In recent years there have been massive migratory waves, particularly into Europe and the United States. However, there is deep and widespread disagreement over how the nations to which migrants are headed should deal with this situation. Some believe that they should prioritise the migrant’s right to a better life. Others object that they should prioritise the nation’s common good whenever unrestricted immigration could be deeply harmful to that country’s economy, culture, and local communities.
In navigating these debates, Catholics need to ensure that their guiding principles are evangelical rather than ideological. For this reason, they need to know and unpack the Church’s authoritative teachings on the right to migrate. That is easier said than done. There is much debate over what that teaching actually is. There is also much room for discussion over whether any concrete policy applies it soundly or only in part.
In this interview, Antônio Lemos discusses his pick of the five best books for learning about the Church’s teaching on the right to migrate.
Antônio Lemos is a Catholic moral theologian. After studying law at the Universidade Federal do Paraná in Brazil, he graduated in philosophy and theology at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome, Italy. He completed his doctoral studies at the University of Notre Dame, where he submitted a dissertation entitled The right to travel and dwell in Francisco de Vitoria and Domingo de Soto: a historical retrieval of the right to migrate in Catholic social teaching. His research interests include Catholic social teaching, migration ethics, business ethics, and bioethics. Presently, he is a postdoctoral fellow at the department of theology at University of Notre Dame.
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Does the Church teach that there's a natural right to migrate? A very good question. During the twentieth century, the popes teach unanimously that there is a right to migrate. This teaching really starts with Pius XII’s apostolic constitution on the Church’s care for migrants, Exsul familia. In it, he talks of the natural right to migrate. This is a very bold statement. It means that we humans, on account of our human nature, should be allowed to migrate to other countries.
Pius XII repeats this teaching in several radio message and addresses. Later, John XXIII reiterates it in his famous encyclical Pacem in terrris. There he expounds upon the fundamental human rights, such as the right to freedom and life, and includes the right to migrate.
Every single pope since then has confirmed and reaffirmed that people have a right to migrate.
Nevertheless, Pius XII is the only pope to have said that it is a natural right. The other popes do not go that far. They say that the right to migrate is founded upon on the dignity of the human person or on the universal destination of goods (the theological principle that God has created the earth for the good of all human beings).
Interestingly, although they affirm that people have a right to migrate, all of them, including Pius XII, state that this right is not limited. It needs to be regulated by state in accordance with its common good and security.
You have just mentioned the modern papal teaching on the right to migrate. Does Sacred Scripture offer any clear teachings on the right to migrate, the duty to welcome migrants, or the limits of such a duty? The scriptures do not mention explicitly a right to migrate just as they make no explicit mention of many other rights, such as the right of political participation. However, there are implicit references to the bases of the right. For example, the Bible is full of reference to hospitality, welcoming strangers, and charity towards foreigners.
Many of these references are in the Old Testament. Some are in the Gospel: the way Jesus received people and was kind to them. Especially St. Paul has some very clear references about hospitality. “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares” (Hebrews 13:2).
Many popes have insisted that biblical hospitality is the basis of the right to migrate. However, the bible makes no explicit reference to allowing migrants to come into one's country. We are not talking here about sovereignty or the regulation of borders. Hence, some scholars ask what does Scripture’s talk of hospitality entail. Does it mean that we should receive for a few days the traveller who needs a place to stay for a few days? Does it mean to receive any foreign traveller or simply travellers from a neighbouring city or one’s own country? There is a debate about what this hospitality means. That is why it is important to read the Scripture together with Tradition and how these biblical passages have been received throughout the century by Christians.
That brings me to my next question. Do any of the Church Fathers address this issue in detail? Unlike the twentieth-century popes, no Church Father speaks explicitly of a right to migrate or goes as far to claim that it is a natural right. However, they set the bases for that teaching.
In some of his letters, St. Cyprian of Carthage, one of the most important Church Fathers of the third century, calls his friends and community repeatedly to be hospitable to travellers and foreigners. In one letter, he tells them to use his money to receive travellers and offer them whatever they need.
Another way of finding reference to the right to migrate in the Fathers is by looking at their teaching on the universal destination of goods. Basil, Ambrose, Augustine and especially John Chrysostom teach that God created the earth and its goods to serve the flourishing of all human beings. Nobody should be set aside or hindered from access to the goods—such as land, water, and the fruits of the earth—that they need for their survival and flourishing.
