Description
When the concept of displacement is used in popular, policy-focused and scholarly discussion, it is typically thought to be synonymous with forced migration: to be displaced is to be physically forced from one’s home. However, a number of social scientists have challenged this standard view of displacement in recent years, instead arguing that there can be ‘displacement without migration’ (Lubkemann 2007) in cases where involuntary processes disrupt people’s sense of home and place, even while they remain in their habitual locations. This may be the case in circumstances of war-time violence, colonisation, climate breakdown, gentrification, homelessness, or the social exclusion of minorities. While these scholars have given grounds for expanding the concept of displacement, they have not examined the normative or ethical implications of this broader view explicitly or in depth. In this paper, I begin to sketch a normative framework for approaching ‘displacement without migration’, seeking to understand how to identify and distribute responsibilities for this kind of displacement, and how the harms it causes should be redressed. The harms surrounding this broader form of displacement, I suggest, may be effectively remedied through the promotion of displaced people’s autonomy in situ, but in some cases they may also be meaningfully addressed by offering migratory opportunities to them in certain ways.
Key words: displacement, migration, place, home, justice, responsibility, reparation
