TY - JOUR AU - Rigo, Enrica PY - 2020/12/21 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Arbitrary Law Making and Unorderable Subjectivities in Legal Theoretical Approaches to Migration JF - Etikk i praksis - Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics JA - Etikk Praksis - Nord J Appl Ethics VL - 14 IS - 2 SE - DO - 10.5324/eip.v14i2.3537 UR - https://www.ntnu.no/ojs/index.php/etikk_i_praksis/article/view/3537 SP - 71-88 AB - <p><em>The article considers the changes that have affected European border regimes of migration control as a testcase for discussing arbitrariness. T</em><em>h</em><em>e argument highlights the limited capacity of </em><em>notion</em><em>s</em><em> of arbitrariness defined as a departure from the rule of law</em><em> to </em><em>captur</em><em>e</em><em> the ongoing conflict at the borders of Europe</em><em> and brings, instead,&nbsp; to the foreground the ambivalent meaning of arbitrariness. </em></p><p><em>By comparing Santi Romano’s classical theory of legal pluralism with recent analyses of legal globalization processes,&nbsp; </em><em>arbitrariness </em><em>emerges</em><em> either as an authoritative attempt to impose a different order on society or as a means to contrast acts of resistance to border regimes</em><em>. In both cases, arbitrariness forcefully blurs the limits between the ordered and unordered, indicating the paradoxical impossibility of excluding the law’s outside from the legal order. </em></p><p><em>On these premises, the</em><em> article advocates the importance of reframing the demand for open borders as a call for freedom of those who challenge the pragmatic order </em><em>of migration regimes. Indeed, arbitrariness is necessarily limited when the legal order recognizes, to an extent, the agency and the claims of subjectivities that resist the dichotomy between inclusion and exclusion.</em></p><p><strong>Keywords:</strong> migration, arbitrariness, borders, legal order</p> ER -