Managing migration for everyone: the 21st century challenge

Cycles and ages of migration recur throughout human history. From Greek colonies and Roman military conquests through Byzantine and Ottoman empires, from European colonisations to the great migrations of the 19th and early 20th centuries, migration has been crucial to human progress and integral to the rise and decline of organised political entities. Yet it is remarkable how few societies have been capable of managing the phenomenon effectively.

When support for immigration collapses (which, historically speaking, occurs with pendulum-like regularity), the duration and depth of a society’s engagement with the process does not seem to inoculate it against excessive reactions. This is as close to a ‘law’ of migration as anyone might posit. Moreover, it seems to hold independently of such factors as the size of immigration’s imprint on that society’s evolution and economic progress, or the benefits and experience thereby accrued.

The United States - Mexico border

I want to argue for greater realism about the prospect of changing the deeply embedded processes of contemporary ‘people flow’ merely through tougher domestic regulations and unilateral action in an increasingly interdependent world. There is no single blueprint for success. Learning from other states – even those as closely related to one another as many advanced democracies are – requires extreme care. In a policy domain as complex as international migration, managing uncertainty and learning to deal with imperfection may be the only realistic policy goal.

The existing international migration system is organised around ideal constructs that are both dated and disturbingly binary. States are designated as either ‘sending’ or ‘receiving’; people who move are classified as either permanent settlers or temporary residents; and reasons for flight are categorised either as the improvement of one’s economic condition or protection from various forms of persecution.

Such gross dichotomies shed little light on the reality of today’s migration patterns. Today, people move for a variety of reasons simultaneously; many states both send and receive substantial numbers of migrants; large proportions of permanent immigrants either return from their adopted country or move on, while many students and professionals settle in the host country.

The attempt to manage these complex transnational processes through unilateral and single-purpose policies will be of ever-diminishing value in the years ahead. Rather, to improve management of people flow, it is essential that we come to match the complexity of current reality and behaviours with an understanding that is equally multifaceted and creative.

Managing complexity: three elements

The difficulty that governments, and more generally societies, have in managing well the effects of large-scale immigration is rooted in three sets of factors. All three require governments to engage in delicate balancing acts in which the cost of failure is often measured not only in severe social and economic consequences, but also in political ruin.

The first set of factors lies in immigration’s relationship to sudden and deep social and cultural change. Societies evolve at leisurely, almost glacial rates. Large-scale immigration accelerates that pace and deepens its effect, while its ethnic, racial or cultural ‘visibility’ makes change caused by immigration difficult to deny. Immigration makes change, rather than constancy, the rule.

For the so-called ‘traditional’ countries of immigration – the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – the only social and cultural ‘constant’ is change. But this is not the case for most western states, including most European societies. Large-scale immigration challenges their dominant systems of social, economic and political governance to open up, and in effect, renegotiate their power allocation formulas – whether religious, linguistic, ethnic or racial.

Moreover, where gross annual immigration intakes by the US and Canada have doubled in the past twenty years, migration to Europe grew by a comparable rate in about half the time, and mostly without active immigration selective systems in place. In much of southern Europe, the growth rate has been extraordinarily high. This has been accompanied by the emergence of a new industry: the organised smuggling of people, spawning a highly profitable and corrupting black market, which constantly shifts its organisational framework in order to protect itself from the authorities.

The second set of factors is the sheer complexity of political and policy trade-offs confronting policy-makers in migration today.

For example, migration juxtaposes a philosophy of economic competitiveness that seeks ever-greater access for employers to the global labour pool, with social democracy’s more traditional interests in training its own workers and maintaining generous social and labour protection. Policy-makers are asked to make virtually instant calculations about complex cost-benefit ratios across a maddeningly broad array of policy domains – and to do so with grossly inadequate information and crude policy tools.

A different example of a complex trade-off is finding the proper balance between the furtherance of human rights and economic opportunity in developing countries, and offering immigration opportunities to their citizens. Each alternative has merit, yet each also carries substantial costs. The former requires sustained investments of physical, diplomatic and political capital; the latter an unceasing effort to explain to one’s public the rationale for and benefits from this course of action.

Yet another type of trade-off resides in the area of international cooperation to tackle irregular migration. If the advanced industrial democracies want immigrant sending and transit states to assist in a common front against illegal migration, they must place items of high interest to those countries on the table – conditional opportunities for liberalising trade in hitherto highly protected areas such as agriculture, textiles and garments; substantial physical and social infrastructure assistance; and far greater access to the advanced world’s labour markets.

While such policy objectives are important, the costs of making such a ‘deal’ are measured both in jobs and short-term economic well-being for some sections of society, and in political pain, as the affected domestic constituencies organise in opposition to such a bargain.

