In Europe in the Middle Ages, if you were very lucky, your parents would be nobles, and you would be a noble too. If you were very unlucky, your parents would be peasants, and you would be a peasant too. In fact, most people in Europe in the Middle Ages were unlucky—most people were peasants.
In his book The Ethics of Immigration, the political scientist Joseph Carens makes the observation that in many ways, being born a citizen of a rich country today is like being born a noble in the Middle Ages, and being born a citizen of a poor country is like being born a peasant.
In the Middle Ages whether you were born a noble or a peasant had a huge impact on the chances you had in life: of course being born a noble gave you much better chances. But there were laws restricting movements between peasants and nobles. Very few peasants were able to overcome the disadvantage of being born a peasant and become a noble, no matter how talented they were or how hard they worked.
In today’s world whether you are born in a rich country or a poor country largely determines the opportunities you have in life: being born in a rich country gives you much better opportunities. But very few people born in poor countries are able to move to rich countries: there are very effective laws that keep people from poor countries from moving to rich countries. (The laws are very effective in the sense that they do in fact keep the vast majority of people born in poor countries who want to move to rich countries from moving to these countries.) Even if someone born in a poor country is very talented or works very hard, it is extremely difficult for them to overcome the disadvantage of being born in a poor country.
Not only were people born as peasants in the Middle Ages destined to remain peasants, their freedoms were heavily restricted. That included the freedom to move from one place to another in search of a better life. Today governments have very strict immigration laws and, as Carens notes, those laws tie people to the country they were born in almost as effectively as the laws that tied peasants to the land in the Middle Ages.
Questions
- People in the Middle Ages had no control over whether they were born nobles or peasants. Was it right to treat peasants and nobles so differently? Was it right to have laws that prevented peasants from moving from one place to another in search of a better life?
- People today have no control over whether they were born in a rich country or a poor country. Is it right to prevent people born in poor countries from moving to rich countries in search of a better life?