Introduction

Migration has been part of human history for as long as we can remember. The geographic movements of large groups of people have shaped human history, and also individuals have moved from one place to another in search of a better life: fleeing from war, famine or ecological crises, looking for better economic or educational opportunities, joining family members, etc.

Migration has also been investigated from a philosophical perspective. In particular, immigration has been considered philosophically from the perspective of political philosophy and ethics. Next to various arguments for open and closed borders, there has also been work looking at more applied questions concerning, for example, economic migration and refugees.

The approach of the present collection of articles on the philosophy of migration has been guided by a concern for philosophical methodology. As a discipline, philosophy is made up of many different styles, tools and methods. Students often do not have a clear idea of what these different tools and methods are, nor how to apply them to specific topics. They may, for instance, have read some of the work of Husserl and associate it with phenomenology and the phenomenological method, but they would have difficulties explaining what exactly the phenomenological method in philosophy consists of and how to apply it to particular topics or problems beyond those discussed by Husserl himself.

Fortunately, there are by now different resources (listed in the references below) students can use to find out about philosophical tools and methods . These resources can serve as brief introductions which students can use to explore further. However, what I have not seen so far is a resource that systematically applies different philosophical tools and methods to the same problem or issue. This is what the present collection of articles aims to achieve.

In this book, we distinguish philosophical methods from philosophical tools. We consider philosophical methods bigger, more general traditions of philosophical thinking such as phenomenology, deconstruction, hermeneutics, etc. that have been associated with different philosophers and have been developed and applied over the course of many years. Philosophical tools, on the other hand, are much more limited and specific, like the essence-accident distinction, the notion of a category mistake, or the naturalistic fallacy. This book explores the application of both philosophical methods and philosophical tools to the topic of migration. The aim is on the one hand to demonstrate what these tools and methods are and how they can be applied, and on the other hand to demonstrate how rich the topic of migration is from a philosophical perspective. Different philosophical tools and methods can illuminate this topic from quite different angles.

This book was created as an open educational resource in the course Philosophy beyond Academia at the University of Groningen in 2023. Except for this introduction and the chapter Martin Buber’s I-It versus I-You Distinction, all of the chapters have been created by students of the MA Philosophy Programme of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Groningen.

Structure of the Chapters

For the philosophical methods covered in the first part, each chapter starts with a description of the philosophical method itself. This description consists of:

1. a general exposition of the method,
2. key features, elements or steps which are central to applying the method to a particular topic or question,
3. key authors and central works associated with the method, and
4. references to literature and links to other media where readers can find more information about the method.

After the description of the method, the chapter applies the method to a number of different topics or problems related to migration. Each application:

1. describes the topic or problem,
2. applies the method to the topic or problem, clearly identifying the key features of the method,
3. presents the results and added value of applying the philosophical method to the topic or problem, and
4. presents a philosophical exercise the reader can do to explore the philosophical method and/or the topic further.

For philosophical tools covered in the second part, the setup is the same except that the description of the philosophical tool is shorter than that of a philosophical method. Also, philosophical tools are applied to only a single topic or problem related to migration.

References

I. M. Bocheński. Die zeitgenössischen Denkmethoden. Francke Verlag, 1954.

Peter Fosl & Julian Baggini. The Philosopher′s Toolkit: A Compendium of Philosophical Concepts and Methods. Wiley Blackwell, 2020. (Third Edition)

Tatjana Schönwälder-Kuntze. Philosophische Methoden zur Einführung. Junius, 2015.

Daniel Dennett. Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking. W. W. Norton & Company, 2013.

Note concerning the Cover Picture

The picture on the cover of the book was taken by Marc Pauly on July 30th, 2021 in the Ciutat Vella of Barcelona.