Migrant workers process green peppers in California. Bob Nichols for USDA/Flickr. Creative Commons.
The plight of migrants crossing the Mediterranean to seek entry to the European Union raises profound issues for Western democracies and their responsibilities for those beyond their contemporary borders. The current response of governments is that maintenance of a ‘European model’ of welfare requires strictly policed borders and populations, as well as military action against the ‘business model’ of those they are pleased to call ‘traffickers’. We suggest a different way of defending welfare regimes and addressing the legitimate claims of the world’s poor through an alternative global social democracy based upon reparations and a collective concept of freedom.
A modest proposal?
The current official EU response invokes the language of ‘anti-slavery’, but directs it against migrants fleeing poverty and civil disruption caused by war and other acts of oppression. However, a new ‘economic’ argument has entered the debate. Recently put forward by Chicago University law professor Eric Posner and economist Glen Weyl, and pitched to the World Bank, this is a ‘pro-slavery’ argument for the free movement of unfree labour. An echo of their argument is heard in the suggestion by Italian interior minister, Algelino Alfano, that migrants should be made to work for free.
