Noncitizenism 23 In the border case, a person may well not only be being prevented from entry into one State alone. It is theoretically possible that a person could be excluded from every State. In such a case, the coercion needs to be understood as reaching more deeply than the prevention of one border crossing. It theoretically risks preventing that person from living out a located life.39 Perhaps in a world that was differently composed, a person could go to some non-State space and live out some other life plan without submission to, or interaction with, States. Perhaps such a life would be better, or perhaps more brutish. In the world as it currently is, though, except in extraordinary circumstances, a person has to be in a relationship of some sort with some State or States, whether they like it or not. This type of relationship does not only occur at the border. Abizadeh presents the problem of border control as unjustified to a constituency that includes all people. He argues that liberal theory does not have an adequate way to explain the way in which this coercion takes place. And it is not only at the border that liberal democratic theory comes into contact with individuals that it defines out of its scope of justification. It may be that in many such cases, coercion as usually defined cannot be traced directly. And yet it is clear that there are individuals who are vulnerable to a State vis-à-vis their vital interests and broader capabilities without being counted within the scope of democratic justification. Far from being a lack of a relationship, this in fact creates a special relationship. One other way to see coercion, then, is through the way in which it makes a person vulnerable with regard to her/is capabilities. That is, the noncitizen relationship can be understood through the way in which an individual’s basic and less basic capabilities become dependent upon that State – in a way that is left unexamined and unmitigated. Of course, citizens are also vulnerable to a State, and indeed much liberal theorising has aimed at understanding whether this subjection of citizens to States is legitimate, and, as such, what the proper limits and mitigations of State power should be. The coercion of citizens by their States is often framed as involving limiting citizens’ capabilities in one dimension in exchange for the protection and promotion of their capabilities in some other. For example, a State may limit citizens in their use of violent power. Yet, in doing so, it commits to protect the vital interests that those individuals would have protected otherwise – and indeed to do so to a greater and more efficient extent – for example by organising a police force. Many liberal theories try to find ways in which this submission is consensual, even if hypothetically (i.e. this is what people would consent to). The coercion of noncitizens has not undergone the same level of examination. And yet, if we go along with writers like Michael Blake and Thomas Nagel who claim that relationships marked by State coercion ground duties of justice, then this seems to be a serious omission.40 39 This is developed in Chapter 3. 40 Michael Blake (2002) ‘Distributive Justice, State Coercion, and Autonomy’, pp. 257–296 in Philosophy and Public Affairs 30; Thomas Nagel (2005) ‘The Problem of Global Justice’, pp. 113–147 in Philosophy and Public Affairs 33. This point is also made in Bloom and Risse 2014 ibid.