"Migrant", "non-migrant", "refugee", "non-refugee", here or there, self or other... what are we looking for at the end: unity or division, recognition of all and each or discrimination and marginalisation?
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In Europe, in particular, it seems more and more that some people (especially politicians, the media, social actors and even citizens who consider themselves "native") are trying to frighten (themselves) by exacerbating the difference to the point of opening the way to intolerance.
The point here is not to advocate for naivety or blind pacifism, but simply, and this is the Josefa mission, to argue that instead of amalgamating the human beings that we are, into sectarianised groups: "migrants", each human being is unique and can neither lock others into a "box" nor allow themselves to be locked (but after all, this is also their "right" or even sometimes their interest to "get their rights" as "assisted") into a category. For we are all of us migrants, and there is no problem of migration or migrants, but migrations.
Moreover, speaking of rights, one would have to be precisely blind not to see that the famous "right of asylum" is today being undermined, not in its application (already and for a long time much discussed or debated) but in its very foundation. Here again, it would have been simpler (wiser?) to think about our various uniquenesses, or even particularities, and to think about "rights of asylum".
Of course, to remain consistent with the Josefa proposal, both migration and asylum and therefore rights need to be radically rethought and, at the very least, pluralized in order, as Josefa said earlier (and has been saying for many years), to avoid opposing some "non-migrants" to others "migrants.
Therefore, while there are certainly emergency situations that require "emergency" responses (cf. the possible role of the UNHCR, for example), emergency should certainly not become a constant. Looking for causes for a problem "migrants" is only a narrow vision of a few (politicians, media, sociologists...) who continue to want to think for others (isn't this the famous and old game of "Western-style" development?).
As in the case of the climate or the environment, or even religions (whatever they may be), is it not urgent to consider our migrations as the foundation of human life and to remember that, as far as humanity is concerned, there is not one group or category that would hold a so-called identity (pe "non-migrants") at the risk of an absolutism that would then generate another group (pe "migrants") with a differentiated right of application in terms of free humanity.
In conclusion, without totally calling into question a body of law (which is often aggregated with a well-established state nationalism with very rigid borders: what is "European law"? ) necessary at a given moment, for Josefa, the fact remains that thinking about "law(s) and migration(s)" would open up the field of possibilities in terms of political and societal transition so that future generations do not look back on our current era as a time of history entangled in civilisational schemes that only knew how to live through "clashes" or dialectics of opposition (racial, intellectual, religious, economic, migratory...).
We were migrants, we are migrants, we will be migrants. Rights (and the rights-makers that we are for the most part) are invited to favour our migrations and not to constrain or even restrict them (especially not for one group for the benefit of another group, but you will have understood that...).
Gilbert
