ABSTRACT
In Europe and other regions of the world public debate concerning how many immigrants should be admitted, which rights those admitted should have, and which conditions can be required for access to citizenship is intense and enduring, and these have increasingly become central electoral issues. On the one hand, the harsh treatment of migrants is often a matter of public criticism; on the other hand, states are concerned about problems of welfare, security and social unrest that they have come to associate with large-scale migration. At its most fundamental level, this debate concerns the question of how best to balance particularist principles of democratic self-determination and state sovereignty and universalist principles of individual freedom and human rights.
