Abstract
The chapter develops an approach to the articulation of migrants’ claims and, in particular, gendered claims for global justice. This approach embeds the cosmopolitan critical theory of global justice in people’s everyday critique of structural injustice. The author builds on critical theory, especially that advanced by Axel Honneth, Marek Hrubec, Iris M. Young and Ulrich Beck, and on the critical analysis of global capitalism presented by William Robinson and Leslie Sklair to articulate migrants’ struggles for recognition and to situate transnational migration practices in the context of global interactions from which these practices arise. The author argues that by limiting our understanding of the transnational subject of justice claims to only organized political collectivities, one overlooks a significant component of social protest. She elaborates a concept of lived critique and challenges the understanding of the agents of global justice claims as individuals or transnational organized collectivities. She argues that although migrants’ lived critique does not take the form of traditional political protest, understanding marginalized migrants as a structural group allows cosmopolitan critical theory to identify more seriously based and more ambitious claims for global justice. The author suggests that the migrants’ lived critique contests the legitimacy of global capitalism and of the nation-state-defined institutional and legal framework. Finally, she highlights the lived critique of marginalized groups of migrant women and articulates gendered claims for the social recognition of care and transnational social reproduction as a matter of global justice.
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Notes
- 1.
This work was funded by the research programme Global Conflicts and Local Interactions (Strategy AV21) and institutional support of the Czech Academy of Sciences (RVO: 68378025).
- 2.
Methodological nationalism is a strongly dominant approach within the social sciences and political theory as well as within political practice (Sager 2014). The view of a nation state container society is taken for granted and naturalized as a premiss that does not require explicit justification. The quantitative research in particular reproduces a view of a nation state container society. While some limitations of large international quantitative research are acknowledged, they are justified by the limitations of existing data collection. Rather than develo** an adequate methodology, the research content is subordinated to a fetishised methodology. Today the current nationalist tendency toward closing borders, e.g., constructing fences and rejecting migrants, restricting migration laws and asylum policies, are interpreted as confirming the relevance of a nation-state-defined analytical framework. Nevertheless, these tendencies are also a response to global interactions and transnational practices. Current nationalist tendencies are an attempt to deal with problems using old means that, however, cannot provide a solution. Moreover, Robert Fine and other scholars point out that this is not a recent problem because methodological nationalism was never able to provide an adequate account of political community and forms of practices (Fine 2007).
- 3.
For an analysis of discussions on cosmopolitanism between different interpretations in political theory, see Ingram (2013).
- 4.
The term cosmopolitan refers to reflexive critique and the normative horizon of ideas on alternative society and actors’ claims for justice. It refers to opportunities and challenges resulting from global interactions. In contrast, the term transnational acquires critical and descriptive meaning. It relates to transforming institutions, forms of life and practices that in terms of their causes and consequences go beyond nation-state borders.
- 5.
However, Beck does not systematically develop this inclusive notion of actors. Beck sees transnational civil society, states and global capital as agents of the cosmopolitan moment. He speaks about subpolitics when referring to political actors who stand outside of traditional political institutions; however, he reserves subpolitics mainly for grassroots-level organised collectives and various civic and employee initiatives. Hence, it seems that marginalized actors escape his attention unless they collectively organise (Beck 2009).
- 6.
Robinson defines the first phase, symbolised by geographical “discoveries” and primitive accumulation, as a transformation from feudalism to capitalism ; the second phase represents classical capitalism symbolised by the industrial revolution and emergence of modern nation states ; and the third phase denotes corporate capitalism characterised by the emergence of an integrated world market (Robinson 2004: 2–6).
- 7.
- 8.
Here I use the terminology of the UN report. The term (global) “North” is used in the report for all countries of Europe and North America, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
- 9.
See Figures at a Glance, http://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html (last accessed on September 20, 2017).
- 10.
See also Alessandra Sciurba (2019), Chap. 12 “Vulnerability, Freedom of Choice and Structural Global Injustices: The “Consent ” to Exploitation of Migrant Women Workers” in this volume.
- 11.
For the articulation of the concept of need and its relation to a theory of social justice , see Pinzani (2015).
- 12.
See also Alessandro Pinzani (2019), Chap. 8 “Migration and Social Suffering ” in this volume.
- 13.
Young proposes understanding women as a structural group . She argues that the ascribed position of women is non-reflectively reproduced through a set of individual and collective actions within the framework of social structures of the gendered division of labor , gender power hierarchy and normative heterosexuality. According to Young, gender is “a particular form of social positioning of lived bodies in relation to one another within historically and socially specific institutions and processes that have material effects on the environment in which people act and reproduce relations of power and privilege among them” (Young 2005: 22). Therefore, gender does not mean identity but a specific structural link between institutional conditions, individual life possibilities and their realization.
- 14.
I ground my conceptualization on migrants’ lived experiences on my previous work (Uhde 2014) as well as other studies based on migrants’ narratives (e.g., Anderson 2000; Choudry and Hlatshwayo 2015; Hondagneu-Sotelo 2001; Parreñas 2001; Pérez and Stallaert 2016). It is also based on the experience of marginalized migrants to globally wealthier countries in the European and Anglo-American economic and cultural regions. Although globally the number of South-to-South migrants is slightly higher than the number of South-to-North (90 million versus 85 million, UN 2016), migration to globally wealthier countries represents more pithily the consequences of global inequalities and global risks.
- 15.
In my analysis of the narratives of social and economic migrants in the Czech Republic, I identified various strategies in which migrants reframe the lack of social recognition to attribute a positive meaning to their work and renew the sources of their self-esteem. For example, they talk about positive satisfaction and perceived recognition for their effort or performance in moments that should be taken for granted in the context of rule of law: e.g., when employers invited them to sign an employment contract or expressed trust in them (Uhde 2014).
- 16.
See Alessandra Sciurba (2019), Chap. 12 in this volume.
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Uhde, Z. (2019). Claims for Global Justice: Migration as Lived Critique of Injustice. In: Velasco, J., La Barbera, M. (eds) Challenging the Borders of Justice in the Age of Migrations. Studies in Global Justice, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05590-5_10
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