ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I outline the position of ‘open borders’ advocated by economists such as Branko Milanovic and discuss his claim that, while such a policy is necessary to alleviate global inequality, it has to be mitigated by a system of differential citizenship. This is further discussed in terms of arguments made by Glen Weyl and Eric Posner for indenture to be understood as a ‘choice’ for the world’s poor. In this chapter, I discuss the broader histories of global inequality in the context of the European movement to what came to be known as the New World and the colonial processes instituted as a consequence. It is this history, I suggest, that has produced the global inequalities that are supposedly the object of concern to economists, and I will argue that there is no just way to address global inequality without reconciling this colonial history through postcolonial reparative action.
