Britain’s liberal democratic state, and the political class that manages it, are more confused about immigration than 15 years ago. The issue now cuts across many of the usual tramlines of political thought and, by forcing us to consider the boundaries of national cultures, citizenship and belonging, it seems to challenge the universalist tendency of modern liberalism.
The Labour government has reflected some of these new uncertainties. On the one hand, it has overseen the biggest ever flow of migration into Britain, and has been more positive about this migration (and about minority rights in general) than any preceding government. On the other hand, in response to public anxiety, it has introduced stiff controls on low-skill migration, and adopted a rhetoric of national citizenship that would have been unthinkable 10 years ago.
It used to be so much simpler, especially for people on the left. West Indian and Asian immigration into Britain in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was economically and culturally enriching. Moreover, it was socially just, allowing people from poorer countries – many of which had suffered under British colonial rule – to become richer at the stroke of an immigration official’s pen. Opposition to immigration, and to immigrants, was seen as the product of a primitive, pre-liberal nativism or racism.
This narrative, although born on the left, became the dominant national story about immigration in the 1980s and 1990s, partly thanks to the success of organisations like the Commision for Racial Equality, but also thanks to its convergence with another narrative, born on the right, about free markets and globalisation. If goods and capital were now to flow freely around the world, then labour surely must be allowed greater freedom to migrate too? Meanwhile a new political worldview was also emerging – particularly on the liberal left – that was anti-national and post-socialist, and rooted in a mix of universalist liberalism (cross-border human rights) and cultural relativism (all cultures are equal).
Much of this narrative is now in retreat. This is not because the average British citizen has become more racist (although it is true that the far right has never been as electorally successful). Thanks in part to legislation such as the Race Relations Act, the principle of anti-discrimination is now more widely embraced and practised than ever before in British history, and the average Briton is more comfortable with racial difference than ever before (consider the rise and rise of inter-racial marriage). But the political worldview described above has proved far too insouciant about the nation state and feelings of identity and belonging. Moreover, it has been unable to formulate a practical political response to the challenges associated with the sheer scale of immigration since the late 1990s – one million new legal residents between 1998 and 2004, then the 500,000 new citizens of the EU since 2004 – nor the growing scepticism about multiculturalism.
Although almost all opinion polls show large majorities opposed to mass immigration, and politicians of all parties talk about ‘managed migration’, setting out clear arguments for limiting immigration remains controversial. Even a politician as robust as David Blunkett shied away from contemplating a ‘cap’ on immigration, when pressed to do so in a television interview. One reason for this, as the Oxford philosopher David Miller has argued, is that it is difficult to make the case for limiting immigration ‘without at the same time projecting a negative image of those immigrants who have already been admitted’. It is possible both to argue that every member of the political community, whether native or immigrant, must be treated as a full citizen, enjoying equal status and equal respect, and that there are good grounds for limiting the overall number of new immigrants. But this requires more sensitivity than our adversarial political conversation sometimes allows.
Another reason for the difficulty in formulating a liberal case for immigration control is the continuing influence of liberal universalism. It is now taken as axiomatic in the political discourse of most developed nations that all humans are morally equal and worthy of equal regard, wherever they happen to live. This truism appears to undermine the case for favouring our own national citizens above those of other countries, but it does not prevent us doing so in practice – for example, we spend 20 times more each year on the NHS than we do on development aid. In any case, it is a non sequitur to suppose that the moral equality of all humans means that we are equally obligated to all humans. It is quite possible, indeed desirable, to believe that all humans are morally equal and yet to consider that national citizens have special obligations to each other that do not extend to all humanity – after all, we do not consider our own families to be morally superior to others, yet we would not hesitate to put their interests above those of others. Until a couple of hundred years ago, the basis of this national ‘specialness’ would have been mainly ethnicity – shared ancestry, history, sacrifice and myths. In multi-ethnic and multi-racial societies, the basis of specialness is citizenship itself.
But what is the moral basis of the specialness of citizenship? I believe it is ultimately a pragmatic claim relating to the efficacy of the nation state. Most of the things that liberals desire – democratic legitimacy and accountability, equality of citizenship, economic redistribution, strong welfare states, the shared language and norms that can create the bonds of fellow-feeling – only work effectively at nation state level. It is national citizenship, membership of the national community, that grants us the legal, political and social rights that we associate with the good society.
