The State Made Me Do It: How Anti‐cosmopolitanism is Created by the State

ANTI-COSMOPOLITANS hold that our obligations towards compatriots greatly outweigh (and in some cases eclipse) duties towards foreigners, and that our relationship with the latter is of a sort that does not include strong redistributive obligations as a matter of justice. Often they base this claim on motivational limitations, maintaining that most people are unable to make such sacrifices to people with whom they share only their humanity—a claim that is often echoed in mainstream political debates. However, the relationships in which people are involved, which greatly influence the extent of their willingness to give up resources to others, are created and maintained by state policies and societal institutions to a large degree. This is especially true of relationships between co-nationals, which are shaped and upheld by nation-building policies, media, and collective acts. These processes influence our relationship with non-compatriots significantly as well, however, and thus, they help form and fix the motivational limitations that constrain us in meeting redistributive obligations towards poor foreigners. But if we are making people unable to sacrifice resources to poor foreigners, can we reasonably claim that they are not required by justice to do so? Parting from the usual cosmopolitan route, I accept the anti-cosmopolitan premises about human motivation and justice, and claim that even if we accept these, we have good reasons to deny the conclusions. Hence, we cannot conclude that people are unable to fulfil strong redistributive duties towards foreigners, but