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Immigration, Sovereignty, & the EU | Philosophy Tube

Philosophy Tube | September 30, 2025



Britain has a referendum on whether to remain part of the European Union or to Brexit, and there’s some very important philosophy to be done about sovereignty, racism, nationhood, and immigration.

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Recommended Reading:
Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics
Falguni Sheth, Toward a Political Philosophy of Race
Sherene Razack, Casting Out
Giorgio Agamben, The State of Exception
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities

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Comments

This post currently has 39 comments.

  1. @kimpalonen1978

    September 30, 2025 at 1:24 pm

    Above all, talking about immigration and poverty and society at large is about how we feel people should live their lives, within which conditions lives are going to happen and I think it's very telling in the way we speak about each other how we feel about people that aren't us. I've accepted racism and fascism as a fact of life because it's become evident to me that a lot of white people don't care about people that aren't white or profitable, so long as we're upfront about being absolute asshats and don't expect anybody to respect or admire us for that.

  2. @phantomblot6072

    September 30, 2025 at 1:24 pm

    Most conservatives who discuss immigration will either tell you immigrants take "our" jobs or that they're unemployed and leech off "our" tax money, sometimes they use both arguments in the same discussion. There is no way for an immigrant to pass these criteria, they're just meant to justify bigotry.

  3. @Totoofwarful

    September 30, 2025 at 1:24 pm

    The uk is a trash can fire that, like a lighthouse, illuminate the rest of europe and the eu.
    On the path of what not to do.
    Furthermore, as an european, i would like to thanks the subject of her majesty, for their noble sacrifice.

  4. @daPawlak

    September 30, 2025 at 1:24 pm

    Time to get those damn Pollacks from UK!
    Worked on me, left Sheffield in 2016 for Reykjavik, one of the best decisions I made. So… thank you Brexit?
    Also, I honestly think Brexit is about wide-scope xenophobia, not just racism. There has even been the case that people from old colonial possessions of Britan are easier to assimilate than the East Europeans, a kind of 'I am not a racist' type of xenophobia.

  5. @Nihilarity

    September 30, 2025 at 1:24 pm

    I'm late to this one, but political and economic sovereignty were absolutely important issues in the referendum (and in euroscepticism in general over the last few decades, since long before Maastricht enshrined the right to free movement) and should not be dismissed so lightly as irrelevant concerns.

  6. @sophia-helenemeesdetricht1957

    September 30, 2025 at 1:24 pm

    I noticed with some dismay that you were very careful to make note of the distinction between the right to kill and the right to let die by tying them together. I get that you're trying to erase that distinction, but the fact that even has to be done is upsetting in a lot of ways. You hear a lot of the same things about sovereignty here in the US. and it's ignoring something that is at least in the US foundational to our entire way of life. Understanding that almost all of Europe considers itself to be post-christian, that is… not the way that we do things in the US. However if we in the US are going to hold ourselves to that standard, we should be better than having to make that distinction.

    The plain fact of the matter is that if you let someone die and you had the ability to stop it, then you have killed them. The fact that the distinction even needs to be made is highlighting an ugliness in the soul of, at the very least, America.

  7. @funkybobblehat

    September 30, 2025 at 1:24 pm

    sovereignty? What sovereignty might that be? The Anglo Saxons were Germans, the Normans were French, the Tudors Were Welsh the Stuarts were Scots and George the 1st was a German that couldn't speak a word of English. haven't had sovereignty since 500ad and then it was for only 200yrs pre Roman Empire

  8. @connorallen162

    September 30, 2025 at 1:24 pm

    I feel like you're saying some super interesting things about "camps" but something kind of bothers me about that term. Maybe it's just because various summer camps were a big part of my childhood.

    A word that might be better is caste?

    Talking about the caste system in western societies seems like a very fruitful way to examine current issues, with physical camps (e.g. slave camps, labor camps, internment camps) as an acute way caste differences and conflicts manifest physically.

    Otherwise I've definitely been challenged by things you cover and I hope to see more!

  9. @ShufflinRhino

    September 30, 2025 at 1:24 pm

    Not quite correct that the government has total control over all areas of domestic policy; to take two, capital requirements (both the minimum and maximum) for banks is set by the EU, and in healthcare the Working Time Directive has not been good for the NHS.

  10. @DeeCeeDees

    September 30, 2025 at 1:24 pm

    Once the EU is federalized and names itself as the United States of Europe (Full Economic Union) then you will lose the national sovereignty. Yes, it is true that NOW your government has the ability to control the law and public spending, but this will not be true in the future of Europe. This is what you cannot understand, this is only what us European patriots understand.

  11. @joanofarc33

    September 30, 2025 at 1:24 pm

    I like the way he uses hand quotes on the word “sovereignty” as if there is no such thing. Represented voted in by the population is to be sovereign, representatives deciding who can emigrate to their country and in what numbers. Yes you get to exclude people, if you didn’t you would lose the ability to control your borders and thereby the nation. Your explanation is entirely puerile.

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