Rather condescending that Cecilia Malmström. I really wonder why she felt the need to tell us she came as a friend of Malta. (Did she also bring beads and tobacco?) I’ve a feeling someone whispered in her ear what sort of comments and venom her appearance had provoked on her previous visit.
We’ve earned ourselves a right royal reputation: the Maltese, the gypsy-haters of the Mediterranean. The only reason we don’t throw stones at them is that we use the missiles to build huts by the sea instead. It is, after all, a small country, and we have no space to spare.
Seriously, and even though I’m no fan of EU bureaucrats, I consider Malmström’s visit to have been a godsend. First, she told us that the EU was “concerned about the systematic use of detention”. That’s Brussels polite-ese for saying that it’s unacceptable for us to persist in locking up asylum-seekers for several months at a stretch. Which is what the UNHCR and the NGOs have been pointing out all along.
The second reason why I took a liking to Malmström had to do with the choreography. When was the last time you saw a Maltese politician sit with migrants and discuss their situation? Call it posturing if you will, I found it a healthy exchange.
By contrast, the best our Foreign Minister could come up with was that “the migration issue had become a security one, in view of Isis Islamists”. It used to be al-Qaeda, now it’s Isis. Any excuse to take the war on terror to desperate people in a boat.
Third, Malmström’s itinerary exposed, albeit unintentionally, the sort of narrow-mindedness with which we treat sub-Saharan migrants. As expected, the highlights were the open and detention centres. It’s as if migrants who are released from detention go on to spend their days lounging about at Marsa at the taxpayer’s expense.
That’s not my experience. Every day I see Africans hard at work – on construction sites, in the fields, and delivering a range of services. I also see them shopping at the growing number of specialist food stores, walking to their places of worship, and chatting over beer in Paceville. They’re no different to migrants from other places, and why should they be?
Yet we continue to marginalise them, geographically by containing them within the centres, economically by thinking of them as dependants, and socially by means of funny ideas about alien cultures. We have condemned African migrants to live separate lives on the edge of society, even as they do the opposite.
Malmström’s visit should have made us think about some of the myths and sleight that sub-Saharan migration to Malta finds itself afloat in. Take the idea that the EU needs to do more to help poor little Malta.
I find the notion quite insufferable, for the simple reason that it isn’t us who need help here, but rather the migrants themselves. They are the ones who risk losing their lives at sea, not us. So if anyone needs more attention from the EU, it’s them.
Malmström did at one point drop a hint that the flow of migrants has in recent months been greater in the north, rather than the south, of Europe. I think she was trying to tell us to stop playing the martyrs.
Frankly, I don’t think sub-Saharan migration to (and through) Malta is much of a problem. Certainly it does on occasion present a logistical challenge, especially when the influxes come thick and fast (as they haven’t done for some time now).
By and large, however, we manage swimmingly. I can’t think of a single way in which migrants affect my life for the worse. I find it much harder to live with fish farms that mysteriously edge towards land and pollute our beaches, a government that sanctions land-grabs in the name of exclusive development, and people who ask women candidates at interviews whether or not they intend to have babies. Funnily enough, we haven’t so far asked the EU for help on any of these.
It’s not Malmström and the EU that are failing us, it’s our own pig-headedness
In any case, even if migration were a big problem, there would be nothing one could do to stop it. A thousand Malmströms, each armed with Frontex and Mare Nostrum, would still not stand a chance.
I wish people would understand that migration is here to stay. That’s because of two related reasons. First, the main factors driving it happen to be fundamental human qualities. It is perfectly normal to hope and aspire to a better life. Some of the African migrants we get are on the run from persecution and desperation. Others aren’t, and come from fairly acceptable backgrounds. What unites them are those fundamental human qualities.
Second, we belong to a species that does not stay put and is prepared to travel long distances in search of some version of El Dorado. It’s there in the migration of early humans out of Africa, in the colonisation of the thousands of islands of Oceania by the Lapita, in the original settlement of the Maltese islands by people from Sicily, and so on.
Like hope and aspiration, long-distance mobility is a fundamental human quality. Historically, certain groups have built walls and fences to try to thwart it. The Berlin Wall was one example, as is the madness that goes on along the US-Mexico border. Historically, these attempts have always failed in the long term.
The funny thing is that it is actually the borders we so love that ultimately get in the way of a sort of self-regulating burden sharing. The image of Malmström herding migrants into batches and apportioning them across Europe is worse than a caricature. It shows a profound lack of understanding of how migration and the desires that drive it work.
Burden sharing works best when borders and controls are relaxed and people are free to move and to follow their aspirations. If Malta were actually El Dorado, we’d have a problem. Only it isn’t. That means that while many will want to stay, lots more won’t. It’s not Malmström and the EU that are failing us, it’s our own pig-headedness.
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