Economic migration is neither new nor unique

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For generation after generation, Wales has lost people, particularly young people, who have left to seek a better future elsewhere. The immediate cause is well-understood: a lack of opportunity here, coupled with greater opportunity elsewhere. Within the UK, it’s not a phenomenon unique to Wales of course; Scotland and much of England outside the south-east corner have suffered the same fate. The wider reasons for that economic imbalance are well-understood as well: a centralised state which concentrates power, wealth and talent in the centre by sucking it in from the peripheries. The extractive and exploitative nature of the Welsh economy is easily seen by looking at transport links – the best ones overwhelmingly run from west to east rather than north to south, historically facilitating the extraction of mineral and other wealth.

The fact that Wales has not been an independent country during that time, and the consequent lack of a recognised international border obscures the basic fact: most of those who left Wales were (and are) what are today called, usually pejoratively, economic migrants. People who live in an area denuded of much of its wealth by far-away rulers migrate in search of a share of what was originally theirs anyway. We’re not good at recognising it, but it is the same imperative which drives many of the migrants reaching these shores currently. Coming from countries which were systematically exploited and robbed by their colonialists, they travel to where the wealth now resides in search of opportunity. And it should be no surprise that the country of choice for many of them will be the one which colonised them, and whose language was imposed upon them. So, for example, Algerians tend to favour France and those from the former British Empire tend to favour the UK.

If anyone should be able to understand and empathise with economic migrants, it is us here in Wales. But by and large, many amongst us don’t. Perhaps it’s due to a lack of understanding of our own history, coupled with an acceptance of the version of history with which we are fed. But the bottom line is that, whilst many in Wales blame the exploiters for the loss of those who leave, they blame the individuals for the new arrivals. In truth, our interests have more in common. If it’s an unfair distribution of wealth which drives economic migration, it is a fairer distribution which will reduce it. It’s no accident that, in the UK as in the US, anti-immigrant sentiment is being driven and funded by some of the richest political donors. We only have to ask ourselves who might feel most threatened by any suggestion of a fairer distribution of wealth, whether within a state or more globally, to understand why.

Choosing the wrong target

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After Jeremy Corbyn’s speech at his party’s Scottish Branch meeting over the weekend, it is a complete mystery to me how anyone is still giving any credibility to the idea that Labour’s policy on the EU is in any way different in substance to that of the Tory government.  As an exercise in cakeism, it was a tour de force: Labour want all the benefits of the EU without being bound by any of the rules; they want to be outside the EU yet still have a say in all the important EU policies; they want the exact same benefits as we get from membership whilst having more freedom to make our own policies than any member, let alone any of the countries with which the EU has an existing relationship.  Other than the use of words, and the fig leaf of ‘a’ rather than ‘the’ customs union, it was a speech which could have come from the mouth of Johnson, Gove, Fox, or May.

Except, that is, for the part about immigration.  That was more Farage than Johnson and friends.  And it was a particularly depressing section of his speech, designed more to try to appeal to the prejudices of a particular segment of the electorate than to set out any sort of vision for the future.  There’s been plenty of research showing that the impact of immigration on wages and opportunities is minimal, but he chose to ignore that, concentrating instead on the idea that the damaging part of immigration, in economic terms, is when agencies bring in foreign labour to undercut workers in the UK.

Now, on a factual basis, I don’t know what proportion of total immigration this issue affects.  It’s certainly not all immigration, and I suspect that it’s actually a small part, but it’s a part which is more visible in some communities and some types of work than others, as a result of which it probably has more impact on people’s views on the issue than other types of immigration.  It would be interesting to see some more detailed research on it, but I’ll accept that there is a widespread perception that some agencies are getting around UK law on issues such as the minimum wage by providing food, accommodation, transport etc. and docking these costs (at an inflated level) from the wages being paid to the migrants concerned.  As I said, the extent to which this is a true or accurate perception is a question on which I do not have adequate information to make a judgement, but I’m certain that the perception is widely held.

If we suppose, for the sake of argument, that it is an accurate perception, and that the practice is in use widely across the UK, then it is reasonable to ask what the solution might be.  And my immediate reaction is that if there are holes in the law allowing unscrupulous capitalist employers to exploit employees, than those holes need to be plugged and enforcement action taken.  And had Corbyn suggested that, I would have whole-heartedly supported him.  Protecting workers from exploitation by unscrupulous employers is exactly the approach that I would have expected from anyone calling himself or herself a socialist.

Sadly, however, that wasn’t what he did.  To his shame, he effectively scapegoated the migrants themselves, by supporting an end to freedom of movement.  It’s a case of blaming the victims of an economic relationship based on power and wealth for being on the wrong side of that relationship.  His underlying point, I assume, is that freedom of movement for lower paid workers is a policy which is working more in the interests of employers than of employees.  But even if he’s right, the answer isn’t to curtail the freedom of workers to move, it is to curtail the freedom of employers to exploit.