17. Social Readiness: Care Ethics and Migration

This chapter applies the lens of care ethics to suggest an alternative moral consideration for issues of migration. Traditional ethical approaches address rules, policies, and rights and although these are important moral markers for society, they do not account for relationships and dispositions. This discussion investigates a society’s ethical readiness to welcome and care for migrants. Ethical readiness refers to the capacity to engage in responsive caring including cognitive and emotional habits such as empathetic imagination, willingness to learn, and ability to take action. The chapter introduces care ethics emphasizing its epistemic and skill-based dimensions and develops a notion of social readiness to care applied to issues of migration in service of a culture of hospitality.