research
Movements of the ‘we’
- Publication date
- 1 February 2010
- Publisher
- We consider cross-border migration through the lens of the capabilities
approach, with special reference to transnational migration and to implications
for the approach itself. Cross-border migration has profound and diverse
effects, not least because it accelerates change in the nature of political
community. A capabilities approach can be helpful through its insistence on
multi-dimensional, inter-personally disaggregated, reflective evaluation. At the
same time, the realities of migration exercise pressure on capabilities thinking,
to deepen its underlying social and political theory and nuance its efforts to
counter communitarian tendencies. By extending its attention to migrants and
the locality-spanning social and political spaces in which they live, the
capabilities approach will be able to better concretize and situate the picture of
the ‘we’ who ‘have (or seek) reason to value’ purported goods and rights.