Migration

In 1492, Christopher Columbus reached the island of Guanahani, which he named “San Salvador”. Columbus and his crew were accepted enthusiastically by the natives. Each year ten thousands of refugees from Africa reach the Canary Islands. They survived the risky crossing, which seems as dangerous as the crossing of the conquistadors 500 years ago. The refugees are usually rejected by the Spanish authorities following the stipulations of the European Union’s immigration policy. I would like to analyze the disparities and the possible connections between these two events by focusing on the concept of migration as developed in the writings of Francisco de Vitoria, who was contemporary with Columbus.

Vitoria’s Approach on Migration

Vitoria was born sometime around 1492 in the city of Burgos. In 1504, he entered the Dominican convention and was sent to Paris to study theology. He returned to Spain in 1523, soon joined the famous University of Salamanca and later became the most prominent representative of the School of Salamanca.

Vitoria treated intensively the question of the conquest’s legitimacy. In this context, he took up the theological, ethical and juridical questions pertaining to the event. Thereby, he developed international public law from the Roman ius gentium (literally, national law) to a modern ius inter gentes (law between nations), a set of regulations that are adequate to rule the interests of different states and peoples, such as those of the Spanish and Indian civilizations. For Vitoria, the crucial universal ideas of natural justice are applied to intercultural relations by shifting the focus from Christianity to humanity. He envisioned a unique mankind (totus orbis) as a universal world community that in its diversity with regard to race, culture and religion built up relations on the basis of international public law as a constitutional foundation beyond any theologically justified claim by a minority of superiority to others. With the idea of the totus orbis, symmetrical relations are regulated by international public law and cultural pluralism, and intolerance yields to universal principles that represent an early form of human rights.

A Human Right to Migration

Vitoria developed a concept of a human right to migration, supported theologically by reference to the Christian commandment of love. It follows that “everyone may go to the region of one’s choice and stay there as long as one wishes to stay there.” But “no people [may] refuse other peoples the immigration,” and “no people may forbid other peoples the free trade and the use of the oceans, ports and rivers as a common property of mankind.”

Vitoria’s plea for free migration, free use of resources and free trade expresses an important reservation, namely that this must not happen to the disadvantage of any party involved. The mentioned principles are only applicable as long as the migrant does not abuse the hospitality, that is, as long as the migrant “does not cause any damage and does not do any wrong.” Analogously, free trade and the use of resources must stop when the natives legitimately do not tolerate this any more, particularly in cases where the appropriation of goods by the migrants causes serious restrictions to the supply of the native population.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

With regard to migration, the idea of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is different: Article 13 allows for “the right to freedom of movement and residence” only “within the borders of each state,” and for everyone’s right “to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” In other words, Article 13 provides a right to emigration or “re-migration,” but does not speak about a right to immigration. This is up to the state’s domestic policy, ensured by the principles of autonomy, sovereignty and non-intervention embodied in the U.N. Charter.

On one hand, it seems pointless to try to limit or prevent migration by forcefully securing Europe’s borders, for example, or by accepting the durable state of war at the border between Mexico and the U.S. state of California; on the other hand, an unlimited human right to migration can only be a utopian solution.

The basis for a realistic solution that does not deal only with symptoms is an analysis of the causes of migration, for if someone leaves his or her home country, it is for good reasons. In every case of emigration there are push factors that are so strong the migrant cannot see another way out. He can only begin anew somewhere else. We can influence these push factors. If we wanted people to stay in their native country and provide for its development with their abilities and skills, then we must weaken these push factors.

Eliminating the Causes of Migration

It all starts with the acknowledgment of the connection between our waste of resources and the ecological disasters in the Third World as one reason for migration, of the connection between our past as European colonial powers and the political tensions, wars and civil wars in Third World countries as another reason, and finally of the connection between the world-economic system organized by us and the social situation in the Third World as a further reason.

So it is not all about enhancing the legal conditions for migration but of focusing on its causes. In this context, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek emphasizes, “The solution cannot consist in pulling down the walls to let them all in as claimed by the cheap demands of soft-hearted liberals. The only real solution is namely to pull down the true socio-economic wall and change society itself, so that the people no longer desperately try to escape from their own world.”

The prevention of migration by the elimination of its reasons and causes has become a crucial aspect in international relations. Migration as such, therefore, has become a test case for a humanitarian globalization, indicating in a seismographic manner the structural problems in certain world regions, showing us unjust and insufficient economic and political conditions. Migration understood that way becomes a valuable regulative instrument to ensure justice and benevolence in the age of globalization.