It is often quoted but seldom heeded – H.G. Wells’s statement that“human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe”. Nowhere is this argument more appropriate than in the case of recent trends and debates on migration which have been characterised by panic, hysteria, fear and not an inconsequential amount of ignorance and bigotry.
The current European migration ‘crisis’ is without doubt a challenge requiring a serious and considered response; neither the current panic nor the sense of helplessness and hysteria constitute a real or adequate response. Razor wire, batons and tear gas, a phoney war of words on people smugglers, suggestions of push back and mental gymnastics on ‘real’ asylum seekers and ‘illegal migrants’ will not resolve the crisis.
Hysterical responses are both ineffective and inhumane and routinely based on self-serving myths many of us repeat and half believe on a daily basis; myths that can be deadly when followed by myth-based action as the history of Europe illustrates all too well. It is worth considering two such dominant myths.
Myth one: we are being invaded and swamped.
The number of international migrants almost doubled between 1960 and 2000 while the world population grew at the same pace, so the rate of migration remained stable; less than threeper cent of the world’s population are international migrants, that is 11 per cent of total population across all developed countries.
What has changed is the nature and direction of migration. For centuries it was mainly Europeans who emigrated and colonised foreign territories but since WWII the pattern has reversed and Europe has become a major migration destination. This reality has fuelled the myth that migration is acceleratingsimply because it has changed direction. When we are (were) migrants it is good; when they are (were) migrants it is bad.
According to the UN Refugee Agency, in 2014 there were 59.9 million people forcefully displaced, largely due to conflict: 86 per cent were hosted in developing countries with just 14 per cent hosted in the West. Approximately 1.66 million applied for asylum in 2014, with the Russian Federation the largest recipient of such claims followed by Germany and the US.
The vast bulk of refugees do not even get the chance to apply for effective asylum. Of the top 10 countries hosting the highest number of refugees per 1,000 inhabitants, Lebanon (at 232 per 1,000) and Jordan (at 87) stand from all others with the top six being developing countries followed by Turkey, Mauritania, Sweden and Malta in 10th place at 14 per 1,000.
The Maltese Catholic migrants who arrived in the US in the second half of the 19th century were often similarly viewed – likely to dilute America’s democratic values
The UN estimates that in Europe, some 515,000 have arrived since January 2014 with 54 per cent of them being Syrian. This is a small percentage of the four million forced to flee regionally as a result the war.
It would be fanciful in the extreme to characterise such migrant or refugee numbers as an invasion.
Myth two: They have come to liveoff our welfare systems, take ‘our’ jobs and houses.
This is a never-ending refrain that has very, very little truth in reality. Few areas in international research generate almost total agreement but the case of migration and its positive impact is one such area.
The World Bank, the OECD, EU, UN agencies and academic researchers all agree that while migration can, in certain circumstances, have a negative impact on locally-born workers with comparable skills, these effects are generally small or short-term and often entirely absent. Overall migrants boost economic output, at little or no cost to locals.
For example, a 2014 study of all OECD European countries as well as Australia, Canada and the US found that the impact of migration over the past 50 years is on average neutral rarely amounting to 0.5 per cent of GDP in either positive or negative terms.
The study also found that migrants contribute more in taxes and social contributions than they receive in benefits.
In the case of the UK, despite claims by tabloid media and opportunistic politicians regarding ‘benefit tourism’, there is very little evidence to back it up; so little that in 2013 the EU publicly stated that the UK government had “completely failed to come up with any specific evidence” to show that UK benefits systems were being abused despite requests over three years for such evidence.
A 2014 study from University College London indicated that migrants arriving in the UK since 2000 from all areas were 43 per cent less likely to claim benefits compared to the UK-born workforce.
A 2011 study from the Institute for the Study of Labour in Bonn found no link between levels of unemployment benefit and immigration to different countries in the EU and rejected the idea of Europe as a welfare magnet.
Surveys in Spain show that immigrants are net contributors for health. Research in 2009 from University College London found that immigrants who arrived after EU enlargement in 2004 “are far less likely to live in social housing” than the rest of the UK population. The same result was found in a 2015 study by the London School of Economics.
However, such myths play an important role for they allow too many of us to artificially build distance between an ‘us’ and a ‘them’.
When a tragedy affects our own they are ‘us’ –human beings with histories, hopes and imagined futures; when a tragedy strikes others they become ‘them’ – foreign, shadowy, threatening – just statistics devoid of a shared humanity.
This allows us to avoid any shared responsibility. To see them as we see ourselves would be both inconvenient and challenging. It also gives licence to those in our societies who have self-important bigoted or even racist views of the world.
The wave of poor Maltese Catholic migrants who arrived in the US in the second half of the 19th century were often similarly viewed – likely to dilute America’s democratic values through ignorance and superstition. Likewise the Jews who fled pogroms and poverty in Eastern Europe whose alien ways threatened ‘Christian civilisation’.
We need to find the courage to say that the real threat to European values is not migrants but the fearful, negative reaction that makes it okay to dehumanise whole groups of vulnerable people.
The world today is challenging in so many ways: growing inequality as never before; persistent hunger that could, and should, have been solved decades ago; the rise of many fundamentalisms (economic, political and religious); and the consequences of unchecked climate change, to name but a few.
But ultimately, the world is a challenge to our very basic humanity. What does it mean to be a human being in such a world today and, in particular, what does it mean to be one such ‘safer, richer and generally better off’ being?
Today’s challenges offer an opportunity to answer such questions and to define ourselves and our identity and values in that context. We have the opportunity to use our reason and on the basis of that reason, to act reasonably (or unreasonably). We need to question ourselves and challenge the worst of our individual and collective instincts and we must not let them get the better of us.
If we do, the consequences for ourselves and our children are immense – prejudice, fear, instability, conflict and, ultimately a negative definition of ourselves. To survive and prosper, we need ideals.
Colm Regan is an educator who has been involved with human rights issues.