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Journal Article•DOI•

Peeling an onion: the "refugee crisis" from a historical perspective

Leo Lucassen1•
International Institute of Social History1
04 Feb 2018-Ethnic and Racial Studies (Routledge)-Vol. 41, Iss: 3, pp 383-410
TL;DR: The authors argues that in 2014/2015, a "perfect storm" developed, bringing together factors that in the past had been largely unrelated and then converged with new ones, revealing five necessary and sufficient conditions: discomfort with immigration and integration of colonial and labour migrants from North Africa and Turkey (1970-80s); growing social inequality and widespread pessimism about globalization (1980s-); a growing discomfort with Islam (1990s−); Islamist terrorism (2000s−) and the rise of radical right populist parties (2000-2000s).
Abstract: This paper asks a simple question: why did Western and other European politicians become so alarmed and, in some cases, downright apocalyptic at the rise of asylum seekers in 2014–16, especially compared to the previous refugee crisis in the 1990s? This paper argues that in 2014/2015, a “perfect storm” developed, bringing together factors that in the past had been largely unrelated and then converged with new ones. Peeling the onion of societal discontent with migrants and refugees has revealed five necessary and sufficient conditions: (1) discomfort with immigration and integration of colonial and labour migrants from North Africa and Turkey (1970–80s); (2) growing social inequality and widespread pessimism about globalization (1980s–); (3) A growing discomfort with Islam (1990s–); (4) Islamist terrorism (2000s–) and (5) the rise of radical right populist parties (2000s).

Summary (4 min read)

Jump to: [Introduction] – [4 L. LUCASSEN] – [6 L. LUCASSEN] – [8 L. LUCASSEN] – [10 L. LUCASSEN] – [The failure of multiculturalism?] – [12 L. LUCASSEN] – [14 L. LUCASSEN] – [The rise of populism] – [16 L. LUCASSEN] – [Politics and framing] – [20 L. LUCASSEN] and [Conclusion]

Introduction

  • In the summer of 2015, facing a rapidly rising influx of asylum seekers, the Dutch government – unprepared despite early warning signs – frantically sought municipalities willing to accommodate temporary centres for asylum seekers, preferably with a capacity of 1,000 or more.
  • In other countries, the government message reproduced far-right populist discourse, including systematic dehumanization of refugees in British tabloids and the symbolic threat by the Danish government to invoke the “Jewelry Law” to confiscate money and valuables from asylum seekers.
  • Former Yugoslavs seeking sanctuary in Western Europe were soon superseded numerically by refugees fleeing the escalating conflicts in the Middle East (Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan) and the Horn of Africa in the same decade.

4 L. LUCASSEN

  • This coincided with the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2013.
  • As Figure 2 shows, however, the recent numbers are not that exceptional, and whether the second decade of the twenty-first century surpasses the record of 4.2 million from the 1990s remains to be seen.
  • The fact that the presentation in Figure 2 differs from Figure 1 is explained by the logarithmic presentation, which is necessary to make the trend of Hungary visible.

6 L. LUCASSEN

  • Finally, the argument that “the authors ain’t seen nothing yet” holds that due to high rates of fertility, poverty and environmental degradation in parts of Asia, the Middle East and Africa poor countries will “empty out” in the coming decades (to use Collier’s (2013) term) and will try to jump ship, unless the EU fortifies its borders even more.
  • As the authors saw above, the percentage of West Africans among the irregular migrants coming to the EU may have increased somewhat in the past years; especially in Italy, they constitute a very small fraction of the population at risk in SubSahara Africa.
  • In 1993, this changed, when the EU adopted a new policy of protecting and controlling its outer borders that had major consequences for irregular migrants and asylum seekers.
  • The basic idea had already developed in the United States in the early nineteenth century and was labelled “remote control” by Zolberg (2006, 110–113).

8 L. LUCASSEN

  • In the summer of that same year, the United States followed the example of Germany, France and Great Britain: pursuant to a joint order by Secretary of State Robert Lansing and Secretary of Labor William Wilson, aliens coming to the United States had to present passports containing valid visas before embarkation (Zolberg 2016, 240–241).
  • So, although the data on border deaths should be dealt with prudence, it is interesting to note that while total applications for asylum decreased sharply after 2000, the number of deaths soared, suggesting a growing dependence of asylum seekers and other migrants on smugglers and sea routes.
  • Shipping asylum seekers by boat in the Mediterranean already started in the 1990s, when most recorded deaths occurred in the Adriatic Sea between Albania and Italy, after the regime change in 1991, and again during the anarchy caused by the implosion of Ponzi schemes six years later.
  • Others were killed in minefields or drowned in the Evros, which separates Turkey from Greece.