The third set of factors making governments’ management of migration difficult is the creation by people flow of distinct categories of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’. Migration’s economic and social impacts are distributed unevenly both across policy domains (such as human resources, trade and tax) and among investors, producers, consumers and workers. The experience of many advanced industrial countries today shows that a failure to address these consequences quickly and decisively can make immigration socially divisive and politically contentious.

The costs and benefits of global interdependence

For nearly every opportunity that trade agreements create, some social and economic sectors ‘win’ while others are asked to absorb a significant amount of risk. The adverse effects of increasing economic interdependence and consequent restructuring impact most directly on non-competitive industries and the holders of uncompetitive skill sets. It is however, the social consequences of this restructuring that are at the root of the popular uncertainty and fear that globalising forces have created; and they are at the root of much of the reaction to immigration as well.

Witness for example, US fears in the mid-1990s that the failure to ‘rescue’ the Mexican peso would greatly increase immigration pressures from that country; or Europe’s concerns that, under some circumstances, the Iraq war might have substantial refugee consequences for the European Union – just as the Balkan conflicts did in the 1990s.

In a perverse way, unwanted migration may thus be transferring instability from ‘source countries’ to ‘destination countries’, where it threatens to (or actually does) adversely affect the lives of ordinary people. It should not be surprising that the political resonance of the issue ebbs and flows most consistently with an economy’s overall performance. When entire industries retrench radically, relocate abroad, or attempt to change their labour relations in a quest to enhance their global competitiveness, there seems to be little that the affected workers and their organisations can do. But they can speak out against the one visible and tangible element of that change: immigrants.

Anxieties about such global forces over which single countries have little control have put immigration policy and management regimes throughout the west under the policy microscope. At issue is regaining the public’s confidence that their governments can and will manage immigration competently, address public grievances relating to it effectively, and defuse growing xenophobia and violence.

An unfolding paradox that is fascinating to watch, as a result, is how conventional political parties, which have sought to accommodate the minority appeal of xenophobic impulses by adopting restrictionist rhetoric and policies, deal with the emerging realisation that immigrants are fast becoming demographically and economically indispensable. Moreover, most leaders of such parties are becoming increasingly aware that the political power of immigrant and ethnic groups can only grow as large-scale immigration and active citizenship drives increase the electoral power of such constituencies.

The more general point, however, must not be forgotten. One of the most notable by-products of this crisis has been that parties of protest (so far mostly parties of the right) have been able to exploit public fears and discontent about several issues, initially in local and regional elections. It is in their ability to stimulate anti-immigration fervour and then use it as a political weapon that most such parties have excelled, thus catapulting immigration to the forefront of public debate and electoral politics.

The public’s impatience with experimentation and its intolerance for anything but near-immediate results can make migration policy even more problematic. The obsession with controlling international migration through unilateral law-and-order measures continues to distort public debate and allows governments little space to demonstrate that immigration is not at the root of the north’s major problems; that the problems to which migration contributes can be managed; and that immigration, properly managed, can in fact provide important answers to some of the north’s most intractable longer-term economic, social protection and demographic dilemmas.

The reactions from which such fringe parties and movements benefit, however, go much deeper than protest at illegal immigration. Most fundamentally, they go to the very fears and anxieties of both governors and governed about the capacity of their countries (individually and collectively) to make the policy adjustments that will allow them to retain their privileged standing in the world community – and with it, their political and economic well-being and the social order that flows from it.

There is clear agreement that reform is long overdue. What is less clear is whether such reform will be the product of a judicious effort to address all of a nation’s interests, as well as balancing those interests with international obligations and thereby remaining meaningful international players – or simply exerting an automatic pull of the control levers?

Can societies that appear to value tradition and continuity virtually above all else, as do the European (as well as the ancient Asian societies), make the leap that larger immigration levels require? Will the traditional destination countries start preparing the political ground for the larger immigration intakes they will need? Will both types of societies be able to manage the social and political reactions this solution will generate? Even without the elevation of national security concerns amongst migration policy priorities since 9/11, these are difficult adjustments.

Paths to progress: seven recommendations

What then, might the advanced industrial world be doing differently? Countries (or regional groupings) might start with a “learning by doing” approach: some modest experiments in cooperation that are constantly evaluated.

These experiments must introduce ideas that go beyond simply building better control-mechanisms, to test a variety of market-based responses – such as fees and bonds for migrants and their employers, incentives to employers for hiring native workers, and the establishment of migrant-funded trust funds for providing social support in the early years of migration.

In particular, they must also examine areas that address the long-term needs of emigrant-producing countries. Only by systematically setting up and assessing the performance of new policies, testing the durability of new regulatory frameworks, and laying out menus of policy alternatives can initiatives on migration stand a decent chance of producing positive management results.

