Critical Cosmopolitanism and the Ethics of Mobility

This chapter sets out criteria for a critical cosmopolitan account of the political philosophy of migration. It develops this account through an exploration of Matheiu Kassovitz’s film La Haine that follows three youth from the banlieue of Chateloup-les-Vignes in the aftermath of neighborhood clashes with the police. The multidimensional forms of exclusion that the banlieue youth experience suggest the need for a more complex ethics of borders. To guide the search for this ethics, the chapter outlines a critical cosmopolitan ethics of migration and borders that combines insights from the social sciences and philosophy and seeks to promote people’s capabilities and to contest relationships of domination and hierarchy