The left must move on from the economics of immigration and find a more progressive way to talk about the benefits of migration.
The left must move on from the economics of immigration and find a more progressive way to talk about the benefits of migration
Yesterday on this site, James Bloodworth wrote that the anti-immigration voices have lost the economic argument and should move on. He’s absolutely correct: the figures released from the UCL research are hard to argue with.
However, it’s also true that in challenging those voices by reacting to their claims of economic burden with counter claims of economic benefit, the pro-immigration camp too have lost sight of the other benefits of immigration.
The debate over immigration, and by extension integration, within British politics and the media has changed considerably since 1997. There has been a gradual shift towards the framing of the immigration debate through a neo-liberal prism whereby new entrants to the UK are reduced to their roles as either contributors or consumers of the UK’s national resources. Individuals are therefore valued not for who they are, but based on how much they give or take.
This both demeans and dehumanises migrants. Writing in the Guardian recently, Zoe Williams was right to say that “bagging up foreigners and weighing them by their economic usefulness is more racist that closing the borders”. How does this language significantly differ from that used during the slave trade, when people were bought based on their potential to produce more profit for the owners?
This is part of the wider creep of the neo-liberal vernacular into a number of policy areas (for example education and social welfare) that started in the 80s and has continued through to the current coalition. Such an argument for ‘economic migration’ was at its strongest under Blair and Brown.
And herein lies the problem: the frame of economic benefit or burden is used by all major parties.
In real terms, there is very little variation in the discourse and policy outlines of the Conservatives and Labour. Even those who are pro-immigration on the left use this same frame. There has been very little attempt to shift the debate away from the economic and there is no evidence to suggest that anyone on Labour’s front bench will break ranks to challenge the usage of this frame.
Instead, the left’s arguments have become strait-jacketed by neo-liberal speech into a limited, very narrow debate on cost/benefit and numbers. This falls into the old language of a threshold of tolerance. The assumption with these debates is that if that threshold is breached, ‘our’ tolerance becomes tested.
By viewing immigration in this way, policy-wise there are two solutions we are left with, what Zygmunt Baumann terms either the option to ‘devour’ or to ‘vomit’. That is, to assimilate or deny entry.
Over recent years government policy has used this two-stream strategy. On the one hand, there are attempts at ever greater controls over immigration numbers. On the other hand, under both Labour and the coalition, integration policy, has become neo-assimilatory in nature whereby migrants are expected to adhere to the curiously ‘British’ values of democracy, equality and rule of law.
Increasingly, though, British values have come to include neo-liberal tenets of contribution and lack of reliance on the state.
Migrants, indeed all residents, are expected to be net contributors, be self-sufficient, pay taxes and not rely on social welfare. And if these conditions are not met, then people are demonised in the press and used as fodder for UKIP.
This is even extended to those types who are denied the right to work, such as asylum seekers. Of course asylum seekers are ‘scroungers’ taking the generous £36 per week benefits allowed to them, if, by law, they are not allowed to take up paid employment.
But it isn’t just asylum seekers who are the affected. Family reunifications rely on proof of sufficient savings and annual salary: a person wanting their partner and two children to join them in the UK would have to have to earn a shade under £25,000 gross.
At the other end of the spectrum, the passport applications of foreign investors over £10m are fast-tracked from four down to two years. So, in Westminster, and increasingly in society generally, migrants are weighed up on the size of their wallets and their ability to contribute to the public coffers.
The multicultural model may have already been on life support for a number of years, and it has undoubtedly been given a helping hand to towards involuntary euthanasia by the corrective ideology of successive government community cohesion policy that concentrate on getting Muslims to be less, well, Muslim.
However, maybe what is really killing the ideal of cultural pluralism is that in the public debate on the benefits of this model have been replaced by reducing non-nationals to black and red numbers on the national balance sheet.
Because of this, it is even more vital that the left finds a way to move on from the economics of immigration and find a more progressive way to talk about the benefits of migration. Otherwise, it’s not just the anti-immigration voice that has lost the argument.
Sam Bennett is a doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Linguistics at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland. His thesis is on the discourse of integration in the UK
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21 Responses to “It’s not just the anti-immigration voices that have lost the argument. It’s the left too”
Sparky
Sam Bennett, yesterday I asked James Bloodworth to explain why in his article entitled ‘Anti-immigration voices have lost the economic argument’ he made no mention of the figure in the UCL data that non-EU migrants made a negative net contribution of £117.9bn over the course of the last Labour government.
I asked him this because it invalidates the title of his article and calls into question his intellectual integrity and credibility.
He did not respond.
Perhaps you would care to. You have, after all, stated that ‘Janes Bloodworth is absolutely correct. The figures from the UCL research are hard to argue with.’
Or James Bloodworth -the invitation is still open.
Lisbeth
How else do you want to study discourse of immigration? I presume you study it from a library in the UK. That makes it so much more credible. You’re right.
Sparky
Well, for a start, you might want to study it from it outside the confines of an academic campus, let alone a campus a thousand miles away. Half the articles on here are written by students and lecturers. And it seens to be same names that crop up again and again, all part of the incestuous left-wing service industry, comprised of bloggers, academics, think tanks, focus groups, writers, and journalists. I can respect Left wing views held by working class people because they are fundamentally sincerely held, what I have no respect for is the army of phonies and intellectual poseurs and professional Left wing academics that infest these pages.
Sam Bennett
Sparky, a note from the author. I do agree with some of what you say. Let me come back to you on some of your points.
1. I have studied this topic from outside the confines of a campus. My field work – a number of focus group interviews with migrants themselves (EU and non EU, refugees, economic migrants, aslyum seekers, new citizens) – was conducted in the UK. The plan was to hold further similar interviews with local govt case workers, NGO workers, local politicians and the public, but money was not available. I’d like to do this in the future.
2. I live in Poland not mars – all of the non-interview literature was available online (10yrs of policy and 10yrs of newspaper articles – including left wing papers). it didn’t matter where I worked from.
3. I am also wary of academic work that stops at the door of the lecture theatre. Hence dissemination of findings in different ways – workshops with NGOs both here in Poland and in the UK. Also, once I finish this thesis, I’m going to start up two charities here. one
on refugee integration and another on assisting minorities into getting
their voices heard in the media so that they can challenge the dominant
discourses.
4. I am not just an academic, my work informs my other activities. I have interned at the Refugee council, been a refugee mentor and worked with different excluded groups in housing departments and education depts of local authorities.
5. since when was being intellectual a bad thing? yes, books can be stuffy, but they may also point to
6. I am well aware you seem to view me as part of the elite or a champagne socialist or one of the liberal commentariat but I fail to see how not being ‘working class’ denies me the right to comment. You are not in any place to judge the sincerity of my words and deeds, just as I am in no place to judge yours.
7. many words can be used to describe me, but professional would not be one of them 🙂
GhostofJimMorrison
I’d suggest hopping on a plane, going up North, knocking on some doors and actually speaking to people, as I do most weekends when canvassing. I’m not doubting Mr Bennet’s intelligence, merely suggesting his subject could be better pursued in Britain by actually engaging with people.