Migration to Europe: Crisis Or Opportunity?

The Economist recently described refugees as “reasonable people in desperate circumstances”. Tragically, similar rational observations are in short supply. Amidst rising public concerns over the massive influx of displaced peoples and the European Union’s repeated failure to sufficiently respond to the crisis, specious populism has increasingly emerged at the forefront of political discussion. This has been compounded by the rapidly approaching possibility of a British exit from the EU and a broader resurgence of nationalisms across the Continent. The underlying cosmopolitan tenets of the European project may be starting to crumble. Paradoxically however, this turbulence may also provide an excellent opportunity to re-assert the EU’s humanitarian ethics.

Mass migration has increasingly come to define the BREXIT debate. UK Nationalists and Eurosceptics have a tendency to conflate public frustration over record high immigration figures with the refugee crisis, framing them as synonymous issues that can only be resolved through a ‘Leave’ victory in the referendum. With a recent Economist/Ipsos MORI poll revealing 56 per cent of British citizens view immigration as the most important issue facing the country, the expediency of politicising the refugee issue becomes fairly obvious. In light of the 2015 Paris attacks, demagogues across Europe have also sought to securitise the crisis, drawing dubious links between migration and terrorism by using inflammatory terms and stoking hardline nationalist sentiments.

Pervasive xenophobia has proliferated across the continent, born on an undercurrent of popular anxiety. Trumpeting the dichotomy between ‘European values’ and the ‘undesirable’ qualities of ‘outsiders’, far right parties are seizing the opportunity to re-engineer European liberalism as a vehicle for social discrimination. In this sense, European identity has increasingly become anathema to the cosmopolitan norms it was trying to advance, igniting tensions along predominantly ethnic and religious lines and accelerating a new wave of national isolationism.

In such an atmosphere, the legal realities of dealing with refugees have been largely overlooked. As Zoe Gardner, spokeswoman for London-based Asylum Aid, has argued, “if your issue is you want no refugees in the UK, then your issue is not with the EU – it is with global law”. In contrast to regular migration, refugees and asylum seekers are protected under the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. These statutes transcend the authority of national border controls and make the outcome of the BREXIT debate largely irrelevant to the refugee issue. However, given the level of European hostility towards fulfilling their legal obligations, it remains unclear how much impact the humanitarian values underlying international law actually have today. The EU is facing an existential crisis. Crucially however,  this is the product of nascent xenophobic and Islamophobic tendencies long associated with Europe’s far right, rather than the malign interests of external agencies.

The inflexibility and institutional deficiencies of the EU itself has not helped the situation either. Its initial approach of regional refugee containment was poorly executed and relied on the Middle East acting as a closed system, with already saturated local states absorbing any spillover generated by the Syrian crisis. When the strategy was eventually adapted to manage a growing exodus of peoples, gridlock in the European Parliament, vetoes by an increasingly recalcitrant Eastern European bloc and the resurrection of internal border controls across Schengen, have all undermined the EU position further. In the eyes of internal and global audiences, the EU has become an inert bureaucratic Leviathan incapable of resolving the challenges now facing it. In this context, it is understandable that the deal with Turkey was hurriedly ratified in March 2016. At its core, the agreement aims to mitigate refugee flows coming into frontline European states by facilitating the fast-track mass return of migrants from Greece on a ‘one in one out’ basis structured along specific national quotas. However, the Council of Europe has subsequently condemned the bargain, maintaining “it at best strains and at worst exceeds the limits of what is permissible under European and international law” by infringing on the “basic norms on refugees’…rights”.

Leaving aside the practical issues in actually implementing the deal, it is ultimately an ad hoc strategy for shifting the ‘burden’ of dealing with refugees back to the Middle East. This entirely contravenes the humanitarian values codified in European law by re-locating people to countries that are well known to infringe human rights. It also installs a discriminatory regime at odds with the self-ascribed liberal aspirations of the EU. Perhaps most importantly, the agreement doesn’t offer a sustainable, long term solution to the crisis. The strain will only increase in the coming decades. Under the pressure of climate change, food insecurity and water scarcity, many host nations for refugees from neighbouring states, such as Kenya and Ethiopia, are liable to transition back into departure states over the coming years, creating further waves of displacement far beyond the numbers we are experiencing today.

