“The Germans
themselves I should regard as aboriginal, and not mixed at all with other races
through immigration or intercourse. For in former times, it was not by land but
on shipboard that those who sought to emigrate would arrive, and the boundless
and, so to speak, hostile Ocean beyond us seldom entered by a sail from our
world”.
Publius Cornelius
Tacitus, Germania, AD 98.
Alphen, Netherlands. 24 August.
Last week was a busy week in Europe’s migrant crisis, this week will be no
different. German Interior Minister Thomas de la Maizière warned that some
800,000 migrants would seek asylum in Germany in 2015 and that it would take
years before such mass migration would end. The same day the EU reported that
107,500 irregular migrants had entered Europe in July alone, whilst the British
and French interior ministers agreed a new ‘Joint Force’ at Calais designed to
counter human traffickers operating at the French Channel port. Today, ‘Europe’s’
self-appointed leaders German Chancellor Merkel and French President Hollande
will meet to discuss the migration crisis which if unchecked threatens to make Europe
a very different place in ten to twenty years. However, there is another way of lokking at the crisis. Indeed, if one takes an
historic view the current migration crisis becomes one such movement in many. When
did those migrations take place, what drove them and what was their impact?
There have been four mass immigrations
into Europe in recorded history and one major emigration. The first such period of immigration took
place with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire between the fourth and eighth
centuries. The westward movements of the
Germanic tribes was driven by military pressure from beyond Europe's eastern borders and a loss of
control in the west. Between the fifth
and sixth centuries Slavic migrations took place into modern Europe which also
saw profound social, cultural and economic shifts in Europe. Moreover, between the ninth and tenth
centuries the Hungarian occupation of the Carpathian Basin led to a profound
population shift in Southern and Eastern Europe as did the Moorish conquest of
the Southern Iberian peninsula between the eighth and sixteenth centuries. However, perhaps the most influential mass
migration was that of Europeans to the Americas between the seventeenth and
nineteenth centuries. Indeed, European
migration to North America in the nineteenth century represented some 40% of
the population and had an enormous and deleterious impact on the indigenous
aboriginal population, as did similar migrations to modern day Australia, and
to a lesser extent New Zealand.
All such migrations shared common
drivers; war and conquest in source regions, economic dislocation, poverty and oppression
of groups, religious and/or ideological hatreds, and struggles for local and
regional political superiority between regimes, races and cultures. Today’s
mass immigration within and into Europe is little different and thus a
twenty-first century version of a very old phenomenon.
Critically, from a policy perspective,
it is important not simply to see the current wave of mass immigration as
having begun with the arrival of people smugglers and horribly over-loaded boats
across the Mediterranean. Indeed, the
current mass immigration into Europe began with the end of European colonialism
and accelerated as the successor states set up after colonialism began to
falter and then collapse from the late 1970s on, particularly in the Middle
East and Africa, but also in Asia. The Arab Spring, the failed
Western interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya further accelerated
such flows because it enabled sophisticated criminal trafficking networks to
create unhindered ‘pipelines’ from source countries to Europe across effectively ungoverned spaces. Indeed, the
traffickers are clearly ‘winning’ their war with European governments.
One must also draw an important
distinction between irregular immigration into Europe and legitimate immigration
within Europe. The latter is the result of a deliberate and agreed EU policy and
part of the free movement of peoples designed to foster a ‘Europe whole and
free’ after the 1989 end of the Cold War.
Indeed, as one of 3m British migrants living within the EU I am one of
those self-same immigrants who has benefitted from free movement.
Equally, whilst today’s mass
movement shares many of the same characteristics of historic movements there
are some crucial differences. Whilst the
German interior minister’s figures if correct suggest that upwards of a million
people will seek asylum in Europe in 2015 such a movement is still relatively
small compared to the 500m or so inhabitants of the EU. In past migrations the ratios between
indigenous peoples and immigrants was far lower, the host populations were so
much smaller, cultures and races more localised, and thus the impact far
greater.
However, if such flows continue
effectively unmanaged then the implications for European society and individual
European societies will be very profound indeed. It is reasonable to assume that most of the migrants
will seek to head to northern and western Europe, as have many southern and
eastern Europeans during the Eurozone’s now interminable financial crisis. Indeed, one can already see the impact of
recent mass immigration on those societies – for good and ill. Resentment within indigenous populations will
grow and social cohesion will suffer leading to profound policy implications. For example, de la Maizière warned yesterday that the 1985 Schengen Agreement might have to be
suspended if the flows of migrants continue unchecked.
The lessons from the past? History suggests that those on
the Left who believe that open door migration leads to a diverse and tolerant multicultural
society that somehow strengthens said ‘society’ are utterly naïve at best. History
also suggests that those on the Right who believe such flows can simply be
stopped and/or reversed are equally naïve.
It is therefore vital effective management is established and quickly. That means immigration and asylum systems that are just for migrants and
seen to work by and for citizens at one and the same time.
Prospects? Sadly, through all recent
crises European leaders have proved themselves spectacularly incompetent and by and large unable
to take the decisive action that a ‘crisis’ by definition demands. It is as though the appearance of EU ‘solidarity’
is more important than finding solutions. Consequently, the EU has become an appalling talk-shop because European leaders rarely
if ever agree about any course of action.
Failure to act and Europe’s
migrant crisis will only deepen. In such
an event migrants will not find Europe the safe haven or the ‘better life’
magnet they had hoped for, and the growing contempt felt for Europe’s leaders
by much of Europe’s population will only worsen.
As Tacitus once said: “Viewed
from a distance, everything is beautiful”.
Julian Lindley-French
