In the first phase of our migration in Europe debate, Theo Veenkamp and his Demos colleagues launched the People Flow prototype offering a new way of thinking about how Europe could use people’s movement for the benefit both of migrants and of the societies that receive them. This provoked a wide range of responses from many of the key contestants in the migration debate today: restrictionists, such as Anthony Browne and Peter Brimelow; open border advocates like Nigel Harris and Franck Duvell, multiculturalists such as Cem Ozdemir or Ali Rattansi; those looking for a national solution, like Martin Kovats, a European solution, like Ash Amin, or a global solution, like Arthur Helton; those like Tony Curzon Price who say that asylum is in crisis and those, like Gil Loescher, who say it is not. Veenkamp wraps up part 1 with an invitation to take the arguments even further.
Phase two – the Challenge to People Flow – tackles one of the thorniest obstacles for any Europe-wide advance – the debates within the nation states, where politicians often face head on a growing desire for national boundary control. We start with Britain. Our roundtable – an edited extract from an event sponsored by the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr) at this year’s Labour Party conference – features Home Secretary David Blunkett – the architect of the UK’s controversial migration polices, in dialogue with economist Bob Rowthorn and the chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips. Ben Page from Mori provides a snapshot of British public opinion on this hot button political issue.
Dirk Jacobs, analysing the rise of the Arab European League, detects a similar policy quagmire in the Belgian response, while Liza Schuster, in an overview of European approaches to asylum, urges the People Flow authors to hold European governments to proper account.
Also: Ulf Hedetoft’s superb overview of the Danish debate.
Migration: the emergency exit
Migration is an issue not just of management but of politics. A migration approach based on humane values and leading to just outcomes requires sensitive political judgment as well as accurate information. The logic of the People Flow proposal is deficient in both respects – by eliding the crucial distinction between refugees and economic migrants, and by viewing migration as normal rather than as an ‘emergency exit’.
Home from home? The journey to a better refugee policy
Some governments and analysts of migration propose ‘international transit centres’ and ‘protected zones’ close to refugees’ countries of origin, as a way to control and limit their movement as well as guaranteeing their basic rights. But research into the human rights environment in the regions immediately affected by refugees and asylum-seekers indicates that a consistent, holistic policy to protect people in movement would be a far more effective and humane solution to current problems.
Africa: rushing for the exit
Africa’s economic collapse and corruption mean that Europe’s efforts to stem immigration from the continent will remain futile until the underlying causes are addressed.
Open borders: a future for Europe, migrants, and the world economy
The controversy over People Flow reflects a major tension of globalisation: between the opening of national economies and restrictions in the world’s labour markets. Government attempts to fix labour movement in static patterns fail to register either migration’s fluid, dynamic aspect or its benign economic effects. The way forward for Europe is to integrate the continent within the evolving world labour market – and move towards free migration and open borders.
The globalisation of migration control
As migration increases around the world, both international organisations and states seek tighter regulation and control over workers, asylum-seekers, and refugees. These forceful attempts to manage free movement in the interests of economic growth and social engineering inspire in response a radical defence of global social justice and equality – and an end to all restrictions on migration.
The migration time-bomb: American lessons for Europe
Will mass immigration prove a similar threat to the integrity of European society and culture as it does to America’s? For the author of “Alien Nation”, the book which helped to catalyse the modern anti-immigration argument in the US, the current ‘great wave’ from third to first world is undesirable, economically unnecessary, and driven by a misplaced sense of guilt over past racism and colonialism.
Mehmet and Edeltraud too: prospects for a multicultural Germany
The German Bundestag’s first parliamentary representative of Turkish descent is currently in Washington, comparing how minority groups organise themselves politically in the United States and Germany. Recently named ‘Multicultural Man of the Year’ by a German radio station, he turns a sometimes appalled gaze on his homeland, and asks how far Germany has to go to fulfil a truly multicultural vision.
Migration fantasies: how not to debate immigration and asylum
The urgency and topicality of debates about migration should not create space for a language loaded by prejudice and presumption that fuels a far right agenda. Yet this is precisely the approach of Anthony Browne in the People Flow discussion. An analysis of his panic-laden, historically-myopic argument is a necessary prelude to creating a rational basis for responsible exchange.