It is therefore essential for the EU to design comprehensive institutional structures with the capacity to effectively deal with these issues. There is no silver bullet and any success will have to rely on a pan-European process involving multilateral coordination and contentious discussion. But, by initiating this conversation, there will be space to debate and re-define the underlying normative values of Europe providing an opportunity for much needed societal introspection. In doing so, it would allow sensible voices to confront and hopefully diffuse the Continent’s volatile political fringe, laying the foundations for a new, genuinely inclusive European project. By tackling what constitutes European values and a European identity, the EU may be able to finally ameliorate its darker tendencies and more fully embody the liberalism it seeks to champion.

ANSWERING EUROPE’S MIGRANT CRISIS

John Bond of Initiatives of Change writes:

A million migrants reached Europe last year from the Middle East and Africa, half of them from Syria. A million more are expected this year. This will not stop until peace prevails in Syria and Iraq. People fleeing for their lives do not obey border controls.

We Europeans need to do all we can to resolve the conflict. And we need to care for the refugees.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has set the lead, and many Germans have responded wholeheartedly. Other countries have dragged their feet, not least Britain. This is shameful. We led the invasion of Iraq along with the USA, and the ineptitude of our post-invasion policies are a major cause of the war from which the refugees are fleeing. More than any other European country, Britain has a moral obligation to care for them, and we are shirking that responsibility.

In so doing, we are missing a vital opportunity. Because refugees are not just victims, they are potential peacemakers. In many countries, returning refugees have played a significant role in developing structures capable of maintaining peace. Europe, after centuries of war, has had a large measure of peace for 70 years, and the lessons we have learned can advance peace on other continents. Here Syrians can gain insight into what it takes to enable a multicultural society to function harmoniously. Many of them will return when conditions improve. We can help them return with a greater understanding of how to work for a governance which serves all citizens.

We need to offer this help because of our history. A century ago Britain and France grabbed the territory of the defeated Ottoman Empire and divided it up, creating Syria and Iraq. In Britain’s case, to ensure a supply of oil. There was no thought of creating coherent nation states whose peoples could live in harmony with each other. And we British promised the same land to different peoples. The region has been paying the price of our duplicity and short-sightedness ever since. As the British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, said in 2002, Britain’s record in the region is ‘not entirely honourable’.

He spoke with British understatement. If we ask why such a destructive organisation as ISIS attracts thousands to its ranks, one answer is to look at the decades of humiliation of the peoples of the region. As psychologist Evelin Lindner has said, humiliation is the ‘nuclear bomb of feelings’. We British cannot deny that we have helped cause the explosion of anger and hate we see in ISIS, and the resultant flow of migrants. If we recognise this, we will then be able to develop policies which unite British of all backgrounds in tackling extremism, rather than policies which do the opposite because they stigmatise Muslims for our misdeeds.

Much of this also applies to our record in Africa. For several centuries Europeans have exploited Africa – taking slaves, minerals, oil, agricultural products, fish, and giving little in return. African diseases receive inadequate attention until they affect richer nations. Weak African governance is tolerated, perhaps because it makes exploitation easier. And then there is climate change, which is largely caused by the industrialised nations, but which impacts most on Africa’s drylands, severely reducing their agricultural potential.

The overall result is that some countries are so poor and so poorly governed that many enterprising Africans see no hope, and leave for Europe.

This will continue until Africa thrives. That is a challenge to Africans; there is much that only they can do to improve governance.

But it is also a challenge to the rest of the world including Europe. We need to end the exploitation. Let Africa’s fish feed Africans, not the rich nations whose factory fishing vessels plunder African waters. Let us pay adequately for the minerals and oil we take from Africa. Let us end the trade agreements which thwart African development. Let us tackle the European corruption which enables African corruption. Let us build the partnerships between Europe and Africa which will strengthen human rights and inclusive democracy on both continents.

That is the realistic answer to Europe’s migrant crisis.

John Bond grew up in Britain and has worked with Initiatives of Change on several continents, including eight years in Africa and 25 in Australia. There he gave leadership in initiatives aimed at healing the harm done by tragically misguided policies towards Aboriginal Australians, and was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia. He is now a co-convenor of the Caux conference on Just Governance for Human Security. He and his wife Mary Lean live in Oxford.