Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Transnational migration practices represent a challenge for social sciences and theoretical articulation of global justice. This article locates the transnational migration practices in a context of a geopolitical economy of capitalist globalization and argues for a necessary shift away from methodological nationalism as a defining analytical framework. Following this, the author presents the argument that while marginalized migrants do not necessarily share a cosmopolitan consciousness, they can be defined as actors of really-existing processes of cosmopolitanism if conceptualized as a structural group. She argues that while migrants’ everyday struggles are seemingly only individual, if we understand marginalized migrants as a structural group, cosmopolitan critical social theory allows to refer to a migrants’ lived critique as a source of generalizable claims for global justice although it does not take the form of traditional political protest. She then discusses the gendered dimension of the claims for global justice through analysis of care claims derived from migrant domestic workers’ lived critique which implies a more ambitious demands on global justice than those asserted by organizes collectivities.

A recurrent argument in the theses of those who advocate for maintaining the current model of closed borders is the one known as favoritism or priority of fellow citizens. According to this argument, States would be entitled to control and limit the entry of foreigners into its territory because, otherwise, could not maintain a socioeconomic system that requires special attention to the needs of its less advantaged members. This article develops a critique of this argument without denying the practical conflict between the patriotic loyalties and global distributive responsibilities analyzing whether these are strong enough to withstand the weight of the intrinsic value of all human beings and their most basic and urgent needs.

Global society faces two major contradictions: "walled globalization" and the “limits of unlimited growth”. The interaction between these two explains wars over resources, climate change and the global land market. These phenomena, in turn, provoke the “flight effect” of forced migrations, and xenophobic responses in the receiving countries. In order to guarantee every human being the “right to have a place in the world” formulated by Arendt, it is necessary to question the two hegemonic forms of land possession: state sovereignty and commercial property. The Earth belongs to no one but at the same time belongs to everyone. Exclusive possession must be replaced by shared usufruct. The first global pandemic in history imposes on us a double moral imperative: to take care of each other and to take care of our common earthly dwelling together.

The migration and refugee crisis that Europe has been experiencing since 2015 can only be understood within the crisis of the neoliberal migration regime. At the same time, this crisis brings together the most important elements of the systemic crisis that capitalist societies have been suffering since the 1970s and which was exacerbated by the financial crash of 2008. The reaction of the rich countries to the forced displacements is another sign that the majority reaction to the system crisis is leading to a dead end.

«Border» and «wall» are sometimes used as interchangeable terms, although in fact their meanings diverge. The former is intended to regulate transits and all kinds of exchanges, so, unlike the wall, it is not in itself an obstructive device. In the context of current restrictive migration politics, it is crucial to denaturalize the hegemonic rhetoric about the need to fortify the borders, showing its ineffectiveness, costs and violent character. This article outlines the approach of «open borders» in order to overcome the somewhat chimerical vision of a «borderless world» and to lay the foundations for solidarity-based migration policies that respect the basic values of democratic societies

Rawls defined justice as a virtue of the basic structure. The characteristics by which he interpreted it, however, imposed severe limitations on the theory of justice in terms of its ability to confront the new problems we face in our globalizing world. One of them is that of the injustices suffered by the growing number of international migrants, about which Rawls' theory is silent. In this article an alternative structural approach will be presented and, in order to evaluate its critical potential, we will apply it to the case of the injustices suffered by migrants. The aim of this text is to provide a more adequate theoretical approach from which to address one of the most pressing challenges in our world.

Border studies have shown it as a social and political construction, of a dynamic nature and a field of tension and conflict. This work tries to apply the border approach to the concept of citizenship. Citizenship as a closed and complete formal condition is questioned and it is presented as an open and unfinished normative project. In it, rights constitute the ethical basis on which the processes of expansion and extension of citizenship that break the moulds of the sedentary model of political community take place. But it is its political dimension that shows the need to broaden inclusion in a political-legal order capable of protecting and guaranteeing them. The link with the State does not disappear, but it is integrated into a multilateral citizenship system that can only be reached from the progressive expansion of cosmopolitan experiences.

This article focuses on the social stigma imposed on migrants and on people who have become economically “useless” and depend on social benefits to survive. It discusses some of the mechanisms leading to such a social stigma, namely those connected to systemic doctrines –defined as a system of beliefs, values, social norms and social practices– that permeate the structure of a society and influence social interactions.

The hyperconnection, deterritorialization and acceleration of social life that characterize globalization imply a resignification of the concepts of territory, border and belonging to the political community. While capital, business and tourism are increasingly transnational, in the era of globalization, walls, fences and restrictive immigration policies proliferate, placing migrants in a situation of special vulnerability. The perspective of intersectionality allows identifying both the situation of special vulnerability of migrants –at the intersection of multiple gendered and racialized structures of exclusion– and the interconnection among the different factors that define situations of power and privilege in a dynamic way. Focusing on the negotiation of identity in migratory processes from this perspective enables to glimpse a space to redefine resilience and individual agency. This article argues that the liminal position of “living between borders” can generate a fertile ground to rethink the basic concepts of social organization, abandoning outdated concepts.

In Eugenio Trías’s Philosophy, existence, understood as an ethical existence, demands the subject to fulfil the classic imperative of knowing oneself, as a prime condition for the encounter of the subject with one’s self. The objective of this study is to elucidate which characteristics may be found in that encounter, by means of an appeal to a mysticism of wittgenstenian origin, and how the concept of «oriental» is interpreted in order to make it possible.