'Asylum crisis' in the UK and Europe
The discussion of asylum-seeking, especially in the UK press, is sensationalist and distorting. The result is policy measures that are not just repressive but self-defeating. The reality, argues our regular columnist and migration-watcher, is that there is no ‘asylum crisis’. Rather, there is a complex, variable pattern of human movement that politicians are doing lamentably little to understand.
Mass immigration: a route to environmental collapse
The authors of People Flow have failed to consider the effects of migration on the environment, argues this advocate for a Britain of 30 million people. You can have sustained immigration, or a sustainable nation: but not both.
Muslims and European multiculturalism
Anti-Muslim sentiment in post-9/11 Europe contends that Muslims compound their ‘alien’ status by claiming special treatment from their ‘hosts’. But what if the aspiration to a recognised ‘Muslim’ identity is itself characteristically European? In the British context, Tariq Modood argues that a healthily multicultural society needs to accommodate religion as a valid social category – and rethink Europe so that the Muslim ‘them’ becomes part of a plural ‘us’.
A liberal European immigration policy platform
People movement is released by globalisation but must still be accommodated within institutional norms and fundamental values. In a vigorous counter-proposal to the People Flow document, Achilles Skordas argues that making the European Union an accessible space for new migrants requires a policy built around two axes: the market and human rights.
Muslims in flux: the problem of tradition
Muslims across the world are engaged in a great debate about the fundamentals of their faith. The discussions among European Muslims often focus on how to sustain the meaningfulness of their religion within a new environment. Here, a Muslim still in ‘the process of arriving’ in Britain examines the tension between nostalgia and oblivion which afflicts his generation, and proposes a creative understanding of Islam for the new century.
People Flow: Migration and Europe
Does migration erode or enhance national culture? This question is highly sensitive in many European countries. The problem with the existing European approach to migration is that official distinctions between categories of migrants do not match reality. We need a new, sustainable model that recognises the evolving complexity of human mobility. In our People Flow pamphlet, openDemocracy and Demos have proposed such a model to open up debate.
The folly of mass immigration
The argument of the ‘People Flow’ report that mass immigration is normal, irreversible and beneficial to host societies is a damaging illusion. Rather, the current experience of developed western countries, faced with huge inflows of people – refugees, asylum-seekers, economic migrants – from poorer parts of the world, is unprecedented and damaging. The process can and should be stopped, in the interests of the rich diversity of nations it will otherwise crush.
People movement: the need for a World Migration Organisation
The world urgently needs effective, generous and humane ways of managing the vast movements of people across borders that is a defining feature of globalisation. A World Migration Organisation would be a crucial step in the process.
The immigration problem
The vast movement and mingling of peoples is a defining feature of societies in the age of globalisation. It poses huge long-term challenges. How can European policy-makers respond creatively? For a start they need ideas that look well ahead, are grounded in current realities and are tested in healthy debate. This is the aim of a collaboration between the think tank Demos, a senior and experienced Dutch civil servant Theo Veenkamp, and openDemocracy. Tom Bentley of Demos introduces the agenda that will shape our project.
The peopling of London: how 'they' become 'we'
For centuries London has been a city of immigrants. Their first port of settlement has often been the East End area of Spitalfields. As a new museum opens there commemorating the impact of waves of these people – Huguenots and Jews, Bangladeshis and Irish, Poles and Chinese – Caroline Moorehead celebrates a historical process that continues to expand horizons and enrich lives in the present.
Not in my back yard: reforming the asylum system
A refugee officer with Amnesty international assesses the impact of new British proposals to send asylum seekers back to be processed in Regional Protection Zones – which may well set the agenda for a global rethink of refugee and asylum law.
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This week's guest editors
Our guest editors James Ron, Leslie Vinjamuri, Sophie Arie and Archana Pandya introduce this week's theme of:
Our guest editors James Ron, Leslie Vinjamuri, Sophie Arie and Archana Pandya introduce this week's theme of:
A Turkish Spring?
Woolwich - terror or conflict?
Palestinian borders
Nobel Women's Initiative
Europe from the bottom up
The media in Europe
Mali: the plot thickens
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Remote control war
oDRussia at journalismfestival .com
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Lis Howell On broadcasting
Dan Hancox Revel, Riot and Rebellion
Martin Rose Bliss Was It in that Dawn to Be Next Door
Vron Ware Up in Arms
Jim Gabour Sunday Comics
James Warner Standing Perpendicular, as books do
Markha Valenta Inter Alia: religion, politics, culture
Paul Rogers on Global security
Mary Kaldor on Human security
