Immigration and racism under neoliberalism: The challenge for social movements

In many capitalist countries nowadays, restrictive and repressive policies are put in place targeting immigrants and refugees. This trend is encouraged by the reemergence of a racist narrative linking up a so called ‘war between civilizations’, Muslim ‘fundamentalism’ and social and political problems related to migrations. All in all, social movements have tried to respond to that reactionary onslaught. But so far more is to be done if we want to block the advances of racist policies and politics.

Immigration central to capitalist accumulation

In 2005 according to the UN, more than 200 million people (3% of the world’s population) are on the move. Millions are leaving their country in the largest migration in the history, even more important that the last big waves of migration in the late 1800’s and the early 1990’s. People moved by necessity of course, hoping to get a better life elsewhere. They leave also because under current rules, it has become easier since contemporary capitalism (neoliberalism) needs to increase what it calls «labor mobility’.

New needs

The restructuring of the economy under neoliberalism indeed is based on restructuring on labor, labor as a commodity to buy and sell at the best prices. With this restructuring there huge demands for labor both manual and intellectual, on the one hand to respond to the needs of capital accumulation, on the other hand to minimize the impact of the demographic decline in the western countries.

Agile hands

The current cycle of accumulation does require abundant cheap, unskilled and semi-skilled labor in agriculture, construction and services. These labor ‘reservoirs’ are immense in South America, Asia and Africa and are daily ‘produced’ by the destruction of the peasantry. In the capitalist countries, hard work is required in many sectors where jobs are low-paid, ungratifying, and often dangerous. Contrary to the previous cycle of accumulation/migration however when the manufacturing sector needed this labor, today contemporary capitalism needs mobile and precarious labor for different types of tasks where labor rights and rights in general hardly exist, like agriculture and personal services. Immigrants are ‘adequate’ to fulfill these jobs as they are more vulnerable and forced to accept degraded conditions.

Brain power

At a second level, accumulation requires also highly qualified labor which is easier to take from other countries without assuming the training costs. For sure, this brain-drain did not start yesterday, but it is accelerating fast. Contemporary capitalism indeed is more and more dependant on science and technique in sectors like computers, bio-medical, engineering. Skilled labor is that nature is declining in the advanced capitalist countries while ‘surpluses are being created in the global south.

The US «model»

In the United States, this ‘new’ model of migrations is more advanced. On the one hand, millions of ‘illegal’ migrants are being used as the ‘perfect’ cheap labor all over the place. Brackets need to be put on the word ‘illegal’ because in reality, the boundary between ‘illegal’ and ‘legal’ is blurred. Under the pressures of employers, US legislators are at the same time ‘legalizing’ and ‘illegalizing’ in order to stabilize and fragilize migrant workers with the overall goal of making them work harder and cheaper. According to various estimates, 60% of non skilled jobs will be occupied by migrants by the year 2012.

Canadian trends

In Canada, 250 000 ‘legal’ immigrants arrived each year. The fastest growing segment however is ‘contract workers’ who are almost 200 000 per year, notably in agriculture. In 2017, 22% of the Canadian population will be composed of immigrants. On average, immigrants earn lower incomes (10% less than the Canadian medium). 15% of immigrants are under the level of poverty, which is double of the national rate. While racism and outright discrimination are not as grave as in other countries, immigrants are discriminated on the basis of race, color, religion. Even second and third generations remain ‘aliens’ to a certain extent. People of color remain at the lower end in terms of income, housing, social benefits, etc.

The new ‘enemy’

From the global south, migratory trends are particularly strong from Asia, Middle East, and Africa where the majority of the population are Muslims. These Muslims migrants are now a sizable chunk of the overall immigrants in places like Canada where close to two million Muslims, originally from Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Palestine, etc.) are concentrated in big cities like Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. An important proportion of these populations are actually refugees fleeing war and atrocities. While most of the migrants live and act like any other person, religion does act as a ‘marker’ in terms of culture, food, religious feasts, etc. these markers are used by demagogic and reactionary forces to target migrants, especially so-called ‘visible minorities’. Muslims migrants secular or religious are presented in a derogatory and discriminative war as being ‘against our western values’.

