The Ethics of Migration: Introduction
| Date | 01 April 2012 |
| DOI | 10.3366/jipt.2012.0032 |
| Published date | 01 April 2012 |
| Author | Christine Straehle,Patti Tamara Lenard |
| Subject Matter | Symposium: The Ethics of Migration |
Symposium: The Ethics of Migration
THE ETHICS OF MIGRATION: INTRODUCTION
CHRISTINE STRAEHLE AND PATTI TAMARA LENARD
The migration of people across borders is high on the political agenda across
nations, in large part because of the increasing numbers of people who choose
to, and who desire to, move. Poor migrants hope to access the labour markets in
wealthy nations; political conflicts and environmental disasters produce migrants
who claim asylum; and so on. Yet wealthy, peaceful countries are reluctant to
open borders to all those who have reasons to want to join them. The articles
in this special symposium discuss the empirical and normative challenges that
migration poses. In particular, they weigh the demands made by individuals
to migrate, in pursuit of physical security, wealth and family reunification,
against the rights of states to control whom to admit onto their territory and to
citizenship. To do so, they consider how to balance two important normative
principles: moral equality and national sovereignty. Political theorists have
typically taken both these principles to be of equal value and importance, yet
the dilemmas posed by migration illustrate instead that one will often have to be
prioritized over the other.
Historically, it has been taken for granted that the principle of national
sovereignty grants nations the right to determine who should be allowed to
enter their territory. The right to control borders is claimed as a right of national
sovereignty, and therefore as essential to protecting the capacity of nation-states
to be self-determining. Moreover, national self-determination is considered to
contribute to several other goods, including the forging of a democratic political
community, the promotion and protection of a shared public culture, language
and a sense of belonging, and a shared system of redistribution. More recently,
however,the view that nations have the right to be the sole arbiter of their borders
has come into question; buoyed by the observation that borders appear to protect
the wealth of some nations, and to consign others to unconscionable poverty,
some thinkers now argue that a genuine commitment to the moral equality of
individuals demands opening borders to those who wish to enter.
Journal of International Political Theory, 8(1–2) 2012, 118–120
DOI: 10.3366/jipt.2012.0032
© Edinburgh University Press 2012
www.eupjournals.com/jipt
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