This post is part of the blog series titled Visions for migration, published by the Standing Committee Reflexivities in Migration Studies (SC REFLEX), and edited by Sorina Carstea, Iva Dodevska, Stefan Manser-Egli and Anna-Lisa Müller. The series discusses the question: how does who we are shape how we do migration research, and what kind of world do we hope our research can contribute towards? Find the introduction to the series here.
Author: ANNA MARINO
It is undeniable: we are surrounded by narratives about events and people that provoke discomfort, frustration, or anger in many of us. When United States President Donald Trump refers to migrants as criminals and animals, we recognize the injustice embedded in such language. We know that disrespecting human beings and their experiences through words has very tangible consequences. However, in a context where prominent public figures invoke freedom of speech to justify racist and sexist discourse, determining whether and how we can evaluate such discourse becomes challenging. Migration has always been discussed at length in modern and contemporary history, as people on the move have often been seen as a challenge by the institution of the constructed homogenous national state. Nationalism, especially when intertwined with racism and white male supremacy, has generated animosity toward groups deemed inferior or threatening to these ideologies. It is quite puzzling to think that settlers who came to the United States, stole land, and committed genocide on this territory have rarely been narrated and problematised by US elites or the mainstream media as criminal and aggressive migrants, while Latinos have often been framed as criminals linked to drug cartels, and as responsible for a spike in violence and criminality in a country born itself of genocide at the hands of white Europeans. It is thus not all people on the move who are liable to be framed as problematic - regardless of their involvement in criminal activity or human rights violations - but rather those constructed as inferior within a racist and white male supremacist system.
Hatred directed at specific migrant groups in public discourse produces tangible consequences, which are increasingly evident. Some of us observe these developments with shock, while others are directly affected, often left with little recourse but to endure this escalating hostility against human beings that do not look like or act like Western society requires its constructed world to look. The danger of alarmist, dehumanizing narratives regarding migration is so evident that I wonder why so many of us studying migration still ignore the big elephant in the room. If we can analyze unjust and dangerous narratives and report their consequences, why can't we normatively assess them? We have been witnessing the political consequences of hateful discourses towards migrants. Isn’t it perhaps time to speak up regarding the need to normatively assess how we talk about migration? Some might argue that normative assessment is not the job of a researcher, who rather objectively analyzes and reports. I believe that, both as researchers and human beings, we have a responsibility to assess how migration and migrants are narrated, rather than simply reporting narratives and their potential effects on governance. Thus, in this blog piece, I will try to answer the question of how should we narrate migration if we care about justice? to explore what it might mean for a migration narrative to be considered “just,” and how we can evaluate narratives without falling into either rigid idealism or pure relativism. This is an attempt and should be treated as such. But I hope it can be a first step towards better reflections and analyses if my call is ever answered by the academic community in migration studies.
I will firstly discuss two approaches to justice, idealism and consequentialism, to then introduce the concept of “iterative contextualism” (Modood and Thompson, 2018) as a potential way to determine if narratives are to be evaluated as just or not. We start with idealism, which in political philosophy refers to approaches that share a priori, universal principles of justice, then applied to concrete cases. An idealist approach assumes that justice can (and must) be defined before looking at the empirical world as ideal theory is “the reliance on idealization to the exclusion, or at least marginalization, of the actual” (Mills, 2005: 168). Justice is thus grounded in abstract norms such as equality and human dignity, which are fixed and apply everywhere regardless of specific historical, cultural, and/or political developments. An idealist approach employs a top-down form of reasoning in which one starts from a principle and deduces what justice requires in any given case. So-defined universal norms are prioritized over structural inequalities, specific power relations, and context-specific constraints. In addition, abstract norms are more easily disregarded in the real world, as they might exist, but being so detached from the empirical world risks them becoming less and less relevant for the seeking of justice in practice. Moving on, I briefly introduce consequentialism, an approach to justice that evaluates actions, policies, or narratives based on their outcomes. In simple words, something is considered “just” if it creates good outcomes (Schmidt, 2024). As a result, the moral value of an action or narrative would depend on the effects it produces. In this sense, ends matter more than intentions and principles when evaluating if something is just. A limitation of this perspective is that, first, there is not always consensus on what a “good and beneficial” outcome would entail, and second, if ends matter more than intentions and principles, then harmful means might be put in place or justified to achieve the so-called beneficial end. Consequentialism is considered pragmatic because it focuses on measurable consequences. However, it is important to underline that the realm of what can be considered harmful or beneficial in the empirical world varies extensively and is dependent on the specific context we find ourselves in.
