When home isn’t home anymore: Towards a political theory of displacement without movement

Normative political theorists typically view displacement as a phenomenon that entails forced movement. In this article, I challenge this orthodoxy by arguing that displacement is fundamentally a loss of one's place and/or home that may occur either with or without such movement. After developing a series of conditions to explain when place-based changes precipitate ‘displacement without movement’, I contend that there are at least two key theoretical, ethical and political advantages to introducing this notion into normative political theory. First, the notion allows us to identify a common condition that unites the experiences of those who lose their place and/or home through forced movement and those who lose it in their habitual locations. Second, recognising this common condition may serve as a pathway to much-needed forms of solidarity among not only these two groups, but also non-displaced populations. I then discuss how the idea of displacement without movement may dilute the normative status that is often ascribed to displacement, while arguing that this implication is not problematic for my account. I conclude that displacement without movement should be viewed as a pressing global harm which deserves far greater attention by normative political theorists.