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Associative Solidarity, Relational Goods, and Autonomy for Refugees: What Does it Mean to Stand in Solidarity with Refugees?

2020; Wiley; Volume: 51; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/josp.12339

1467-9833

Christine Straehle,

Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy

Solidarity is a concept that has been applied only sparsely in the discussion of cosmopolitan justice so far.1 If it is applied to the cosmopolitan sphere, then it has been mostly understood as "as a relationship among individuals or among groups or associations. In this use, people are understood as potentially feeling solidarity with the suffering of others or as standing with them in their struggles."2 The concept of solidarity has also not seen much attention in the discussion of migration justice, both immigration and emigration. Yet thinking about refugees and thinking about solidarity allows to link the international and the domestic debates since asylum-seekers who ask for refuge transcend the international—national divide. Refugees, in other words, are an excellent test case to evaluate different conceptions of solidarity in political philosophy. In this paper, I want to do two things: first, I want to investigate what account of solidarity can plausibly explain any obligations toward refugees. In liberal-egalitarian writing, solidarity has often been motivated to support the social welfare state—it becomes then one of the necessities of that state.3 I will juxtapose the definition of solidarity as social solidarity supported by David Miller, for instance, to that of political solidarity. This conceptualization has recently been proposed by Avery Kolers.4 In Miller's view, the notion of a "duty of solidarity" refers to the particularistic duties that flow from what is shared, namely a national identity and common belonging to a group. Kolers, starts from the premise that linguistically, a duty of solidarity could also refer to the duty to engage in practices that create what is shared, that create the community among which solidarity can be demanded. To "stand in solidarity" is then the willingness to engage in certain practices of sharing or defining a solidaristic community. I argue that neither of these accounts of social and political solidarity quite captures the concept of solidarity. One of the important dimensions of the promise of asylum is the idea of providing for conditions of agency and autonomy among refugees. Thus, my starting point is the premise that all human beings have a basic need to stand in particularistic relationships with others, for their autonomy-based needs to be met. I then apply this understanding of solidarity to the case of refugees. The promise of refuge and asylum is not simply to provide shelter and protection against human rights violations, but also to provide those who ask for refuge with a new home and the basis of social membership. Agency and autonomy in the forms I construe them here demand that social needs are met. If these needs go unmet, I argue that the promise of asylum remains unfulfilled. I explain that social needs can be met in two different ways: first, through the (much discussed) aspect of social recognition within society; and second, through providing for the sources of self-respect within society. Assessing political solidarity from this perspective, I show that it provides a picture in which the particular is largely absent. Political solidarity in Kolers' account defines a general duty to provide people with what is needed for autonomy. Yet, what people need is a space of particular relationships in which the autonomous life can be built. I explain that political solidarity neglects the need for social relationships. In this respect, conceptualizing solidarity as a duty neglects the constructivist principle that we need to think about the particular person and their need when analyzing what moral equality requires. Put differently, political solidarity seemingly neglects the social context in which individuals are treated as equals. One way of treating individuals with equal respect is to assure that all have access to the means of self-respect. In contrast, when Miller speaks of a duty of solidarity, he provides a picture in which the particular forms the limit of the realm of our duties of solidarity. The people with whom we stand in solidarity are the only people to whom we have normative duties—apart from very thin humanitarian duties toward outsiders, as I will explain. Instead, I argue that we need an account of solidarity that neither ignores the need for particular relational spaces; nor makes the presence of those relationships the limit of our obligation. I call this associative solidarity.5 In part two of the paper, I examine what specifically the account of associative solidarity would demand. Many calls for solidarity with refugees seem to lack a prescription of what solidarity with refugees would provide for individual persons. My proposal of associative solidarity aims to address this lack. I suggest that refuge is the most appropriate site for a duty of solidarity, since refugees are by definition the most vulnerable to the annihilation of the social—they are persecuted by their states of origin, stripped of their social, political and civic rights and lack the protection of a state. We, therefore, have an obligation to stand in solidarity with individuals having suffered this loss, by creating particularistic bonds with them to meet their social needs. I argue that solidarity with refugees is a universal obligation of justice, namely to build what is particular. I end with an example to illustrate the content of a duty of solidarity toward refugees. The Canadian Refugee sponsorship regime implies that each refugee has a group of individuals or a family involved and preoccupied with their successful integration into the social fabric. Sponsors "provide financial support and settlement assistance for the refugees they