Equal mobility rights do not automatically create equal mobility capacity
Imagine two people who possess exactly the same legal right to move.
Both are allowed to leave.
Both are allowed to enter another political community.
Both can apply for residence there.
On paper, they have the same freedom.
But their lives are different.
One has savings.
A portable profession.
No dependents.
Several languages.
Friends abroad.
A passport that makes international travel relatively easy.
The other has little savings.
An elderly parent who depends on daily care.
A job tied to one local labor market.
Children in school.
A disability that requires nearby support.
A qualification that may not be recognized elsewhere.
Legally, they may have the same right.
Practically, they do not have the same choice.
That is one of the hardest problems for Foot Democracy.
Equal mobility rights do not automatically create equal mobility capacity.
Unequal Starting Points
The inequality can begin before income, housing, disability, or family circumstances enter the picture.
Consider passports.
In the January 2026 edition of the Henley Passport Index, a Singaporean passport provided access to 192 destinations without obtaining a visa in advance.
A Japanese passport provided access to 188.
An Afghan passport provided access to only 24.
These numbers do not measure a right to immigrate, work, or become a political member of another country.
A tourist visa is not Foot Democracy.
But the contrast reveals something important.
Even basic cross-border mobility is already distributed very unequally according to nationality.
Before two people begin considering jobs, housing, family, or political membership, the administrative obstacles they encounter may already be radically different.
Formal Freedom and Usable Freedom
A legal right matters.
Without it, movement may be impossible from the beginning.
But legal permission is not the same as practical ability.
A legal option can exist while remaining difficult to use in ordinary life.
This is why Foot Democracy cannot be evaluated only by asking:
Can people legally leave?
The harder question is:
Can they realistically establish ordinary life somewhere else?
Natural Attachment Is Not Institutional Lock-In
This distinction is crucial.
Suppose someone stays because their parents live nearby.
That is not the same as being legally trapped.
Suppose someone stays because they love the language, landscape, neighborhood, or community.
That is not political coercion.
People are rooted.
That is part of human life.
Now suppose someone stays because leaving would mean losing professional status for no adequate reason.
Or because accrued pension rights cannot realistically follow them.
Or because necessary records must be recreated from the beginning.
Or because a residence procedure is unnecessarily opaque.
Or because an institution demands duplicative documentation without a clear purpose.
Those are different problems.
They are forms of institutional lock-in.
Foot Democracy should not try to eliminate attachment.
It should try to reduce avoidable institutional barriers that turn legal mobility into nominal mobility.
The Goal Is Not Equal Mobility
There is a temptation to overcorrect.
If mobility is unequal, perhaps government should make everyone equally mobile.
That would be neither realistic nor desirable.
People have different lives.
A caregiver cannot simply be made as mobile as someone with no family responsibilities.
A person who loves a particular place does not need to be made less attached to it.
A person with a locally rooted profession may rationally prefer not to leave.
Foot Democracy does not require equal movement.
It does not require equal willingness to move.
It does not require equal outcomes.
The claim is narrower:
Public institutions should not add avoidable barriers that make an otherwise available political-community choice predictably unusable.
The World Citizen Society calls this practical standard Effective Mobility.
The principle is simple: legal freedom should not be made hollow by unnecessary institutional obstacles.
What Makes Mobility Unequal?
The two people from the beginning may have the same formal right, but very different practical choices.
One may be able to move within weeks.
The other may need to ask:
Who will care for an elderly parent?
Can the family afford housing?
Will the children enter school without serious disruption?
Will necessary disability support continue?
Will professional qualifications be recognized?
Can the person work?
Can accumulated pension or social-insurance rights be preserved?
Do they understand the procedures?
None of these questions alone proves that movement is impossible.
Together, however, they can make the same legal right much weaker in practice.
Some of these differences arise naturally from human circumstances.
Others are created or intensified by institutions.
That distinction tells us where institutional reform should begin.
Disability: From a Right to a Usable Right
Disability makes the distinction especially clear.
Article 18 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recognizes, on an equal basis with others, the rights of persons with disabilities to liberty of movement, freedom to choose their residence, and nationality. It also protects access to nationality and identity documentation needed to exercise mobility.
That establishes an important legal principle.
But legal recognition does not answer every practical question.
Can accessible transport be used?
Will disability documentation be recognized?
Can a person use services without proving the same condition again from the beginning?
Will essential support disappear at a border?
The European Union has adopted a limited institutional response.
Directive (EU) 2024/2841 establishes a European Disability Card to be mutually recognized across Member States. The Directive must be transposed into national law by June 2027, and its rules are to apply from June 2028.
The card is intended primarily to make it easier for persons with disabilities during short stays in another Member State to receive the same special conditions or preferential treatment offered there to residents with disabilities.
Its scope is limited.
It does not create a single European disability-benefit system.
It does not require every Member State to accept another state’s assessment for all social-security or long-term support purposes.
But that limitation is precisely why the example is useful.
It shows one way institutions can reduce unnecessary discontinuity without requiring all political communities to operate identical systems.
A person need not always begin from zero merely because a border has been crossed.
What Can Institutions Actually Change?
Institutions cannot remove every reason movement is difficult.
They cannot eliminate family attachment.
They cannot make every house affordable.
