Abstract

What does justice in the area of temporary migration require? In her excellent book, Justice for People on the Move, Gillian Brock argues that temporary migration arrangements that enable the movement of low-skilled workers from the developing to the developed world are outside the domain of ideal theory and cannot fully comply with the demands of those on the progressive side of politics. As a result, the right to family life becomes negotiable and so permissible for liberal states to either deny entrance to family members or allow entrance to be conditional on financial self-sufficiency. In this essay, I argue that Brock is wrong in accepting the separation of parents and children as a direct or indirect cost of temporary migration arrangements that are sufficiently feasible.