Johannes Servan: On Migration and Social Distance

Abstract

The current refugee crisis exemplifies how transnational migration can challenge liberal democracies, such as those within the Schengen territory. Quite obviously the “stream of migrants” challenges the territorial sovereignty, but the prospects of a high increase of long-term residents without full-member citizenship also question the idea of popular sovereignty. How should we respond to this challenge?

As a cosmopolitan, the defensive reaction of the Schengen-members, and the principle questioning of core cosmopolitan norms such as the right to asylum, worries me. Inspired by Seyla Benhabib, we should acknowledge that the transnational migration alters the conditions for the democratic legitimacy of our nation-states. It calls for a normative learning process where we must be re-negotiate the balance between our commitment to cosmopolitan norms (such as the Human Rights) and democratic sovereignty. The critical aspect of the “crisis” is precisely this; an occasion to renegotiate the direction in which this balance should shift.

Within this context I find it relevant to bring in ‘social distance’ as an analytic concept. Migration brings ‘the distant other’ or ‘the stranger’ to the midst of our political attention. An adequate conception of social distance is useful in order to grasp the conditions of the crisis as part of a learning process. In the sociological, social psychology and sociobiological contexts this concept is applied to describe “pro-social” responses such as sympathy and altruism. The philosophically relevant question, or so I will argue, is the question of how we should understand the learning process as one of moral progress? In other words, on what terms should we evaluate the conditions for this normative learning process?

Briefly, my argument takes the notion of expanding (stoic) circles as the standard progressive model of social distance. Based on a more nuanced concept of social distance developed within a sociological context, I propose that it offers a more adequate account of the social reality on which our conception of moral responsivity should be grounded.