Amy Reed-Sandoval and Luis Rubén Díaz Cepeda, Latin American Immigration Ethics. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2021. Notes, bibliography, index, 312 pp.; hardcover $100, paperback $35, ebook.

Abstract

In US popular national discourse, immigration tends to be associated with Latinx and Latin American people. Yet the Western European philosophical subfield of ethics of immigration has not adequately engaged the materiality of US-Mexico border histories and the lived experiences of immigrants entering the United States from Latin America. This is foremost in the historical lack of dialogue and uptake with Latin American philosophy. If one were to investigate early articles in the field of ethics of immigration, one would encounter abstract discussions of these matters that presuppose neutral notions of space, homogenized accounts of immigrants, and idealized concepts of states. Latin American Immigration Ethics is a non-ideal theory,1 materialist intervention that is conscious of these conceptual traps and carves out a distinct Latin American immigration ethics. The collection splits into four sections. The first focuses on providing methodological foundations for a Latin American ethics of immigration. Specifically, it argues that we should take a Latin American and decolonial approach to immigration issues. While both of these approaches are heterogeneous and thus do not link a priori, they are distinctly recognizable approaches that emerge from the three articles in the section. The first chapter, co-authored by Amy Reed-Sandoval and Luis Rubén Díaz Cepeda and titled “Latin American Immigration Ethics: A Roadmap,” develops the nonessentialist roadmap thesis that Latin American immigration ethics has two methodological features. First, by paying attention to the histories of Latin American migrations, it is explicitly a historical method. This can be helpful when the authors situate migration within the history of Spanish colonization in 1492 and move through the period of Latin American independence because it encourages philosophers to research, for instance, the arguments in favor of blanqueamiento (i.e., white immigration policies). Second, this contextual approach to immigration draws on Latin American philosophy. This chapter expands our categorical horizons beyond merely Global South to Global North analyses to include South-South and North-South histories of migration. It also goes beyond discussions of the categories of migrant and refugee and introduces the concept of the exile as a unit of analysis. The second chapter, written by José Jorge Mendoza, called “Decolonizing Immigration Justice,” critically evaluates three dominant view in the field of ethics of immigration: reactionary, market based, and liberal egalitarian. The first prioritizes enforcement as a way of managing threats to the national cultural order. The second is concerned with maintaining a situation in which global competition for labor is operative. The third tends to argue for open borders because of the