Go Back to where you came from: if this isn’t the best TV in ten years, we don’t know what is

“But why do they all come here?” is the agonised cry of Dave Watford and his mates in every pub from Truro to Thurso. Dunno, Dave. The English language? Because of our free market, low regulation economy, where the reward is for taking risks? Because we’re still relatively prosperous? But Dave and the boys are right: Immigration and its discontents are the number one driving force in all our lives here in the third decade of what may prove to be our very last century.

Or are there deeper forces at work? People have always moved from bad conditions to try to find better ones. Such movements are always deeply resented by the native populations in the host lands. It is the achievement of Channel 4‘s Go Back to Where you Came From [1] to cast the question in terms of the way people really are, not the way they ought to be. Six ordinary, but essentially decent British people complete a typical migrant’s journey from the ravaged lands of their origin to their final landing under the White Cliffs of Dover. The producers chose Syria and Sudan as the “GO” points. Wow. We get it.

And we stress: ordinary, decent people. So the producers deliberately chose the reality show format to highlight their odyssey; for no one in 2025 would have watched a documentary. And what an odyssey for the 21st century it is! They run the gauntlet of squalid refugee camps, freezing and burning temperatures, lousy food, unmentionable lavatory facilities, major league armed criminals and deadly waters in the course of their journeys. All the while in dialogue themselves, and with the locals. All six displayed levels of courage and endurance which we could ever endure, we confess.

Like the heroes of any epic road movie, they are transformed, so that they are not the same people they were when they started it. One man in particular stood out: a haulage contractor from Yorkshire who though sheer hard work has built up a small lorry business. It lets him feed his family, of whom he is fiercely protective, with out any help from the state. And get this: if you are fined £10 000 every time an illegal immigrant jumps on your lorry, wouldn’t you be just a little resentful? But it is to the immense credit of this man, and the film makers, that they slowly uncover the causes of his plight. War; ecological collapse; deep inequality and the paid apologists who defend it at every turn. He comes, he sees, he thinks, he changes. His deep reserves of emotional intelligence finally process the better angels of his nature.

Yet we at LSS do not advocate opening England’s doors to every migrant, however desperate their plight. Emotion and pity are bad guides to policy. A Nation state is not the same thing as the Social Services department of a London Borough. But the lesson is clear: a substantial, though not crippling transfer of funds from richer to poorer countries would eliminate most human migration quite quickly.

Go Back to Where you came from at last shows the true causes of this problem, And most people learned the lesson. That is a mighty achievement indeed.

[1]https://www.channel4.com/programmes/go-back-to-where-you-came-from#:~:text=Six%20opinionated%20Brits%20experience%20refugee%20life%20up%20close

#go back to where you came from #immigration #migration #emigration #climate change #war #poverty #inequality

World Government #2: the end of mass migrations

The world heats, driving waves of refugees in search of survival. Nationalism, religious identitarianism, ethnic exclusion grow. The resulting conflicts throw more waves of refugees onto the shores of societies with neither the psychological nor economic means to cope. Those societies in turn experience fear and destabilisation, as people understandably try to cling to the mental assurances of the past, leading to more nationalism, identity politics………… This spiral downwards will require big thinking indeed if we are to survive at all as a species.[1]

The problems we have identified-(climate change and mass migration) are closely connected. They are rooted in deep inequality. People migrate along economic lines from poor to rich, just like ions in an electric field. They always have done. The solution is a mass transference of sufficient wealth from richer countries to poorer ones to build up their economies. This would not only reduce the incentive to migrate. It would also slow the endless production of status goods like luxury cars and fashionable clothes in the rich countries. The ending of such frivolous production, distribution and consumption would enable an enormous reduction in carbon emissions.

Yet how can a world constructed on hundreds of lines of sovereign and religious identities ever achieve this transfer? There is too much incentive to cheat. To let other nations make the transfers, while guarding local advantage. To allow funds to be hidden in “sovereign” jurisdictions. To allow quick fossil fuel booms to grab short boosts of wealth. To think short term, to think parochially. Perhaps future generations will even decide it was criminally, like the Slave-owning Planters of the US South in the nineteenth century. Whereas a single world Government would cut through all these problems at once. And we haven’t begun to mention the advantages in things like health, space exploration and cleansing pollution, which would follow easily. Once again, the situation is now so desperate, that it’s time to consider something utterly different. We begin to suspect that something to be a World Government, however bizarre that sounds.

In the next post in this series we shall look at the history of the idea of world government, and find it’s not such a new idea after all.