They cannot make every profession identical.
They cannot guarantee that every destination suits every person.
But they can reduce barriers of their own making.
For example, they can:
- make qualification-recognition procedures clear and subject to reasonable time limits;
- make accrued pension rights, records, and relevant entitlements more portable where coordination permits;
- provide residence, employment, education, healthcare, and tax information in an accessible and understandable form;
- reduce unnecessary duplication of documents and assessments;
- coordinate transitions so that disability or care support does not cease merely because an administrative boundary has been crossed;
- provide review or appeal when recognition, residence, or portability is refused.
These measures do not guarantee movement.
They make an existing freedom more usable.
If a Barrier Remains, It Needs a Reason
Not every mobility barrier is illegitimate.
A medical profession can require proof of competence.
A state can require reliable identity documents.
A community can enforce safety standards.
Some restrictions serve real public purposes.
The question is therefore not:
Should every barrier disappear?
It is:
What legitimate purpose does this barrier serve, and could that purpose be achieved with less damage to mobility?
This connects Foot Democracy to a broader principle developed earlier in this series: restrictions on political freedom need justification.
The institution imposing a restriction should be able to explain why it is needed, why it is proportionate to the problem, and why a less restrictive alternative would not work adequately.
That does not eliminate regulation.
It disciplines regulation.
When Unequal Mobility Becomes Unequal Political Power
An earlier essay, “Can Foot Democracy Discipline Majority Democracy?”, examined one consequence of unequal mobility.
A person who can credibly leave may have more leverage over government than someone rooted by income, care, disability, or family.
If only a narrow group can realistically change political communities, Foot Democracy will work far better for that group than for everyone else.
That makes unequal mobility capacity not only a practical problem, but a political-equality problem.
What Equality Should Mean
Equal mobility capacity is impossible.
The more defensible principle is equal legal standing combined with a duty not to impose unjustified institutional barriers.
People should not need to be unusually wealthy, healthy, mobile, or well connected in order for a legal mobility right to be usable.
This leaves room for personal differences, legitimate regulation, and people who strongly prefer to remain where they are.
Staying should not automatically be interpreted as political consent.
The freedom to move must coexist with the freedom to remain.
Conclusion
Equal rights are essential.
But equal rights on paper do not automatically create equal political choice.
The passport someone holds can shape the obstacles they encounter before a move even begins.
Income, disability, care, housing, qualifications, employment, language, and social networks can widen the difference further.
Some of those differences are part of ordinary human life.
Others are created by institutions.
That is the line political design should pay attention to.
Foot Democracy cannot make everyone equally mobile.
Nor should it try.
Its more realistic task is to identify avoidable institutional barriers, remove them where possible, and require justification where restrictions remain necessary.
The goal is not more movement for its own sake.
It is not to detach people from family, home, or community.
It is to ensure that political-community choice is not merely a formal freedom reserved for those whose circumstances already make movement easy.
A political freedom is not fully meaningful if only the most mobile people can realistically use it.
Notes
The Henley Passport Index, January 2026, ranked passports by the number of destinations accessible without obtaining a visa in advance. Singapore provided access to 192 destinations, Japan 188, and Afghanistan 24. These figures concern short-term travel access and do not measure residence rights, employment rights, or political membership.
Article 18 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities concerns liberty of movement and nationality. It recognizes these rights for persons with disabilities on an equal basis with others and includes protections concerning nationality and identity documentation needed for mobility.
Directive (EU) 2024/2841 establishes the European Disability Card and European Parking Card. The Directive must be transposed into national law by 5 June 2027, and its rules apply from 5 June 2028. The European Disability Card is principally designed to facilitate short stays and equal access to specified special conditions or preferential treatment. It does not harmonize national disability-benefit systems or require general portability of social-security benefits.
The World Citizen Society treats unequal mobility as a central limit on Foot Democracy. Mobility capacity can vary with income, wealth, age, disability, health, family obligations, caregiving, job specificity, housing, language, education, qualifications, nationality, legal status, social networks, debt, and pension arrangements.
Sources
- Henley & Partners, “A Growing Passport Divide Reshapes Global Mobility in 2026,” 13 January 2026: https://www.henleyglobal.com/newsroom/press-releases/henley-global-mobility-report-january-2026
- United Nations / OHCHR, Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Article 18: https://searchlibrary.ohchr.org/record/22683/files/22683.pdf
- EUR-Lex, Directive (EU) 2024/2841: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32024L2841
Further Reading
For why legal Entry must be accompanied by realistic mobility, see “Why Exit Is Not Enough: The Missing Problem of Entry.”
For why restrictions on political freedom require justification, see “Rights Before Choice: Why Neither Majorities nor Mobility Can Override Basic Rights.”
For why rights and records must survive movement, see “How Can Rights Survive Movement?”
For how unequal mobility can become unequal political influence, see “Can Foot Democracy Discipline Majority Democracy?”
For the broader limits of political-community choice, see “What Foot Democracy Can—and Cannot—Do.”
For the full institutional treatment, see Toshiyuki Nishimura, The World Citizen Society: Political Freedom, Democratic Choice, and the Institutions of a New Society, Chapter 16, “Unequal Mobility and Unequal Migration Pressure.”
