Indeed, it is an inter-connected world. So while that famous spirit of independence – this quintessentially British cry to ‘leave us alone’ – might have been something to be admired in medieval times, in today’s world for certain it is something to be feared. Not so much because we would be unable to go to the UK anymore, but because the UK may not really be the UK anymore. And so – just like that – the Tree of Liberty could be in need of new Guardians.
There is only one way a nation can stop people from wanting to emigrate to it, and that is by not having anything anyone wants. Otherwise, it must evolve an unapologetically xenophobic government in the attempt to keep inflows to a trickle. And what would the implications of this be? Not much, if it is used to bigotry; but where a society claims to be open and free, a respectful of human rights, and a leader in, and of, the global community, then the narrowing of public attitudes towards the foreigner becomes vastly significant, signaling not just a shift in policy but a shift in the character of the State itself.
So, Brexit is significant precisely because it is happening – not in Russia or China – but in the United Kingdom. From the heart of Western Liberalism comes a worrying statement; that the UK, comfortable with the EU when the EU was comprised of nations like France and Germany, finds the prospects of stronger ties with people from Poland, Hungary and (God forbid) Turkey simply unpalatable. It is a shocking manifestation of xenophobia dressed up in the policy speak of controlled immigration. All the rousing talk of nationalism, and the shining virtue of putting Britain first, when really all it is is people unable to bear the thought of Syrian families moving into their idyllic English villages.
Indeed, parochialism (what we would call tribalism in Africa) is alive and well in the West. We have seen the videos of Hungarians building barbed fences to keep out immigrants, of Germans protesting to keep out immigrants, of Britons murdering and voting to keep out immigrants – all in the bid to preserve society and culture as they know it. The irony being that the rest of the world was generally minding its own business when the West sailed in with its evangelistic message of globalisation. But the Aborigines of Australia did not have the luxury of a referendum. Neither did the Native Indians of North America, or the Xoxas of South Africa. In fact, those who attempted to preserve society and culture as they knew it were labeled ‘savages’, and a refusal to share was taken as an open invitation to mass murder.
In Western lore, these migrations are even till today still glorified as great adventures, as the heroic deeds of trailblazers, the courageous acts of pioneers. Migration would have to wait hundreds of years, till the trend reversed, till the rest of the world started showing up in droves at the doorstep of the West, to become a crime. For in the previously dominant narrative of globalisation, the West was the avatar of a borderless world, aggressively preaching the benefits of a globalised economy to the regressive ‘nativists’ in the Third World. When Intellectuals and governments of the Global South questioned the efficacy of unfettered free trade, they were derided as enemies of progress bound by an expired ideology.
But as popular discontent with global capitalism has increased in the West itself, it has unleashed xenophobic and anti-globalist ultra-right political currents, from the British National Party and UKIP in Britain and Marie Le Pen in France, to Golden Dawn in Greece and Donald Trump’s Republican insurgency in the US. What these movements share is a rabid distaste for the sort of socio-cultural hybridisation fostered by immigration, and a desire to re-establish racial and ethnic purity.
…you can vote ‘exit’ in as many referendums as you want, roll out as many coils of barbed wire across your coastlines as you want, tacitly encourage as many far right groups as you want, but as long as the grass is seen to be greener where you are, people will still come.
In the UK, migratory waves have called into question the very meaning of ‘Britishness’, and portend the end of the Anglo-Saxon dominance of British identity. Across the Atlantic, the ‘browning’ of America, the fact that the US will shortly cease to be a white majority nation, has ignited no small racial hysteria. Trump has prioritised pulling the US out of the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) agreement, and building a wall on the border with Mexico. In both instances, increased diversity and complexity are disrupting civic solidarity and posing new questions of governance. Were these tensions occurring in Africa, we would have been blitzed by the international media coverage of yet another tribal conflict in the Dark Continent. Yet it is White tribalism – Anglo-Saxon tribalism – that is now manifesting.
And this is what History shows that despite the rhetoric of Western liberal politicians, about Human Rights and Rule of Law, the world system is actually not a moral construct, but a simple reflection of Power; in this case, the Power of the West to legitimise migration – in fact, mandate it – when it suits it (in the name of spreading civilisation) and criminalise it when it suits it (in the name of defending civilisation). So, we are told (like Black South Africans were once told about White South Africa) to stay out of the Western World unless we have a valid pass showing we are there to provide a service they need, or to purchase a service they provide.
