tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6153845628469776909.post6839197349414036854..comments2024-03-24T09:13:28.758+00:00Comments on The Plashing Vole: Won't somebody rid me of this troublesome MP?The Plashing Volehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13021407602157515927noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6153845628469776909.post-8377430015272326682012-06-12T21:51:30.584+01:002012-06-12T21:51:30.584+01:00Last year I attended a conference on early medieva...Last year I attended a conference on early medieval migration where I gave one of the plenaries, in which I made a plea for a more ethical and socially responsible attitude to the subject by modern writers. The other plenary was by Leo Lucassen from Leiden, a historian of modern migration. Leo gives lectures outside academia wherever he can to counter what he calls the 'fact free politics' of right-wing demagogues - sadly the whole immigration debate has become 'fact free'. Anyway, one of the many interesting points he made was that analysis of later 20th-century migration shows that (maybe counter-intuitively) stronger border controls and reduced benefits for migrants make immigration go UP. This is because most migration before the mid-70s was fairly circular 'career migration'. You left - say - Algeria and worked for a few years in the West, sending money home, and then went back for a few years, maybe returning later. And so on. What harsher border controls etc tended to mean was that such immigrant workers *didn't* go home for fear of losing the rights they had acquired, or of not being able to return. So instead they brought their families over. Food for thought...Historian on the Edgehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.com