sponsor, usually for one year after arrival."6 The most immediate advantage of the system is that refugees have a social network upon arrival in the host society. They have a group of people who feel responsible for them, who share the task of finding housing, entertaining and introducing them to the ways of their new society, finding clothing and employment. As I will explain, the program illustrates what may constitute solidarity with refugees in light of the need to distribute access to relational goods fairly, and in light of the promise of asylum that includes providing access to the means of individual autonomy and agency. The relationship between refugees and members of the asylum-granting state needs to be thicker than either social or political accounts of solidarity can justify, or so I argue.7 A well-known account of the basis and requirements of social solidarity or solidarity within society8 has been proposed by David Miller who considers it necessarily embedded in ideas about national identity and definitions of citizenship. Miller's account of social solidarity is motivated by the worry that states need to have the necessary social conditions in place to support redistributive policies within the context of the welfare state. Call this the social solidarity caveat. Social solidarity is putatively tied to the fact that individuals identify with their community, a feeling only plausible within the context of a shared national identity. Miller thus cautions that we should be wary of adopting immigration policies that may change the makeup of our community for fear of what might happen to feelings of social solidarity.9 In fact, while Miller first writes about a nationality's power to "increase" people's sense of solidarity,10 he soon sheds his reserve and writes that "among large aggregates of people, only a common nationality can provide the sense of solidarity that make [democracy and social justice] possible".11 Much state activity involves the furthering of goals, which cannot be achieved without the voluntary co-operation of citizens. For this activity to be successful the citizens must trust the state, and they must trust one another to comply with what the state demands of them. […] Since adhering to the rules the state proposes will usually have costs, each person must be confident that the others will generally comply—and this involves mutual trust.12 From the perspective of the host society, cultural integration matters because it allows immigrants to identify with that society more fully and to adopt its national identity as their own. Certainly that identity must adapt to acknowledge their presence. […] But a shared national identity is a resource that can allow a society to solve collective action problems, pursue policies of social justice, and function more effectively as a democracy.13 To be fair, Miller accepts that the shape and form a national identity takes is malleable. This is to say that national identity is built on civic principles that can include and integrate newcomers, and signal to them that they are now part of those who shape and form the nation. The community Miller has in mind, in other words, is not preestablished. However, my critique remains valid—which is to say that Miller's conception of solidarity still assumes that the community has to be given first, before we can foster feelings of solidarity. This is to say that we do not establish a community through acts of solidarity but we share solidarity because of our sense community. Following this interpretation, then, solidarity within society is a by-product of a history of collective interaction, of a collective memory, or of active integration into a preexisting collective. Social solidarity emanates from previously established groups, such as a nation, based on fellow feelings and possibly shared goals.14 In Miller's recent discussion of what we owe to strangers, he reiterates arguments for partiality that should guide our concern for fellow citizens, and which contrast with obligations toward strangers. We owe fellow citizens particularist duties of community, whereas we owe strangers reasons for our actions.15 Miller's use of the social solidarity caveat makes two different claims that are worth separating in the context of my argument here. The first is that feelings of community are at the basis for solidaristic action. The second claim worth distinguishing is that social solidarity is instrumental for social justice. These two claims are different in nature and scope and, in fact, are not as interdependent as Miller suggests.16 Here, I will criticize the first of these, which I take to be a claim about the nature of solidarity. Now, one could object that there is simply a "purely verbal dispute" between Miller's position and my own here.17 Miller could concede that we owe duties of solidarity to outsiders, while maintaining that we have a specific set of particularist duties toward fellow nationals. I have discussed and criticized Miller's position on this elsewhere.18 What is important for my argument here is that Miller does not conceive of solidaristic obligations toward outsiders as duties. Instead, our duties toward outsiders are based on their needs, but they are not duties of solidarity. To put this differently, we may say, linguistically, that we feel solidarity with some outside group, implying feelings of empathy, fellow feeling, and the desire to help, yet such feelings are not identical to solidarity within a group, which is reciprocal and generates duties.19 In contrast to Miller's account of solidarity as flowing from a given community, Avery Kolers suggests that solidarity defines the community to which we have obligations. This is important since it allows for more flexible boundaries of the solidaristic group. Kolers defines his account of solidarity as "political action on others' terms."20 Thus, "solidarity-given obligations are individual obligations to constitute the collective in pursuit of something else."21 Solidarity is the