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This chapter examines the appropriate view of the relationship between territory, national communities, and self‐determination. It examines various (historical, indigenous, efficiency, divine) arguments for territorial rights.

This chapter explores the concept of territorial rights. It argues that the primary incidents of territorial rights are rights of jurisdictional authority over persons and resources, while the contingent incidents (incidents that could not hold and the right would still exist) are rights of ownership over resources and rights regarding residency and immigration. An analysis of territorial rights must also include an account of what kind of agent may hold territorial rights. This chapter argues that the agent must be a collective of persons and should not be understood as a state or as an individual.

Chapter 4 provides a theory of particular territorial rights. These particular rights are claimable only by the collectives that meet the general criteria (established in the previous chapters), and that also have a relevant historical connection with a particular geographical region. This chapter advances a collectivistic Lockean account of particular territorial rights by adapting the Lockean principles of desert, efficiency, and autonomy. According to this theory, (i) relevant collectives must be capable of changing the land thereby creating a relationship with it, and (ii) this relationship must be morally valuable—established through the concern for basic individual needs expressed in terms of these principles (of desert, efficiency, and autonomy). Because the collective’s relationship with territory is fundamentally morally valuable, as it is necessary for the collective to meet the basic needs of its members, the collective territorial relationship is granted rights status.

Chapter 2 defends the general collective right to territory from the perspective of natural law theory. A general right to territory is a claim to be self-determining over some territory, even if the particular territory is not yet identified. Natural law theory is well suited for the task of explaining and justifying territorial rights because it establishes a universal method for the appropriation of exclusive rights over goods. However, modern natural law theorists did not carry out a sustained investigation of territorial rights. Consequently, this chapter utilizes capability theory to develop a naturalistic perspective from which we can derive a general principle regarding the acquisition of territorial rights. This principle tells us that exclusive territorial rights are justified if they are essential for the provision of individual basic needs.

After eschewing existing cosmopolitan arguments regarding territory and resource rights in previous chapters, This chapter details an account of territorial rights that is sensitive to the needs of individuals worldwide by adapting a version of the Lockean proviso for use with territorial rights. The Lockean proviso is a mechanism that maintains consistency between principle and practice in the case of systems of exclusive rights over goods. This mechanism is triggered to change particular rights (A’s exclusive right to a territory) when those particular rights threaten the values (to provide for individual basic needs through the self-determination of groups) that justify the system of rights as a whole. Because the system of territorial states is a system of exclusive rights over goods, especially land and resources, it is subject to the conditions of a Lockean proviso mechanism. An application of these arguments yields the following result: ecological refugee states may be candidates as sovereign over a new territory after their existing territorial lands have been lost to the rising sea.

This chapter engages with cosmopolitan theory in order to set the stage for the theory of exclusive collective resource rights. It criticizes the claim that territorial borders are morally arbitrary. Because of the importance of a collective’s relationship to the land and resources for the capacity of individuals to meet basic needs, denying that certain collectives have a prima facie claim to natural resources may constitute an unjustifiable harm to individuals. As such, our placement in the distribution of natural resources is not ‘up for grabs’ in the redistribution of goods.

Who has a right to control borders? Political philosophers divide territorial rights into a right of jurisdiction, a right to use resources, and a right to control borders. However, they focus on the first right, because they think that both the second and third flow from it. This chapter argues that territorial rights are fundamentally plural: the right to border control is independent from the other territorial rights. This pluralist thesis enables an alternative analysis of the right to control borders: specifying their objects, proper site, scope, institutions, duty bearers, and holders. The chapter also shows that border control rights have a different grounding than the rights to jurisdiction and to natural resources. While the latter may be grounded in internal legitimacy, the former are grounded in international conventions and place-specific obligations, indicating that borders require shared and reciprocal governance by adjoining countries and the international system.

The dominant model of territorial politics views territories as distinct, independent, and subject to ownership by its own people: it models countries on a newly occupied desert island. The model however, cannot accommodate crossborder populations, interconnected ecosystems, and other transborder flows. Why does the model withstand critiques? This chapter argues that the Desert Island Model endures because it is normative, not descriptive. The chapter examines this normative origin in Vitoria’s, Locke’s, and Kant’s work, as well as in contemporary Lockean and Kantian theories of territorial rights. It shows that to justify rule on the basis of individual or collective autonomy, these theories must also envision territory as subject to ownership, and thus as distinct and independent from other territories. This is an assumption, not a fact, but it conditions the practice of territorial politics.

This chapter offers a conceptual analysis of territory, distinguishes it from property accounts, and discusses different versions of property accounts, all derived from Locke’s ‘Second Treatise of Government’. It offers a conceptual analysis of territory and the various rights associated with territory. According to Locke, territorial right is established through the subjection, by free consent, of persons and their land to state authority. This theory is found to rest on a number of flawed assumptions, among them claims to natural rights of property and an obvious link between private property and territorial jurisdiction. Cara Nine draws on Lockean principles to claim that a state is a collective that, like individuals, owns property, namely the territory of the state. After examining the historical antecedents of such ideas, the chapter points away from them and towards accounts of territory based on individual and collective claims of rights.

