As humanity enters the second quarter of the twenty-first century, pressing injustices seem to be multiplying on both national and international scales. In the United States and many other developed nations, governments are imposing austerity as inequality continues to climb and the AI boom mints a new cohort of powerful billionaires. Globally, violent conflict, climate change, and severe poverty are generating mass migration flows that are confronting many rich countries with significant humanitarian and political challenges.

Philippe Van Parijs is a professor emeritus at the University of Louvain and chair of the advisory board of the Basic Income Earth Network. For decades, he has been a leading figure in political philosophy, writing widely on a range of topics relevant to justice at the national and global levels. Along with G. A. Cohen, Erik Olin Wright, John Roemer, and others, he was part of the “September Group” that pioneered the tradition of analytical Marxism. He is perhaps best known for his advocacy of a universal basic income (UBI); more recently he has written on the dilemmas of justice posed by mass migration.

Jacobin’s Asher Dupuy-Spencer recently interviewed Van Parijs about his work and how it might speak to our current moment. They discussed Van Parijs’s political and intellectual trajectory, the prospects and need for a UBI in the age of AI, and how to think about migration-related problems of justice.