I. People Flow
The vital conceptual shift from migration control to flow management proposed in People Flow is convincing: in the era of globalisation the nature of migration has profoundly changed and the movement of individuals has been superseded by the movement of groups wider families, clans, persecuted ethnic or religious minorities.
However, this transformation in itself is not sufficiently cataclysmic to force host countries to abandon selection. Moreover, comparing the dynamics of migration to the trans-boundary flow of ideas or the free movement of capital, goods or services has some misleading consequences. The displacement of people in search of a better world is a much more culturally and anthropologically complex process than either of the latter.
There are therefore at least two People Flow conclusions with which I beg to disagree. First, People Flow underestimates the distinction between political and economic migration. Second, it underplays the significance of the current debate raging around the relative merits of integration on the one hand and multiculturalism on the other.
What I would like to offer you as a counter-proposal is a liberal immigration policy platform for Europe, built around a number of principles which together constitute a market and human rights oriented approach to immigration.
These two axes often find themselves in a certain tension with each other. But in practice they must be reconciled, since an effective market economy so clearly depends both on democracy and on the rule of law. However, immigration can be beneficial for European society, if the European Union and its member states are able to attract the kind of immigrants the economy needs and to assimilate them successfully.
To this end, I want to argue that as a point of principle, EU policy-making must clearly differentiate between voluntary and forced migration. This provides the basis for two different strategies to be pursued simultaneously: a first strategy driven by economic criteria for the flow management of voluntary migrants; and a second strategy for those forced into migration, as determined by a humanitarian response.
Any discussion of the needs of refugees must focus not only on what temporary or permanent protection looks like in the countries of destination, but also and mainly on strategies of conflict prevention, and in the maintenance and restoration of peace in their countries of origin. These challenges will not be dealt with in here.
What I concentrate on in this policy outline are voluntary migrants, and the two pillars, as I see it, of a liberal European immigration platform:
- flexible market-oriented EU regulations;
- the integration of long-term immigrants, understood as a process of voluntary assimilation into the societal and cultural norms of the European Union.
II. Towards a market-oriented immigration policy
Fundamental decisions about immigration policy should be taken at the EU level. Some member states may have sufficient information with regard to their national segment of the EU labour market and they may implement a national immigration policy, based on that information. But since the Union created an internal market by abolishing obstacles to the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital, the fact that immigration matters is still largely determined by individual member states has proved increasingly anomalous, with potentially grave social and political consequences.
The concentration of immigrants on some member states, thanks to their expectations of actual or potential levels of social and economic benefits, combined with the absence of mechanisms effectively guiding immigrant mobility between member states, may easily fuel xenophobia in the most burdened regions of Europe. The same problems are to be found in some states of the United States where there is a high concentration of aliens.
Governments cannot expect to manage effectively the overall complex of issues arising from immigration on the national level, when in essence the relevant market has ceased to be national.
But these legal regulations need to be flexible. Immigration does not necessarily mean permanent resettlement of aliens into the Union. Rather, this depends on the demand for labour. Rules should be flexible enough to attract immigrants for specific jobs and periods of time while demand continues to exist. A clear distinction between short-, medium- and long-term immigration should be made, with only the latter leading to citizenship. Short-term immigration and seasonal occupations, both necessary to bridge temporary labour shortages in some areas, should not result in permanent resettlement.
Immigrants might also be given the chance to work in areas where corporate or trade unions interests have distorted the normal operation of the markets. Evidently, this has to be approached with some caution, to avoid the sudden or high unemployment that could trigger a backlash against immigration policies. But generally, immigration can play a pivotal role in opening labour markets up to competition, and in checking wages and countering inflationary pressure, in particular during times of almost full employment and economic prosperity within the domestic market.
Moreover, special incentives should be provided for some categories of highly skilled professionals and entrepreneurs. In 2002, to ease the immigration of information technology specialists, engineers, scientists in the natural sciences and technology sector, doctors and nurses Denmark introduced special rules for certain professional fields, creating the so-called Job Card Scheme and the positive list. Germany had adopted similar measures to attract information technology specialists in 2000.
