“Nowadays almost everyone knows what the term ‘overpopulation’ means. The idea that the Dutch are in danger of becoming foreigners or minorities in their own country was hardly heard in the 1990s. Part of the population sees immigrants as a direct threat to their own status. You can see that very well in the white supremacymovement in the US. He fears that migrants of color and their descendants will no longer adhere to segregation and will overtake them on the social ladder. That is an important motivation to believe in conspiracy ideas.”
The populist framing of migrants as the source of all evil obscures the real cause of the discontent, says Lucassen. “There is increasing inequality. That is not a result of migration, but of decades of neoliberal politics.”
Three tips for politicians
How should politicians deal with the fiercely polarizing subject of migration? Lucassen does not have to think long about that. “It is useful to stick to the facts anyway, but also to place the phenomenon of migration in a broader and historical perspective. We need to debate the main cause of immigration, which is the structure of our economy and our labor market.”
“Furthermore, it does not hurt to take the principle of non-discrimination in our Constitution more seriously. Politicians have the task of identifying and combating forms of stigmatisation, exclusion and institutional discrimination. This implies that they must distance themselves from radical parties that demonize migrants and their descendants and portray them as an existential problem.”
This is an edited version of an interview that appeared on MO*.be and Sociale.net.
2023-07-07 22:33:45
#dont #migrants #cut #economy #OneWorld
