This paper will compare the presentation of solidarity in mainstream Christian ethics with the practices of solidarity as described in recent novels about immigrant and refugee experiences. The practice of solidarity in diaspora communities illuminates aspects of solidarity that have been hidden in mainstream Christian ethics. 1) Solidarity can be a “burdened virtue” that does not necessarily lead to flourishing. 2) Solidarity is practiced by “narrative selves” that inherit identities, relationships, and obligations.

Most accounts of immigration ethics implicitly rely upon neoclassical migration theory, which understands migration as the result of poverty and unemployment in sending countries. This paper argues that neoclassical migration theory assumes an account of the human person as solely an autonomous rational agent which then leads to ethics of migration which overemphasize freedom and self-determination. This tendency to assume that migration works as neoclassical migration theory describes is shared by political philosophers, such as Joseph Carens, Michael Walzer, and David (...) Miller. This paper argues that all three philosophers incorrectly frame migration as a contest between the freedom of the migrant and the communal self-determination of the political community. Migration systems theory is presented as a theory that draws upon a relationally embedded understanding of autonomy in order to begin to develop a migration systems ethics. This paper concludes by arguing that the central ethical category for an ethics of migration is not freedom or self-determination, but justice-in-relation. (shrink)