International Migration and Transnational Ethics of Well-Being

__Abstract__ Migration involves a search for well-being and security, but is not guaranteed to bring either. In the short run it quite often reduces both. What are the hoped for benefits for which the risks are undertaken? Insecurity can generate migration, and in the case of refugees from conflict, migration is primarily insecurity driven. But apart from people fleeing the most extreme physical insecurity, what motivates many migrants is something more than security. Migration can itself put people’s security in jeopardy, and migrants are often risk-takers, although sometimes they act on the basis of bad information, miscalculation or duress. It would be self-contradictory to risk everything for the hope of security alone. Some people even flee a security that is felt as stifling or dull. So migration involves considerable uncertainty. Some migrants achieve an acceptable or even admirable outcome while others end in situations of great insecurity and distress. Some lose their lives. The risks are greatest for illegal migrants. This chapter looks, first, at migrant lives, at being—ill-being, well-being, and plain be-ing—as well as at their degree of security.3