When John Paul II and Benedict XVI talk of the right to migrate, they recall these teachings of the Church Fathers on the universal destination of goods, a principle that is also very present in medieval theologians, such as St. Thomas Aquinas.
The popes argue that those who do not have access those goods, for themselves or for their family, should be allowed to relocate to another country to gain access to them.
We can see how the Fathers point to the right to migrate in this way. Usually, they talk about the situation of the poor and how the well-off should share their means with the poor. Often migrants are poor and do not have the means they need. Those with means have access to the goods of the earth. They should allow the poor to have access to them as well.
Some might want a quick summary of the Church's teaching on the right to migrate and a nation's duty to welcome migrants. Does the Catechism of the Catholic Church n. 2241 provide a complete summation of this teaching or does it leave out anything? That number is a very good summary. What I like about it is that it talks not only of how migrants should be welcomed but also of the state’s duty to protect its borders. The state needs to be generous in welcoming migrants, especially those who are in most need or refugees of war, but also has a duty to oversee its borders, enforce its sovereignty, and ensure that the rule of law is observed and its own common good is in place. This number puts the two realities together.
However, when should a country receive migrants or deny them admittance to secure its borders and preserve its common good. When the situation becomes complex, it is useful to go back to what the popes have taught and the many resources of Catholic social teaching, or to complete that teaching by considering how the Fathers of the Church, medieval theologian, and the Catholic tradition dealt with these issues.
"Leo XIII was the first pope to refer to a right to stay."
The right to migrate appears to be more of a negative than a positive right. A right is negative whenever it consists in the moral entitlement to be immune from violent or coercive restriction when pursuing a certain end. The natural right to religious liberty is a negative right. So is the nubile adult’s natural right to marry. It is wrong to impede a nubile adult from marrying, should that person choose to. However, the natural right to marry does not entail that a nubile adult can demand that the partner of his or her choice must accept their marriage proposal. Although the right is natural, its specification is not. Whose child one is specified by birth, namely nature, but not whose spouse one is. Is not the right to migrate akin to the right to marry in this regard? Those exercising this right may not be impeded from migrating to another country but that does not entitle them to residency or citizenship in any country they choose. Yes. This reminds me of a very important aspect of the Catholic Church’s migration ethics. As you mentioned, the right to migrate is a negative right. No one should be forced to migrate. That is why the popes also point out that alongside the right to migrate there is a right not to migrate. Sometimes they call it the right to remain or stay. Pope Francis called it the freedom to stay or migrate.
During times of war there is often the phenomenon of forced migration. Due to war, poverty, or political persecution, people feel forced or compelled to leave their country. That denotes a dysfunctional country. This is not how human communities should operate. People should feel free whether to migrate or stay in their homeland and lead a dignified life there, while providing for their families.
Leo XIII was the first pope to refer to a right to stay. He does so in Rerum novarum, when speaking of the importance of private property and for a worker to have his own assets. He argues that if people are not allowed to have property, they will be forced to leave their country. In a way, property gives people the freedom to stay in their homeland. Later popes, especially John Paul II and Benedict XVI, stressed this a lot. People should not feel forced to migrate.
Similarly, states should not be forced to accept migrants. They should be able to discern how many migrants they can receive, when and which ones.
It seems, therefore, that the Church's understanding of the right to migrate is quite different from some of the theories, such as cosmopolitanism, which are currently in vogue within mainstream political philosophy. According to cosmopolitanism, the nation state should be re-dimensioned in favour of internationalism or open borders How does the church's understanding of the right to immigrate differ from this cosmopolitan view that is quite prevalent today in academic philosophy? Very recently I read a paper whose author argued that Church’s teaching does not support such a broad idea of cosmopolitanism, but what he called moral cosmopolitanism: that the good of human beings goes beyond borders.
Nevertheless, we need to give an important place to the sovereignty of each state. Each community needs to decide about its own laws.
The Church does a good job at balancing those rights that exist across borders and of defending the state’s role in deciding when it should receive migrants and in what number.
The Church emphasises the role of the state, rather than transnational organizations, in deciding these matters. The Catechism is very clear that each state should be able to secure its borders and so on, but also that it has a duty to be generous in welcoming migrants, especially those in greatest need.
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The first two works that you have chosen are from sixteenth-century Spanish Scholastic theologians who were analysing pressing social issues of the day in the light of St. Thomas Aquinas and his account of natural law. Are they the proximate source of the modern Catholic social teaching on the right to migrate?
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