The same flexibility criterion must be applied to the relationship between immigration and social security. The 2000 study of the UN Population Division on Replacement Migration (ESA/P/WP.160/21.03.2000) argued that only an increase in immigration could meet the challenge posed by the ageing populations in developed countries. From this assertion, there is only one small step to the conclusion that migration may also provide the solution to the EU member states crisis-ridden social security systems.
However, empirical studies in both Europe and North America conclude that the impact of immigration is more complex, sometimes alleviating and sometimes overburdening social security and state finances. What we can safely assume is that a major factor in determining which impact it has is the successful integration of immigrants into the labour market.
In the United States, immigrant upward mobility in the last decade seems now to have stalled. If this is true, and unemployment rises among immigrant groups, social security will have to bear a significant additional burden, also taking into account the number of dependent members of immigrant families. Under these circumstances, the authorities should require a very clear picture of the demand for labour before they fix immigrant quotas, or make decisions regarding their short-, medium- or long-term status.
There is little doubt that immigrants are attracted by welfare-state social security benefits. Such incentives distort the international labour market leading to increased migration flows in some EU countries. To prevent this distortion, it is necessary to limit the access of immigrants to the full social security system during the initial stages of their presence in the country of destination.
It seems, for instance, reasonable to exclude immigrants with short-term residency permits from the state-financed social security system, referring them to private insurance; or including them in the social security scheme, but not entitling them to family allocations before their entitlement to family reunification; or excluding them from unemployment benefits if they are contracted to a specific employer during their short-term stay.
This kind of exclusion could, in fact, be beneficial for the immigrant. In the well-known case Gaygusuz v. Austria, the European Court of Human Rights decided that contributions paid by immigrants constituted property rights, which should correspond to the benefits to which one is entitled. The judgment stipulates that states need to make an exact correlation between social security benefits and social security contributions. If immigrants are excluded from some benefits, for which they have paid contributions, the state incurs international responsibility for the violation of property rights.
To conclude, flexibility in immigration rules serves two purposes. As long as EU social security systems are not harmonised, the EU should accord member states some certain discretion to regulate immigration in a way which suits their respective systems. Moreover, flexible rules will permit exclusion from some social security benefits, depending on the nature of the residency permit, on condition that contributions match benefits. What is important, however, is that overall, the nature and structure of residence and work permits corresponds to the demand for labour.
III. Integration as voluntary assimilation
If we are to avoid the xenophobia and racism which arise from the uneasy coexistence of modern and postmodern lifestyles with pre-modern ones, a policy of immigrant integration through voluntary assimilation is the necessary second pillar of a liberal immigration platform.
Integration hovers uncertainly somewhere between segregation from the majority and assimilation to it. In Greece, sharia (Islamic law) offers a clear example of segregation involving citizens rather than immigrants, since it constitutes the family law and personal status law of the Muslim minority. This raises the following legal question: would a policy promoting voluntary immigrant assimilation be legally permissible under international law, and what would its content be?
Assimilation could encounter major legal obstacles if immigrant groups are accorded minority status. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights declares that in those States, in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practise their own religion, or to use their own language (Article 27). While it does not spell out whether immigrants should have minority status, the organ for interpreting and implementing the Covenant, the Human Rights Committee, does indeed recognise immigrant groups as entitled to minority rights.
But in practice, states treat this interpretation of Article 27 as open to question. The standpoint of the Human Rights Committee constitutes legally non-binding soft law sometimes regarded as useful in supporting the human rights of immigrant groups, but at other times leading to the unwelcome stabilisation of pre-modern lifestyles. This divergence of view can very clearly be seen at play in two different examples of international practice outlined as follows.
Two cases: one Greek, one Danish
- In 2001, the Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination concerning Greece (CERD/C/304/Add.119/27.04.2001) contained the following statement, the Committee encourages the State party to pursue further its dialogues with representatives of the Roma, Pomak, Albanian and other minority populations, with a view to expanding as necessary the available range of multilingual educational programs and policies. In 1999 the Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women in the same country (CEDAW A/54/38/01/02/99) had stated that while attention is given to the situation of certain groups of minority women, such as Roma, insufficient information is available concerning the situation of other ethnic and religious minority women, such as Turks and Albanians.
