59

This article focuses on a passage from Spheres of Justice where Michael Walzer contends that we have “obligations of the same sort that we have toward fellow nationals” toward “any group of people whom we have helped turn into refugees”. The argument is often referred to in the field of migration justice to support a reparative conception of asylum, according to which long-term admission to the territory constitutes a means for states to repair the wrongs they have inflicted on non-members, especially as a result of their external interventions. However, such an interpretation is a misunderstanding of Walzer’s argument, which aims to circumscribe the limits of the political community: for him, the transformation of individuals into refugees is the source of a relationship of affinity. Through what we shall call the argument of harm, or “injury” as Walzer writes, as affinity, he hopes to answer the question: who is an American? This paper aims to reconstruct the meaning of Walzer’s argument, in order to provide the keys to a normative assessment of its power and interest in the context of migration justice.