constitutive factor for a group, not based on a group. A second distinguishing feature of Kolers' account is the stance of deference that those who act in solidarity have to adopt: "the agent in solidarity is disposed to defer […] about what is to be done, how and why"22 to those with whom she stands in solidarity. To stand in solidarity does then not imply that we need to identify with the course of action chosen and adopted by others. In contrast to Miller's conception of social solidarity, according to which solidarity solves problems of collective action, a political conception of solidarity does not require that we agree on how to realize social justice. Instead, the political concept of solidarity reminds us that those whose terms we adopt ought to determine what kind of action we ought to choose. To illustrate, Kolers proposes the example of Rosa Parks who was asked to vacate her seat on the bus for a white passenger. If a well-meaning fellow passenger wants to be in solidarity with Parks but her interventions risk putting Parks into danger or harm's way, the fellow passenger ought to defer to Parks' guidance on how to oppose oppression. This is how we ought to understand solidarity as political action on other's terms. One might object here, though, that a sense of deference cannot be unlimited if it is not to jeopardize solidarity.23 This is to say that if I were to defer without ever agreeing with a course of action, it is not clear what form my solidarity can take. However, I do not believe that deference is necessarily problematic unless we have a particular idea what solidaristic action looks like. Most minimally, I can donate money to a campaign to save trees in my neighbourhood, even if I do not agree with the strategy of chaining myself to specific trees. Put differently, deference does not question endorsement of the cause and different actions can count as acts of solidarity.24 "[t]the concept of solidarity is related to empathy … in that solidarity suggests a standing with others and a readiness to act with them, based on a certain emphatic understanding of the social situation of these others and a shared perspective with them."28 Kolers, moreover, wants to argue for a duty-based concept of solidarity. In this Kantian vein, duties of solidarity are owed in order to prevent others from coming to harm, not because individuals are emotionally invested in the well-being of others generally, or a specific group of others particularly. To put this otherwise, the Kantian duty of solidarity that Kolers describes defines with whom we should stand in solidarity.29 An example may illustrate what Kolers has in mind. Imagine that our reason to be in solidarity is that we want to defend the interests of those who lack equal access to opportunities. According to Kolers' account, the group with whom we stand in solidarity may change depending on who we believe to lack access to equal opportunities, and presumably whether or not these opportunities are defined socially or globally. So for example, we could say that we are in solidarity with low-skilled workers in our community because we believe that they lack access to equal opportunities in an economy that prices and rewards professional skills, and that considers so called low-skilled workers as dispensable.30 Yet when confronted with global contexts of lack of access to fair equality of opportunity, we may decide to direct our political action towards the globally disadvantaged, such as refugees, rather than the locally disadvantaged. "[T]he referent of oppressed shifts and [reason] r shifts with it."31 This is plausible if we accept that standing in solidarity, while being a perfect duty in Kolers' Kantian account, does not determine the object of the duty, but only the content of the duty. The content of the duty arises from the reasons for it: "Solidarity with those who suffer inequity constitutes equitable treatment of them."32 So while in the first instance, we could think that Miller and Kolers' accounts build upon each other—that Miller describes the community from which feelings of solidarity flow, while Kolers describes the content of the obligations of solidarity, including a sense of deference— Kolers' stipulation of solidarity as agent-neutral is indeed a critique of the community-based account of Miller's concept of solidarity. Yet some could argue that there is a kind of lexical ordering of duties of solidarity: Miller's duties of social solidarity are then acceptable if they do not conflict with the kind of duties of solidarity that Kolers describes. As I discussed above, however, duties of social solidarity often conflict with duties toward strangers—and Miller does not accept the primacy of duties toward strangers as duties of solidarity over duties towards fellow nationals.33 Kolers' account raises several questions for the case of refugees. Most importantly, the link between solidarity and a Kantian idea of equity and moral respect raises the question why we would need the concept of solidarity in the first place. Unless we understand solidarity simply as the vehicle through which we express our respect and moral concern for the welfare of refugees, it is not clear why solidarity with refugees is important. Put differently, the account here begs the question what moral work the concept of solidarity as political solidarity can plausibly achieve. Rather than being called upon to stand in solidarity, could we not say that we are called upon to respect the equal moral value of all human beings, and that we ought to act in accordance with the duty that flows from this value? Put otherwise, what does solidarity bring to the analysis? So far, I have juxtaposed Miller's account of social solidarity with Koler's account of political solidarity. I have criticized Miller for his reliance on fellow feeling or particularist social relations as grounds of solidarity, and have sided with Kolers who argues for an account of solidarity based on reasons and need. However, as I said just now, the political