Dr. Désirée Lim

Désirée Lim is the Catherine Shultz Rein Early Career Professor and Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Penn State's Department of Philosophy. Between 2016-2018, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University's McCoy Center for Ethics in Society, and she completed her PhD in Philosophy at King’s College London in July 2016. 

Désirée’s primary research interests lie in contemporary political philosophy, with a special focus on questions about migration, citizenship, and global justice. Her first monograph, Immigration and Social Equality: The Ethics of Skill-Selective Immigration Policies, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. There, she argues that social equality has a universal scope, and that non-citizens are entitled to be treated as social equals. Her second book project, tentatively titled Internal Restrictions on Immigration: A Reconsideration, is in progress.

List of publications:

• “Selecting immigrants by skill: a case of wrongful discrimination?” in Social Theory and Practice 43.2 (2017): 369-396.
• “The indirect gender discrimination of skill-selective immigration policies” in the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy. (2018) DOI: 10.1080/13698230.2018.1479812
• “Domination and the (Instrumental) Case for Free Time” in Law, Ethics and Philosophy. (2018) DOI: 10.31009/LEAP.2017.V5.07
• “Migration, Entry Fees, and Stakeholdership” in Analyse & Kritik 40.2 (2018): 277-293.
• “Social egalitarianism and the private sponsorship of refugees” in Journal of Social Philosophy 50.3 (2019): 301-321.
• “Socially Undocumented, Civically Ostracized, or Both?” in Philosophy Today 64.4 (2020): 963-968.
• “Travel Bans and COVID-19” in Ethics & Global Politics (2020), forthcoming.
• “Low-Skilled Migrants and the Historical Reproduction of Immigration Injustice” in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24 (2021), 1229-1244
• “Colonial Injustice and Racial Exploitation” in Journal of Social Philosophy (2021) DOI: 10.1111/josp.12450