International Trade, Fairness, and Labour Migration
Fair Trade Special Issue guest-edited by David Miller. Moral Philosophy and Politics, 1 (2014), p. 289-313.
Posted: 14 Oct 2015
Date Written: December 01, 2014
Abstract
This paper aims to show that fairness in trade calls for relaxing existing WTO rules to include a greater liberalisation of labour migration. After having addressed several objections to global egalitarianism, it will argue, first, that the world’s rich and the world’s poor participate in a same multilateral trading system whose point is primarily to reduce trade barriers and hence to establish global economic competitions, in order to raise their standards of living; second, that these competitions are subject to requirements of formal and substantive fairness; and, third, that the substantive fairness of the competitions that are taking place in the field of trade in goods is likely to require a greater liberalisation of labour migration, especially low-skilled labour from developing countries.
Keywords: WTO, global egalitarianism, labour migration, substantive fairness, associatiative obligations
JEL Classification: F15, F22, I31, K33, J61, J68, J71, O15
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation