In an age when tailored social media algorithms have presented most people with an unending loop of attention-grabbing content, none has remained in the collective public consciousness as immigration has. From Japan, South Africa, and Australia to Europe and the United States, immigration has become a hot-button issue. As the world has become smaller and more people traverse the conversation bubble has expanded to include more voices and perspectives than ever. However, as real as the issues surrounding immigration may be, they expose governments’ failures not only to adequately address immigration but also to address their citizens’ concerns. In this article, we will discuss how immigration has become a scapegoat for governments worldwide.
The Birth of a Mobile World
Whilst immigration simply means to move from one’s place of origin to another, it goes without saying that the word in the modern context invokes a specific image. But how did we get here? After all, immigration has been part of human history for as long as we can trace. However, immigration in the modern context results from the establishment of the nation-state.
Many people credit the foundation of the nation-state to the French and American Revolutions (despite neither being the first democracies). However, as most of the world remained under colonial rule for another century and a half, the concept of a nation-state did not become a global reality until the decolonial struggles across Africa and Asia in the aftermath of the Second World War. As newly independent states sought to define their sovereignty in the midst of the tumultuous Cold War, many people found themselves migrating to the countries (often their former colonial powers).
Whilst these waves of migration were by no means the first into Europe or the Americas (Chinese immigration to the United States predates both World Wars), they do lay the foundation for our current state. These patterns of migration established the invisible routes we see today: Algerians and Moroccans to France, South Asians to Britain. At this point, migration appeared to be mutually beneficial. As most nations struggled to find their feet in a post-colonial world (whilst others faced the emergent threat of neo-colonialism), emigrating to Europe offered stability, and the host nations received much-needed labour in the aftermath of World War II.
Post-Colonial Immigration and Racism
It goes without saying that the relationship between racism and the further you go back in time is exponentially proportional. Partly because colonial powers used the dehumanisation of their colonies to justify the cruelties of colonialism. This dehumanisation forms the structures that hold up racism. In addition to the fact that, whilst many laws against discrimination have been revoked across most places, there has been no concerted effort to rid the biases that have been intrinsic to most racial biases, then immigration in an economically disastrous world becomes a perfect storm.
The Perfect Scapegoat
It would be unfair to reduce the detractors of mass immigration to simply being racist, though one must admit the loudest voices of opposition often use racist rhetoric. However, it is true that mass immigration strains communities and government finances. Additionally, conversations around assimilation, though mostly riddled with racial biases, are important ones to have if immigration is to be sustainable.
These concerns, ironically, are why immigration becomes a perfect scapegoat. For instance, it is estimated that the United Kingdom spends around five billion pounds a year on asylum seekers. In isolation, this is a significant number; in fact, some would argue it is significant in any context.
However, when considering that an estimated nearly 50 billion pounds (this being a conservative estimate) is lost to tax avoidance by the ultra-wealthy, it becomes clear that the motives of those campaigning against immigration are not about proper spending of tax money. This example often replicates itself in many other domains; much has been made about the ethnicities of the perpetrators (many of them of Pakistani heritage) of the child grooming gangs in the UK. Many detractors of immigration have used it as an argument against migration; it has been consistently reported that the EU leads the world in hosting child pornography.
Put simply, problems that exist in immigrant communities are not unique to them, but by pointing the finger squarely at these communities and highlighting these very real issues, governments are able to deflect from their shortcomings. By coupling this with the racist biases that already exist against most immigrants, the issue of immigrants starts to seem as though it is several orders of magnitude larger than it actually is.
Conclusion
If positives can be drawn from the entire conversation around immigration, it’s that the conversation is being had, and despite the presence of bad-faith actors in governance, media or the influencer space, the conversation is still being had. As this conversation has progressed, attention has begun to return to the failures of governance. As such, it is important for all involved to keep the conversation alive until solutions, not deflections, are presented.
Let us know your thoughts. If you have burning thoughts or opinions to express, please feel free to reach out to us at larra@globalindiannetwork.com.
