The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
Busting myths about migration
This number-crunching, non-partisan study will shake cherished beliefs held by Left and Right alike
464pp, Viking, T £19.99 (0844 871 1514), RRP£25, ebook £10.99 ÌÌÌÌÌ
Do tougher border controls – whether stricter visa regimes or more patrols at ports and beaches – reduce immigration? Government policy and ministerial speeches would certainly suggest as much. Yet the evidence suggests otherwise. Making it harder to cross borders can in fact create higher net migration, as migrants who might have passed backwards or forwards freely settle permanently once they have made it across the now-closed border. Attempts at greater enforcement on borders are met by riskier or more ingenious ways of smuggling migrants. Brexit and the end of free movement with the EU might be a cause of the recent high net migration figures.
That is one of the – often counterintuitive – lessons from How Migration Really Works by former Oxford academic Hein de Haas, now at the University of Amsterdam. He explores 21 “myths” about migration, ranging from global migration levels to its economic and social impact, dispelling many cherished beliefs of Left and Right alike. No, immigration does not increase crime rates – in fact, immigrants appear less likely to commit crimes, and in particular violent crimes. No, climate change will likely not drive massive global displacement – although it might well exacerbate and increase temporary displacement. Although – perhaps wary of wading into the specifics of current political debates – Prof De Haas does not spell it out; attempts to “stop the boats” through border crackdowns and a hostile environment are likely themselves a driver of the small boats crisis.
De Haas counterclaims that there are more migrants than ever before, by pointing out that there are more people than ever before. As a proportion of the world population, the number of international migrants is very stable – hovering around 3 per cent for the past 60 years. Debates about the integration of migrants are reviewed on a generational basis. The same fears that are expressed by some today about Latin American migrants in the United States, or about Muslim immigrants across much of Western Europe, he demonstrates, were once aired about Italians and Germans and Catholics, about Jewish and Irish people.
The most important lesson is one politicians find hard to hear. Our ability to control migration is limited. It is a natural force, part of human existence for millennia. Movement of people – from the countryside to towns and cities, from sleepy backwaters to booming centres of science or trade, from places with few opportunities to places with many – is one of the key drivers of progress and development, and always has been. That does not mean we should give up trying to shape or influence the nature of migration. But it requires a far smarter approach.
The book holds two crucial lessons for policy-makers: that migration is a response to labour demand; and that employment and the prospect of building a better future are the best route to integration (with the corollary that keeping migrants or asylum seekers in extended limbo and fear of deportation pushes them towards the isolation and dependency we claim to want to avoid). Together, these insights hold the key to effective migration policy.
De Haas is rightly critical of political rhetoric, which demonises migrants or exaggerates the scale of problems while doing nothing effective to actually influence the level of migration. His criticisms seem worryingly valid. Political debate in Britain – and across much of the Western world – has failed to reconcile with migration as it is.
There has been an absence of leadership: of political leaders willing and able to look beyond the next election, to think seriously about the role of migration in society, and to make the case to voters – who, as De Haas points out, typically have a rather more nuanced and less reactive view of immigration than politicians themselves – for the changes needed or accommodations required to reach a desired point.
The author takes a long-term view of migration. His observation that declining global fertility levels may in the future leave us asking not how to stop migrants from coming, but how to attract foreign workers, is included in passing –
New arrivals: refugees land on the Greek island of Lesbos in 2015
but is a long-term consideration as we adapt to a multi-polar world, with more strong regional economies. Over the past three years Britain has faced serious labour shortages, creating a very attractive market for migrants to move into.
De Haas decries the instinct to talk up the scale of the global refugee crisis in pursuit of funding and support, noting that this can lead to fatalism or backlash – the problem is too big to tackle, there are hundreds of millions of people on our doorstep, all we can do is batten down the hatches. A similar tension can be found in coverage of the climate crisis. Anything which makes a problem seem unsolvable risks meaning we do not even try.
There is at least one small error – on page 295, he claims that Albania is the only country in Western and central Europe whose citizens still need a visa to enter the UK, missing out the country of my birth, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the other four western Balkan nations. At times his descriptions of the role of corporations in driving demand for migration can seem to forget the crucial role of markets and companies in creating wealth and driving development. But this is an important book, which should become a standard textbook for anyone seeking to have a real impact on migration. To do so, we will have to be prepared to abandon old positions and the safety of tried and tested rhetoric, and to think afresh, starting from the basis of evidence, not assumptions.
Counter-intuitively, tougher borders can in fact create higher net migration
from death. Her name echoes that of Dante’s Beatrice, and she is, Witold repeatedly notes, equally “gracious” – though she repeatedly tries to disclaim the role in which he tries to cast her.
That Beatriz will not and cannot save Witold from death is clear, but it doesn’t stop their relationship from unfolding, like Dante and Beatrice’s, into an afterlife of sorts. She abounds in “a saving scepticism”, and yet she cannot help but come back to the question of what Witold sees in her, and “the whole creaking edifice of romantic love” into which he slots her.
Coetzee seems to share both the scepticism and the belief: death is the end and yet it isn’t, for once Witold is only ashes in an urn, the relationship is resurrected to enter a new phase.
The five stories that follow The Pole return to the title character of 2003’s Elizabeth Costello, a onceadmired Australian novelist who now lives in obscurity, entering her years of decline. That book’s central topic, the relationship between men and animals, returns with her too, as Costello, self-exiled to a remote Spanish village, surrounded by semi-feral cats, dedicates her final years to thinking about death, care and posterity. She is a difficult character: intransigent, wilful, patronising, self-serious. She is also the closest Coetzee has come to creating an alter ego: a writer, a vegetarian dedicated to animal rights, burdened by a sense of the debts we owe them, fascinated by what we can and cannot know of their inner lives.
There is humour in these stories, metafiction and metaphysics too, but they hum with the sense that ageing and death, the fragility of the mind and body, are no longer abstract ideas but real and lengthening shadows stretching inexorably across the garden. As Costello decays under her own and her children’s eyes, it’s hard not to feel that Coetzee is living through the same thoughts and fears. She is, like him, an avid reader of Kafka, and sees something like humour in his statement that “yes, there is hope. But not for me.” That might be the case for Coetzee as much as Costello, but I hope he has more books in him.