From anti-Semitism to islamophobia

Racial and religious profile is not new. In the first part of the XXth century of course, Jews were the target. Jews as ‘rich’ and ‘dishonest’ stealing the money of the poor. Jews as ‘subversives’ and ‘social agitators’ fomenting dissent and chaos. One way or the other, Jews were the source of ‘our troubles’ and therefore the target of official and non-official discrimination and repression. Just prior the beginning of the second war, the Canadian Prime Minister of that time, Mackenzie King, refused European Jewish refugees who wanted to come into Canada to escape Nazi Germany. Anti Semitic attacks were common throughout North America and Europe. Often, anti-Semitism was used to repress labor and social movements as well as left parties who were opposed to that discrimination. Today of course, this has changed. The new target is the Muslim and like Jewish immigrants of the past, they are profiled and attacked.

The endless war

It is very convenient to attack Muslims in the context of the ‘endless war’ launched by the United States (with the ambivalent support of the western countries) against the peoples of the ‘arc of crisis’ from East to West through most Asia and Africa. The war has many dimensions of course but the fundamental issue is about subjugating and controlling these nations and their resources. Bush and his NATO allies have talked about ‘reengineering’ that part of the world which also implies a ‘battle of ideas’ to colonize the minds. The ‘enemies’ must not only be destroyed, but dehumanized, transformed into a ‘beast to eradicate’. The neocon social scientist Samuel Huntingdon says it, ‘this is a war of civilizations, ours against theirs’.

The enemy from within

While the endless war is waged in Kabul, Baghdad, Gaza and many other places, it is important for the rulers to keep the pressure on in the capitalist countries themselves. 9/11 allowed these rulers to aggravate and to accelerate repressive legislations denying human rights and targeting migrants, especially those from Muslim countries. For the first time sine long time, regressive laws have been imposed allowing administrative detention, torture, blacklisting and other forms of discrimination whereas citizens are denied their rights, including the right to defend themselves in front of a court of law.

The bad Muslim

Popular media are contributing this image as the dangerous and devious Muslim. He is hiding his ‘true nature’ and profiting ‘from us’ to undermine our society. The bad Muslim commits atrocious crimes like keeping his customs. He is against women’s rights. He is supporting terrorist groups and attacks across the world. For sure, the bad Muslim needs to be confined, repressed. But the problem is, since the bad Muslim is hardly distinct from the good Muslims, there is a need to control the totality of Muslims, bad or good.

The challenge for the social movement

Current debates about immigrations are therefore not surging into a vacuum but on the contrary they are parts and parcels of a new economic and political context where elites are on the offensive. The restructuring ‘inside’ capitalist countries is accompanied by a ‘surge’ outside through war, insecurity, violence. At a first level, social movements have to fight tooth and nails against this for obvious reasons. They need to confront the strategy to deny citizenship and rights and confine people in so called racial, ethnic, religious ‘identities’ where particular groups (currently Muslims) are targeted. They need to support migrants who want to express their cultural or religious identities as far as they do not contradict basic human rights.

Resist, fight back, organize is the language of the social movements. Opposing the struggle for equal rights for everyone to the regressive policies of turning everyone against everyone. There are on in addition short term imperatives like struggling for equal access to jobs, housing, health and education, and, in the case of immigrants, for the recognization of their skills and diplomas (as there are often not confining migrants to cheaper jobs). There is an imperative need to oppose the illegalization of migrants and for massive and immediate legalization of so called ‘illegal’s’ or ‘undocumented’.

All of these battles are demanding and they cannot achieve their goals without the massive involvement of social movements, in particular trade unions. Labor groups must engage into huge campaigns to organize migrants and other non skilled and precarious workers under equal terms and norms than what affects the rest of the working classes.

Document drafted by the Collectif d’analyse politique (CAP), a progressive think-tank established in Montreal. (see the website: http://cap.qc.ca.edu/)