The importance of context brings a third approach into play: iterative contextualism. Iterative contextualism examines “the interaction of contextual facts and cross-contextual principles” (Modood and Thompson, 2018: 340) to reach specific conclusions about the requirements of justice. Let’s take the example of economic migrants, a category often used to imply choice, opportunism, or a sense of lesser deservingness to be on the move. An iteratively contextualist approach helps us evaluate whether a narrative on economic migrants is just by a. looking at the contextual facts, b. bringing in cross-contextual principles (lessons learned from other contexts), c. iterating between the two to, d. create a “just” narrative, one that is both context-sensitive and principled. A context-sensitive narrative would consider: structural economic inequalities across regions; colonial legacies shaping current patterns of migration; the lack of safe, legal migration pathways for economic migrants from specific regions of the world; and precarious legal statuses that push people into informal work. Such considerations challenge the simplistic portrayal of the economic migrant as an opportunist who “chooses” to migrate for better wages. A more just narrative would thus take into consideration that people on the move labelled as “economic migrants” might decide to be on the move under conditions shaped by global inequalities, climate pressures, and historical ties. Furthermore, their mobility is not simply a matter of individual choice but reflects structural constraints and labour demands in receiving countries. Recognizing these dynamics and drawing on lessons from past migration regimes suggests that economic migrants have legitimate claims to fair treatment, protection from exploitation, and access to basic rights. In addition, an evaluation of narrative based on context would shed light on the understanding of opportunism: is a person who wants to better their life conditions (e.g., better wages) an opportunist? Is earning wages/making a living/getting by in a host country considered opportunistic for all non-citizens, or is the charge of opportunism applied selectively to particular non-citizen groups? Is being involved in informal work, with no access to basic rights, to be considered as opportunistic? Some “economic migrants” are celebrated as ambitious and proactive, rather than seen as opportunists. Many questions arise from a single example of migrant categorization. While there has been an effort to report, for example, double standards in migration discourses, I have rarely read a reflection that relates the question of justice to instances of double standards.
I understand why. The question of how to narrate migration – or any social phenomenon – in a just way is overwhelming; however, considering that narratives produce the social realities we study as academics, I argue that it is not only desirable but our duty to reflect on justice in the social world that co-produces the data we rely on. And why is the way we talk about migration so crucial when we are simply looking at words? Because injustice begins long before an unjust governance of migration. Before borders are militarized, before asylum systems are restricted, before deportations are normalized, people on the move or naturalized people/citizens with foreign origins are narrated as threats, burdens, criminals, invaders, or opportunists. Reflecting on just narratives means reflecting on the imaginaries/ideas those narratives create: it is not a matter of sensitivity or aesthetics; the way we talk changes the way we think, the way we think changes our practices and the practices we are willing to normalize and – morally – accept.
Bio: Anna Marino is a doctoral researcher at the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research – The Migration-Mobility Nexus (nccr – on the move), and at the University of Neuchâtel. Her PhD thesis “Who’s Beyond the Border? Narratives and Counter-Narratives of Migration in Southern European Border Societies”, under the supervision of political philosopher Matteo Gianni, Professor at the University of Genève, is situated within the broader nccr – on the move project on “Narratives of Crisis and Their Influence in Shaping Discourses and Policies of Migration and Mobility”.