Ch 6. Fair Terms of Benefiting From Labour ImmigrationEszter Kollar

24 April 2025

Eszter Kollar (KU Leuven), 17:15 - 18:45, presents her project in the Interdisciplinary Research Seminar of the GRK "Collective Decision-Making”.

Location: Room 0079, Von-Melle-Park 5

Abstract

Labour migration is dominantly discussed in political philosophy as an issue of immigration and citizenship within liberal democratic receiving countries, which raises moral concern with differentiated rights, discrimination, and exploitation. Labour migration, however, is also a key economic question of our time, integral to the global and local organization of labour, largely driven by skill shortages resulting from demographic shifts and structural economic transformations. This book brings a structural economic perspective to the forefront of normative philosophical analysis of labour migration, while centering ethical concern on the life prospects of persons, migrants and non-migrants alike. By doing so, it aims to complement migrant-centered political theories of immigration with an economic-structural lens, while resisting the dominant political narrative that frames labour migration merely as an economic benefit for receiving societies, thereby reducing migrants to instruments of national interest. Labour migration involves both the movement of people with personal autonomy interests and the transnational flow of their skills, which carries morally significant distributive consequences within and across national borders. In response to this complexity, the book develops a novel liberal egalitarian normative theory of labour migration. It argues for fair terms of labour migration based on an egalitarian theory of cooperative fairness in a global economy that affords equal moral concern to the prospects of all persons; migrant workers, as well as those living in sending and receiving countries.

Find the abstract as PDF here.