The universalistic logic of justice and human rights clashes with the particularistic logic of national sovereignty. This contraposition is thrown into sharp relief in the analysis of migration politics. This article provides an argumentation in favor of a flexibilization of the access to citizenship and of the conditions for border crossings as an appropriate institutional framework for the recognition of human rights and the implementation of distributive justice on a global scale. This thesis is developed in four stages by: offering some reasons for overcoming the state-centered focus of the Rawlsian theory of justice (1); describing poverty and the migrations that derive from it as a question of justice (2); analyzing the obstacles that state boundaries present at the moment of implementing a global conception of justice (3); and, finally, arguing in favor of a redefinition of the notion of citizenship that constitutes the normative horizon of migration policy (4).

Research and Training Network on “Applied Global Justice” (HPRN-CT-2002-00231) was supported by the European Commission (5th Framework Programme).

Peer reviewed