This chapter critically examines the two main versions of statist theories of territory, associated with the accounts given by Hobbes and Kant about the link between jurisdictional control over land and the fulfilment of the purpose of the state, which makes territorial right contingent on the achievement of those goods. The Hobbesian version identifies the achievement of peace, stability, coordination, and order as the function of the state and then justifies territorial rights as necessary to an effective state order. The more moralized version, associated with Kant and contemporary Kantians, links the state with the achievement of justice, and argues that territorial rights should be accorded to a legitimate state.

Chapter 3 turns to political theory to explore the normative foundations of the state’s power over immigration. It examines theories based on (1) the value of cultural and national identity, (2) the right to property, (3) freedom of association, and (4) freedom from unwanted obligations. The first three appeal to the value of collective self-determination. On the nationalist view, the fundamental imperative of immigration control is the preservation of culturally distinctive nations. The property argument derives the right of immigration control from the labor of citizens. The freedom-of-association argument regards citizens as parties to associations, such as marriage or a golf club, which have the right to refuse association with nonassociates. The freedom-from unwanted-obligations-argument does not directly engage with the idea of collective self-determination. I argue that each of these theories falls short of providing a convincing theory of state authority over immigration.

The Introduction presents the “river model” for territorial rights theory. On the river model, groups with rights of self-determination over territory are interdependent and overlapping. If we imagine human settlements and territorial rights as established in river catchment areas—not on isolated islands—the primary features of group life are not independence and distinctness. Instead, groups are vitally connected to each other. Essentially, many mobile and flowing resources and resource systems are shared between groups, not divided cleanly between them. The Introduction presents other key concepts in the book, such as “foundational titles” and “foundational territories”, and it provides a brief description of each chapter.

Real borders are arbitrary. Could they ever be legitimate? Could they get their legitimacy through democratic means? The people could decide where the border should go, but this approach creates a problem: Who exactly are the people who should decide? This is the famous “boundary problem,” to which this chapter offers a new approach. Most democrats, even nationalists and cosmopolitans, delimit the demos by relying on territorial jurisdictions. However, territory is not explicit in their arguments. This chapter urges democrats to recognize territory’s normative importance. Acknowledging territory is a risky, yet promising strategy. Risky, because it may lead to a vicious circle: one needs well-defined territorial borders to delimit the people, yet one needs a well-defined people to establish legitimate territorial borders. Promising, because it forces democrats to find new resources for dealing with the vicious circle. The chapter describes four possible strategies: asserting, circumventing, solving, and dissolving the circularity. It chooses the last.

Chapter 7 identifies two problems with prevailing theories of self-determination and territorial rights. First, they fail to represent the political standing of small-scale groups in their overall account. Second, they face a boundary problem. The set of legitimate residents of territories and the set of persons who have a justified obligation to obey the territorial rule of law need to match. Unfortunately, these sets often do not match, and this throws up practical and normative obstacles. The chapter draws three conclusions. First, theories should vary the justification for political obligations according to scale. Second, theories should develop a place-based account of political obligations. And third, theories ought to break down the right of collective self-determination into its component parts to analyse how political units at various scales may share the component rights.

Borders today evoke exclusion, and they pose a dilemma for inclusive democrats: if borders define the people by exclusion, and democratic politics requires the people, then democracy requires exclusive borders. So, on one horn, there is democratic politics, but exclusion; on the other, inclusion, but no democracy. This chapter argues that this is a false dilemma, because it only arises if there is a tight connection between people and territory. Such a connection occurs in the mainstream model of territorial politics, which envisions countries as desert islands belonging to a people—but there are alternatives. This introductory chapter shows how turning to a neglected tradition of territorial politics that focuses on place and geography and takes the environment seriously can show a way out of the dilemma. It proposes a watershed model of territorial politics grounded on place, rather than identity. The rest of the book will use this model to tell us where should borders go, and how should they be governed.

Chapter 5 moves beyond the two most politically consequential understandings of the right to self-determination: attributed to Demos and Ethnos respectively. While normative theorists are not sure how to evoke these figures, this chapter treats them as ensembles that are extracted from Nephos; an even fuzzier and more granular political ‘aerosol’. Against it as a backdrop, the discrete locations of territorial rights will also appear more fuzzified—not as identifiable locations, but rather as Scopos; visual effects of concealed, but nevertheless contestable scopic regimes. Once its holders and objects appear in that light, otherwise incommensurable accounts of the right to self-determination will reveal a denominator they secretly share: a Kelsenian ‘tendency’—an aspiration to increase the degree of constituent attachments across the entirety of the spacetime of a constitutional order whose legitimacy is put in question by a demand for ‘self-determination’.

The chapter argues that regardless of whether a legal order has been established over a territory, possession of land itself already imposes obligations on persons outside the territory to respect it. She points out that possession of land also imposes duties on the holders of territory that are global in scope. It is therefore not possible to reduce territorial rights to claims of juridical independence in virtue of a state’s internal civil condition, although the existence of a legal order over a territory is an additional argument to the duty to respect a group’s occupation of land. This is because the internal legal order is only binding to its members, while occupation of land is binding to individuals and states already in the state of nature.