Unbounded inclusiveness and the ethics of bordering: domination, responsibility, and epistemic justice beyond the open/closed divide

Contemporary border regimes operate through dispersed, technologically mediated, and externally delegated practices that exceed the traditional statist–cosmopolitan debate. This article argues that the central ethical problem is not simply whether states may exclude, but whether the practices through which bordering is organized can be justified to those who are subjected to them. Drawing on algorithmic governance, detention, externalization, and climate‑related displacement, it shows how contemporary enforcement produces domination, vulnerability, and epistemic exclusion that admissions‑focused theories struggle to capture. The article advances unbounded inclusiveness as a normative orientation that treats territorial membership as neither the sole source nor the natural limit of political responsibility. Responsibility instead follows the historical, ecological, economic, cultural, and political relationships through which bordering creates and distributes vulnerability. Unbounded inclusiveness is distinctive not because it advocates more open borders, but because it offers a standard for evaluating bordering practices wherever they occur. Those affected must be able to contribute to the knowledge on which such practices rest, challenge the power exercised over them, and hold institutions accountable for the responsibilities arising from their relationships. Epistemic justice and non‑domination are therefore not supplementary concerns but conditions of legitimate bordering. The article concludes by clarifying how this framework reorients border ethics towards the relational conditions through which contemporary bordering generates obligations and harm.