Moving beyond polarisation in the refugee debate.
How I changed my mind on the refugee situation.
I’ve worked with refugees and asylum seekers for two decades. Throughout all that time, I’ve petitioned for greater tolerance, I’ve even, I admit, argued for open borders.
But recently, in response to an article I wrote (Why the Rwandan threat won’t deter asylum seekers) a friend asked a simple question: “But what do you say to people who fear we will be flooded?”
My usual answer to this familiar question had always been to take the moral high ground and argue that we should take as many asylum seekers as need our help, whatever the consequences, because this is the compassionate thing to do and compassion is more important than anything else. This answer seemed self-evident to me — I’d used it many times before …
… but with zero effect.
Looking back, I don’t recall a single person who was anti-asylum seeker shifting their position on account of my argument.
I was about to repeat this same mantra to my friend, when, in an epiphany moment, I realised that my answer really wasn’t good enough. Why? Because it rides roughshod over a sizeable proportion of the population’s genuine concerns.
In my righteousness I had failed to understand, or even consider, people’s heart-felt objections to a policy of greater tolerance towards asylum seekers. I realised that I was part of the problem: polarised on one side of the argument and not listening to, or even allowing the possibility of some validity in, the other side’s point of view.
What should we do about asylum seekers? Should we make it easy for them to come to our country or should we turn them away, or even be actively hostile?
We are deeply divided in our answer to this question.
One side argues that asylum seekers can be of net benefit, providing much needed labour in sectors that need it and an enriching cultural diversity. They reason, as I did, that welcoming asylum seekers is, in any case, the compassionate thing to do — they are desperate people fleeing persecution and war.
The other side argues argues that most asylum seekers are fraudulent: they aren’t asylum seekers at all but economic migrants who want an easy life and access to our welfare state without contributing taxes. They argue our country is already taking more than its fair share compared to other countries, that we are too soft and cannot cope with the numbers who have already arrived.
The debate is important to us — it’s a red-hot political issue — but we don’t agree. We don’t agree on the facts or on what to do. And, as we argue, proponents on both sides are in danger of becoming ever more passionate and extreme. One side arguing for open borders, the other for impenetrable borders. In extremis we are at a stalemate. It is moving from being a valley between us to a grand canyon.
In my epiphany moment I realised that I needed to stop talking and start listening. I needed to try and understand people’s intolerance to asylum seekers with an open mind. It had been all too easy for me to reject their arguments against accepting asylum seekers, not just as unethical, but also as racist or mis-informed, and some are, but by no means all. Concerns about asylum seekers need to be understood, and properly taken into account or the stalemate will continue.
By way of examining arguments for and against greater tolerance I have, amongst other sources, noted many discussions on social media. This is where the argument rages and where it is immediately obvious that those for and against operate from two separate bubbles, separately informed, separately self-re-enforcing and with little or no overlap or middle ground. It has the effect of generating pointless exchanges and little movement. The polarising effect of social media has, of course, been widely noted, but perhaps nowhere is it more starkly apparent than around this issue.
Both standpoints are convinced they are right, both think they are stating self-evident facts, both accuse the other of being stupid and imply the other is misinformed. And never the twain shall meet.
You might be thinking, well why bother, then, to look at social media if it is so arid and polarised? One answer to this is that, like it or not, this is the major forum, now, where the voting public expresses its florid and divergent range of views. These are the views that the politicians take into account when formulating policy. These are also the views that they selectively re-enforce or deny in a two-way feedback loop.
The only way to build a broader consensus is to find a meeting ground beyond the polarisation so apparent in social media. We need to shift from argument to discussion. We need to understand why we are so divided, how we ended up arguing in the first place, and the principal issues that must be addressed in order to derive policies acceptable to a larger proportion of the population.
Researching social media has been like panning river silt in search of gold. The silt contains many personal jabs, vitriol, inaccuracies and prejudice. But amongst it all are occasional nuggets of gold — the good arguments, from both sides, that merit greater consideration.
Here is an example of the silt — a reaction on Facebook to Mo Farah’s confession in July 2022 around being smuggled to the UK.
