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The Greater Caribbean This Week

Combating the fear of migration

by Rubén Silié

The tremendous opening up of markets and increased interconnectedness in the 21 st century, coupled with changes and trends toward cultural interaction, have made the world more cosmopolitan.

One of the most salient aspects of this process can be observed through migration. However, it is surprising that in Europe where regional integration is most advanced, certain sectors are engendering a climate of fear as a weapon to oppose immigration. Their arguments stem from such primitive fears and phobias as the intermixing of the races, and they exaggerate the bio-somatic characteristics of European identity vs. the non-European. Foreign culture is presented as nefarious, or as a contaminant to the purity of the indigenous culture, while access of immigrants to the job market is classified as the displacement of nationals.

In addition, it is argued that foreigners monopolize public services, primarily education and health, and they are presented as the cause of violence, delinquency and insecurity in all of its forms.

These are the elements that nurture the fear of immigration, which is not presented as a social process with historical, social and economic underpinnings, but as a strategy of “barbaric” peoples to attack the roots of Western culture.

Those who voice these types of arguments against migration are at the same time those who accuse immigrants of being fundamentalists, an accusation which reinforces the notion that they are a threat to the West.

This manipulative approach is based on the fact that the process of insertion of immigrants, unlike that of the last century, is no longer through assimilation; migrants maintain the essence of their culture and their beliefs, instead of acquiring those of their adopted countries. This is particularly evident after the recent surge of intolerance, which has become one of the consequences of the famous “War on Terror.”

When immigrants are accused of being fundamentalist, this idea is transmitted despite the fact that such an accusation itself amounts to a form of fundamentalism. But in light of the discredit associated with the concept, it is often applied and endorsed by the accuser, without his realizing that he is in fact, the personification of that which he accuses the immigrant to be.

One must not forget that fundamentalism originated during the eighteenth century in France, amongst religious groups opposed to the changes proposed then by the modernist movement.

For behavior based on fundamentalist attitudes, xenophobia is an accepted practice; these ideas have been the motive for violent acts against immigrants in recent years --- assassinations, burning of homes, persecution and threats.

But, it is clear that it does not serve the aims of xenophobic groups to offer explanations that take into account the cultural complexity of migration. They are not prone to the acceptance of the immigrant presence as a result of the demand for labor, caused by demographic limitations in Europe to replenish its population at the same rate of growth as its economy. Rather, it is believed that with the presence of foreigners, European society will never be the same again --- in the sense that the supposed purity of the Western culture will be lost.

It is the same narrow-minded, black and white approach, which prohibits seeing the presence of foreigners as a solution to the labor problem. Moreover, the presence of migrants enriches the cultural diversity of that continent, as occurred in the societies of the South, to which Europeans emigrated several centuries before.

Dr. Rubén Silié Valdez is the Secretary General of the Association of Caribbean States. The views expressed are not necessarily the official views of the ACS. Feedback can be sent to: mail@acs-aec.org