Westphalia, Migration, and Feudal Privilege

Abstract

Most people acquire citizenship at birth; and modern liberal states regulate the migration of non-citizens as a matter of their sovereignty. Do contemporary border and migration controls based on citizenship therefore enforce the continuation of feudal birth privilege? In this paper I interrogate this question by examining the role of migration controls in the Westphalian Treaties, which  define a milestone in the development of territorial state sovereign. I find that the Treaties assumed that a sovereign’s subjects are not free to cross territorial borders, and that migration controls continue to enforce birth privilege. However, while feudal sovereigns ruled by bondage, modern liberal states rule by exclusion.