While policy prescriptions are always easier to offer at a distance from the ‘real’ world of politics, the following seven ideas are offered for what states might aim to do:

• Recapture control of migration from the two groups that are posing the most imminent and clearest threat to this valuable instrument of progress: the demagogues, irrespective of party affiliation and regardless of whether they are in or out of government, who are riding the issue for political advantage; and the international criminal syndicates, which are substituting their interests for those of the societies in which their cargo ends up and those of their hapless cargo itself.

• Be more truthful and transparent. While all governments use facts and truth much more sparingly than they should on politically complicated issues, on immigration, wilful distortions and outright lies play directly into the hands of immigration’s opponents.

• Explain to the public what they are doing and why; and seek out a national debate in which they make the case for immigration policies that maximise benefits while minimising costs. Consistently applied rules-based actions and predictable outcomes are essential to building public confidence in complex and divisive policy realms.

• Build robust management systems, fund them properly (under-resourcing the management of migration has become endemic across most advanced industrial countries), review and adjust them frequently – so that they are always aligned with policy objectives – and pay attention to delivery, because it is in implementation that most systems stumble. Building and maintaining capacity in the management of migration should thus become a policy priority of the first order for all immigrant destination countries.

• Understand that single-purpose policies, just like single-cause explanations, are poor guides in setting policies on complex issues.

• Make immigration decisions part of the central policy area across domains and responsibilities. Government competencies are typically single-issue-focused, and bureaucracies are organised vertically in order to deliver the necessary function. Yet immigration, in terms of both benefits and consequences, cuts across policy domains; a partial list must include public order, social welfare, education and training, and foreign and development policy. Accordingly, the responses to it are stronger when they are considered and implemented across multiple policy domains.

• Turn two of the most determined ‘critics’ – the market and organised civil society – into partners in a common effort to create win-win situations on managing migration. Working against, rather than with, the market is often an exercise in futility; working without the benefit of civil society – a system’s main stakeholder – makes the task of governance on complex issues tougher than it needs to be. Working with critics on difficult issues makes it possible to share responsibility for what succeeds rather than always being blamed for what fails.

Measuring success in ‘people flow’ management

The past decade has shown that good management practices can prevent immigration from becoming a runaway policy and political ‘problem’ that requires extreme measures to control.

The willingness of Australia and Canada to adjust their policies regularly and to invest systematically in policy research and evaluation has enabled these countries to derive substantial benefits from immigration while minimising its downside.

Similarly, US actions in the mid-1990s in support of Mexico’s currency showed a particularly sophisticated understanding of the complex linkages between economic and political stability and unwanted migration, while pointing to the mutual obligations and liabilities that Nafta-like relationships impose on all the parties involved.

The negotiations between Mexico and the US on sharing responsibility for managing their bilateral migration relationship (until the events of 9/11 took the energy out of them), showed extraordinary promise towards developing a new bilateral regulatory paradigm with implications well beyond North America.

These and similar responses – the exceptions in a sea of rhetoric and action that emphasises unilateral controls – represent a ray of hope that advanced industrial democracies appreciate that most migrants, including many unauthorised ones, have been essential to their prosperity. This a time for such democracies to remember that migrants have basic human, social and economic rights, and that these rights should not be withdrawn unilaterally.

The significant political, human rights and demographic differentials that continue to divide the world make a realistic response to migration essential. Advanced industrial societies cannot exhort people to stay at home without a serious commitment to a long-term and costly endeavour to improve conditions there. Open and democratic societies must also understand that attacking the root causes of flight, while worthy and necessary, has a long horizon that will exact substantial domestic political costs before it yields measurable long-term benefits.

Foundations of a new wall, part of the triple fence being constructed on the border

In the interim, advanced societies retreat in the face of immigration’s challenge and retrench behind increasingly restrictive, and ultimately undemocratic, controls. As is becoming apparent, unilateral actions and fortress mentalities misread the complexities of the migration system while denying receiving societies an essential ingredient for their own economic success and social enrichment. Policies designed within such naïve frameworks are destined to fall short of even relative long-term success.

A more insightful set of policies would take into account the variety of the experiences of advanced industrial countries and their different levels of success – while appreciating that ‘success’ is overwhelmingly a function of effort, resources, commitment, flexibility, and consonance with a state’s culture and history. This is true both for the control of illegal flows and for the broader management of legal flows.

Success in solving the immigration puzzle also requires confidence, sure-footedness, leadership and vision in the public arena. These are precious commodities, but they are surely well within the realm of realistic possibility in the democratic world.

This article is a shortened version of a chapter of “The Politics of Migration”, a special issue of the Political Quarterly, published by Blackwells in October 2003.

The Politics of Migration: Managing Opportunity, Conflict and Change is a collection of essays edited by Sarah Spencer, Senior Associate of the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr) which includes contributions from international experts on asylum policy, labour migration, citizenship, the rise of the far right, attitudes towards Muslims and processes of integration and on the politics of migration in the European Union and United States.