For this reason we should be glad, as the smoke clears from the great globalisation explosion of the past 25 years, that the nation state is still standing, if not wholly unscathed, then in reasonably good shape. It is true that, as economic borders and regulations have fallen away, some of the traditional government levers for controlling the national economy have lost their power, but as the nation state has stopped doing some things (like controlling the flow of money across its borders), it has started to do other things (like regulating what we eat more closely).
In technologically complex states, national governments will continue to loom large in the lives of citizens. In most of western Europe the state still accounts for more than 40 per cent of GDP, on average. And even in the EU, which has greater ‘porousness’ between nation states, and a more developed supranational structure than anywhere else in the world, the nation state is still easily the most significant element in the political lives of citizens. Consider what matters to most people at election time – personal tax levels, public spending, the health system, education, crime and policing, immigration, foreign policy. The EU impinges very little on any of these things.
This has been a long preamble to establish two vital points: in democracies the interests of existing citizens must come first, and the nation state is still central to political life. Of course, this does not preclude individual citizens, groups of citizens, or even whole countries having a strong interest in the wellbeing of people or countries outside their own nation states, but it does underline the fact that immigration should be considered first and foremost from the point of view of the interests of the citizens of receiving states. With the exception of genuine asylum cases, immigration is not a right. And it is perfectly legitimate for receiving societies to choose migrants on the basis of who would fit in most easily and contribute most.
Immigration is always in the interests of the immigrant, otherwise the painful and disruptive business would not be voluntarily undertaken. It is often in the interests of some, if not all, citizens of the receiving country too. And while there is no doubt that most immigrants make a valuable contribution to the life of their new country, that is a by-product of their primary motive to seek a better life.
With this in mind, I want to consider two broad arguments that support a liberal case for restricting immigration: first, the economic issues surrounding labour markets, public services and fairness to existing citizens, particularly poorer ones; and second, the more intangible questions of culture, community and cohesion, and how much demographic continuity the good society requires. The costs and benefits of immigration tend to be very unevenly distributed among the citizens of receiving countries. Supporters of mass immigration base their case on economic growth, the replenishment of ageing societies and the fact that the work immigrants often do allows existing citizens to get better jobs. All of this may be true, but if the immigrants are low skilled (and bring their families), they will not necessarily add to per capita GDP. Furthermore, they will grow old too, and the impractical goal of stopping the population from ageing would require tens of millions of migrants over a 50-year period. Lastly, even if migrant labour is not taking jobs from existing workers – because the quantity of employment in an economy is not fixed – it usually helps to keep wages down. That is good for employers and richer people, but less good for people on low incomes (often recent migrants themselves). When it comes to immigration, the left appears to dispense with its usual scepticism about the benign working of the capitalist economy.
The relationship between public services and immigration is also complex. While many migrants provide essential care services in both the public and private sector, they may be resented as consumers themselves of scarce welfare services. This is especially true when newcomers are felt not to have ‘earned’ their access to benefits or housing; for example, when universal criteria based on need allocate council housing to a large, poor, newly-arrived family, ahead of existing citizens who may have been queuing for years.
This leads to the second argument for liberal scepticism about mass immigration. Strong communities are based on continuity, shared experience and trust, and it takes time before their members feel comfortable about sharing their resources with newcomers. If immigration is too high or too rapid, or if immigrants continue to live in ‘little Pakistans’ or ‘little Somalias’, the ‘them’ will not become part of the ‘us’ and Britain will become a more fragmented society. Even for those newcomers who do make an effort to be part of the society they have joined, it takes time to turn formal equality into ‘felt’ equality.
How much integration is required in societies with large and diverse ethnic minority populations to engender the solidarity that underpins a generous welfare state is not clear. And what exactly the means of integration should be in liberal societies that put a high value on individual choice is also not clear. But it does seem to me that the standard multicultural argument – so long as I pay my tax and obey the law, British society has no claim on me – is a recipe for the ‘thinning out’ of society. Some degree of commitment to one’s fellow citizens, and to the public norms and symbols of British society, is necessary for social solidarity to flourish.
David Goodhart is the editor of Prospect magazine and the author of Progressive Nationalism: Citizenship and the left (Demos)
© Commission for Racial Equality, 2006