ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ethics of migration as it impacts development. After surveying the extant of human migration, encompassing both refugees fleeing turmoil and migrants searching for economic opportunity, the chapter asks whether, in many cases, the distinction between political refugee and economic migrants is meaningful. It then examines the tension between communitarian duties to fellow nationals and humanitarian duties to desperate migrants. This simple opposition between duties conceals other global responsibilities that developed nations may have toward the people of developing nations that should guide moral reasoning about immigration policy. Leaving aside the possible economic benefits of unrestricted migration, social contractarian ethics suggests that developed countries may have special duties to assist desperate migrants to whom they are socially connected in a special way. Developed countries might have special duties to repair the harm they have caused to the nations from which desperate migrants originate, and one possible way is to allow these migrants to enter a safe and hospitable environment. Conversely, this duty of compensation might be met through alternative development policies that do not require the uprooting of migrants from their communities and families.