conception of solidarity seems to beg the question what solidarity is for. This, I suggest is the first troubling aspect of Kolers' account. A second problem with political solidarity is that it neglects an important aspect of what it means to show equal moral respect to all in a Kantian sense. I want to argue that the social aspect of solidarity needs to be brought back in to give individuals their moral due. Taking the case of refugees, solidarity with refugees then means to focus and address social deprivation and denial of community membership that refugees suffer. To defend this claim, consider the social conditions of individual autonomy and agency as important parts of an individual life well lived. Increasingly, the literature on migration and refuge accepts that promoting individual agency and autonomy among migrants more generally, but refugees in particular, ought to be an important goal of theorizing migration, and an important goal of asylum policy.34 In the first instance, this discussion is part of the definition of what the promise of asylum entails. I stipulate that the promise of asylum includes the provision of a new home, the protection of human rights and access to social membership. Refugees of human rights abuses are looking for another state to temporarily or permanently assume the duty to protect their human rights and, over time, to provide them with access to the full range of social, civic and political rights.35 Why is membership important? Membership confers status as an equal, it confers the possibility to access the conditions of autonomy within the country of asylum. Yet this promise seems to get short shrift in the current system. This warrants exploration. "The imagined needs of refugees have been reduced to two basics—food and shelter—and it has become assumed that the most viable way to provide such rights is through camps. It was not meant to be this way. Refugee-intake strategies were originally intended to promote access to autonomy, with particular focus on the right to work and freedom of movement."36 "[A] legal regime which is in truth fundamentally oriented to the promotion of autonomy of refugees has been 'pathologized' to focus instead on finding cures for refugeehood. A regime which was actually established to guarantee refugees lives in dignity until and unless either the cause of their flight is firmly eradicated or the refugee himself or herself chooses to pursue some alternative solution to their disenfranchisement has now become a regime which labours single-mindedly to design and implement top-down solutions which 'fix the refugee problem'. […] But refugee protection … is not primarily about looking for solutions. Refugee protection is instead fundamentally oriented to creating conditions of independence and dignity, which enable refugees themselves to decide how they wish to cope with predicaments. It is about ensuring autonomy, not about the pursuit of externally conceived 'fixes'."37 Both Collier and Betts, and Hathaway thus point to the original value guiding refugee protection, namely to provide for the conditions of autonomy for those who have been persecuted in their home countries, who have had their human rights violated and who are seeking a new home. In this view, the original goal of protection was to enable conditions of autonomy, to restore as much as possible the conditions to allow individuals to lead the kind of lives they hope to lead. One way of characterizing the kind of moral respect that Kolers demands is to say that we need to provide aslum-seekers with a new home and access to membership in their new home. Note that I do not wish to imply that some refugees may not hope to return to their countries of origin over time. And indeed, the right to return may be another important way to foster individual autonomy as I have argued elsewhere.38 I simply wish to suggest that social membership in the country of asylum in cases where the option of membership in the country of origin is barred or not viable is an important background condition of individual autonomy. We may mobilize many reasons to sustain this claim—the one I want to focus on here is that the conditions of autonomy and agency that Hathaway, Betts and Collier argue for depend crucially on social membership. Individuals in society need their social needs met in order to be able to have access to the means of autonomy and agency that was at the origin of asylum and refuge. The term 'social deprivation' does not refer to poverty and its associated social ills, but instead to genuine, interpersonal, social deprivation irrespective of economic conditions. Social deprivation is a persisting lack of minimally adequate opportunities for decent or supportive human contact including interpersonal interaction, associative inclusion, and interdependent care.39 Such deprivation can take different forms. The first one is of course that original membership is no longer available and that refugees are displaced from their home. Homelessness can have nefarious effects on their capacity for autonomous agency.40 Another form of social deprivation may stem from the fact that those persecuted by their states of origin arrive in an asylum-granting state as asylum-seekers. Put differently, in the first instance, asylum-seekers do not have the status of members, nor that of members to be. While awaiting the decision on their asylum request, they are kept apart in significant ways from the rest of society. Asylum-seekers do not have the right to work, their movements are under surveillance, as are their dwellings. This is not to deny that many asylum-seekers are helped and attended to by many members of the host societies—many church groups and volunteers make it their cause to help those newly arrived to find their footing. Societies are of course multi-layered and many members of civil society in asylum-granting countries have tried to combat restrictive policies of their governments.41 However, asylum-seekers are not granted membership in the