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| ” Rowthorn argues, “may be exaggerated, but it is not always false.” “To maintain a once-and-for-all reduction in the dependency ratio requires a never-ending stream of immigrants. Once the inflow stops, the age structure will revert to its original trajectory.” "For Goodhart, the taproot of liberals’ hostility to migration controls is their individualist view of society. Failing to comprehend people’s attachment to settled communities, they label hostility to immigration irrational or racist." "The policy conclusion to be drawn is banal, but worth restating. A people’s tolerance for change and adaptation should not be strained beyond its limits, different though these will be in different countries. Specifically, immigration should not be pressed too far, because it will be sure to ignite hostility. Politicians who fail to “control the borders” do not deserve their people’s trust." |
Inconvenient
Truths About Migration
Nov 22,
2017 ROBERT SKIDELSKY
Standard
economic theory says that net inward migration, like free trade, benefits the
native population after a lag. But recent research has poked large holes in
that argument, while the social and political consequences of open national
borders similarly suggest the appropriateness of immigration limits.
LONDON –
Sociology, anthropology, and history have been making large inroads into the
debate on immigration. It seems that Homo economicus, who lives for bread
alone, has given way to someone for whom a sense of belonging is at least as
important as eating.
This makes one doubt that hostility to mass
immigration is simply a protest against job losses, depressed wages, and
growing inequality. Economics has certainly played a part in the upsurge of
identity politics, but the crisis of identity will not be expunged by economic
reforms alone. Economic welfare is not the same as social wellbeing.
Let’s
start, though, with the economics, using the United Kingdom – now heading out
of the EU – as a case in point. Between 1991 and 2013 there was a net inflow of
4.9 million foreign-born migrants into Britain.
Standard
economic theory tells us that net inward migration, like free trade, benefits
the native population only after a lag. The argument here is that if you
increase the quantity of labor, its price (wages) falls. This will increase
profits. The increase in profits leads to more investment, which will increase
demand for labor, thereby reversing the initial fall in wages. Immigration thus
enables a larger population to enjoy the same standard of living as the smaller
population did before – a clear improvement in total welfare.1
A recent
study by Cambridge University economist Robert Rowthorn, however, has shown
that this argument is full of holes. The so-called temporary effects in terms
of displaced native workers and lower wages may last five or ten years, while
the beneficial effects assume an absence of recession. And, even with no
recession, if there is a continuing inflow of migrants, rather than a one-off
increase in the size of the labor force, demand for labor may constantly lag
behind growth in supply. The “claim that immigrants take jobs from local workers
and push down their wages,” Rowthorn argues, “may be exaggerated, but it is not
always false.”
A second
economic argument is that immigration will rejuvenate the labor force and
stabilize public finances, because young, imported workers will generate the
taxes required to support a rising number of pensioners. The UK population is
projected to surpass 70 million before the end of the next decade, an increase
of 3.6 million, or 5.5%, owing to net immigration and a surplus of births over
deaths among the newcomers.
Rowthorn
dismisses this argument. “Rejuvenation through immigration is an endless
treadmill,” he says. “To maintain a once-and-for-all reduction in the
dependency ratio requires a never-ending stream of immigrants. Once the inflow
stops, the age structure will revert to its original trajectory.” A lower
inflow and a higher retirement age would be a much better solution to
population aging.
Thus, even
with optimal outcomes, like the avoidance of recession, the economic arguments
for large-scale immigration are hardly conclusive. So the crux of the matter is
really its social impact. Here, the familiar benefit of diversity confronts the
downside risk of a loss of social cohesion.
David
Goodhart, former editor of the journal Prospect, has argued the case for
restriction from a social democratic perspective. Goodhart takes no position on
whether cultural diversity is intrinsically or morally good or bad. He simply
takes it for granted that most people prefer to live with their own kind, and
that policymakers must attend to this preference. A laissez-faire attitude to
the composition of a country’s population is as untenable as indifference to
its size.
For
Goodhart, the taproot of liberals’ hostility to migration controls is their
individualist view of society. Failing to comprehend people’s attachment to
settled communities, they label hostility to immigration irrational or racist.
Liberal
over-optimism about the ease of integrating migrants stems from the same
source: if society is no more than a collection of individuals, integration is
a non-issue. Of course, says Goodhart, immigrants do not have to abandon their
traditions completely, but “there is such a thing as society,” and if they make
no effort to join it, native citizens will find it hard to consider them part
of the “imagined community.”
A too-rapid
inflow of immigrants weakens bonds of solidarity, and, in the long run, erodes
the affective ties required to sustain the welfare state. “People will always
favor their own families and communities,” Goodhart argues, and “it is the task
of a realistic liberalism to strive for a definition of community that is wide
enough to include people from many different backgrounds, without being so wide
as to become meaningless.”
Economic
and political liberals are bedfellows in championing unrestricted immigration.
Economic liberals view national frontiers as irrational obstacles to the global
integration of markets. Many political liberals regard nation-states and the
loyalties they inspire as obstacles to the wider political integration of
humanity. Both appeal to moral obligations that stretch far beyond nations’
cultural and physical boundaries.
At issue is
the oldest debate in the social sciences. Can communities be created by
politics and markets, or do they presuppose a prior sense of belonging?
It seems to
me that anyone who thinks about such matters is bound to agree with Goodhart
that citizenship, for most people, is something they are born into. Values are
grown from a specific history and geography. If the make-up of a community is
changed too fast, it cuts people adrift from their own history, rendering them
rootless. Liberals’ anxiety not to appear racist hides these truths from them.
An explosion of what is now called populism is the inevitable result.
The policy
conclusion to be drawn is banal, but worth restating. A people’s tolerance for
change and adaptation should not be strained beyond its limits, different
though these will be in different countries. Specifically, immigration should
not be pressed too far, because it will be sure to ignite hostility.
Politicians who fail to “control the borders” do not deserve their people’s
trust.
Nov 8, 2017
CHRISTOPHER SMART
ROBERT
SKIDELSKY
Writing for
PS since 2003
Robert
Skidelsky, Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Warwick University and a
fellow of the British Academy in history and economics, is a member of the
British House of Lords. The author of a three-volume biography of John Maynard
Keynes, he began his political career in the Labour party, became the
Conservative Party’s spokesman for Treasury affairs in the House of Lords, and
was eventually forced out of the Conservative Party for his opposition to
NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999.
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