A Freedom in Name Only? Effective and Non-Effective exercises of Freedom of Movement

It is a core characteristic of freedom of movement that its exercise requires the use of monetary and non-monetary resources. While resourcing is essential to the exercise of freedom of movement of citizens, most of the normative literature on migration, and immigration restrictions, in particular, has paid little attention to the different ways in which the resourcing of migration, and especially the lack of it, is key to its effective exercise and normative value. This is due to a focus in the migration literature on migration restrictions associated with physical controls at borders as an instantiation of state coercion (Abizadeh 2008, Blake 2001, Miller 2009; 2016). This picture of migration restrictions overlooks, however, the subtler restrictions that can affect migrants, especially when their access to socio-economic rights is limited. In this paper, I aim to clarify the role that resourcing plays in freedom of movement. I offer a normative account of freedom of movement as a freedom that needs to be robustly resourced via equal access to socio-economic rights in order for migrants to be able to exercise the basic liberties it serves effectively, most notably freedom of association and freedom of occupational choice. I show that those committed to the value of freedom of occupation and association should still be concerned by restrictions on migrants' access to basic socio-economic rights that undermine the effective exercise of these two basic liberties within the state where the right to freedom of movement is exercised.