What have Idi Amin, Erich Honecker and Theresa May in common?

James Wickham:  Welcome to the biggest loss of citizenship rights in recent European history...

Brexit is about taking away citizenship rights from millions of people: British people, Irish people, Polish people, indeed from anyone who is currently a citizen of an EU member state. 

Brexit is not just about economics and trade, it is fundamentally about politics, indeed about the most fundamental political issue of all.  Political boundaries and political rules define who can live where and thus who can fully participate in society. By definition, the citizens of a national state have the right to live within their national territory.   Every now and then however, national states decide that certain groups are not ‘really’ national and so are expelled.  To take away somebody’s citizenship is thus to remove them from the polity – and from politics.

The free movement of labour is often described as the ‘fourth freedom’ of the Single Market, along with (and subsequent to) the free movement of goods, services and finance.  But labour is people.  The right to work on the same terms as a national necessarily means access to civil rights and employment rights.  Our study of Polish migration to Dublin in the boom documented how newly arrived Poles were fully aware that they had the right to be in Ireland (Krings et al, 2013:137). Crucially this means that EU citizens are not bonded to a specific employer:  Polish workers in Ireland, like British workers in Germany, are free to leave their jobs if they wish without being sent ‘home’.  By contrast, in almost every country in the world some immigrants’ right to remain is tied to a specific employment.  At the most extreme, as for Pakistani building workers in the Gulf, this essentially amounts to bonded labour. Notice however that the same applies to expatriate professionals in Gulf – and can even apply to Irish engineers in Australia.

Although decisions of the European Court of Justice have extended the scope of free movement from workers to persons, European citizenship is not a complete generalisation of national citizenship.  Especially for pensioners, the right to reside in another country remains somewhat conditional – to varying degrees in different countries – on being able to support oneself.  Furthermore, European citizens’ political rights are usually limited to voting in local elections and in elections to the European parliament.  Nonetheless, the basic fact remains.  The free movement of labour has become the right to work and live in another member state.  Since these rights can be enforced by the European Court of Justice, they are not just dependent on the possibly temporary goodwill of a particular member state.

All of this highlights one bizarre bizarre feature of contemporary British discussion.  In Britain it seems that supporting EU citizenship is conflated with support for unrestricted (or at least weakly controlled) immigration in general.  Even more so than in other European countries, discussion of ‘immigration’ often takes little account of whether or not migrants are EU citizens.  Revealingly there is no British equivalent of the Italian term extracommunitari (people from outside the [European] community). For Brexiters and Remainers alike, it seems there is only one category of foreigners!

Theresa May has refused to guarantee the rights of EU citizens currently in the UK, on at least one occasion saying that this depends on how other member states treat their UK immigrants.  After World War I new national ethnic states were created in Europe (Poland, Ireland etc.) which usually contained minorities of the ‘wrong’ ethnicity.  These minorities became bargaining chips between countries – you be nice to ours and we’ll be nice to yours, give you better trade terms or whatever.   Worse was to come.  During the 1930s the Nazis declared that Jewish German citizens were no longer citizens: they could therefore be expelled and eventually murdered.  After the holocaust and the Nazi mass murders of whole population groups it was the turn of the Germans of the new Soviet empire: between 12 and 14 million Germans were driven West from East Prussia, Sudentenland etc. having lost their citizenship rights (Douglas 2012).

OK that all sounds a bit extreme.  Unfortunately states continue to decide that certain population groups are no longer citizens.  In 1972 Idi Amin decided that Ugandan Asians were not really Ugandans and expelled them; during the later years of the German ‘Democratic’ Republic the DDR government under Erich Honecker got tired of locking up its disobedient citizens.  Instead dissidents like Wolf Biermann were ‘ausgebürgert’ – expelled from their country because their citizenship was removed. 

By 2019 UK citizens entering Germany – or for that matter Ireland – will no longer enter through the EU citizens’ channel at the airport.  This will not just be an inconvenience, it indicates that they have lost the right to move within the European Union.  Brexit means that UK citizens will no longer be European citizens, so all UK citizens, even if they’ve never left the country, have lost their rights.  For those UK citizens living elsewhere in the EU Brexit means that they no longer have the right to live where they do (actually I should say ‘we’ since as a UK citizen living in Ireland this affects me personally). 

