CFP: The Ethics of Migration Beyond the State

Call for Abstracts

KU Leuven, Hoger Instituut voor Wijsbegeerte (RIPPLE)

March 13-14th, 2025

Workshop “The Ethics of Migration Beyond the State”

Submission deadline: December 13th, 2024

The robust development of migration ethics in recent years has mainly focused on liberal states' role in controlling their borders and fashioning immigration policies. While not fully neglected, compliance and contestations of non-state actors (broadly conceived) such as NGOs, firms, and civil society have been dealt with as secondary concerns. Nonetheless, as research in other disciplines has shown, non-state actors play a relevant role in perpetuating, enabling, or challenging immigration restrictions. Hence, the comprehensive development of migration ethics calls for taking these actors seriously and expanding the traditional scope of normative analysis in migration ethics beyond statist concerns.

Theorizing non-state actors from a normative angle is particularly challenging due to their diversity and distinct normative character vis-à-vis states (e.g., the formers’ restricted sphere of action and limited legitimacy claims). Hence, de-centering migration ethics from state-focus approaches requires new frameworks sensitive to the normative challenges involved in non-state action for migration. This workshop aims to stimulate conceptual innovations by bringing together scholars interested in philosophical research that provides both ethical analysis and normative guidance on the role that non-state actors should play in achieving migration justice. 

We invite submissions from political & moral philosophy, ethics, political theory, legal theory, and social theory. We are especially interested in work tackling the migration-related role of the following non-state actors, including but not limited to:

• NGOs

• Multilateral organizations (e.g., UN & UN Agencies and IMF)

• International Courts

• Regional bodies (e.g., EU, ASEAN)

• Unions (both domestic and international)

• Diasporas & transnational families

• Organized crime networks (e.g., smugglers)

• Education institutions (e.g. education visas as means of entry)

• Civil society (citizens, settled residents)

• Firms & Chambers of Commerce

• Regional and local governments (as a counterbalance to Central Government)

• Other topics include: political transnationalism, transnational activism & solidarity, and other migration-related business (e.g., international match-making & recruitment agencies)

This list is non-exhaustive, and submissions on related topics are welcome.

Confirmed participants:

Stephen Macedo (Princeton University)

Javier Hidalgo (University of Richmond)

We have space for three external speakers in our program (participation costs will be partially covered). If you are interested in participating in this workshop, please submit an anonymized abstract of no more than 500 words, along with an email including your name, title, and affiliation to [email protected]. The format of this workshop is pre-read. Abstracts should therefore be suitable for development into a paper (5 000 – 8 000 words). Participants will be asked to give a brief (5-10 min) presentation of their paper as part of the 1-hour discussion session of their work. The deadline for submission is December 13th, 2024. Notification of acceptance will be provided by December 20th.

Key dates:

Abstracts submission deadline: December 13th, 2024

Notification sent to participants: December 20th, 2024

Submission of papers: February 28th, 2025

Workshops: March 13th-14th, 2025

If you have any questions regarding the workshop, please contact the organizer, Andrés Salazar, at [email protected]

The workshop organizing committee consists of:

Mario J. Cunningham Matamoros & Eszter Kollar (KU Leuven), Martin Deleixhe (ULB), and Andrés Salazar (UC Louvain)