A Cooperative Framework Incorporating the Concerns of Both Migrant-Destination and Migrant-Origin Countries into Migration Policymaking

Abstract

Normative theories about the justice of policies to control international migration tend to come from either the standpoint of the migrant-destination country or the migrant-origin country. I show how three influential normative theorists of migration—Abizadeh, Carens, and Walzer—in formulating their respectively democratic, liberal, and communitarian visions of a just migration policy never incorporate the concerns of different groups within migrant-origin countries. Since empirical research shows migration can have both heterogeneous positive and negative impacts on migrant-origin and migrant-destination countries, normative theories about just migration policy would benefit from shifting away from either focusing on the impacts of migration only on migrant-destination countries or only on migrant-origin countries toward assessing their impact on both. I then formulate a theoretical framework-institution that could better incorporate the concerns of different groups with different positionalities within migrant-origin countries and migrant-destination countries toward the impact of international migration. This framework would allow mini-publics to elect representatives of groups with distinct interests within migrant-origin and migrant-destination countries. Such representatives would then engage in an intersubjective deliberative dialogue to develop a more just migration policy with a more international orientation, with each group’s level of influence moderated by the amount of international inequality between countries and the amount of harm caused by one country toward another.