Utopianism on the right: Walling in "the nation"

It is interesting to me that so much of right wing social visions today is about security and keeping us safe from things. It would seem that the world is a dangerous place (in spite of all the data showing that the world has become a much safer place over the last century) and that there is an urgent need to protect us. Much of that concern is focused on "securing the borders" from "illegal immigration" and to ensure that those who receive welfare "do not abuse the system". We hear that from politicians across the democratic world, particularly in relation to the ongoing refugee situation in Europe, during the Brexit debate and certainly during the American election campaign. It would seem that immigrants and poor people are dangerous.

The Fatalist Way: Management by mistrust

Key Values: Mistrust, suspicion, security, rule enforcement

The right wing narrative about the dangerous world is based on the assumptions that inform Fatalist management, which I often refer to as management by mistrust, namely that solidarity is impossible to achieve and that every system invites fraud, free-riding and opportunism. To counter that, governments need to take protective steps. Some of those are random controls, like the breath-tests used by traffic control law enforcement.

The management model is clearly top-down but there is also little coordinated action, because trust levels are so low. This is rational within this system. Since actors fear each other, they don't dare enter into partnerships, because if they do, their ideas might be stolen by others. Alternatively, they have to work a lot while others don't work at all, just free-riding on others' efforts. Anyone who's done group work in school will recognize it. For those who do the work, there's just too little benefit for the high cost involved.  Under such circumstances, people stop collaborating.

That becomes a substantive problem when it occurs throughout society. Democracy builds on trust. Almost 200 years ago, the French thinker Alexis DeToqueville described why American democracy worked: because people spontaneously came together, formed mutual aid groups and helped each other. Putnam later called this "social capital" and found, in a classic study, that Southern Italy's socioeconomic challenges could be tied to the lack of trust prevailing there. Citizens did not get organized and work together, because they did not trust each other. At a certain level, the lack of cooperation - the lack of social networks, social capital - becomes a problem and undermines democracy.

Keeping people in poverty: Workfare schemes

A very common Fatalist policy is the workfare program. It has been adopted for social welfare services across the democratic world in the last couple of decades and frames social welfare users as untrustworthy opportunists. To make sure recipients don't "abuse tax payer dollars", applicants are put through all sorts of rigorous tests, including drug use or literacy. Sometimes case officers force them to complete public work before giving them their welfare remuneration. The negative effects on the user have been well documented and they certainly don't do anything to get people off welfare or closer to self-sufficiency (Herd, Mitchell, & Lightman, 2005; Lightman et al., 2006; Lightman et al., 2006). In some cases, clients were unable to provide all the requested information and thus were disqualified (Herd, Mitchell, & Lightman, 2005). In one study, interviewed welfare recipients described how the system was “dominated by suspicion and a mentality of policing” (Herd et al., 2005, p. 13). Civil servants end up caught in the middle; they do not like having to treat clients this way. Senior managers complained that the system had been turned into an “eligibility machine” (Lightman et al., 2006, p. 137), which meant that they could not do what they wanted to, to support clients towards an improved life situation. The case demonstrates how destructive management by mistrust can be, particularly in social policy areas.

Walling in the nation to "keep it safe"

By now, it should be easy to spot the consistency between the values of the Fatalist Way and what conservatives in all democratic countries are saying about immigrants and refugees: "They are here to abuse our generous system and we have to keep our borders safe from free-riders and people who might be criminals". That sentiment clearly builds on mistrust and a treatment of these categories as potential free-riders and opportunists whose primary motivation is to abuse "our hospitality/system". While there is little new to say about him, Donald Trump's plan for immigration reform constitutes a good example of a Fatalist framing of immigration. The below identifies some typical Fatalist analysis in the plan.

Here is the free-rider frame: "Current immigration policy costs taxpayers $300 billion a year." Note how Trump ignores the contributions immigrants ("legal" or "illegal") are making to the US economy by adding their productivity to the overall workforce. They could make even greater contributions if they could work without fear of deportation, so their status as illegal is actually a drag on the American economy, but Trump ignores that possibility, too.

The crime-frame is referred in nine of ten bullets. Notably, most research shows that crime rates among immigrants in the US are lower than among the native born population, so this is incorrect, but it's essential to build the impression of a dangerous world that the Fatalist approach to governance thrives in. The point (no. 5 in Trump's list) about tripling the number of border control agents also supports that perspective, as does the now-famous proposal to build a wall. Trump wants to emphasize policing, rather than reform laws that are costly in both humanitarian and economic terms.

