Description
Human beings have migrated since their origin. This migration has ranged from journeys of a few miles to epic travels across oceans and continents. Drought, plagues, floods, or other natural disasters have triggered migration. Slavery, escape from slavery, invasions, and exile have created forced migration. There are many perspectives on why people migrate, how people migrate, what impact migration has on receiving, transit and sending countries, and whether countries should encourage, discourage, or limit migration. This compendium raises some issues and questions in order to encourage a thoughtful, in-depth discussion of the ethics of migration. Migration, the geographical movement of people in order to settle in other places for longer periods of time, has extensively been analyzed by historians and social scientists, but philosophers have thought little – and said even less – about it. This gap is quite astonishing if one considers the fact that migration policies involve highly contested normative judgments in all phases. Yet historically, moral and political philosophers and political theorists have rarely discussed migration; none developed a coherent ethics of migration. Only in the past thirty years have theorists begun to think about the issue, but still we do not have any comprehensive and systematic treatment. Migration involves many phases: emigration (root and intermediate causes), immigration or actual first admission, and the different stages of incorporation. Today, as in the past, global economic gradients of difference are among the most ... See more
Description
Human beings have migrated since their origin. This migration has ranged from journeys of a few miles to epic travels across oceans and continents. Drought, plagues, floods, or other natural disasters have triggered migration. Slavery, escape from slavery, invasions, and exile have created forced migration. There are many perspectives on why people migrate, how people migrate, what impact migration has on receiving, transit and sending countries, and whether countries should encourage, discourage, or limit migration. This compendium raises some issues and questions in order to encourage a thoughtful, in-depth discussion of the ethics of migration. Migration, the geographical movement of people in order to settle in other places for longer periods of time, has extensively been analyzed by historians and social scientists, but philosophers have thought little – and said even less – about it. This gap is quite astonishing if one considers the fact that migration policies involve highly contested normative judgments in all phases. Yet historically, moral and political philosophers and political theorists have rarely discussed migration; none developed a coherent ethics of migration. Only in the past thirty years have theorists begun to think about the issue, but still we do not have any comprehensive and systematic treatment. Migration involves many phases: emigration (root and intermediate causes), immigration or actual first admission, and the different stages of incorporation. Today, as in the past, global economic gradients of difference are among the most salient differences motivating migration. Setting aside the cases of refugees and many internally displaced persons, much of current and future global migration is essentially an economic phenomenon, yet that fact is too often obscured by the narrowly political terms in which it is debated by political theorists.
Migration, Ethics and Power: Spaces of Hospitality in International Politics aims to present and critically discuss the relevant arguments favoring opening or closing of borders. The text adopts a less commonly seen perspective on immigration controls, in considering the issue from an ethical standpoint. This Book will be of valuable for students and scholars of politics, international relations and political geography.
