Navigating Ethical Dilemmas of Migrant Solidarity: A Political Sociology Approach

When making decisions about migration, political actors are often confronted with ethical dilemmas. Yet, no systematic comparative study exists of how political actors respond to ethical dilemmas in real-life circumstances, and we lack a theory to explain the factors that impact their decisions and the impact that these decisions have on their political identity. MIGSOL therefore asks: When faced with hard ethical dilemmas, how do political actors respond, why do they choose to respond in this way, and with what consequences for their normative self-understanding? By asking this question, the project breaks with traditional approaches by shifting the object of study from conflicts between different moral visions about migration (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 about the impact of values in politics. MIGSOL’s innovative political sociology approach will investigate the impact of actor-centred, institutional and political factors on decision-making about dilemmas. This approach will be implemented through a global comparative study of the ethical dilemmas faced by 5 types of actors—national policy actors, local policy actors, labour unions, faith-based organizations and facilitators of movement—engaged in policies and practices of solidarity with irregular and precarious migrants in 10 political contexts: Brazil, Spain, USA, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Belgium, Jordan, Germany, the Darien Gap (Colombia/Panama) and Ukraine. Based on this highly original and 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 of those interested in understanding the determinants of moral judgement, well beyond the field of migration studies.