Philippe Van Parijs
In terms of social justice, I am — against Rawls, Michael Walzer, and many other “egalitarians,” a globalist. Any global equalizing mechanism is prima facie a contribution to greater justice, and migration is a powerful mechanism of this type.
Moreover, I believe that the demographic imbalance between continents is simply untenable. Europe’s population is expected to plummet from 750 to 650 million by the end of the century according to United Nations projections, while Africa’s is expected to soar from 1.5 to 3.8 billion. High levels of transnational migration are both desirable and unavoidable.
In my own city, Brussels, foreign citizens and Belgian citizens of recent foreign origin make up close to 80 percent of the population. The city has two official languages — French and Dutch — the only languages in which public services are legally allowed to be offered. These languages are only known, prior to their arrival, by a minority of immigrants.
The learning and transmission of languages and the adjustment of the linguistic regime of public services are therefore key components of what I called earlier the “technology of integration.” They must not only enable the newcomers and their children to quickly develop locally usable human and social capital; they must also ease local cohabitation while promoting the maintenance of fruitful links with immigrants’ regions of origin.
Since 2020, I have chaired the Brussels Council for Multilingualism set up by Brussels’s regional government. This is one of the causes I intend to keep serving as long as I am physically and mentally up to it. A modest, local, down-to-earth contribution to the huge — and, I hope, tireless — collective effort to make our world less unjust.
Auteur: Philippe Van Parijs
