Listening, Recognising and
Building Bridges
Immigration Challenges in a Turbulent Europe
Everything is a matter of perspective. But what happens when national public debates lose sight of these different perspectives and favour their own, and what are the consequences when the culture of debate hardens?
What will happen to real democracy if we find it difficult to listen and delve deeper?
If opinions or even fact checks threaten to eliminate ambiguities?
What shape could the European Union take?
The whole world is currently experiencing a considerable dramatic change in political conditions. Whether a new Cold War is looming or the transition to multipolarity is helping the global South to rise. These processes, which are so difficult for us to judge in the present, are associated with wars, a considerable increase in conflicts and struggles over distribution.
In the midst of this constellation, an issue has come to the fore in recent years that was long regarded as merely a symptom and indicator, but is now also seen as a right and a solution: migration and the integration of immigrants into the economy in Europe, whose territorial borders have become increasingly porous due to the rise of transfer of finances and goods.
So, internationally, the image of migration is often projected as a win-win situation for everyone – for the migrants, the home country and the host country, the so-called triple win. But for others, immigration is positioned at the interface of social, cultural and economic fractures. They focus on the term ‘host country’?
Europe needs immigration and integration, stability and a harmonisation of internal inequalities. It needs qualified labour and must also defend its values both internally and externally. Unfortunately, there is a lot of tension between them.
SOME STATISTICS?
In some respects, numbers are no more objective than concepts and terms. We talk about flight or migration, for example, and express the inevitable emergencies or the neutral coming and going. Sure, numbers are measured and are generally not falsified.
And yet we have to pick and choose because there is no one number that explains everything. Do we want to know and see how high migration is? Or how much space the demographic curve leaves for immigration?
Numbers answer to questions and interests. A process with the intention of listening should refrain from doing so in advance. We hope for your understanding.
In addition to their socio-economic perspectives, the 27 states of the European Union are characterised by their history that sometimes shows different collective traumas or responsibilities. The relationship of Finland and Russia, Poland and Russia or Germany and their history of National Socialism are examples of these.
Even some of the established media do not escape the temptation to defend narratives, some of which are presented in complete harmony. Inconvenient facts or possible contradictions are sometimes not presented at all or are shown from a perspective that requires no adjustments. In periodic cycles, the focus is then directed towards the respective weak points of the other perspective, so that they too become part of a general polarisation. As a result, the major narratives then barely touch each other. They are indeed studies that deal with the question of commonalities between the different positions, such as “Public Preferences for German Immigration Policy” conducted by Marc Helbling (University of Mannheim) but they are hardly taken into account.
Against this backdrop, EUROPEAN DIPLOMATS advocates for a dialogue process that actively seeks to listen and understand rather than condemn, but also allows critical questioning and a deepening of the fault lines. We need a greater view, tolerance for ambiguity and, in addition to understanding and recognising differences, we must realise that the issue of migration will be a key.
It is not just about accepting or rejecting. It’s about much more: our development in a broader sense, the development of the global South and our relationship with them.
The decision to adopt such a perspective was not easy for us. Hundreds of studies have been written, and yet people ignore the limits of their perspectives. We came to this conclusion after reviewing several thousand newspaper articles and conducting a number of interviews with academics from nine countries, mainly from the Global South. And the process continues, with no end in sight.
Fragments from the two main narratives, either of them in "their" newspapers: PRO MIGRATION versus LIMITING IRREGULAR MIGRATION
‘Scientists have come to the conclusion that people don’t come for economic reasons, but because of war and environmental problems.’
‘There is a lot of criticism of the concept of pull factors in science.’
The surveys do not show that social welfare is a ‘significant’ pull factor.
Research has found that migrant networks and the infrastructure of flight are also important pull factors.
Germany is practically the only country that pays social welfare to rejected asylum seekers. Migrants are not stupid, they see which country offers the best conditions.
A survey shows that many Ukrainians from Poland continue to Germany, because they do not have to accept jobs here, receive medical and educational services.
Both quote favourable studies
The change from critical evaluation to action does not depend on the conviction of one organization alone. To this end, EUROPEAN DIPLOMATS intends to proceed in several stages:
- We are looking for organizations and bodies throughout Europe that are convinced of the idea of a necessary dialogue. We are thinking of academic organizations, those that think in terms of state planning and action, but also others. It’s the mix that counts.
- Together with our partners, we want to organize a general exchange of different national and sectoral perspectives in order to overcome the boundaries of reflection. This is also about listening and acknowledging.
- This experience and its systematization then offer the opportunity to prepare the topic of migration for a more extensive pan-European dialogue process.
Project Coordinator: Dirk Bornschein
Dirk is a political scientist, author, editor of regional publications and communication expert. After his Doctorate Degree, he worked in Guatemala at the Latin American Faculty for Social Science (FLACSO), an inter-governmental institute operating in most countries of the region. Throughout these 10 years Dirk founded and coordinated a research programme on migration and development and facilitated relationship-building between academic institutes, government institutions and civil society organisations, especially in Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, the United States and the broader Latin American region.