Since no indigenous Albanian minority exists in Greece, in both cases the Concluding Observations draw the particular attention of the Greek authorities and of the international public opinion to the situation of Albanian immigrants, based on the insistence of the Human Rights Committee that immigrant groups must be accorded minority status.
- The 2000 Danish Aliens Act points us in a different direction. This Act dealt, inter alia, with the problem of prearranged or forced marriages.
Among more conservative immigrant groups, it is customary for parents to exercise pressure upon their children to marry a person of the same group, but resident in the country of origin. Travel is arranged so that the young Danish immigrant meets his or her future partner in Anatolia for the first time, where they are married. They then pursue the family reunification path open to them in the EU.
In an attempt to tackle this, the law prohibits family reunification for spouses under the age of 25, unless it can be proved that the marriage has been contracted at the desire of the resident. Family reunification under the age of 25 is possible only if thorough investigation establishes that the person voluntarily contracted into this marriage (Section 9 of the Law). The immigration authorities issue a booklet urging young people under pressure from their parents or other relatives to marry to contact the Danish Immigration Service on three different telephone numbers.
But if immigrant groups constitute minorities, these Danish regulations would risk breaching international law on the protection of minorities. Indeed an active policy against the more reactionary and patriarchal cultural aspects of an immigrant group could confront major legal difficulties, once immigrant groups have minority status conferred on them by international law.
A new approach
I am all in favour of international institutions having the ongoing authority to control the human rights situation of immigrant groups, albeit under the cover of alleged minority status. However, this control and the respective obligations of states should stop short of embracing a comprehensive right to segregation of the group. After all, immigrants enter another country of their own free will and it is inadmissible for them to transpose their lifestyle lock, stock and barrel into a completely alien social environment, causing friction and giving rise to xenophobia and racism as they do so.
Any restrictions on family unification, however, may well encounter difficulties in Strasbourg. The European Court of Human Rights should therefore address itself to defining the meaning and content of the right to family life in a democratic society. Meanwhile, the need to protect the right to privacy of young persons as well as the right to personal autonomy are equally legitimate objectives of the European legal order.
What should not be attempted by any policy of voluntary assimilation is the assimilation of aliens along ethnic and religious lines. The 2001 Greek Law on the Status of Aliens set a bad precedent in that regard when it encourages immigrants applying for citizenship to submit their certificate of religious baptism, although there exists no strictly legal obligation for them to do so.
Immigrants, in particular Albanians, often convert to the Orthodox faith in an attempt to prove their descent from the Greek minority in Albania, and thereby secure their position in Greek society. The approach is wrong, because law and state meddle directly with the hard core of a persons identity. It should never be part of an assimilation policy.
Standards for assimilation may be found among the fundamental principles and values governing the society of the European Union. EU integration through voluntary assimilation is something different from what one might expect the term to mean within a single national society. The Union is a very recent multi-ethnic entity, which has not yet taken its final form. Therefore its meta-values and principles are much softer and more integrative than they would have been in any national society.
Nevertheless, long-term residents need at least to know the language of the place they are living in, as well as the history of the Union, and get involved in its politics. They should be prepared to preserve its independence and integrity, respect the rule of law, the democratic principle, human rights and fundamental freedoms, the equality of men and women, the rights of homosexuals, the right to privacy and, above all, the culture of tolerance in an open society. Acceptance of these values by immigrants should constitute the very transmission belt from short- to long-term residence and, finally, citizenship.
The question is, at what stage in the immigrants stay in the country should an assimilation policy be implemented and how is it to be implemented in practice? Sanctions should certainly not be the main tool, although the imposition of fines should not be ruled out as a means of at least enforcing participation in language or other courses. Restrictions on family reunification such as those put in place by the Danish Aliens Law, are not sanctions in the strict sense, but limitations of the right to family life.
A voluntary assimilation policy should be graded, depending on the short-, medium-, or long-term residence status of the immigrants. A sufficient knowledge of language, for example, should in principle be acquired during the short-term residence. Family reunification should be permitted during the medium-term residence; during that period, projects concerning the equality of men and women, family planning and womens rights should be implemented as part of a civic education programme.
