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.
Thursday 22nd December
By restricting entry, settlement and family reunification in the UK now, the UK risks putting off those that it will be seeking to attract in the future, as well as making the process of migration more precarious for all, says Ruth Grove White
Thursday 1st December
In a response to
Daniele Archibugi and
Patti Tamara Lenard, the author argues that unauthorized immigrants should be seen as offering a powerful normative challenge to the vast disparities in life chances that are the norm in the current global system. Rather than advocating the open borders approach rejected by both Archibugi and Lenard, however, he argues for more gradual transformations involving deeper, democratically accountable integration between states.
Wednesday 2nd February
Are borders ethically arbitrary? What, apart from sheer political pragmatism, justifies one community from keeping another from exercising the right of free movement? A proper consideration of the difference between voluntary migration and economic migration suggests cosmopolitan alternatives to a free-for-all
Wednesday 4th June
An era of worldwide "people flow" demands radical new thinking on migration
Friday 30th May
The work of Chinese immigrants in the rich west puts them in a trap with many locked doors
Saturday 4th August
A stream of asylum-seekers fleeing conflict in Sudan presents Israelis with tough questions
Friday 5th January
Whatever their backgrounds, newcomers to Britain have more in common than they might think. Linda Grant reflects on family history and real-life experiences.
Thursday 13th July
The Rabat gathering’s "plan of action" to control migration flows from south to north is based on a faulty diagnosis and will not succeed even in its own terms, says Gregor Noll.
Wednesday 12th July
In the United States and Europe alike, immigration policy isn't working – and the failure is most evident at the crossing-points of the rich and poor worlds, from the Mexican border to the Canary Islands, says Saskia Sassen.
Monday 10th April
Whatever methods the United States uses to control or manage the flow of people from Mexico, immigrants will find a way to enter and make their lives anew, says Hank Heifetz.
Thursday 2nd February
Two years after the deaths of twenty-three migrant workers who drowned while cockling on England's Lancashire coast, Hsiao-Hung Pai reports on the economic roots of the disaster, which remain unchanged despite public attention, debate, and new legislation.
Monday 12th December
Asylum-seekers from Uganda, after horrific experiences in their own country, endure detention, ill-treatment and deportation once they reach Britain, reports Jason Parkinson. He tells the story of Harriet, a Ugandan woman incarcerated at Yarl’s Wood detention centre north of London.
Thursday 20th October
Occasionally, one encounters real-life
Alice in Wonderland stories, where the narrator describes a well-known situation with such crazy inversions of commonsense and reality that incredulity sets in for the knowledgeable reader. One such situation occurred for me whilst reading Gregory Maniatis’s
openDemocracy article, “
The road to nowhere”. Was he describing the same report that I had read a day earlier?
Sunday 9th October
The death of African immigrants near Spain’s Moroccan enclaves is a humanitarian crisis with deep political implications, writes Nicholas Mead.
Wednesday 5th October
The Global Commission on International Migration set out to change minds about managing the movement of people in the 21st century. Gregory A Maniatis of the Migration Policy Institute reflects on what it got right – and wrong
Thursday 25th March
Alessandra Buonfino recently cited The Silent Invasion by Alberto Carosa and Guido Vignelli as a particular, Italian example of fear-inducing anti-immigrant analysis that has parallels across Europe. On behalf of the co-authors, Alberto Carosa vigorously responds in the name of “good common sense”.
Thursday 19th February
Italy has become one of the major destinations for migrants to Europe, without noticing or developing a coherent policy, says the deputy director of the centre for the study of international politics in Rome. Can the country move beyond its schizophrenia, where migrants are economically wanted but not welcome?
Thursday 12th February
Cem Özdemir is a child of Istanbul who became Germany’s first member of parliament of Turkish origin. The terrorist bombs of November 2003, he writes, attack the city’s most precious inheritance: its multicultural, tolerant heart.
“The Silent Invasion” is a recent Italian addition to a growing wave – books which exploit scant evidence and post-9/11 fears to provoke anti-immigration sentiment. This, says a co-author of the People Flow project, is no way to hold a debate on migration – in Italy, or across Europe.
Thursday 22nd January
“I can’t remember anything until I was five years old. Then what I noticed was war. My mother and father and I were running away.” A Liberian teenager recalls a childhood of war.
