The Compassion of 'Compassionate Migration'

Abstract

“Compassionate migration” carries social significance and implies moral criteria. This practical notion should provide means to review, envision, and develop laws, policies, and practices for how we engage non-citizens and build political community within wider human relations. Yet “compassion” is an elastic concept; competing discourses and practices reveal conflicting meanings, assumptions, and orientations. “Compassionate migration” needs criteria upon which its “compassion” is evaluated, including how this notion evolves and what practical results it inspires—such as social cohesion, immigrant integration, strengthened community, and societal transformation.

Bookending the chapter’s conceptually driven discussion are two recent, and opposite, case studies in the American immigration debate: Donald Trump’s odd rhetoric of “compassion” and Hazleton, Pennsylvania’s normative shift from a locus of “enmification” toward a community of “Thanksmas.”

Keywords: moral psychology, hate studies, conflict resolution, compassion, conceptual elasticity, enmification, immigrant policy, Hazleton, Trump

JEL Classification: none