[1] Is the world ready for mass migration due to climate change? – BBC Future

#world government #migration #climate change #pollution #inequality

Larry Elliott’s balanced view on immigration. A Must-read

Nothing releases passion like the subject of immigration. Nor is anything so certain to unleash binary thinking, with defenders and attackers of this essentially economic phenomenon dividing into mutually hostile camps, high on their own anger and righteousness. It’s time for some balanced nuanced thinking. As ever, Larry Elliott of the Guardian is here to provide it, [1] In an article titled It’s not bigotry to worry about immigration

We won’t steal his thunder. You should read it. No, really, this time. it applies to your country too. But we will dare to adduce the two essential points

1 Immigration isn’t all bad-it has serious economic advantages

2 Immigration isn’t all good- it has serious economic disadvantages

Our thoughts? Those who call themselves leftists should be passionately against immigration, as it’s a classic example of a free market mechanism disrupting society. Those who call themselves rightists should be passionately in favour of immigration as it’s a classic example of a free market mechanism disrupts society, which is always the price for economic efficiency. Can we go back to some science now?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/11/migration-figures-britain-economy-keir-starmer

#economics #immigration #migration #poverty #economic development

On the differences between racism and xenophobia

We still recall our fascination one autumn evening around 2011, at developing media reports of running battles in the streets of East London between followers of the popular Association Football teams West Ham and Millwall. What on earth, we wondered, could these largely homogenous groups of young, poor males find to divide them-so brutally and so effectively? The only possible response came from a wiser acquaintance, who speculated; “the River Thames?”

The tendency of heavily armed hominins to draw lines between them, and fight over the consequences, has long been a source of fascination for this blog.(LSS 2 1 21; 13 4 23, et al).We think that the time and energy so wasted could be better deployed in co-operative pursuits. The development of new medicines or the exploration of space spring to mind. Readers may consider their own ideas at this point. Yet it’s good to see that a wiser scholar has also considered the matter. Thus we present the learning of Dr Karim Bettacche,[1] who makes a fascinating distinction between xenophobia, which is natural, and racism, which is not. In a nutshell he asseverates:

Human beings can be divided into any category imaginable, inevitably resulting in xenophobia.

We love it, gentle readers when a single thought suddenly knits together the observations of so many . Think again of Orwell‘s two minutes’ hate from 1984. Think of the baroque intellectual constructions of Nazi ideology. Or the production line of hated out-groups from so many well funded right-wing newspapers and TV stations. And the trouble with out-group hatred is: it works. The only hope is to try to drain the economic and social swamps in which it thrives. No easy task.

[1]https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cultural-psychology-discrimination/202112/xenophobia-may-be-natural-racism-is-not

#xenophobia #racism #psychology #economics #sociology #history

Immigration: Intriguing new research suggests this blog got it wrong

“When facts change, then I change my mind.” So said the great economist JM Keynes. It should be the guiding principle for every scientist and scholar. Now, some readers will recall several blogs we have made on immigration ( LSS June/July ’22;Nov ’22). We still think we were right to raise this issue. Because it seems to be of neuralgic importance. But we ascribed the basic cause to the movement of people from poor economies to richer ones. We have now seen good evidence that this belief, although not entirely wrong, is so simple as to be almost misleading. And we are now going to present you with that evidence, so you can judge for yourselves.

Of course immigration does indeed flow from poorer societies to richer ones, But not from the absolute dirt-poor countries. The bulk of immigration comes from middle income countries. According Hein de Haas. a Professor of Sociology who writes in the Guardian, anyway. [1] And why do they do it? To fill jobs in short contract, essentially unregulated labour markets in the host countries. The second link, from Nature Briefings, should allow you to drill down more into Professor Haas’ work (we hope the link works!) It’s called Prejudice Colours our View on Immigration, a title that says much:

Many of us have opinions about immigration, but most of us don’t fully understand it, suggests sociologist Hein de Haas in his impressively wide-ranging book How Migration Really Works. By busting myths that surround human mobility, de Haas provides a welcome corrective to common misconceptions, writes reviewer and migration scholar Alan Gamlen. “But with migration patterns shifting as the world rocks in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s unclear for how long his conclusions will hold true,” writes Gamlen.Nature | 7 min read

There’s a lot of humility to go around for all of us here, not just LSS. Like, even when you think you have the answer, it may turn out to be only part of it. That sudden sweeping generalisations can be utterly wrong. Yet there remains one small observation in which we were right, You get very little immigration from richer countries(e.g. Switzerland, Denmark) to poorer ones(e.g UK) And we still think that, in there somewhere. lies the answer to all this angst.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/29/politicians-immigration-wrong-cheap-labour?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

#migration #immigration #emigration #inequality #economics