From Workers to Migrants, from Distributive Justice to Inclusion: Exploring the Changing Social Democratic Imagination

There is little awareness that from the perspective of distributive justice, a transnational market society exercises a justice-disabling effect. No longer is society perceived to be a system of co-operation, the net product of which is to be distributed among all participants fairly, but rather viewed as a composite of uncoordinated templates for the individual pursuit of opportunities. A society of this type does no longer regard a centralised political effort at redistribution as its essential objective; rather, its most fundamental principle concerns equal access to opportunities without regard to nationality or local preference. Such a concern with inclusion appears to be at odds with the received vision of distributive justice whose realisation presupposes bounded solidarity and, hence, closure.