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Allison Wolf, Dept. of Philosophy, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia

—Almost all philosophical work related to immigration explores the issue through the lens of the way migration is framed in the United States and Europe.  That is, the aspects of immigration taken to be salient, what are taken to be “problems” requiring solutions, and the relevant parties in most philosophy of immigration up to this point are those identified as most pressing from the perspective of the United States and Europe. As such, its primary focus has been on questions of borders and border security (for example, to what extent should borders be opened or closed or what mechanisms are justified to enforce a nation’s border and immigration policies?) and admissions policies (such as which immigrants should be prioritized for admission, the number of migrants to grant admission to each year, etc). But what would happen if we took a Global South nation as our point of departure instead? How would philosophy of immigration and immigration justice change? 

This is precisely the question that I will explore in this talk.  More specifically, I will take Colombia as my starting point for exploring migrations in the Americas and the philosophical questions they raise, particularly in relation to identifying the injustices migrants face and responding to those injustices in ways that improve migrant lives and experiences in a concrete and measurable way. After giving a brief overview of traditional philosophical approaches to immigration, I will explain some issues of migration in relation to Colombia (that is, the influx of Venezuelan migrants; transit migration through Colombia by Haitians, Venezuelans, and those from numerous African nations; internal displacement; and emigration from the South American nation).  Then, I will suggest new questions these empirical realities raise questions that go far beyond border security and regularization (though those do exist in different forms), for example, in relation to how they are treated in the receiving nation on a daily basis, what is required beyond granting legal status, and the differences (if any) between internal migration and external migration. I will conclude by presenting a feminist approach to the philosophy of migration that I maintain is more apt than the traditional philosophical approaches for understanding migration from a Global South perspective.