Including Labour Migration in the Basic Structure of Liberal Democratic States

This paper reconsiders the relation between labour immigration and the liberal state by revisiting the Rawlsian notion of the domestic “basic structure”. The basic structure of society is the set of its major institutions, which provides the background on which all transactions within society take place and the fundamental terms of social cooperation. Labour immigration is an integral part of the history and setup of contemporary liberal democratic states, which constitutes an essential trait of their economic, social and political framework. Based on these observations, this paper claims that the institutions of labour immigration should be included in the domestic basic structure of liberal states. Against the objection that the mere fact that liberal states depend on labour immigration does not imply that labour migration should be theorised as a constitutive, normal element of their setup, the paper argues that abstracting from labour immigration when theorising about the domestic basic structure of liberal democratic states is an instance of improper idealisation, which prevents an adequate account of the normative issues at stake and may serve ideological purposes.