JD: “Send him back the horrible man take his knighted off him”
The silt certainly isn’t confined just to arguments against greater tolerance. Consider this comment on a Facebook thread about Rwandan deportations:
CS: “we should keep the refugees and send ignorant, racist, idiotic, morons, like yourself, to Rwanda”
Those advocating greater tolerance are also prone to couching their arguments in a judgemental saccharine righteousness (mea culpa), or pulling rank by patronisingly focussing on trivial details such as punctuation, grammar and spelling:
BN: “you’re using ‘propergander’ and then telling someone to ‘go and educate yourself’, oh the irony”
It is, of course, a mistake to assume, either consciously or unconsciously, that errors of punctuation and spelling somehow invalidate any argument being made. They don’t. Good arguments are made by the less well educated, and a lack of education does not equate to being stupid. As one person arguing for less tolerance quipped:
JW: “You had the moral ground until you called me stupid”
I am still on a journey of learning how to listen to the ‘other side’ and panning for gold. It is a practice in patience and restraint.
Some of what I have learnt, so far, is that those opposing asylum seekers have many fears. They are frightened that they may lose their jobs to refugees, or that their wages will be undercut and working conditions undermined. They are frightened that they will lose their places in the queue for health care and housing and that the welfare state will become ever more stretched. They are frightened that refugees will engage in criminal activities such as grooming and sexually abusing children and that they include terrorists and drug smugglers. They are frightened that their culture will be compromised by practices they do not approve of, such as arranged marriages, the wearing of the veil and women being treated unequally. They are frightened about where the money will come from to pay for new arrivals, arguing that funds are finite and charity must begin at home. They are frightened about their country becoming overcrowded. Most recently, and importantly, with the cost of living soaring and homelessness on the rise, some are frightened for their very survival.
I have learnt that it is a serious mistake to make light of these fears, or, worse still, to accuse those that have them of being racist (even if they sometimes are as well). Such fears are real and important to the people that have them. Moreover, any liberal government that glosses over such fears and presses on regardless, accepting more and more asylum seekers runs the risk of evoking an extreme right-wing populist reaction or even civil war. People’s fears need to be properly understood and addressed if we are ever to achieve broader based support for more merciful asylum policies.
Which of those fears are grounded in fact is of course debatable. For the fears that are rational there is an additional question as to whether reducing asylum seekers is the most cost-effective way of addressing them. These questions are complex and require nuanced answers beyond the scope of this article, but are, I hope, being covered by other articles I have written, hope to write, and invite you to write too, for the publication Refugee Think Tank.
Listening to the other ‘side’ has also meant I have become more open to considering policy solutions I previously rejected out of hand. I no longer think that opening our borders to any asylum seeker that wants to come is necessarily the best thing to do. It is often argued by those opposing asylum seekers that they should stay in the first safe country that they reach — and I used to scornfully reject this. But there are some arguments to be made for helping refugees in the countries they first arrive in, where they may be more likely to speak a relevant language, or share similar culture, and from which they will be better able to return to their home country whenever it becomes safe again. Perhaps the focus, where possible, should be more about maximising the chances of refugees integrating into whatever safe country is most likely to work for them … and this might require richer countries, rather than taking asylum seekers themselves, to support the poorer countries to do this well. For a detailed and erudite exposition of this possibility see the book Refuge, Transforming a Broken System by Alexander Betts and Paul Collier. Another option would be to pursue ways of influencing those countries from which people flee by promising genuine aid, contingent on genuine reform.
In 2022 the world reached a terrible new milestone: over 100 million people displaced and living away from their homes on account of having been forced to flee. That’s about one in 80 people alive. In the decade up to 2022 the numbers forced to flee their homes doubled. The refugee crisis has got much worse and is here to stay for the foreseeable future. Polarised arguments don’t work. Whatever our different persuasions we need find ways of working together respectfully to find mutually acceptable solutions.
If you have enjoyed reading this article please let me know and help by sharing it with others. Also I would be delighted to hear your views and thoughts— whichever side of the fence you are on, either in the comments below or by email here.
