The ethics of migration policy dilemmas

Abstract This article proposes a new approach to the political theory of migration: the ethics of migration policy dilemmas. The core of this new approach lies in identifying specific policy dilemmas of central relevance to policy makers and other stakeholders in the field, and then submitting these dilemmas to systematic theoretical analysis. We conceptualize policy dilemmas as involving hard choices between competing moral goals and distinguish this kind of dilemma from other types of ethical choices, such as conflicting means, dirty hands, political feasibility, and politics dilemmas. We argue that, besides enlarging the range of questions asked by political theorists of migration, our approach of engaging normatively with hard policy dilemmas can help mitigate the negative political and societal effects of reductionist political positions that seek to negate the existence of competing moral goals. We make the case for a multidisciplinary approach to the normative analysis of hard ethical dilemmas, transcending both explanatory and interpretive analyses in the spirit of an applied normative political theory that aims to be action guiding.