10 L. LUCASSEN

  • The fear that Islamist terrorists, especially members of ISIS, might be hiding among the refugees would seem to be at least as important.
  • This unfathomable attack propelled the Clash of Civilizations proposed by Huntington into public view, linking the security issue to the perception of Islamist terrorism as a weapon in the existentialist battle between Islam and the West, with the ultimate aim of turning Europe into “Eurabia” and establishing Sharia law (Ye’or 2011, see also Huntington 1996).
  • Such conspiracy theories, which are strikingly similar to the late-nineteenth-century anti-Semitic premise that Jews are scheming to rule the world (Werbner 2013), serve to legitimate extreme anti-Muslim discourse and behaviour.
  • These acts did not instigate general fear of Muslims in that decade, let alone lead them to be identified with asylum seekers.

The failure of multiculturalism?

  • While asylum seekers may have been very minimally involved in terrorist attacks, in nearly all cases, the offspring of former guest workers and colonial migrants from Islamic countries participated and consequently caused existing discomfort with immigration and integration to become linked with the refugee question.
  • Whereas in the 1990s these two domains had been largely separate, the social and cultural problems of Moroccans and Algerians suddenly became intertwined with the refugee debate, in terms of terrorism and integration alike.
  • General fear of Muslim migrants was further increased by the emigration of “foreign fighters” for the Caliphate in Iraq (Bakker and Singleton 2016; Chaliand and Blin 2016; Nance 2016).
  • Apart from countries such as Jordan, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia, Belgium “production” of radicalized youth was by far the highest as a share of the total population, followed by Denmark, France and Sweden.
  • Germany, however, despite its sizeable Muslim population and record number of asylum seekers, scores much lower (Table 2).

12 L. LUCASSEN

  • Having been socialized partly in the language and culture of the colonial motherland, with its renowned ideology of equality, daily reality in the isolated banlieues may cause greater frustration and rancour.
  • Segregation has not intensified among the majority in these two groups, and the existing concentrations are highly dynamic (Musterd 2011, 376).
  • Absolute number and relative share of foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria at the end of 2014.

14 L. LUCASSEN

  • In the 1990s, this integration pessimism gradually supplanted previously prevalent political correctness and undermined the consensus among mainstream political parties that immigration should not become an electoral issue.
  • Refugees remained largely distinct from labour migrants from Islamic countries, and references to unsuccessful integration did not yet permeate the discourse on asylum seekers.
  • After all, the average human capital of refugees varied considerably from that of former guest workers, leading migrants and their descendants along different integration paths (Maliepaard, Witkamp, and Jennissen 2017).

The rise of populism

  • By the time the number of asylum seekers from the Middle East and the Horn of Africa started to rise again, society firmly believed that integration of Muslim migrants and their children had failed.
  • Commentators and journalists, in many cases also from the left, expressed alarm and were soon echoed by mainstream politicians.
  • By the start of the twenty-first century, political sentiment towards Muslims had culminated in a broadly supported consensus that immigration was economically, socially and culturally harmful to nation states (Lucassen and Lucassen 2015; Van Reekum 2016).
  • Immigrants – defined as unskilled and mainly non-European – were portrayed as welfare parasites unwilling to adopt modern, liberal cum national values.

16 L. LUCASSEN

  • The Netherlands and the United Kingdom are between these two extremes, with an increase since 2008 and then a sharp drop in 2016 to well below the EUAQ6 ¶ (19) average.10.
  • Such public spending derives in part from economic crises, ageing populations and, in some cases, related increases in healthcare costs and does not reflect the underlying changes in the nature of the welfare state and increasing vulnerability of workers.
  • Since the 1990s, attention has shifted to the unskilled native working class, strongly emphasizing the recommodification of labour through tightening eligibility, diminishing duration of social benefits and regulations compelling the able-bodied to work (King1995; Karimi2017, 148).
  • Since 2000, the share of the Dutch working population with a fixed contract has steadily decreased, while flexible, temporary and self-employed work is on the rise and nowadays constitutes one-third of the total workforce.

Politics and framing

  • Whether and how the growing social and economic insecurity of the native population impacts these attitudes to immigrants and more specifically to refugees depends not only on the political economy as conveyed briefly above but also in significant measure on how politicians frame the situation.
  • The crisis caused great uncertainty about the economy and the welfare state.
  • Far-right populist parties have been very successful in associating the erosion of the welfare state with immigrants, who are depicted either as a burden and/or as competitors on the labour market.
  • The German example is still more interesting.