The most important step for the EU immigrants presence should be the transition from medium- to long-term residency. At that stage, an overall assessment of the immigrants integration into European society should be undertaken including, along with labour market criteria, a comprehensive assessment of his or her personality and of the ties he or she maintains with the society of the European Union.
Immigrants with a clean criminal record who have been successfully integrated into labour markets and are actively participating in the civic education programmes, as well as in the social life of the communities, including activities in trade unions, professional organisations, non-governmental organisations, political parties or other kinds of associations, should be given long-term resident status without restrictions.
This status should encompass rights derived from the Unions citizenship and should then lead, as a rule, to the acquisition of citizenship in the respective member state. In this way, immigrants may be the first Europeans to assume a European identity without having passed through the national identities of the member states.
The granting of long-term residency should more or less decisively conclude the EU integration process. Immigrants would be further entitled to learn their language and profess their religion, but not to establish schools with the curriculum of their country of origin. Withdrawal of long-term residency status should in principle not be possible. This however necessitates a fairly strict eligibility test for the acquisition of that status.
IV. In Conclusion
Migration and welfare in world society
Immigration has acquired some distinctive features in the era of globalisation. There now exists a worldwide market for a migrant workforce. Regional societies compete with each other to attract immigrants with the necessary skills for their own economy. Correspondingly, there is a migrant demand for countries offering the best job opportunities. In 2002, the number of migrants reached around 175 million people about 3% of world population more than doubling the worlds migrant population since 1970.
It is a common fallacy to assume that migration equalises income between the rich and the poor, giving immigrants from disadvantaged regions the opportunity to establish themselves in a more affluent environment. On the contrary, on a worldwide scale, migration rather tends to increase inequality. The poorest social groups, excluded from the life of their own societies, are not in a position to face the cost and complexities of migration. Migrants are more often people with the sufficient resources, skills and capacity for long-term planning. They too find themselves in a structurally vulnerable position in the country of destination, mainly because they have chosen to break away from the safety net of relationships they maintained in the country of origin. Meanwhile, the brain drain effect can increase inequalities in the relationship between developed and developing countries, at least for a transitional period.
But despite this tendency to increase disparities, there are two reasons why world society benefits from migration over all. First, because the transaction between the country of destination and the immigrant is an opportunity to nurture the welfare of both parties. Were the borders in world society completely open, people flows would just crisscross each other at random. But where the country of destination permits the immigrant to enter its territory lawfully, a contract may be concluded to mutual advantage.
Second, immigration can act as a catalyst in challenging authoritarian regimes. It is naïve to believe that it would help developing countries, if developed countries closed their borders to put an end to the brain drain. Development and democratisation in these countries is quite likely to be the consequence of crises, in particular of the breakdown of the economic system of the state concerned. Such a breakdown, in turn is often the direct result of the exclusion of large parts of the population from participation in the social and economic life of the nation.
In such a setting immigration, or voting with the feet, is both a symptom of the disease and a possible therapy. Moreover overall, emigration is an important factor in alleviating poverty through workers remittances to their families. Immigrants and refugees who have been successfully integrated into an open society, provide the most valuable human capital for the reconstruction of their countries of origin, once those authoritarian systems have collapsed.
Europe an open space for immigration
EU immigration policy must be sensitive to the market, drawn up on the basis of labour demand and supply, with the aim of maximising the welfare of the European Union.
In conformity with the principle of subsidiarity, the EU should indeed take the fundamental decisions, while member states maintain enough space to steer migrant flows according to local legal and economic specificities, including the needs of their social security systems. The correspondence between social security contributions and benefits should be strictly observed and the mobility of immigrants within the Union enhanced. Europe should become a space open for immigration.
To prevent friction within society, it is necessary to promote a policy of voluntary assimilation of immigrants and confer long-term residence status only on persons who have been successfully integrated in the above sense. It is not desirable and it would certainly not be legal from the standpoint of international human rights law, to impose artificially and from above the national identity and culture of the receiving state upon immigrants.
European legal, political and societal meta-values, in contrast to national ones, are flexible enough to permit the co-existence of different ethnic groups and cultures under the same roof. In the era of universal human rights, nonetheless, cultural specificities should be clearly distinguished from unofficial norms of conduct, that should not be permitted to contradict the liberal paradigm of European society.
