Book Review: Tisha M. Rajendra. 2017. Migrants and Citizens: Justice and Responsibility in the Ethics of Immigration. Grand Rapids (Michigan): William B. Eerdman Publishing Company, 179 p.

DOI: 10.33876/2311-0546/2022-2/333-339

Abstract

The publication of T. Rajendra's book is very timely. The author's main argument is that for understanding the contemporary migration crisis and fair distributions of responsibilities between citizens and migrants, current relations between locals and newcomers should be put into historical context. Heated debates and ambiguous attitudes towards refugees and migrants in receiving countries create, according to Rajendra, different, sometimes diametrically opposed narratives, which often contain historical inaccuracies and even barefaced lies. She thinks that justice to migrants requires correcting these inaccuracies, fiction, and falsifications and creating narratives more truly describing relations between citizens and migrants. Hence, these inaccurate and incomplete narratives should be replaced with fuller narratives faithful to reality. Rajendra concludes that an adequate answer to ethical questions about citizens' responsibilities to migrants and potential migrants and the bases of these responsibilities requires not only new narratives but also new accounts on justice grounded on the ideas of responsibilities rather than the ideas of human rights that are typically used in the migration discourse. She calls it "justice as responsibility for relationships". T. Rajendra's book provides a fresh look at the migration crisis and the problem of undocumented migrants and offers a new approach to the reimagination and reconstruction of narratives about immigration – this complex and contradictory reality of our days.