There is only
one way a nation can stop people from wanting to emigrate to it, and that is by
not having anything anyone wants. Otherwise, it must evolve an unapologetically
xenophobic government in the attempt to keep inflows to a trickle. And what
would the implications of this be? Not much, if it is used to bigotry; but
where a society claims to be open and free, respectful of human rights, and a
leader in, and of, the global community, then the narrowing of public attitudes
towards the Foreigner becomes vastly significant, signaling not just a shift in
policy but a shift in the character of the State itself.
So, Brexit is
significant precisely because it is happening – not in Russia or China – but in
the United Kingdom. From the heart of Western Liberalism comes a worrying
statement; that the UK, comfortable with the EU when the EU was comprised of
nations like France and Germany, finds the prospects of stronger ties with
people from Poland, Hungary and (God forbid) Turkey simply unpalatable. It is a
shocking manifestation of xenophobia dressed up in the policy speak of controlled
immigration. All the rousing talk of nationalism, and the shining virtue of
putting Britain first, when really all it is is people unable to bear the
thought of Syrian families moving into their idyllic English villages.
Indeed,
Parochialism (what we would call Tribalism in Africa) is alive and well in the
West. We have seen the videos of Hungarians building barbed fences to keep out
immigrants, of Germans protesting to keep out immigrants, of Britons murdering
and voting to keep out immigrants – all in the bid to preserve society and
culture as they know it. The irony being that the rest of the world was
generally minding its own business when the West sailed in with its
evangelistic message of globalization. But the Aborigines of Australia did not
have the luxury of a referendum. Neither did the Native Indians of North
America, or the Xoxas of South Africa. In fact, those who attempted to preserve
society and culture as they knew it were labeled ‘savages’, and a refusal to
share was taken as an open invitation to mass murder.
In Western lore,
these migrations are even till today still glorified as great adventures, as
the heroic deeds of trailblazers, the courageous acts of pioneers. Migration
would have to wait hundreds of years, till the trend reversed, till the rest of
the world started showing up in droves at the doorstep of the West, to become a
crime. For in the previously dominant narrative of globalization, the West was
the avatar of a borderless world, aggressively preaching the benefits of a
globalized economy to the regressive ‘nativists’ in the Third World. When Intellectuals
and Governments of the Global South questioned the efficacy of unfettered free
trade, they were derided as enemies of progress bound by an expired ideology.
But as popular
discontent with global capitalism has increased in the West itself, it has
unleashed xenophobic and anti-globalist ultra-right political currents, from
the British National Party and UKIP in Britain and Marie Le Pen in France, to
Golden Dawn in Greece and Donald Trump's Republican insurgency in the US.
What these movements share is a rabid distaste for the sort of socio-cultural
hybridization fostered by immigration, and a desire to re-establish racial and
ethnic purity.
In the UK,
migratory waves have called into question the very meaning of ‘Britishness’,
and portend the end of the Anglo-Saxon dominance of British identity. Across
the Atlantic, the 'browning' of America, the fact that the US will shortly
cease to be a white majority nation, has ignited no small racial hysteria.
Trump has prioritized pulling the US out of the North American Free Trade
Association (NAFTA) agreement, and building a wall on the border with Mexico.
In both instances, increased diversity and complexity are disrupting civic
solidarity and posing new questions of governance. Were these tensions
occurring in Africa, we would have been blitzed by international media coverage
of yet another tribal conflict on the Dark Continent. Yet it is White tribalism
– Anglo-Saxon tribalism – that is now manifesting.
And this is what
History shows that, despite the rhetoric of Western liberal politicians, about
Human Rights and Rule of Law, the world system is actually not a moral
construct, but a simple reflection of Power; in this case, the Power of the
West to legitimize migration – in fact, mandate it – when it suits it (in the
name of spreading civilization) and criminalize it when it suits it (in the
name of defending civilization). So, we are told (like Black South Africans
were once told about White South Africa) to stay out of the Western World
unless we have a valid pass showing we are there to provide a service they
need, or to purchase a service they provide.
However, the
genie of globalization is out of the bottle and cannot be forced back in. For
it is, indeed, an incredibly egotistical notion, for a society to believe it
can freeze Time, and indefinitely preserve itself, its status in the world, and
its culture from being affected by others. For, in reality, the same primal hunger that drove Europe’s
‘explorers’ to risk death in pursuit of new lands is the very same one that
herds today’s migrants unto rickety dingies across the treacherous
Mediterranean. So, you can vote ‘exit’ in as many referendums as you want, roll
out as many coils of barbed wire across your coastlines as you want, tacitly
encourage as many far right groups as you want, but as long as the grass is seen
to be greener where you are, people will still come.
