ABSTRACT
It is not easy to assess the contribution that the tradition of political realism might make to the ethical debate over the transnational migration of peoples. The difficulty is not only that questions of migration have traditionally lain on the periphery of concern for most realist writers. More importantly, the whole point of departure of the conference at Mont St Michel in 1989 was one which assumes the supremacy of the moral point of view, whereas realism is often identified with a radically different stance. In their works on international ethics, both Michael Walzer and Charles Beitz begin their enquiries by arguing ‘against realism’, a doctrine identified with Thrasymachus’s teaching that ‘justice is the advantage of the stronger’, or the speech of the Athenian generals to the Melians.1 In short, the doctrines often identified with a political realist perspective would seem at first glance to have very little to contribute to a debate on the ethical appropriateness of restrictions on the free transnational migration of peoples. In so far as realists subscribe to Thrasymachus’s principle, they would seem hardly to have an ethical doctrine at all, much less one that might have illuminated the topic of our conference.
