Every attempt to unambiguously distinguish between economic and forced migrants is made more difficult by the overlapping of the reasons lying at the roots of mobility. Rarely is a single cause enough to push people to leave one's home country for another. And yet, critical analysis of the language, the taxonomies and the distinction categories is essential. The analytic distinction between self-initiated and compelled or forced migration has the advantage of drawing attention to the different value that needs to be recognized in the claims and the rights of economic migrants compared with those of refugees: the latter, differently from the former, have had no choice as for the decision of leaving and therefore they hold a specific moral right – and, in theory, also a legal one.
