People Flow

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): I have long thought that migration should be treated as a serious, positive force. I'm proud that five years ago openDemocracy joined forces with Demos to publish People Flow, in which among other things Theo Veenkamp of the Dutch Ministry of Justice argued for linking migration and welfare. We ran a huge debate edited by Rosemary Bechler in which even Blunkett participated. No notice whatever was taken. Then in the run-up to the 2005 election there was a classic Blairite panic. It laid the basis of last week's Green Paper (opens as pdf). Here is what Tom Bentley, then Director of Demos, wrote at the time i.e., in 2005 :