However, the genie of globalisation is out of the bottle and cannot be forced back in. For it is, indeed, an incredibly egotistical notion, for a society to believe it can freeze Time, and indefinitely preserve itself, its status in the world, and its culture from being affected by others. For, in reality, the same primal hunger that drove Europe’s ‘explorers’ to risk death in pursuit of new lands is the very same one that herds today’s migrants unto rickety dingies across the treacherous Mediterranean. So, you can vote ‘exit’ in as many referendums as you want, roll out as many coils of barbed wire across your coastlines as you want, tacitly encourage as many far right groups as you want, but as long as the grass is seen to be greener where you are, people will still come.
In this sense, all this xenophobic policy-making bears the fatal stamp of futility. For no mother will sit by a wall watching her baby die, when there is food on the other side. No father will mope by a fence watching his children die, when there is medicine on the other side. This is not a grand conspiracy to sabotage Western civilisation, or any other civilisation for that matter, it is simply the reality of being human. For the migration and commingling of peoples is one of the most primal of human imperatives. It is part of the search for self-actualisation and existential security. To curb it as drastically as the right-wing nativists in the West are demanding is to go against an inevitable and unstoppable tide of venturesome humanity. Indeed, what is more likely to happen is that just as the Prohibition in the US spawned organised crime, a clampdown on immigration will simply enable the evolution of more sophisticated, organised and ruthless people-smuggling cartels; for the need to emigrate is that visceral.
Even more, to be able to have some of its people move to other countries periodically, is in fact a necessity for a poor developing country, ravaged by multiple problems but severely handicapped in its internal capacity to govern. For, surely, one of the ways the world must redress the gap between the well managed (rich), and not so well managed (poor), nations is by allowing the latter to export some of its burdens to the former regularly. This is not a subversive statement for, in truth, it is the poor and the vulnerable – fleeing hardships and the consequences of bad governance – that tend to be in the greatest need of emigration as a means of escape.
…to think the global debate on migration simply a Western issue which developing countries should ignore to face the more pressing task of lifting their own societies to such a standard that their people are no longer queuing to emigrate from it, is to ignore the fact that one of the factors undermining the capacity of African countries to export agricultural products to the West is the payment of subsidies by Western governments to Western farmers…
These were the sorts of people that fled the Irish potato famine and migrated to the US in the 19th century; not settled, professional types with bright prospects where they were. No. These were certainly not the sorts Britain exported to New Zealand in colonial times. So, an immigration policy that says, “it is not that we are adverse to immigration, it is that we only want the ‘good migrant’” is a totally self-serving policy, determined to exacerbate the deadly effect of ‘brain drain’ on the developing world. In truth, as the developing world, we need to keep our bright ones and export our troubled ones, because we need the former more than you do, and you can help rehabilitate the latter more than we can.
This is the sort of stuff leaders of Third World countries should be advocating at international organisations, instead of routinely agreeing with the right-wing narrative that people should live contently in their own countries. What? What is the world now, a collection of segregated states? For the West is adept at globalising its own issues, and making everyone contribute to solving problems it singlehandedly created in the first place (think, climate change), while insisting on keeping the problems of others (particularly third world countries) ‘contained’. Well, if you want us to leave the coal we have in abundance and come and buy green technology from you so we can pursue industrialisation in ways that meet your carbon-emission standards then you give us a flexible and humane migration policy that recognises our need to export parts of our population (good, bad and UGLY) periodically.
For emigration is not only a critical pressure-release valve for a developing country, it is also an important capacity-building mechanism. Otherwise, how long would it take a developing country to produce, from within itself, a critical mass of people with skill sets and resources comparable to those found in the developed word? Too long. Yet this is precisely what Emigration is able to do within a short space of time for its source nation; that is, create a skilled Diaspora, which is then able to contribute to the source nation’s development by sending back sorely needed first world resources.
So, to think the global debate on migration simply a Western issue which developing countries should ignore to face the more pressing task of lifting their own societies to such a standard that their people are no longer queuing to emigrate from it, is to ignore the fact that one of the factors undermining the capacity of African countries to export agricultural products to the West is the payment of subsidies by Western governments to Western farmers; that diseases existing only in the developing world are grossly under-researched and under-funded in the developed world; and that forced migration – of slaves to the first world, and settlers to the third world – is the foundation of this present global economic system.
Indeed, it is an inter-connected world. So while that famous spirit of independence – this quintessentially British cry to ‘leave us alone’ – might have been something to be admired in medieval times, in today’s world for certain it is something to be feared. Not so much because we would be unable to go to the UK anymore, but because the UK may not really be the UK anymore. And so – just like that – the Tree of Liberty could be in need of new Guardians.
Dike Chukwumerijie is an award-winning writer and poet, while Chris Ngwodo is a writer, consultant and analyst.
