ABSTRACT
Melilla is a Spanish city on the northern coast of Africa. People from throughout Africa and the Middle East travel to the outskirts of Melilla in order to reach Spanish territory, which they see as a gateway to Europe. But the city is surrounded by a fence that is topped with razor-sharp barbed wire, and border agents patrol the fence. Migrants use different strategies. David tried to evade border patrols, scale walls, and swim around fences. Other migrants travel through unpopulated deserts and mountainous regions, cut through border fences, or tunnel under borders. They travel over bodies of water on boats and rafts. Over the centuries philosophers have given different arguments for the view that people have obligations to obey the law. Some political theorists argue that citizens have obligations of reciprocity to obey the law. Natural duties are general duties: they apply to all moral agents irrespective of their institutional relationships.
