Ethics in Action · Navigating Ethical Dilemmas of Migrant Solidarity

Policymakers and civil society actors in the migration field are often confronted with ethical dilemmas. Yet, no systematic comparative study exists of how these actors respond to ethical dilemmas in real-life circumstances, and we lack a theory to explain their decisions and assess their impact on the actors’ political identity. Focusing on actors engaged in solidarity practices with irregular and precarious migrants, which raise particularly acute dilemmas, MIGSOL therefore asks: When faced with ethical dilemmas, how do political actors respond, what political and sociological factors impact their responses, and with what effects on their political identity?By asking this question, the project breaks with traditional approaches to value-based conflicts in politics by shifting the object of study from conflicts between different moral visions (e.g. supporters vs opponents of open borders) to the internal contradictions that arise within the same moral vision. Shifting the perspective in this way opens a whole new agenda for empirical research and calls for a different approach to theorizing the role of values in migration politics.MIGSOL’s political sociology approach to migration ethics innovates by placing the spotlight on the nuanced normative reasoning that political actors engage in when they navigate through ethical dilemmas. This approach will be implemented through a global comparative study of dilemmatic decision-making on migrant solidarity by 5 types of actors—national policymakers, local policymakers, labor unions, faith-based organizations and facilitators of movement—in 10 locations that cut through the Global North/South divide.Based on this ambitious global comparison, MIGSOL will break new ground by pioneering an empirically grounded theory of decision-making under dilemmatic circumstances, which will be of relevance to all those interested in understanding the determinants of moral judgement, well beyond the field of migration studies.