The Structural Misrecognition of Migrants as a Critical Cosmopolitan Moment.

Transnational migrants and their struggles have become central for rethinking cosmopolitanism from below. This chapter builds on theoretical and empirical arguments of critical cosmopolitan perspective and proposals for methodological cosmopolitanism that shifts the angle from which the social sciences look at social reality. Who is regarded as a relevant social actor to put forth cosmopolitan claims is crucial. Nevertheless, the author suggests that equally important is what struggles are taken into consideration. She suggests that cosmopolitan critical social theory can be beneficially oriented by the concept of recognition which brings to the forefront experiences of harms and wrongs as prepolitical motivations for social struggles and related articulation of claims. Migrants’ lived critique is an expression of their struggles against structural misrecognition mediated by geopolitics of borders and structures of global capitalism and their claims arising from these struggles need to be taken into consideration in a process of articulation of cosmopolitan norms. She suggests that claims arising from migrants’ lived critique stretch normative horizons of cosmopolitan imaginaries to include more radical critique of global capitalism.