№ 4 - 2006
Ban’kovskaya S.P.
Migration, Freedom and Citizenship: Paradoxes of Marginalization

Freedom begins with the freedom of movement in space. Making a start from this thesis, the author reflects on those changes which are going on in the world in connection with the rethinking of the notion freedom of movement and with the indi-vidualization and democratization of mobility. The uppermost question in the author's mind is the question of how to combine the freedom of movement, the freedom of choosing citizenship (its exterritoriality), the freedom of differences — with political and territorial integrity, definiteness (and ontological security). According to her conclusion, individualized and democratically arranged mobility is not compatible with a typifying approach to political identification of migrants, with attempts of assimilating them on the basis of the community of the territory, and therefore migrants' right of non-participation appears to her more important than the right of participation, as it is exactly the former that contains acknowledgement of the primacy of individual's desire being expressed, over mechanical unification.