The revolving wheel of history

Human migrations for climatic, demographic, religious, political or economic reasons have existed ever since homo sapiens spread out from Africa. And some have been massive enough to partly or totally annihilate the native populations. Over the past century Western Europe has experienced two periods of intense migrations. The first was the consequence of ethnic cleansing in Turkey, of the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, of civil war in Russia and later in Spain, of the rise of fascism in Italy and national-socialism in Germany, and of general poverty. The second, which is still going on, is the consequence of the dismemberment of the Soviet Empire, of civil war in countless countries, of numerous fascist regimes, of the Taliban, Al-Shabaab, AQMI, Boko Haram, IS and of general poverty. In the first case, the interwar period, the migrants spoke different languages, had different customs and practised different religions, but they and the countries they went to shared a common history of alliances and conflicts, and a common heritage of Greek, Latin and the origins of Christianity. From the Black Sea to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arctic Ocean, millennia of fighting had created a community. And the circulation of literature meant that a Lithuanian or a Moldavian would not feel a complete stranger in Paris or London. Also, in the 1920s and 30s Western Europe was the gateway to both American continents, then still open to new arrivals. So that some of the flow crossed the Atlantic. At present the migratory movement into Western Europe comes from Eastern Europe and, more significantly, from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and the only shared experience those immigrants have with their host countries, is that of past colonial subordinations. Some speak a European language, but few have any experience of European cultural and social practices and of Christian traditions whether secularised or not. They are alien and alienated.

Hannah Arendt has described the effects of clandestine “stateless” migrants in the interwar period and their consequences (1). Similar causes are having similar effects today. And, though Europeans may have become more tolerant over the past century, the greater distinctiveness of the present clandestine surge nullifies it. Illegal immigrants are by definition outside the law. They have neither rights nor duties and, as the numbers grow, the lack of legal status results in outlaw spaces under arbitrary rule (the US has free-fire zones for its security services). The trouble is that this contaminates the rest of society. First it implicates legal or naturalised migrants who have the same origins. Then even those that are born in the host country and have full citizenship are drawn back from assimilation by identifying with the clandestine minority in their midst. Moreover, the extra-legal situation imposed on unauthorised arrivals is projected on the whole group. Arendt saw in all this the premises of a police state and potentially a totalitarian one. History is supposed not to repeat itself, but in this age of financial breakdown, of un- and under- employment and contracting demand for unskilled labour, of religious and nationalist armed confrontations and of global surveillance, the totalitarian phantom is getting more consistent every day. And the way a nation treats those seeking refuge is a sure test of that consistence.

1. The Origins of Totalitarianism, part two: Imperialism, chapter nine: The decline of the nation state and the end of the rights of man. (Thirty odd pages worth reading.)