The fourth freedom changes the Single Market from a trading area into a polity in which citizens have rights.  In 2017 many Europeans are going to lose those rights.  Like Idi Amin and Erich Honecker before her, Mrs May is saying to a category of a people:  ‘No, you may live here but you have no right to be here, we might expel you, you might be ausgebürgert…

References:
Douglas, R. (2013) Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War.  Yale UP.
Krings, T., Moriarty, E., Wickham, J., Bobek, A. and Salamo?ska, J.  (2013).New Mobilities in Europe: Polish migration to Ireland post-2004.  Manchester UP.

Emigration a 'lifestyle choice'?

Tom Healy: Today's 'feel good' story in the Irish Times ran as 'Emigrants leaving by choice'. Nice to know that some people still have choices. Politicians seem to believe there is much less choice than before. How much migration is really taking place and who is emigrating - and even still immigrating to the State? There is much less hard data on this than many assume. The CSO estimate an annual gross outward migration of 76,000 in the year ending 2011 - many are young and single. 50% of respondents to the Ipsos MRBI poll reported in today's IT felt it was their 'choice' to emigrate when asked 'Did you feel forced to emigrate or was it your choice'. 42% said the left Ireland for 'a change of experience'. Writer Stephen Collins says: 'The findings appear to back the contention of Minister for Finance Michael Noonan that emigration is a lifestyle choice for many who have left the country in recent times'. While one does not wish to take from yet another feel good story building on all the other good news recently a few questions are in order -

how is it that gross outward migration - most of which is 'by choice' was estimated to be running at 76K per annum in 2011 and 36K per annum in 2006?

If 59% of migrants left by 'choice' what about the other 59%? (a serious statistical question in any opinion survey?)

would it be possible to actually report the questionnaire and precise questions?

it should not be thought that because most emigrants were in employment prior to emigrating that the nature, hours and reliability of employment was anything but inadequate.

how was the sample of 300 persons chosen - the detail given is scanty and one wonders about possible bias.

all of this not to question necessarily the reliability of the results. Just caution is needed. Have a great St Patricks weekend commemorating an immigrant who was forced here in the first place - well he chose to come back a second time.

Scaring us into greater inequality

James Wickham: In a recent article in the Irish Times (4 November) Philip Lane warned that higher levels of income taxation could restrict Ireland's ability ' to attract and retain the highly skilled mobile professionals that are key to future economic growth'. This argument needs some discussion.

We could and probably should talk about whether it's desirable to commit ourselves to a form of economic growth that gives 'highly skilled mobile professionals' a veto over taxation policy. But there are smaller scale more empirical issues that can usefully be discussed.

Research on mobile professionals shows that taxation is only one of the reasons why people choose to live in a country. There is evidence that taxation influences location choice, but other things also matter. Issues here range from personal safety to the quality of life. Indeed there is a whole literature in urban geography associated with Richard Florida's claim that young and mobile professionals (the 'creative class') move to cities that offer social, cultural and intellectual diversity. Slightly facetiously, we could say: forget about taxation, just ensure there's some decent music and good craic...

Of course the point is that much 'quality of life' involves public expenditure. A decent health system, a proper public transport system, public broadcasting, even decent public spaces, do not come free. And interestingly, we do have research that suggests these things can attract people to live or stay in a country, and equally we do know that many young and mobile professionals bemoan the lack of such things in Ireland (e.g. Boyle (2006)).

It's also important to disaggregate these 'highly skilled mobile professionals'. For example, we could differentiate between 'visitors' who have no commitment to the country, and 'settlers' who intend to spend much of their life here; we could differentiate between 'experts' who earn say over than €60k (the current minimum income for the Irish Green Card permit) and 'stars' who receive more than (say) €150k. It's clear that what motivates visiting stars is probably very different to what motivates settler experts. Some people (visitors) do move temporarily to Dubai, but it's not clear whether such people are the same as those needed in Ireland - and do we really want to develop Dubai-type expat zones in Ireland anyway?

It can also be argued that relying on visiting stars has dangerous implications for the labour market - it creates a culture of high reward short termism, otherwise known as greed.

