Buruma:
SINGAPORE – The British shadow minister for Europe, Pat McFadden, recently warned members of his Labour Party that they should try to make the most of the global economy and not treat immigration like a disease. As he put it, “You can feed on people’s grievances or you can give people a chance. And I think our policies should be around giving people a chance.”
In a
world increasingly dominated by grievances – against immigrants, bankers,
Muslims, “liberal elites,” “Eurocrats,” cosmopolitans, or anything else that
seems vaguely alien – such wise words are rare. Leaders worldwide should take
note.
In the
United States, Republicans – backed by their Tea Party activists – are
threatening to close the government down just because President Barack Obama
has offered undocumented immigrants who have lived and worked in the US for
many years a chance to gain citizenship. The United Kingdom Independence Party
(UKIP) wants to introduce a five-year ban on immigration for permanent
settlement. Russia’s deputy prime minister, Dmitry Rogozin, once released a video promising to “clean the rubbish” – meaning migrant workers, mostly from
former Soviet republics – “away from Moscow.”
Even
the once famously tolerant Dutch and Danes are increasingly voting for parties
that fulminate against the scourge of immigration. Always keen to assert the
freedom to insult Muslims, the Dutch Freedom Party wants to ban all mosques.
And the tiny and much-harassed opposition parties in Singapore – a country
where almost everyone is descended from immigrants – are gaining traction by
appealing to popular gripes about immigrants (mostly from India and China) who
are supposedly taking jobs from “natives.”
What
can American Tea Party enthusiasts, Russian chauvinists, fearful Dutch and
Danes, and Singaporean leftists possibly have in common that is driving this
anti-immigrant sentiment?
Retaining
one’s job in a tightening economy is undoubtedly a serious concern. But the
livelihoods of most of the middle-aged rural white Americans who support the Tea
Party are hardly threatened by poor Mexican migrants. UKIP is popular in some
parts of England where immigrants are rarely seen. And many of the Dutch
Freedom Party’s voters live nowhere near a mosque.
Anti-immigrant
sentiment cuts across the old left-right divide. One thing Tea Party or UKIP
supporters share with working-class voters who genuinely fear losing their jobs
to low-paid foreigners is anxiety about being left behind in a world of easy
mobility, supranational organizations, and global networking.
On the
right, support for conservative parties is split between business interests
that benefit from immigration or supranational institutions, and groups that
feel threatened by them. That is why the British Tories are so afraid of UKIP.
Nigel Farage, UKIP’s leader, is less concerned with economic growth than with
pursuing his extreme conception of national independence.
On the
left, opinion is split between those who oppose racism and intolerance above
all and those who want to protect employment and preserve “solidarity” for what
is left of the native-born working class.
It
would be a mistake to dismiss anxiety about immigration as mere bigotry or
apprehension about the globalized economy as simply reactionary. National,
religious, and cultural identities (for lack of a better word) are being
transformed, though less by immigration than by the development of globalized
capitalism.
In the
new global economy, there are clear winners and losers. Educated men and women
who can communicate effectively in varied international contexts are
benefiting. People who lack the needed education or experience – and there are
many of them – are struggling.
In
other words, the new class divisions run less between the rich and the poor
than between educated metropolitan elites and less sophisticated, less
flexible, and, in every sense, less connected provincials. It is irrelevant
that the provincials’ political leaders (and their backers) are sometimes
wealthier than the resented metropolitan elites. They still feel looked down
upon. And so they share the bitterness of those who feel alienated in a world
they find bewildering and hateful.
Populist
rabble-rousers like to stir up such resentments by ranting about foreigners who
work for a pittance or not at all. But it is the relative success of ethnic minorities and immigrants that is more upsetting
to indigenous populations.
This
explains the popular hostility toward Obama. Americans know that, before too
long, whites will be just another minority, and people of color will
increasingly be in positions of power. At this point, all Tea Partiers and
others like them can do is declare, “We want our country back!”
Of
course, this is an impossible demand. Short of unleashing massive and bloody
ethnic cleansing – Bosnia, on a continental scale – Americans and others have
no choice but to get used to living in increasingly diverse societies.
Likewise,
economic globalization cannot be undone. But regulation can and should be
improved. After all, some things are still worth protecting. There are good
reasons not to leave culture, education, lifestyles, or jobs completely exposed
to the creative destruction of market forces.
McFadden
has pinpointed the central solution to globalization’s challenges: giving
people “the tools to reap the benefits” of the globalized world, thereby making
the “connected world work better for people.” The problem is that this call is
more likely to appeal to the highly educated, already privileged classes than
to those who feel disenfranchised in today’s global economy.
This is
a serious problem for political parties on the left, which increasingly seem to
be speaking for the metropolitan elites, while provincial populists are pushing
traditional conservatives further to the right by fishing in the dark waters of
popular resentment.
