What to Say to Those Who Stay? Free Movement is a Human Right of Universal Value Kieran Oberman Free movement is under attack, both within Europe and at the frontier. Within Europe, we are witnessing Brexit, Swiss discontent with EU migration and the electoral rise of the far right. At the frontier, free movement has never fared well. The EU has always been something of a gated community, allowing insiders to move while keeping outsiders out. The only difference now, with wars in Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere, is the higher numbers seeking entry and the higher numbers dying in the attempt. How has Europe responded? The current drive is to reinforce the borders, while calling on ‘safe’ third countries, such as a Turkey, to house refugees. Expect more deaths and more misery in the years to come. It is a good time then to be raising Floris de Witte’s question: is free movement worth defending? Like De Witte, I think the answer is definitely ‘yes’, but I offer a different line of argument. For De Witte, free movement is important in encouraging Europeans to change their values: to move away from a narrow concern with nations, membership and exclusion and towards a cosmopolitan regard for multiple identities and ‘anchorless’ belonging. While this a fascinating and original take on free movement, it seems unnecessarily complex and controversial. Not everyone will accept the cosmopolitan ideological stance it assumes and even those who do might question whether free movement is either necessary or effective at promoting this ideology. The argument I offer is simpler and, in one important sense, less controversial. It defends free movement not as means to change values but rather as an extension of the values we already hold. It also offers reasons for why those who stay in their country of origin should nevertheless value their freedom of movement. The human right to immigrate Democratic societies place significant emphasis on basic liberties. These basic liberties are protected in international law. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) lists rights to freedom of religion, expression, © The Author(s) 2019 R. Bauböck (ed.), Debating European Citizenship, IMISCOE Research Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89905-3_29 145