In this sense, all
this xenophobic policy-making bears the fatal stamp of futility. For no mother
will sit by a wall watching her baby die, when there is food on the other side.
No father will mope by a fence watching his children die, when there is
medicine on the other side. This is not a grand conspiracy to sabotage Western
civilization, or any other civilization for that matter, it is simply the
reality of being human. For the migration and commingling of peoples is one of
the most primal of human imperatives. It is part of the search for
self-actualization and existential security. To curb it as drastically as the
right-wing nativists in the West are demanding is to go against an inevitable
and unstoppable tide of venturesome humanity. Indeed, what is more likely to
happen is that just as the Prohibition in the US spawned organized crime, a
clampdown on immigration will simply enable the evolution of more
sophisticated, organized and ruthless people-smuggling cartels; for the need to
emigrate is that visceral.
Even more, to be
able to have some of its people move to other countries periodically, is in
fact a necessity for a poor developing country, ravaged by multiple problems
but severely handicapped in its internal capacity to govern. For, surely, one
of the ways the world must redress the gap between well managed (rich), and not
so well managed (poor), nations is by allowing the latter to export some of its
burdens to the former regularly. This is not a subversive statement for, in
truth, it is the poor and the vulnerable – fleeing hardships and the
consequences of bad governance – that tend to be in the greatest need of
emigration as a means of escape.
These were the
sorts of people that fled the Irish potato famine and migrated to the US in the
19th century; not settled, professional types with bright prospects
where they were. No. These were certainly not the sorts Britain exported to New
Zealand in colonial times. So, an immigration policy that says, ‘it is not that
we are adverse to immigration, it is that we only want the ‘good migrant’’ is a
totally self-serving policy, determined to exacerbate the deadly effect of
‘brain drain’ on the developing world. In truth, as the developing world, we
need to keep our bright ones and export our troubled ones, because we need the
former more than you, and you can help rehabilitate the latter more than we can.
This is the sort
of stuff leaders of Third World countries should be advocating at international
organizations, instead of routinely agreeing with the right-wing narrative that
people should live contently in their own countries. What? What is the world
now, a collection of segregated states? For the West is adept at globalizing
its own issues, and making everyone contribute to solving problems it
singlehandedly created in the first place (think, climate change), while
insisting on keeping the problems of others (particularly third world
countries) ‘contained’. Well, if you want us to leave the coal we have in
abundance and come and buy green technology from you so we can pursue
industrialization in ways that meet your carbon-emission standards then you
give us a flexible and humane migration policy that recognizes our need to
export parts of our population (good, bad AND ugly) periodically.
For emigration
is not only a critical pressure-release valve for a developing country, it is
also an important capacity-building mechanism. Otherwise, how long would it
take a developing country to produce, from within itself, a critical mass of
people with skill sets and resources comparable to those found in the developed
word? Too long. Yet this is precisely what Emigration is able to do within a
short space of time for its source nation; that is, create a skilled Diaspora,
which is then able to contribute to the source nation’s development by sending
back sorely needed first world resources.
So, to think the
global debate on migration simply a Western issue which developing countries
should ignore to face the more pressing task of lifting their own societies to
such a standard that their people are no longer queuing to emigrate from it, is
to ignore the fact that one of the factors undermining the capacity of African
countries to export agricultural products to the West is the payment of
subsidies by Western governments to Western farmers; that diseases existing
only in the developing world are grossly under-researched and under-funded in
the developed world; and that forced migration – of slaves to the first world,
and settlers to the third world – is the foundation of this present global
economic system.
Indeed, it is an
inter-connected world. So while that famous spirit of independence – this
quintessentially British cry to ‘leave us alone’ – might have been something to
be admired in medieval times, in today’s world for certain it is something to
be feared. Not so much because we would be unable to go to the UK anymore, but
because the UK may not really be the UK anymore. And so – just like that – the
Tree of Liberty could be in need of new Guardians.
Images taken from:
http://www.telesurtv.net/export/sites/telesur/img/2016/06/18/ukip_brexit_xenephobia.jpg_1026485750.jpg
http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/463px-punch_rhodes_colossus_copy_small.png
https://colonialfamilies.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/emigration-a-remedy-with-caption.png
http://humanityhasnoborders.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Humanity-Web-View-Logo.png
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/images/content/jun08-640c-MEO-10143356.jpg
https://yerelce.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/eu_immigration_policy_by_latuff2.jpg
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