Liminal Animals

1. Liminal Animals Creation of Animal Denizenship By Shannon Hart Jason Etter Tina Huynh Abigail Whitacre Avery Stefan Rebecca Moore Zain Meghani

2. What Are Liminal Animals Animals that live in proximity to humans but are not domesticated or wild Largely ignored by Animal Rights Theorists Often seen as alien or invaders Extermination and Domestication are unrealistic Denizenship is a possible option Give up certain responsibilities in order to coexist

3. Need for a Denizenship Model • Some liminal animals have no other place to go • Humans need to limit the introduction of new liminal animals • Barriers for migration • Reduce incentives • Use active disincentives • Need to accept that liminal animals belong • Denizenship is necessary because Co-Citizenship is unfeasible • Important to note that they benefit from human environments not human interaction

4. Diversity Amongst Liminal Animals • 4 Main categories of Liminal animals • Opportunists • Niche • Introduced Exotics • Feral • Animals from different categories benefit in different ways from human proximity • Animals of related species exist as wild, domesticated, and liminal animals • Not all animals in urban environments are liminal

5. OPPORTUNISTS • Highly adaptive species, learn to survive in fast changing human-built environments • Some exist in the wild, but most are found in urban environments • Ex. White-tailed deer, mallard ducks, liminal foxes, opossums • Non-specific dependence • Often viewed as “nuisance species” or potential threats • They belong here/have every right to remain here • Synanthropic opportunists • House sparrows & mice • Don’t have options in the wild

6. NICHE SPECIALISTS • Less flexible species than opportunists • Have adapted to human environments over time • Ex. Wild animals who live in regions with long-standing traditional agriculture • Cannot readily leave their environment or adapt to rapid change • Suppressed population growth • Suffering of individuals • Rarely the targets of extermination efforts • Vulnerable to negligence and inadvertent harm

7. Ferals • Domesticated animals and their descendants who escaped human control • Some may benefit from returning to domestication, but many species have adapted to their environment and have become a liminal species • Some cities respond to ferals negatively by attempting mass extermination, while others respond positively and provide shelters, food, and health care • Some species are considered invasive and detrimental to the ecosystem, but that’s not often the case; many species can impact the ecosystem positively or neutrally • Some species are helpful to humans by controlling pest populations

8. Introduced Exotics • Non-native animals introduced to the environment on purpose or on accident • Many people see all non-native species as invasive and detrimental to the ecosystem (and thus believe in a mass-extermination or some other method of control) • However, many introduced species can have a neutral role in the ecosystem (thrive but do not outcompete, or outcompete but does not impact ecosystem) or a positive role (interbreeding and increasing diversity in native species)

9. Denizenship in Human Political Communities • Animals • Domesticated – bred to be a part of human society • Wild – keep distance from humans • Liminal – live amongst us but with limited human interaction • Humans • Co-Citizens – live and participate fully in society • Foreigners – everyone else • Denizens – live amongst us but not as co-citizens

10. Opt-out Denizenship: Rights and the Amish • “Modern democratic states are based on social ethos of participation and cooperation of affiliation (pg 231).” • Amish – view large society as worldly and corrupt and choose to “opt-out” of citizenship but continue to live in the U.S. (pg 231) • Do not contribute to: • Jury Duty • Military Service • Public Pensions • Government Education programs • Taxes • Benefits that are not received: • Voting • Political Candidacy • Public Courts • Welfare and Pension Programs

11. Problems? • Freeloading off the government • Sheer numbers • Exit options • Vulnerability of individual citizens

12. Migrant Denizenship • Migration across international borders • Migrants may have no religious or cultural objections to the ethos of modern citizenship, but may not want to enact their citizenship in their current country of residence • May continue to see themselves as citizens of their country of origin even after living abroad for extended periods, and so may seek only denizenship rather than citizenship

13. Migrant Denizens in the Contemporary World • Illegal migrants in search of work • State-sanctioned migrant workers • Should countries admit permanent immigrants? Or, would this be ineffective and unfair in cases? • The denizenship solution: weaker than citizenship, but not unfair or oppressive

14. Limitations • To be denizens, migrants must be more than merely temporary foreign visitors • Different from traditional immigrants with the expectation and promise of full citizenship • Migrant Denizens are long-term residents but not citizens

15. How Migrant Denizenship Works • Division of labor between states • “On this model, migrants are not ‘perceived as helpless second-class citizens’, but rather as people ‘whose equality of status is secured not by their full inclusion within the host society but by the recognition of their special position and the public awareness of their contingent and temporary relation to that society (Ottonelli and Torresi forthcoming).” p.237 • For illegal immigrants (vs. authorized migrant workers), states can use barriers and disincentives to keep them out, but once they are in they must be accommodated as seen appropriate: either with full citizenship or denizenship, depending on their level of integration

16. Three Clusters of Issues • Security of Residence -rights increase over time while living within an area (p. 239) • Reciprocity of denizenship A. part-time or temporary residents (p. 240) B. a weakened form of affiliation (p. 240) 3. Anti-stigma safeguards -states have special responsibility to protect vulnerable denizens (p. 240)

17. Defining the Terms of Animal Denizenship • Exclusion and invisibility, “out of place” (p. 240) • In or out choice (p. 240) 1. Secure residency- right to residency, over time acquire right to stay (p. 241) 2. Fair terms of reciprocity- weaker relationship than full citizens (p. 241) -subject to predator prey relations (p. 242) -humans differ from animals within this aspect because animals are not protected from killing or starvation (p. 243)

18. Defining the Terms of Animal Denizenship Cont. -they do not want to be citizens -future of denizens unpredictable (p. 243) -we try to control the population of these animals by limiting food sources and nesting sites (p. 246) • Anti-stigma- treated as outcasts and become isolated (p. 248) -protection backed up by law (p. 248) -looks at annoyance instead of benefits of coexistence (p. 249)

19. Conclusion • “We must devise strategies for coexistence which recognize animals’ rights as well as our own.” • “If we operate on the idea that adaptive animals are illegal aliens […] we are going to fail.”

20. Conclusion • Liminal animals cannot be full citizens because they cannot contribute to society • Treating them as denizens mean we should give “reasonable accommodation of their interests in the way we develop the human-built environment” • At the same time, we have the right to limit increases in liminal animal populations (e.g. Dog keeping geese off golf course)

21. Objections • If we give liminal animals rights, how do we uphold those rights? (e.g. Can Animals Sue? article) • Human legal denizenship comes from negotiation, but we cannot negotiate with animals.