ABSTRACT
Given the importance of Seyla Benhabib's defense of porous borders to her vision of cosmopolitan justice in The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens, it is worthwhile to explain in greater depth why she made such a claim. An important secondary idea in the text is Benhabib's call to dispel what she calls "constitutive illusions" that serve as the basis of democratic rule. She argued that a vision of unitary, self-contained states is outdated and that global interdependencies among states and peoples are now the norm and not the exception. Benhabib proposed the idea of porous borders as a way of mediating between a person's freedom of movement and the state's right to determine its admittance policies. The rigorous examination of the ideas undergirding Benhabib's conceptual scheme has left few, if any, stones unturned, and most of her ideas have been unpacked, reconsidered, and recast in various cultural, empirical, and theoretical contexts.