20 L. LUCASSEN

  • Politicians, however, averted taking on the migration issue in election campaigns, leaving the arena to neoNazi right-wing extremists.
  • This did not prevent German governments from trying to reduce both asylum seekers and Aussiedler in number, but these measures were largely devised and applied behind the scenes.
  • In the terms of Goffman (1959): more back stage than front stage.

Conclusion

  • As I have demonstrated above, the easy answers (unprecedented high numbers, shift to Islamic countries and huge integration problems among previous refugees) will not suffice here.
  • This paper argues that in 2014/2015, a “perfect storm” developed, bringing together factors that in the past had been largely unrelated and converged with new ones.
  • This turning point was caused not only by rising awareness among unskilled Europeans and Americans that they were losing out to globalization but was also the outcome of political mobilization by left and far-right wing populist parties alike.
  • This Islamist terrorism (4), starting with 9/11, was a crucial game changer which linked immigration from Islamist countries to possible security threats and associated Muslim migrants in general with terrorism and an alleged refusal to integrate.

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Author(s): Leo Lucassen
Article Title: Peeling an onion: the “refugee crisis” from a historical perspective
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DEBATES AND DEVELOPMENTS
Peeling an onion: the “refugee crisis ” from a historical
perspective
Leo Lucassen
a,b
a
International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, NetherlandsAQ1
;
b
Institute for History, Leiden
University, Leiden, Netherlands
ABSTRACT
This paper asks a simple question: why did Western and other European
politicians become so alarmed and, in some cases, downright apocalyptic at
the rise of asylum seekers in 2014–16, especially compared to the previous
refugee crisis in the 1990s? This paper argues that in 2014/2015, a “perfect
storm” developed, bringing together factors that in the past had been largely
unrelated and converged with new ones. Peeling the onion of societal
discontent with migrants and refugees has revealed five necessary and
sufficient conditions: (1) discomfort with immigration and integration of
colonial and labour migrants from North Africa and Turkey (1970–80s); (2)
growing social inequality and widespread pessimism about globalization
(1980s–); (3) A growing discomfort with Islam (1990s–); ( 4) Islamist terrorism
(2000s–) and (5) the rise of radical right populist parties (2000s).
ARTICLE HISTORY Received 8 May 2017; Accepted 11 July 2017
KEYWORDS Refugees; migration; social inequality; populism; islamophobia; terrorism
Introduction
In the summer of 2015, facing a rapidly rising influx of asylum seekers, the
Dutch government – unprepared despite early warning signs – frantically
sought municipalities willing to accommodate temporary centres for asylum
seekers, preferably with a capacity of 1,000 or more. The ensuing protests
from localities were to be expected, especially from those that already had
a disproportionately large share of asylum seekers among their inhabitants.
Similar protests had occurred in the 1990s, when still greater numbers of
asylum seekers entered the Netherlands and other Western European
countries. Nor was the depiction of asylum seekers as a burden to the
welfare state and as potential criminals unprecedented. What was new in
this case was the apocalyptical tone of mainstream politicians and commen-
tators, who – like the leader of the liberal party (VVD) in Parliament – asserted
in October 2015 that the large number of predominantly Muslim asylum
CE: SD QA: Coll:
© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
CONTACT Leo Lucassen leo.lucassen@iisg.nl
ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES, 2017
https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2017.1355975
5
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RERS1355975 Techset Composition India (P) Ltd., Bangalore and Chennai, India 7/18/2017
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Erving Goffman
01 Jan 1959
TL;DR: For instance, in the case of an individual in the presence of others, it can be seen as a form of involuntary expressive behavior as discussed by the authors, where the individual will have to act so that he intentionally or unintentionally expresses himself, and the others will in turn have to be impressed in some way by him.
Abstract: hen an individual enters the presence of oth ers, they commonly seek to acquire information about him or to bring into play information about him already possessed. They will be interested in his general socio-economic status, his concep tion of self, his attitude toward them, his compe tence, his trustworthiness, etc. Although some of this information seems to be sought almost as an end in itself, there are usually quite practical reasons for acquiring it. Information about the individual helps to define the situation, enabling others to know in advance what he will expect of them and what they may expect of him. Informed in these ways, the others will know how best to act in order to call forth a desired response from him. For those present, many sources of information become accessible and many carriers (or “signvehicles”) become available for conveying this information. If unacquainted with the individual, observers can glean clues from his conduct and appearance which allow them to apply their previ ous experience with individuals roughly similar to the one before them or, more important, to apply untested stereotypes to him. They can also assume from past experience that only individuals of a par ticular kind are likely to be found in a given social setting. They can rely on what the individual says about himself or on documentary evidence he provides as to who and what he is. If they know, or know of, the individual by virtue of experience prior to the interaction, they can rely on assumptions as to the persistence and generality of psychological traits as a means of predicting his present and future behavior. However, during the period in which the indi vidual is in the immediate presence of the others, few events may occur which directly provide the others with the conclusive information they will need if they are to direct wisely their own activity . Many crucial facts lie beyond the time and place of interaction or lie concealed within it. For example, the “true” or “real” attitudes, beliefs, and emotions of the individual can be ascertained only indirectly , through his avowals or through what appears to be involuntary expressive behavior. Similarly , if the individual offers the others a product or service, they will often find that during the interaction there will be no time and place immediately available for eating the pudding that the proof can be found in. They will be forced to accept some events as con ventional or natural signs of something not directly available to the senses. In Ichheiser ’s terms, 1 the individual will have to act so that he intentionally or unintentionally expresses himself, and the others will in turn have to be impressed in some way by him.…

