By:
Martin Ruhs, University Lecturer in Political Economy at Kellogg College and Senior Researcher at COMPAS
I
spend a lot of my time talking to journalists and policy-makers about
labour immigration. In that context, I am often asked if labour
immigration and/or a particular labour immigration policy is “good” or
“bad”.
I suspect most researchers will share my basic hesitation in engaging
with this question. International labour migration creates a wide range
of economic, social, cultural and other impacts for individuals,
communities and countries as a whole. Some of these impacts can be
measured and quantified (with some difficulties and disagreements in the
literature), e.g. the impacts of immigration on wages, while others are
much harder to define and measure (e.g. impacts of immigration on
“national identity” and “social cohesion”, both vague and contested
terms).
So, at a very basic level, one could argue that the different types
of impacts of international migration are inevitably incommensurable
and, in any case, there are so many gaps in the evidence base that we do
not have enough information to provide a complete and comprehensive
assessment (e.g. in the UK there are very limited data and analyses of
the effects of immigration on the provision and consumption of public
services).
While I have given this answer many times, the problem is that, nine
times out of ten, it is a conversation-stopper, especially when talking
to journalists looking for an answer to a “reasonable question” about an
issue that, as opinion polls suggest, most people in the country “care
about very deeply”.
So my second response to the “immigration good or bad” question that I
have used more frequently – and with some (a little) more success in
terms of continuing the conversation – is that it all depends on whose
interests the policy is meant to serve. This sounds like a very obvious
point but the dearth of explicit discussion of this issue is, in my
view, the primary reason why immigration has become such a contested
public policy issue in the UK and many other high-income countries.
There is no clarity and very little discussion about what exactly policy
is trying to achieve, and why.
So I want to ask in this blog: in whose interests should the UK’s
immigration policy be made – and why? Before you stop reading, the
answer “in the UK’s best interest” is not good enough because what
constitutes the “UK’s best interest” is precisely the question that I
want to raise.
What are the potential objectives of immigration policy?
To start the discussion we need a list of the different types
of impacts of international labour migration – in itself a difficult and
maybe impossible task. At the risk of over-simplification, I suggest
that the main types of effects of international migration on
migrant-receiving and migrant-sending countries include impacts on:
- economic growth and welfare (e.g. impacts on the labour market, public finances and wider economy)
- the distribution of income (e.g. the impacts of immigration or emigration on the lowest income earners in the economy)
- social cohesion and national identity (terms that are hard to define but nevertheless feature prominently in public debates)
- crime and national security
- the rights of individual citizens
International migration also has important effects for migrants
themselves, e.g. by affecting their “economic welfare”, “human
development” and “rights”, all in many ways related effects that still
have some distinct features and dimensions.
All
these impacts are likely to be interrelated and potentially
conflicting, which means that the relationship between them may be
characterised by trade-offs. Trade-offs may exist when comparing the
interests of the receiving country, migrants and their countries of
origin (e.g. the international migration of highly skilled workers from
low-income countries may generate significant benefits for migrants and
receiving countries, but can have adverse impacts on migrants’ countries
of origin); between the interests of different groups of people within
countries (e.g. in the short term immigration may benefit employers but
harm some domestic workers in receiving countries); and between
different types of impact (e.g. the level and kind of immigration that
maximises economic growth may not be perceived to be compatible with
considerations about national identity and social cohesion; for another
example, migration may help migrants to raise their incomes but at the
same time reduce some of their rights).
Whether these potential trade-offs exist in practice is an important
empirical question that can be specific to time and place. But the
fundamental and in many ways obvious point is that there will always be
some conflict between some impacts and objectives. If migration was
always good for everybody and everything, the issue would not be so high
up the agenda in public policy debates.
What do we want? The underlying ethical questions
So, given the list of potential objectives and trade-offs,
what impacts and whose interests should labour immigration policy in
the UK (and other high-income countries) serve?
This is an inherently normative question that different people will
answer in different ways. When thinking about this question, I find it
useful to think about two underlying ethical questions.
1) To what extent, if at all, should the outcomes for collectives
(such as economic economic growth or distribution) and the economic
welfare of individuals be given priority over individuals’ rights? To
put this question in the context of an example taken from the current
debate in the UK, should immigration policy restrict British citizens’
right to get married to a non-EEA national in order to minimise the
fiscal costs of immigration? To what extent, if at all, do the ‘means’
(individual rights restrictions in this case) justify the ‘ends’?
2) To what extent, if at all, should the interests of citizens of
receiving countries be given priority over those of non-citizens
(including existing migrants without citizenship of the host country and
people in migrants’ countries of origin)? Many (although not all!)
people would agree that nation states need to prioritise the interests
of their own citizens, but exactly how much more weight should be given
to the interests of citizens? International migration can generate huge
benefits for migrants, especially for low-skilled workers, so to what
extent should these benefits inform the design of immigration policy in
the UK and other high-income countries? And how should policy
distinguish, if at all, between the interests of citizens and other
residents without citizenship (e.g. migrants with permanent and
temporary residence permits)?
Different answers to these two ethical questions have radically
different implications for immigration policy. For example, within an
“ethical framework” that emphasises consequences for collectives rather
than rights of individuals and that strongly prioritises the interests
of citizens, a country’s labour immigration policy is determined based
on an assessment of the consequences for economic growth, distribution,
national identity/cohesion and security in receiving countries – with
little to no importance given to the outcomes or rights of migrants and
people in their countries of origin.
For example, points-based systems that aim to “optimally select”
migrants in terms of their skills and other characteristics in order to
maximise the benefits and minimise the costs of immigration for the
receiving country can be justified by such a normative framework. Guest
worker programmes that restrict the employment of migrants to specific
sectors of the labour market that suffer from labour shortages and that
limit migrants’ access to the welfare state are another example.
In
contrast, an ethical framework that prioritises consequences but puts
equal weights on the interests of all people (“consequentialist
cosmopolitanism”), i.e. migrants as well as non-migrants in receiving
and sending countries, would demand a labour immigration policy that
would admit much larger numbers of migrants. In fact, it could be argued
that if economic efficiency and distribution were the only outcome
parameters, “consequentialist cosmopolitanism” would require open
borders, as the free flow of labour increases world welfare and
decreases global inequality.
What do you think?
There are longstanding debates in political theory and
philosophy about these questions. Clearly, they are normative questions
with no one “right answer.” My intention here is not to take a position
but to simply emphasise that all labour immigration policies are based,
either explicitly or more frequently implicitly, on answers to
fundamental ethical questions about the extent to which consequences for
collectives should trump individual rights, and about the degree to
which nation states prioritise the interests of their own citizens.
So, to create more clarity in immigration debates we need not only
better evidence about numbers and impacts but also more open discussion
about the policy objectives, including the underlying ethical questions.
Visit our
facebook page to discuss the objectives of labour immigration policy.
For more detailed discussion of the issues raised in this blog, see Ruhs, M. and H.-J. Chang (2004) ‘
The Ethics of Labor Immigration Policy’,
International Organization 58(1): 69-102
Bron:
http://compasoxfordblog.co.uk/2012/10/labour-immigration-policy-what-do-we-want-and-why/
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UAF-studente
Nicky Sadyhova is 21 jaar en woont al bijna 10 jaar in Nederland.
Vanzelfsprekend is ze dolblij met het goede nieuws. ‘Hier heb ik heel
lang op gewacht. Het kinderpardon móést eigenlijk wel doorgaan, zo veel
kinderen zaten al lang in onzekerheid… Dat is nu afgesloten. Ik kan
haast niet beschrijven hoe blij ik ben!’
