On the borders of solidarity: ethics, power and immigration controls

An ethical perspective on migration

The debate about immigration in political and media discourse is dominated by issues of economics and culture. The key economic questions are: How much do immigrants pay in taxes compared with what they claim in benefits? What is their impact on wages and jobs? What is their impact on social resources such as health and housing? Are particular regions facing an unfair economic impact compared with others? The cultural questions are whether national identity will be diluted, whether multiculturalism is still tenable, and whether the social cohesion needed for democracy is being undermined. And we see much the same economic and cultural focus at the intellectual/academic level. What is often overlooked, however, is that there is an ethical dimension here. It may be that, even if specific economic and cultural concerns about immigration have weight, ethical concerns outweigh them. In this essay I explore what these ethical concerns are and what happens when we add them to the immigration debate. My argument is that an ethical approach reveals the question of political power, and who is, and ought to be, subjected to that power.

Stuart Hall, Doreen Massey and Michael Rustin identify the importance of developing a progressive political project ‘which transcends the limitations of conventional thinking as to what it is “reasonable” to do’, and to have a debate that goes beyond ‘matters of electoral feasibility’.¹ This is certainly not what tends to happen in the debate about immigration, which is almost always framed within the confines of the ‘reasonable’ and the ‘feasible’ rather than the radical. Indeed the left has found immigration to be a divisive and difficult subject. And it has also often been suspicious about bringing an ethical aspect into the debate, seeing that kind of move as a form of liberal ‘entryism’. But the left’s commitments to solidarity and internationalism have always been underpinned by a strong moral vision of equality and humanity, and in this essay I therefore explore what those commitments mean when it comes to immigration.

The role of unreason

Before I begin it might help to clarify what is at times a complex and confusing debate. We should not characterise the argument as being either for or against immigration. There are those who believe that immigration has certain negative economic and cultural impacts, which weigh against it, and those who think that it is largely beneficial to receiving societies. But those who stress the negative impacts rarely want to close borders altogether, and those who are more positive rarely want to open borders completely. Another clarification worth making is that those who do advocate freedom of international movement are not necessarily arguing for a ‘no borders’ view. They are not arguing for a world in which distinct communities with clear membership boundaries do not exist. They are, rather, pointing out that the majority of political communities succeed in having members, democratic structures, tax-raising powers, responsibilities and a sense of identity, without the need for immigration controls. The fact is that virtually all nation-states have regions, districts and cities, and in many cases nations, that have some degree of autonomous power and strong identities, but have open boundaries. National borders of exclusion are the exception not the rule. So there are many reasons to resist reducing the argument to a close-borders/no-borders polarity.

If this is right there is plenty of room for reasoned discussion about immigration. However, another feature of this debate is the extent to which people refuse to see the reasonableness and evidence of the opposing side. There are certain beliefs about immigration which are very difficult to shift: whatever the evidence to the contrary, it is simply ‘true’ that immigrants are here to claim benefits and exploit the health system, and that they take ‘our’ housing and jobs and lower ‘our’ wages. And so UKIP can win the debate in the face of rational argument and evidence. This can be exhausting and demoralising for those who stress the more positive view of immigration. But this ‘unreason’ is not...