Abstract
This inquiry hopes to develop the moral argument for migration rights. It begins with the historical context of world poverty, that is, the unequitable distribution of global resources which is rooted in the economic as well as the structural injustices in the world. While weak internal structures are a determinant in the lack of human development in the Third World, political exclusion and economic domination are actually to be blamed for extreme poverty. The theoretical attempt to solve this problem through Rawls and the Capability Approach is also examined. Gaps are present. It is noted that Thomas Pogge’s argument for a global difference principle is inadequate. The study distinguishes between economic migrants and refugees. The first should be dealt with from an economic point of view and the latter from a political vantage point. It is argued that economic and moral justifications exist in order to accommodate both. Migrant workers contribute to the economies of developed countries. Refugees, in contrast, may be allowed entry as a matter of negative duty to protect them from violence. The fear of the citizens of host countries that migrants are a security concern may be due to the unfair bias against people who are considered as outsiders. Justice, however, is a matter of fair treatment that all human beings deserve.
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Notes
Thomas. Pogge, “Severe Poverty as a Human Rights Violation.” In Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right, edited by Thomas Pogge, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 11.
John Rawls. A Theory of Justice. 2nd edition. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 56.
Ibid., 54.
Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents, (New York: Penguin Books, 2002), 7.
Alan Thomas, “Rawls, Adam Smith and an Argument from Complexity to Property Owning Democracy.” In The Good Society, Volume 21:1 (2012): 6.
Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2009), 11.
Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 155.
David Crocker, Ethics of Global Development: Agency, Capability and Deliberate Democracy. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 154.
Thomas. Pogge, “Real World Justice.” In The Journal of Ethics 9 (2005): 29.
Ibid., 34.
Pogge, “Severe Poverty as a Human Rights Violation,” 26.
Ibid., 34.
Ibid., 36.
Ibid.
Kok-Chor Tan, Justice Without Borders. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 65.
Pogge, “Severe Poverty as a Human Rights Violation,” 26.
Ibid., 52.
Tan, Justice Without Borders, 67.
Ibid., 87.
Ryan. Urbano, “Global Justice and the Plight of Filipino Domestic Migrant Workers.” In Journal of Asian and African Studies. Volume 47, Number 6 (2012): 605.
Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty. (London: Penguin Books, 2005), 59.
Ibid.
Sen, Development as Freedom, 149.
Des. Gasper. The Ethics of Development. (Edinburg: Edinburg University Press, 2004), 3.
Ibid., 8.
Douglas Massey, “The Political Economy of Migration in the Era of Globalization.” In International Migration and Human Rights. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 28
Goran Collste, Global Rectificatory Justice. (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2015), 115.
Christian Dustmann, Tommaso Frattini and Albrecht Glitz, The Labor Market Impact of Immigration, (London: University College London, 2008), 99.
Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 354.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality, (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 52.
Ibid.
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Maboloc, C.R. The Moral Argument for Migration. Philosophia 48, 1501–1513 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00166-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00166-w