33,615 citations

"Peeling an onion: the "refugee cris..." refers background in this paper

  • ...In the terms of Goffman (1959): more back stage than front stage....

    [...]

Book•
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

[...]

Samuel P. Huntington
01 Jan 1996
TL;DR: Based on the author's seminal article in "Foreign Affairs", Samuel P. Huntington's "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" is a provocative and prescient analysis of the state of world politics after the fall of communism.
Abstract: Based on the author's seminal article in "Foreign Affairs", Samuel P. Huntington's "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" is a provocative and prescient analysis of the state of world politics after the fall of communism. In this incisive work, the renowned political scientist explains how "civilizations" have replaced nations and ideologies as the driving force in global politics today and offers a brilliant analysis of the current climate and future possibilities of our world's volatile political culture.

6,359 citations

DOI•
The Precariat. The New Dangerous Class

[...]

Jose Taberner Guasp1•
University of Córdoba (Spain)1
30 Jul 2014

1,773 citations

"Peeling an onion: the "refugee cris..." refers background in this paper

  • ...…jobs, as well as a growing share of individuals who after losing their jobs as wage earners now offer their labour as self-employed in the same sector (albeit often without the protection and sources of security they once enjoyed), highlights the growing precariousness of labour (Standing 2011....

    [...]

Book•
Birds of Passage: Migrant Labor and Industrial Societies

[...]

Michael J. Piore
01 Jun 1979
TL;DR: In this paper, the impact of migration on the place of origin and the dilemmas of current U.S. immigration policy are discussed. But the authors focus on the long-distance migration in the United States.
Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. The jobs 3. The migrants 4. Particular characteristics of the migrant labour market 5. The impact of migration on the place of origin 6. The historical evolution of long-distance migration in the United States 7. The dilemmas of current U.S. immigration policy.

1,629 citations

"Peeling an onion: the "refugee cris..." refers background in this paper

  • ...This development was first discussed in the 1970s in the dual labour market theory, with especially immigrants locked into the deprived second segment (Piore 1979)....

    [...]

Journal Article•
Urban Outcasts: A comparative sociology of advanced marginality

[...]

Alan Latham
01 Sep 2008-Geography
TL;DR: Wacquant et al. as mentioned in this paper show that the involution of America's urban core after the 1960s is due not to the emergence of an "underclass", but to the joint withdrawal of market and state fostered by public policies of racial separation and urban abandonment.
Abstract: Breaking with the exoticizing cast of public discourse and conventional research, Urban Outcasts takes the reader inside the black ghetto of Chicago and the deindustrializing banlieue of Paris to discover that urban marginality is not everywhere the same. Drawing on a wealth of original field, survey and historical data, Loïc Wacquant shows that the involution of America's urban core after the 1960s is due not to the emergence of an 'underclass', but to the joint withdrawal of market and state fostered by public policies of racial separation and urban abandonment. In European cities, by contrast, the spread of districts of 'exclusion' does not herald the formation of ghettos. It stems from the decomposition of working-class territories under the press of mass unemployment, the casualization of work and the ethnic mixing of populations hitherto segregated, spawning urban formations akin to 'anti-ghettos'.

832 citations

"Peeling an onion: the "refugee cris..." refers background in this paper

  • ...Integration of these groups therefore started around the time that the men lost their jobs, and their families settled in impoverished sections of major cities, often spatially isolated, especially in the French banlieues (Wacquant 2008)....

    [...]

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Q1. What have the authors contributed in "Proof cover sheet" ?

This paper asks a simple question: why did Western and other European politicians become so alarmed and, in some cases, downright apocalyptic at the rise of asylum seekers in 2014–16, especially compared to the previous refugee crisis in the 1990s ? This paper argues that in 2014/2015, a “ perfect storm ” developed, bringing together factors that in the past had been largely unrelated and converged with new ones.