Right to Universal Mobility: A Consequentialist Cosmopolitan Reading

this straight-to-the-point essay offers a consequentialist cosmopolitan reading of the right to universal mobility that intends to avoid the risk of arbitrary or asymmetric positions. It argues that migrants’ rights to freedom of movement have to be considered as a prima facie cosmopolitan right, a right that ought to be politically recognised and that contributes to individual Well-being and subsequently to world welfare. However, the paper also maintains that such right has to be balanced against a prima facie equally valid right of original residents to preserve their societal political project, for this contributes to individual well-being and subsequently to world social welfare, too. Deploying similar reasons, both migrants’ and residents’ claims then ultimately derive their legitimacy from a single principle of global justice, that of maximising social welfare by guaranteeing freedom of choice on different political levels. Hence, a fair political system ought to symmetrically balance these two contrasting claims by appealing to their common principle of justice.