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Toward a Cosmopolitan Ethics of Mobility pp 53–67Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Sites, Systems, and Agents

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Part of the Mobility & Politics book series (MPP)

Abstract

This chapter continues the task of enriching the categories and considerations for an ethics of mobility. It insists that determining causality is central to identifying moral responsibility. It urges locating migration within broader trends of often inequitable social transformation. This requires attention to global political economy, as well as to migration systems which bind people and regions together through historical, economic, cultural, and political relationships. It also advocates for more moral scrutiny of corporate actors and for greater attention to internal migration and mobility restrictions within cities.

Keywords

  • Mobility
  • Corporations
  • Political economy
  • Migration systems
  • Cities

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I suggest some of the implications that migration theory brings to distributive justice in Sager (2012a) and offer reflections on how considerations of class, inequality, and economic transformations affect global justice in Sager (2012b).

  2. 2.

    This discussion draws on Goldin et al. (2011: 103–109).

  3. 3.

    For a notable exception, see Hidalgo (2016).

  4. 4.

    An important exception is Young (2011). Imbriosco (2004) cautions against using mobility as a poverty-alleviation strategy at the level of the city. This should serve as a warning against proposals that uncritically see international migration as the solution to world poverty. (In both cases, matters are complex.) Also see Hayward and Swanstrom (2011).

  5. 5.

    Also see the first chapter of Bridget Anderson’s Us and Them?: The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Control (2013) for discussion of vagrancy laws.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Philosophy, Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA

    Alex Sager

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Sager, A. (2018). Sites, Systems, and Agents. In: Toward a Cosmopolitan Ethics of Mobility. Mobility & Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65759-2_4

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