way that citizens enjoy it. Only once asylum-seekers become refugees, that is, once their asylum claim is accepted and they are possibly on the way to citizenship within the asylum-granting society, may they slowly gain access to the social networks that would satisfy their social, civic and political needs as equals.42 Yet we can easily imagine that many refugees, including long-term refugees, experience a stigma attached to their way into the countries of asylum that prevents them from making the country of asylum, its people and mores their new home. As Brownlee's analysis suggests, many refugees experience a particular dimension of social deprivation, namely "community-level social deprivation in the form of displacement, exile, denial of political, legal or cultural identity, or denial of community membership."43 Considering social deprivation thus points to an often neglected aspect of our lives in writings about solidarity, namely relational needs. Relational needs are basic human needs in several respects. Social relationships are an important basic social need since they provide access to the basis of individual self-respect as I have intimated before. John Rawls describes the basis of self-respect as a primary good that all egalitarian societies should aim to distribute fairly through the institutions of the state—otherwise, liberal-democratic states do not fulfill the promise of realizing the equal moral status of their members. Self-respect according to Rawls has two aspects: "it includes a person's sense of his own value, his secure conviction that his conception of his good, his plan of life, is worth carrying out. Self-respect implies further a confidence in one's own ability, so far as it is within one's power, to fulfil one's intentions." The "sense of our own worth" relies in turn on "… (1) having a rational plan of life […]44; and (2) finding our person and deeds appreciated and confirmed by others who are likewise esteemed and their association enjoyed".45 To put this differently, individuals will have access to the basis of self-respect if they can engage in society and participate fully, engaging and pursuing a specific life plan that they deem good or valuable. Social deprivation, as Brownlee argues, undermines the conditions for full autonomy and the capacity for self-respect since it denies individual members the recognition by others as equal members of society.46 More perniciously still, when experiencing social deprivation, some members of society are not only denied recognition of their own self. Social deprivation also denies individual members the right to ask for recognition, since only full-fledged members can demand it. One needs to be accepted as a moral equal first before one can lodge a claim for equal recognition. Second, social relationships are important for the possibility of individual autonomy. Brownlee refers here to Joseph Raz' account of autonomy. According to Raz, it is vital to take into consideration the means of autonomy as grounded in the relations to others.47 Our community membership is then important because it allows us to present ourselves as the person we would like to be, as who we want to be conceived and how we hope to be recognized by others.48 We could convince ourselves that Kolers' political account of solidarity captures this social need. Remember that Kolers proposes that we adopt a stance of deference to others, thus recognizing others as the agents they are. However, associative solidarity goes beyond these well-known ideas of recognition.49 My account of associative solidarity explicitly stipulates that relational goods are part of what we owe to individuals as moral equals, not only because of the uses relationships serve, but fundamentally because relational needs are part of the basic needs all individuals ought to have met. The point I wish to make, therefore, is that social inclusion is an important component of giving individuals their moral due. Social inclusion constitutes the background condition of having some of one's fundamental needs met. Yet social inclusion is hampered by the stigma that comes from entering asylum-granting states as an asylum-claimant, as somebody who is often construed as a recipient of charity, or as a burden to the host society, as someone who is under scrutiny as a person, or whose claims of persecution are scrutinized. Suffering such stigma may deprive refugees of a sense of belonging to the social fabric. The social stigma attached to their coming to their new homes may have detrimental effect to the capacity to be autonomous.50 This may be the case even though, as refugees, they are citizens in the making and should thus be on the way to equal status through citizenship. Moreover, and if we accept the link made between the relational aspect of our lives and the basis for individual autonomy and capacity for self-respect both Raz and Rawls invoke, then the kind of social deprivation refugees experience is morally problematic beyond the lack of recognition and beyond the question of individual need. It is then also problematic because when socially deprived, and regardless of the uses of social relationships we can imagine, individual refugees do not have access to the basis of individual autonomy and agency. Yet this is what should be the aim of refugee policy, as I explained earlier. Assume that we accept that social relationships generate most minimally the kind of social context that is at the basis of self-respect and provides the background conditions for individual autonomy. I now want to argue that the problem of social deprivation for refugees is even more pernicious. One of the reasons why social relations are important criteria in our assessment of access to the primary goods of society is the fact that social relations can generate goods that individuals on their own cannot generate or access.51 Social relations and social membership are not only necessary ingredients for individual autonomy and the basis of self-respect, but relational reso