Although they are often under the track or understood as secondary and niche topics, questions related to migratory movements and obligations towards foreigners have always been a topic at the centre of philosophical reflection. Plato discusses, for example, the Laws of Migration (IV, 708 b), and the advantages and disadvantages of cultural homogeneity (708 c-d), as well as obligations towards foreigners and persons seeking protection (729 e-730a). Seneca in De Consolatione in Helviam dwells on the fact that in all places "tribes and entire peoples have changed their homes" (VII, 1) and have set out in search of new places to stay. In De civitate Dei Augustine confronts himself with the right of asylum (I, 4-7 and 34).
In the first modern utopias such as that of Moro, Campanella and Bacon, we find long considerations on the reception of foreigners, the formation of colonies and the advantages or disadvantages of opening and closing borders. Even legal theorists such as Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau recognize the philosophical relevance of migratory movements: Hobbes in Leviathan dwells on colonies (chap. 30); Locke examines the question of how "foreigners" can become members of a society (Second Treaty, VIII 95). To these we can add the reflections of French moralists, such as the essays of Montaigne, but many other examples could be given.
If we turn our gaze to our contemporary society, the interest in these questions extends from political actuality to daily life, but with respect to them the contribution that philosophy, and moral philosophy in particular, can offer in this area is not always highlighted.
In particular, the questions raised recall the need to reflect on a) the methodological approach to the development of the principles of law and justice; b) the substantive design of specific principles of justice, for example the right to universal freedom of movement is one of the fundamental rights of every human being or not; (c) the legitimacy of immigration and immigration policies, both in terms of the possibility of justifying policy choices in general and of legitimising specific policies on immigration and emigration; (e) the question of the stability of political orders and whether these can be achieved through endangered or transported migration; and (f) the question of the relationship between the individual, the freedom and sovereignty of the State, and thus the question of the extent to which they may or may not restrict freedom of movement between Member States.
Migratory movements are therefore the reason for philosophical considerations, but ultimately lead to fundamental questions of philosophy, in particular on the role of the Other in the structuring of subjectivity, both on the gnoseological and the ethical-political level. The course aims to show how these considerations are reworked by eighteenth-nineteenth-century philosophy. Inevitably this theme imposes an analysis of the problem of the relationship with the Other. To clarify this aspect, the second part of the course will focus on the concept of recognition.

With regard to the question of immigration, the text compares - especially from American theorists and philosophers (Michael Walzer, David Miller, Ryan Pevnik, Joseph Carens...) - the options that support the need for "closed borders", "open borders" or "porous borders".