance in how they use their privately-held goods for their own self-preservation (and that of any dependents), for a social purpose oriented to the good of their communities, and ultimately to the common destination of goods. Moreover, CST appeals for the assistance of governing authorities to foster possessors’ social use of their property without any undue interference.

At the same time, modern CST also endorses a ‘law of necessity’ that seemingly undermines private property, whereby those in extreme material need may appropriate even privately-held goods for the sake of their own survival, without this amounting to theft. While CST primarily recognizes the paradoxical effectiveness of private property in promoting the common destination of goods, any apparent right to private property or territory cannot hold up against the extreme needs of others for survival. Hence, this ‘law of necessity’ may be analogously applied to borders and territorial sovereignty in cases of asylum seekers (and others in immediate need) legitimately crossing borders for the sake of survival, even without the respective political community’s authorization.

I note, however, that modern CST on the rights of migrants has increasingly appealed to the ‘law of necessity’ in order to broadly bolster migrants’ claims for admission into new territories. In CST, this law now appears applied to all migrants pursuing better economic opportunities in general, not only to those in extreme necessity. While this advocacy may seem to admirably promote the interests of migrants as some of the more vulnerable members of the world community, I will argue that this may inadvertently undermine the interests of poorer political communities seeking economic development, by drawing upon recent counterintuitive research on the migration-development nexus.

Given that the primary emphasis of CST on private property has traditionally upheld its value in empowering the poor, alleviating poverty, and promoting autonomy, I will argue that upholding stable and regulated borders can achieve similar ends for political communities seeking mutually-beneficial economic growth. Further, CST’s distinction between the right and use of property can (analogously) challenge nation-states to use their territorial sovereignty responsibly in order to practice generous hospitality and outreach to those in need beyond their borders. Just as all regimes of private property require some form of governance to facilitate fair exchange and the protection of goods, I will argue for the development of formal global migration governance structures to better facilitate just and safe migration outcomes. This is especially important for the appropriate regulation of intellectual property exchange, largely at play in global migration movements and often to the detriment of formative origin communities who arguably lay claim to the benefits of lost skills. While private property may be an appropriate analogy informing CST on territorial sovereignty to some extent, I will highlight its weaknesses in implicitly reducing migrants to mere objects of exchange and neglecting the legitimate connection of peoples to land.

[1] Francis, Encyclical on Fraternity and Social Friendship Fratelli tutti, (October 3, 2020), §124.