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Introduction: Voluntariness and Migration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2024

Eszter Kollar  and
François Boucher
Eszter Kollar
Affiliation:
Catholic University Leuven, Leuven, Belgium (eszter.kollar@kuleuven.be)
François Boucher
Affiliation:
University of Québec at Trois-Rivières, Trois-Rivières, Québec, Canada (f.boucher2014@gmail.com)
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Abstract

The concept of voluntariness permeates the ethics and politics of migration and is commonly used to distinguish refugees from migrants. Yet, neither the precise nature and conditions of voluntariness nor its ethical significance for migrant rights and state obligations has received enough attention. The articles in this collection move the debate forward by demonstrating the complex ethical judgments involved in delineating voluntary from forced migration and in drawing out its political and institutional implications. In addition to highlighting the interplay between the voluntary and nonvoluntary elements of migration over time and across different sites of the migration journey, they provide a nuanced account of the various conditions of voluntariness and they challenge common ideas about its normative political consequences.

Keywords

voluntary migrationforced migrationsufficiencyacceptable alternativesmoral costsrefugee rightsmigration journeysecondary movementclimate-induced migration
Type
Special Section: Voluntariness and Migration
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , Winter 2023 , pp. 401 - 405
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs

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References

Notes

1 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, United Nations Convention on Migrants’ Rights: International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, July 1, 2003 (Paris: UNESCO, 2005), p. 25, unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000143557.

2 Suella Braverman, cited in Rajeev Syal, “Charity Challenges Home Secretary's Claims about ‘Economic Migrants,’” Guardian, October 1, 2023, www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/oct/02/charity-challenges-home-secretarys-claims-about-economic-migrants#:~:text=Suella%20Braverman's%20claim%20that%20most,if%20their%20claims%20were%20processed.

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17 Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship.