Civics Article
Civics Class: What Do We Owe Each Other?
What, exactly, is a border? It is easy to answer in technical terms: a line on a map, a legal boundary, a point of entry or exclusion. But beneath those definitions lies a more difficult question—one that sits at the center of modern political life. Do borders carry moral weight? And if they do, what do they ask of us as citizens?
This question has reemerged with urgency in debates over immigration, labor, and national identity. On the surface, these debates often revolve around economics—job loss, wage pressure, labor shortages. But underneath, there is a deeper concern, one that political philosopher Michael Sandel has spent years articulating: the question of what we owe one another as members of a shared political community.
Because if citizenship means anything at all, it must mean that we are not simply individuals passing through the same territory. It must mean that we recognize some special obligation to one another—that we are bound together in a common project. And today, that sense of shared obligation is eroding.
The Moral Meaning of Membership
Imagine a simple moral dilemma. Your mother needs urgent medical care. Across the world, a stranger’s mother needs the same care. Both needs are equally real. But would you flip a coin to decide whom to help? Of course not.
You would help your mother first—not out of prejudice, but out of a relationship. Obligation follows from proximity, from shared life, from identity. We recognize, intuitively, that our responsibilities are not evenly distributed across humanity. They are structured: first to family, then to community, then to country, and only then to the world at large. This is not cruelty. It is the foundation of moral life.
Citizenship operates in a similar way. It is a form of membership that binds strangers into a shared framework of responsibility. It says: we may not know each other personally, but we are part of the same collective experiment. We fund the same institutions, live under the same laws, and inherit the same outcomes—good or bad.
But for that idea to hold, it must feel real. People must believe that their country takes them seriously—that it prioritizes their well-being in a meaningful way. Without that belief, the very idea of a shared civic project begins to dissolve.
When Community Feels Abstract
Much of the modern political crisis stems from a growing disconnect between institutions and the people they are meant to serve. When individuals feel economically insecure—when wages stagnate, jobs disappear, or industries are hollowed out—they do not experience globalization as an abstract good. They experience it as loss.
In these moments, immigration debates often become proxies for something deeper. The concern is not always about newcomers themselves, but about whether the system is organized around the well-being of its existing members.
If people begin to feel that their government does not prioritize them—does not see them as having special standing as citizens—then the sense of mutual obligation weakens. Civic trust erodes. And with it, the possibility of solidarity.
This is where the moral significance of borders reenters the conversation—not as instruments of exclusion rooted in race or ethnicity, but as symbols of shared commitment. Americans are not defined by a single identity. They are diverse in every conceivable way. But citizenship, at its best, offers a unifying thread: a promise that, despite differences, we are responsible for one another in a way that we are not responsible for everyone else in the world. Without that promise, the language of “we” begins to lose its meaning.
Patriotism and Its Discontents
And yet, speaking in these terms has become increasingly difficult.
As Michael Sandel has observed, many liberals have grown hesitant—if not outright resistant—to invoking ideas like patriotism or national belonging. The fear is understandable. In recent years, these concepts have often been weaponized, tied to exclusionary or reactionary politics, most visibly in the rhetoric surrounding Donald Trump. But abandoning the language of patriotism entirely comes at a cost.
When one side of the spectrum claims exclusive ownership over national identity, it distorts the concept itself. Patriotism becomes associated with suspicion, even hostility. To express pride in one’s country risks being misinterpreted as endorsing its worst tendencies. The result is a kind of vacuum—one in which a shared sense of belonging is either politicized beyond recognition or avoided altogether. Yet this vacuum does not remain empty. It is filled by forces that benefit from division.
Power, Narrative, and the Shape of Debate
It is worth asking who benefits from a weakened sense of national solidarity. In an era where corporations wield immense influence—where money flows through political campaigns, nonprofits, and media ecosystems—it becomes harder to separate public discourse from private power. The idea that “liberals” or “conservatives” fully control the narrative begins to look less convincing. Increasingly, the boundaries of debate are shaped by actors whose primary interest is not civic cohesion, but economic gain.
From this perspective, the erosion of shared obligation is not merely cultural—it is structural.
If citizenship loses its moral significance, then labor becomes interchangeable. Workers are no longer members of a community with mutual responsibilities, but units in a global marketplace. The logic of outsourcing follows naturally: if labor can be sourced more cheaply elsewhere, why not do so?
The answer, from a purely economic standpoint, is obvious. But from a civic standpoint, it is far less clear.
Labor, Value, and the Question of Replacement
Consider the case often made for importing labor to fill shortages—nurses, for example. The argument is that certain sectors lack sufficient workers domestically, and immigration provides a necessary solution. But this raises a question: is the shortage truly about supply, or is it about value?
In many cases, higher wages and better conditions would attract more workers. The market, if adjusted, could respond. But increasing wages shifts costs, and costs are precisely what institutions often seek to minimize. So instead, labor is sourced elsewhere.
This dynamic becomes more troubling when viewed globally. When wealthy nations draw skilled workers from developing countries, they are not simply filling gaps—they are redistributing human capital away from places that may need it more. The result is a kind of quiet extraction, one that benefits receiving countries while potentially weakening those left behind. The moral calculus here is complex. But it cannot be reduced to efficiency alone.
The Limits of Justification
There are domains, however, where the justification becomes even harder to defend. Take the outsourcing of sexual labor. Unlike fields such as medicine, where one might argue—however imperfectly—that migration addresses urgent needs, the global demand for sexual services raises a different set of questions. What public rationale supports the movement of vulnerable individuals across borders to meet this demand? What civic or moral purpose does it serve?
If citizenship implies a duty to protect and uplift members of one’s own community, then outsourcing such labor—particularly when it involves exploitation—appears less like necessity and more like abdication.
It is here that the tension between market logic and moral responsibility becomes most visible.
Reclaiming the Idea of “We”
So where does this leave us? At the heart of these debates is a simple but difficult question: do we, as citizens, owe something special to one another?
If the answer is no—if our obligations are entirely global and undifferentiated—then the concept of citizenship loses its moral force. Borders become arbitrary, and national identity dissolves into a purely administrative category.
But if the answer is yes, then we must grapple with what that means in practice. It does not mean rejecting the rest of the world, nor does it justify exclusion or prejudice. It means recognizing that moral life is layered—that our responsibilities begin somewhere, and that “somewhere” is often closer to home than we are comfortable admitting.
Family, community, country, world. The order is not accidental.
Reclaiming this structure does not require adopting the rhetoric of any political figure, nor does it demand alignment with any single ideology. It requires something more fundamental: a willingness to speak openly about belonging, obligation, and the common good.
Because without a shared sense of “we,” there is no civic life—only a collection of individuals, loosely connected, navigating a system that no longer feels like it belongs to them.
And if that happens, the question is no longer what we owe each other.
It is whether we believe we owe each other anything at all.
Sources:
https://www.prindleinstitute.org/2018/07/some-normative-perspectives-on-borders-and-asylum-seekers/
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2023/entries/citizenship/