Pensando eticamente sobre refugiados

um caso para a transformação da governança global

Abstract

All of us who are participants in the practices of contemporary global politics face a set of problems to do with refugees which are at base ethical problems. The ethical problems presented to us are becoming more pressing by the day. The questions are becoming acute as a result of the flood of refugees entering Europe following the ongoing war in Syria. In this paper I wish to do three things. First, I shall make the case that the problems must be understood as essentially ethical problems and that in some profound sense we are missing the point if we continue to see the problems presented by refugees as merely technical, legal, political, or administrative. Second, I shall present the outline of what I take to be a particularly useful way of understanding the ethical problems presented to us by refugees. This mode of analysis is based on what I call, constitutive theory. It takes seriously the global practices within which we are constituted as the actors we understand ourselves to be. Third, I shall endeavour to spell out what the implications of this mode of analysis is for those, like us, who are concerned with the question “What ought to be done about the problems presented to us by migrants as we experience them in the contemporary world?” The analysis I shall be offering is radical in that it shows how the language we now use about international ethics, especially the language of universal human rights, indicates how aspects of domestic and international law, are in urgent need of reform.