Most fundamentally of all, surely it's time to start discussing the disadvantages of inequality. Work such as Wilkinson & Pickett (The Spirit Level - Why More Equal Socieities almost always do better) has alerted social scientists to the detriminetal effects of inequality on all members of the society. In other words, in an unequal society even the better off do worse. And furthermore, these effects are generated by inequality 'at the top' (gap between the very wealthy and the rest) rather than just by inequality 'at the bottom' (gap between the poor and the rest). Facilitating visting stars, in other words, may actually have very detrimental indirect effects on the whole society.

Those CSO migration figures: A health warning

An Saoi: Our friends in the CSO have given us at long last their estimates of migration in the year to April last. The figures reflect the return of net emigration, but not to the extent that I would suggest is really happening.

A quick perusal of the tables raises many questions. For example, it suggests in both 2008 and 2009 periods there was net immigration from the United States. Does that tally with your personal experience? Because it certainly does not tally with that of anyone I have spoken to on the subject. However, without some real figures from other sources, we must accept them. I decided instead to look at the UK figures, where there are figures available. Here, the CSO suggests there was small net emigration.

I decided to do some digging and compare figures. The UK National Statistics office provided me with the following number of adult Irish people whoobtained National Insurance Nos. (NiNo)

But, these figures do not include anyone moving from Ireland to the UK who already has a National Insurance Number, or students moving to the UK who apply for a health card.

The ability of the CSO to accurately estimate migratory flows in a country which does not oblige its residents to register their place of abode is akin to going into a boxing ring with both hands tied behind your back. The Lithuanian CSO reviewed their own estimates of migratory trends, and felt that they had massively underestimated population movements (see Tables here). Now, if they cannot accurately estimate the figures in a country where registration of residence is obligatory, how are the CSO here to do so? The Lithuanians can tell us the number of little Litthuanians born each year in Ireland, but our friends in Skehard Road, Cork, cannot.

A comparison with inward migration and the issuance of PPS Numbers to UK Nationals (over 15) in Ireland also throws up discrepancies. The most recent CSO report on the issue is available here. A word of warning however: issuance of PPS Nos. is not directly comparable with National Insurance Numbers in the UK. A number is, for example, required when a person takes an inheritance, however small, under an Irish will - even though not resident in the State.

The publication of the report is to be welcomed, but the figures should come with a serious health warning.

Emigration is back - maybe?

Slí Eile: Before anyone gets carried away with claims that newcomers are heading home and families are abandoning their homes and schools …latest published CSO data (Population and Migration Estimates) confirm that:

* inward migration is down but is still running at twice the annual average of what it was in the late-1980s (57,000 in the 12 months to April 2009)

* emigration is picking up and this is clearly impacting on ‘EU12’ (including Polish workers affected by the building slump)

* there were more children under the age of 15 entering the State than leaving up to last April (table 5)

* the collapse in employment and the severity of the recession in Ireland will, undoubtedly, give rise to some net outward migration. This process may even accelerate in the course of 2010 as unemployment peaks, here, and labour market conditions improve abroad. However, there are major caveats:

* family migration is much slower to respond which explains the absence of any significant flows for persons under 15 (as distinct from those in their 20s and 30s)

* conditions, today, are very different to those in mid-1980s Ireland (welfare for families has improved in relative terms even if these are now under threat)....

* employment conditions across Europe are precarious - countries like Poland has an unemployment rate of 8% and rising in Q1 of this year (and higher still in the Baltic Republics) – check out Table 25 of today's CSO Quarterly National Household Survey.

Also, the following profile of migration in Ireland is of interest - click here.

As we peer into the future there is much uncertainty (NAMA long-term values and demographics please note) about what will happen here, in the UK, across the EU27 and elsewhere. Some period of prolonged and slow recovery, here, allied to ‘jobless growth’ is one possible outcome. The relationships, drivers and ‘push and pull’ factors are not as they were in the past and it would be foolish to extrapolate too much from the past. Migration used to be the joker in the demography pack. Births and fertility have now joined migration as the great unknown. Some commentators are predicting a fall in births and in the birth rate as the recession kicks in. The latest available data indicate that births continue to run at a very high level – the highest since the late 19th Century with a total period fertility rate of close to 2.1 in 2008 (replacement level).

The implications for population growth and continuing demand for service provision are ominous. There is no comfort for those of the view that the recession will solve the excess demand for social housing, education and a decent health service. A Malthusian market response is not on the cards any time soon. Our economy and society is more closely enmeshed in the global situation than ever.