The Global Migration Regime: A Case of Structural Injustice?

Applications of the concept of structural injustice have become increasingly popular in the ethics of migration, especially as a frame of analysis for labour migration, and for the predicament of refugees. According to this set of arguments, the global migration regime is structurally unjust because each state’s individual policy decisions, whilst perhaps independently morally justified, produce an overarching structure that renders certain classes of migrant vulnerable to oppression and domination. This paper critically assesses these arguments. I argue that, although the global migration regime satisfies several conditions for structural injustice, political actors and political theorists should still be cautious of casting that regime as a case of structural injustice. This is because the emergent logic inherent to the concept of structural injustice distorts normatively weighty dimension of the global migration regime. In particular, I argue that representing the problem as an outcome of a series of individually blameless actions distorts the fact that the global migration regime is comprised of agential exercises of power for which a particular set of powerful states bear outcome responsibility. I will argue that this distortion is pernicious and that it is important to expose because something like it underlies a range of justifications for tough-on-migration rhetoric and policy.