Indieoma

Last Thursday, the Algerian national soccer team was qualified for the world cup. That same evening, 3,000 Algerians gathered on the ports of Marseilles to celebrate their victory. The celebration soon turned into a riot, and a number of boats on the port were set ablaze; major arteries were blocked, and passers-by were aggressed; there was loud chanting, flares, and significant damage to public property. This put the on-going debate of the ‘immigration endemic’ back on the front pages of major French newspapers. Some articles and editorials called for those immigrants who want to express their nationalism, as done in Marseilles last Thursday, to do it back in their countries’ of origin, while others argued that the people who’ve come from places like the recently de-colonized Algeria behave this way because they are treated like second class citizens: subject to exclusion, unsatisfactory social programs, and poverty.

Most frequently debated are the economic effects associated with immigration. It remains a lively debate mostly because of its inconclusiveness. It is very difficult to effectively quantify immigrants’ effects on the French economy. Surveys across the country propose largely varying numbers, as there are so many variables to consider. For example, French author, Gerard Nuirel, claims that French highways were built by a work force comprised of 90% immigrants. He also underlines how millions of immigrants (both living in and out of France at the time—in the colonized areas) were called to fight for France in both world wars and were then played a crucial role in the country’s reconstruction. Aren’t these immigrants French yet? Nuirel seems to be asking. Historian, Daniel Lefeuvre, on the other hand–– who writes on doing away with this implacable complex that the left has with France’s colonial past–– claims that immigrants only contribute a very small 5% to the economy’s ensemble; an unimportant input considering all the costs associated with their presence: 36 billion dollars a year on schooling and housing, social programs, unemployment, spaces occupied in prisons, their benefiting from the healthcare system, etc. Another study declares that, in fact, the investment in this population is a notably less 24 billion dollars per year that is largely compensated by immigrants significant contribution to the country’s infrastructure, the development of multiple agricultural sectors, the textile and clothing industry, manual labor, culture, and worlds more if they would only stop being marginalized.

One thing is generally agreed upon (despite the differences in what the causes and suitable responses are): immigrant populations are the most likely to be impoverished and subject to all the risks that follow suit: high unemployment, delinquency, violence, criminality (Le Point magazine noting that in 2004, 12,241 detainees of the 55,355 in France were immigrants without papers), a lack of education, spousal abuse, drug abuse, and so on. And it is these immigrants that make the news, the docile merchant, by the book telephone repair man, and friendly Kebab cook are much less interesting in light of the ‘immigration endemic.’

And then debates on if immigrants are competing for our jobs or if they are doing the jobs that we don’t want arises. So do debates on the ghettoes around Paris that act as criminal breeding grounds, and then we can talk about racism, the wars between the police and the ‘lascars’, the exclusion, the destitution, the riots, national identities, and so on.

In short, the country is divided between those who think that the vast majority of immigrants not only have a right to be here, but contribute far more than they detract, and, those in the opposing camp that argues that immigrants take much more than they give, creating a heavy, national burden.

The flawed debate goes farther than not having any real consensus regarding the statistics on the economic and social impacts of immigration in France, but maybe more fundamentally, there is not a solid definition of what constitutes an immigrant. The International Convention of Rome (1924) and The French Council of Integration define an immigrant as anyone who arrives to a new country in search of work and with the intention of staying in that country. By this definition, approximately 30% of France and the entirety of the United States (save for the deteriorating Native American population) can be called immigrants.

If you have papers, are you still an immigrant? When we talk about the immigrant endemic are we talking about legal or only illegal aliens. Are immigrants only those clandestine black and arab peoples that sneak across the boarder or are they also the Spanish, German, Italien, Portuguese, Belgian, and Polish families that immigrated here three generations ago and now have French nationality? Le Monde studied 24 ghettoes in France, documenting that 87% of these populations do have French Nationality (67% having origins in N. Africa, 17% from central and south Africa, and 9% being considered as having French origins). Yet when we talk about the problems with these ghettoes, we are predominately talking about the problems with immigration. Is an immigrant defined by their degree of integration? Of their children’s integration? If so, how do we calculate this integration? Through literacy tests? Career patterns? Raising children and putting them in French school systems? When we are talking about immigrants it’s not clear whom, exactly, we are talking about?

It’s undeniable, however, that there is an increasing flux in new immigrants: 97,083 in 2000, and 134,800 in 2005. It’s also undeniable that these ‘new’ immigrants are largely disadvantaged and are at a higher risk of falling victim to all the side effects that accompany poverty. We see this when comparing France’s crime and poverty rates to Scandinavian countries. In Norway, for example, they allow less than 1% of their population to be immigrant. In effect, they have a much easier time integrating the few immigrants that they allow in. Is this cold and unwelcoming, or is it the only way to effectively assimilate a new population? Either way, the idea of closing French borders completely is generally considered to be a virtually impossible option, not to mention that we would still have to deal with the question of how to appropriately integrate the 8% current immigrant population (again, a wholly imprecise percentage that has become convention).

So here I have regrettably fallen victim to stating the obvious problem and all of the questions that it poses without being able to offer a concrete solution (a very common and irritating habit of writers tackling this subject).

However, I will argue this: the very concept of frontiers, property rights, and the owning of land, is as ludicrous as claiming the sun or the stars or an ocean as belonging to any person or group of persons. The attitude of we were here first or we are stronger than you so we put the borders where we want has become both totally “normal” and is incredibly imbecilic and unfair. From a humanitarian perspective, the truth is, we can’t have both borders and humanitarian priorities. The very nature of barriers is exclusive and non-humanitarian. The debate in France is about what to do with the children of first generation immigrants that live in France but are not accepted as French: this so called lost generation, and the subsequent lost generations that they will spawn if the French system doesn’t invest heavily in them. The debate is how to integrate them and what to do at the borders for the future.

In echoing radical historian, Howard Zinn, we need to attain full globalization in the “human sense.” The only way to do this is to eliminate national borders completely. A world without borders is the only way to stop war, immigrant labeling, bashing, and oppressing. Just as it’s unthinkable to imagine Minnesota declaring war on Wisconsin or having intensely discriminatory sentiments towards a Wisconsinite, a world without national borders would create the same rapport. National identity could no longer be the source of antagonism and blame. We’ve already seen a baby-step version of this with the creation of the E.U. it is now just silly to be anti-Italian or Belgian. Yes, there would be a ‘weakening’ of some economies and a strengthening of others, but there would also be peace; there would also be the sharing of the world’s resources in an equitable manner; all humans would also, in a political sense, really be seen as having the same rights; there would also be no more need to waste money on destructive entities like the military; and globally, people would be able to work less and have a higher standard of living as work would be more evenly distributed. And maybe there would actually be a universal bill of rights, where all humans are valued the same.

Why did those Algerians riot last Thursday after the soccer match? 1) Because crowds are stupid, and 2) because it was there only chance in god knows how long to be proud in public, to celebrate their difference, to feel victorious in a country that calls them “black feet.” But it was this difference mixed with years of latent, and not so latent, anger that transformed their celebration into rioting. In a world without national borders, in the long term, these irruptions would have no reason to exist.


Links to the other Open Ideas posts:

Philosophizing Now: Graham Harman Interviewed

3 Randomly Chosen Objects From the Studio: Paul Sakoilsky

ENG/ITA Caposud Magazine breaks new ground: Interview with Alfredo Giangaspero

The Return of Metaphysics: Nick Srnicek

Reflections From an Artwork Jettisoned in Space: Mike Watson