Consequences

The consequences of applying Fatalist policy as widely as Trump (and many other nativist, nationalist politicians want to) would be a decline in trust and cooperation in society as a whole. When that happens, we see a decrease in the formation of voluntary organizations, and a lack of capacity to do things together. Withering away trust on such a wide level risks undermining the political culture needed to support democracy itself.

Immigration myths: Law and order arguments for closed borders

This post deals with common law and arguments people use to defend the "we need to close our borders for immigration"-position. As the overview will show, these arguments are difficult to sustain on closer scrutiny. An examination exposes their weak foundation.

Law and order arguments

"Refugees and/or immigrants are criminals/terrorists and should be kept out of the country lest social unrest results"

No. There is no research suggesting that crime rates are higher among immigrants than among the native born population that I am aware of. In fact, the opposite is often true. Now, consider what some are suggesting here: because a marginal fraction of immigrants might have committed criminal acts, everyone should be kept out. That's a form of collective punishment, seriously disproportionate to the problem at hand, and as such a severe infringement of human rights. A better approach would be to keep the borders open and then use regular law enforcement services to bring those who do commit crimes to justice - the way that is done with any native born.

New immigrants are expected to abide by the laws of the land, like everyone else. No one has argued that immigrants should be allowed to break the law. Designing a law that keeps people out because someone else has broken a law and "we think these people might break the law in the future" goes against some fundamental legal principles, like "presumed innocent until proven guilty".

"Allowing immigrants in undermines social cohesion"

People who argue this often refer to Robert Putnam's famous study E Pluribus Unum, which found that local trust levels tend to go down when new immigrants settle in a neighbourhood. They tend to read that piece selectively, however, because the piece then goes on to explain how that can be remedied by building networks between newcomers and long time residents. In short, when people get to know each other, they develop trust. He also cites a number of organizations that have done well with an ethnically diverse workforce.

Also, note how political leaders who speak of how "multiculturalism has failed" and how it challenges "social cohesion" (like David Cameron) never manage to define social cohesion. It's one of those words that sound important but has no real meaning. That makes it particularly useful for xenophobic groups.

"Immigrants bring disease"

During the Ebola outbreak in Western Africa, this argument was used by some who wanted to close the borders for people from the affected areas. This, again, would be a form of collective punishment that is completely disproportionate to the health risks involved. See this piece for an elaboration on how destructive a border closure would have been. If it can't be sustained for a pandemic of that level of seriousness, I can't see how it could be sustained for other matters of health either.

Some would say that the concern is that migrants will burden the health care system. If that is so, a better solution would be to keep the borders open but say that immigrants who are not citizens do not get access to health care. That way, the immigrants would have a few rough first years, but eventually, would become naturalized. If I have to choose between closing the borders and keeping the borders open while deny newcomers health care services, I would go with the latter. Personally, I think that solution is excessive.  There will there be some immigrants who need health services, but there will also be many who a) contribute with tax dollars to fund health services as they work and b) who either arrive with professional health care expertise and thus can work in the sector, or choose to become doctors or nurses after arrival.

"Illegal immigrants should be deported because they entered the country unlawfully"

It is technically true that people who enter the country outside the auspices of the official channels do so unlawfully. Notice, however, how the remedy to this, for those who raise "the issue of illegal immigration" is always to deport people and close down borders. A more straightforward solution would be to change what is, ultimately, an expensive and inhumane law for everyone.

Let us probe a good example: Prohibition. That law was formulated with the best of intentions: to save people from the evils of alcohol abuse. The method chosen, banning alcohol, probed incredibly costly and inhumane. Governments had to spend incredible resources enforcing the law, the alcohol that was produced was less safe precisely because it was done on the black market, with little to no accountability, and organized crime flourished. The sensible solution was to repeal prohibition.

Notice the many parallels to closed borders: smugglers can line their pockets, migrants have to constantly worry about government law enforcement (which gives scrupulous employers ample opportunity to exploit them) and risk injury and death as they travel across borders in dangerous and remote areas. Alan Kurdi's fate is a case in point; the migrants dying on the Mediterranean do so because European governments have put up fences and closed the borders where it is safe to travel.

If the borders were, instead, open, travel would be without risk. Exploiting smugglers or employers would no longer be able to threaten migrants without documents with deportation, so they could get proper jobs, with proper labour protection and thus be as productive as anyone else in society. The migrants could send their children to school without fear of government persecution. Governments could save all that money that is currently plowed into control measures that create more problems than they solve.

Next time a politician suggests building walls to "protect the border", some should ask why that is a good idea when it would be so much easier and more beneficial to everyone to just re-write the law an open the borders. Today, we consider the prohibition of coffee in Sweden enacted periodically during the 18th and 19th century) outlandish and absurd. The ban on movement across borders is much more destructive.