REFUGEES AND IMMIGRATION

Refugees and Immigration

Refugees and Immigration

Introduction

In contemporary philosophic and academic thinking, the term 'justice' is predominantly used in the moral assessment of social rules (laws, practices, social conventions and institutions) and only rarely in the moral assessment of the conduct and character of individual and collective agents. For instance, in A Theory of Justice, J. Rawls provides a proposal for the comparative moral assessment of alternative ways in which a society's (domestic) social order might be designed. Justice, according to Rawls, is “the way in which the major social institutions distribute [emphasis added] fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation.”

Since the publication of A Theory of Justice, many egalitarian thinkers have applied some form of Rawls' unique framework in an attempt to assess the global social order. The central problem for a theory of global justice, then, is to identify principles by which the basic structure of a global society can be appraised. Critics of such an approach, however, question the efficacy of a global theory, suggesting justice: a) is value specific to culture and morality - relative to the customs and values of certain societies - and thus incompatible with non-liberal societies and, b) lacks a global enforcement mechanism (such as a global wealth tax).

In the current literature, there appears to be no consensus as to what 'justice' on a world (global) scale might refer to, or what the hope for global justice should lead us to want in the domain of international or global institutions, and in the policies of states that are in a position to affect humanity and the world order. Liberal theorists, for instance, accept that citizens should be treated as 'equals'. However, there is profound disagreement as to what exactly constitutes treating people as equals, and the scope of such treatment.

The following essay will focus on the debate over the (il)legitimacy of inequalities, vis-à-vis the concept of re-distributive justice. Re-distributive justice appeals to both normative notions of 'equality of opportunity' and 'recognition'. This paper argues global justice encompasses different concepts - economic re-distributive justice and identity-based re-distributive justice - and involves assessing whether anything can be made of them on a global scale.

But first, a brief note on the structure of the following paper. The first section appraises the concept of a global principle of economic re-distribution. Given the centrality of J. Rawls' thesis/project, the essay devotes considerable space to analyzing his theory of re-distributive justice - especially its deficiencies. The essay then provides cosmopolitan amendments to Rawls' theory. The second section examines the idea of multicultural pluralism. The paper questions whether the 'politics of recognition/difference' are compatible with the liberal notion of equality; following which, the paper proceeds to argue for the just recognition of identity-based differential-rights.

Global Justice: globalizing economic re-distribution

Distributive justice deals with the proper “distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation” and, in particular, the proper re-distribution of economic resources. The prevailing liberal justification for economic re-distribution is ...