Political Science

In his Spheres of Justice, Walzer largely focuses on the definition and dynamics of inclusion which make one to be either admitted into a new society or rejected. Owing to the fact that they are highly mobile, people oftentimes leave their communities to join other communities with the aim of changing their economic, political, educational, or environmental conditions. When such movements occur, the migrants find themselves in new communities and in new territories where the host communities may admit or reject them. Admission makes them members of their new communities while those who are rejected but who insist on staying with the new community become stateless, and thus have limited access to the resources available for the community members. Rejection may take the form of formal measures such as immigration policies and other admission-related policies, and other informal measures which are used by different communities.

People are wont to move from place to place, community to another. Apart from the proportion of people moving from one place to the other for leisure, the rest move not because they love to move but because they have goals to achieve (Walzer, 38). More often than not, people are more likely to live with their communities unless the conditions there are so uunbearable that they have no choice or unless the shift to another community promises very good opportunities. The move to a new community is not always easy as the members of the host communities tend to view the newcomers as being out to take shares of their resources, and who should thus be excluded. This is best manifest when there arises a shortage of resources available to the community. During such crises, hostilities against new-comers are common (a case best seen in South Africa recently when South African youths attacked immigrants from Zimbabwe and other Afrian countries, accusing them of taking all employment opportunities and leaving them jobless). Such attacks go to show that law alone may not give one full membership to a community.

While laws may give one an identity through citizenship to a country, Waltzer observes that giving one citizenship to a new community must be accompanied by the process of naturalization. Without naturalization, though one becomes a legal member of a community, the membership is incomplete. Naturalization helps the newcomer to gain an identity in the new community. Countries put in place laws and structures which help them regulate the number of people entering their national borders. While some are allowed into the foreign countries, many are rejected or barred from entering the foreign countries. Of those who are admitted, most become resident aliens in the new countries while only a few are naturalized or allowed to become full citizenship. Political and economic considerations play an important role in deciding who is admitted into the country or community and who is rejected. Territorial admission is therefore more important than many people realize (Walzer, 52).

The author offers a deep and well-argued case into the dynamics membership to a community. While it appreciates the role played by legal, social and cultural structures in the determination of possibility of one becoming or remaining a member of a community, the case raises the question over the best order of ranking of these structures. The importance of this ranking becomes apparent among people who have been part of the same community but who find themselves separated by artificial borders, that is, when a national border crosses through a community confining a part of the community in one country and the other part in a different country. The issue becomes critical if the two countries develop acrimonious relationship with each other. In such a case, a member of the community in the one country may regard himself as a member of the community across the border, but is unable to claim that membership legally.