Dignity through Migration

Refugees as a particularly vulnerable group have increasingly found their way into recent discussions in philosophy, public policy, law, judicial decisions, etc. In fact, the Global Compact on Refugees aims to present a preliminary version of the importance of refugees in contemporary ideas of human agency-based development. Building on this, I propose that deeper engagement through a refugee lens must underlie two interlinked conceptions that are informing law and policy on various rights issues, i.e., ‘human dignity’ and a human capability-based development theory, the Capability Approach (CA). These conceptions are relevant since they have been reifying the way development is viewed to simultaneously address global issues and promote human agency. Yet, till now, even these two ideas are confronted by a (non)citizenship blind spot, particularly in relation to refugees. Thus, I wish to emphasise that the complementary understanding of dignity and CA needs to incorporate the category of ‘refugees’ to be fully coherent as theories of development. I particularly utilise Martha Nussbaum’s foregrounding on dignity in her theory of the CA to highlight its relevance yet the need for further work to include the legally ‘non-citizen’ refugee who does not neatly fit into the idea of nation states and the closely connected citizenship paradigm.

The symposium brings together four contributions by four distinguished authors. The contributions articulate both the potential and pitfalls of the aspirations/capabilities model of the nexus and highlight particularities when the framing is applied together with other layers (gender, climate crisis, refugees). Two of the contributions discuss their topic using the term “migration” while others look into the issue in the context of “refugees.” Notwithstanding the importance of the distinction between “migrants” and “refugees” in current global frameworks, the purpose here is to stimulate debate that goes beyond this fluid dichotomy. In popular parlance, the term “refugees” is used to connote “migrants” or “non-citizens” in general.