‘The migration debate isn’t about migration at all’

Migration has dominated the political and media agenda in the Netherlands for at least twenty-five years, says Professor Peter Scholten. Facts play a secondary role in this. According to him, the problems attributed to migration often have much more to do with globalisation, the housing crisis, economic uncertainty and technological change.

We meet Scholten in his office in Rotterdam. As Professor of Governance of Migration and Diversity at Erasmus University Rotterdam and Research Director of the LDE Centre for Governance of Migration and Diversity, he has been researching for many years how migration policy and the public debate surrounding it take shape. His book was published last year The obsession with migration.
We asked him how this ‘obsession’ came about, who is responsible for it and what solutions he envisages. But first of all, Scholten wishes to emphasise how strange it actually is that we have to keep talking about this: ‘Historically speaking, the scale of current migration is by no means unprecedented. We are a small country with a large economy. The only way the Netherlands can survive and thrive is through migration; it has always been that way. There is no objective explanation as to why we talk so much about migration.’
In an attempt to understand this, Scholten came to a realisation: ‘I was looking for answers in the wrong place. Debates about migration are not about migration, but about something else.’

What about, then?

It is a combination of anti-elite sentiment and years of unease and fear amongst the population about globalisation, which is causing our society to change rapidly. A globalised economy does not just mean that our products are traded all over the world; it also means that the whole world is coming to the Netherlands. A large proportion of the population benefits from this, but a large proportion does not.

In political science, there is a recognised link between social unrest – people feeling insecure at all sorts of levels – and issues such as the housing market, climate change, education and healthcare. We are already projecting all these problems onto migration.

People are constantly being told by the media, politicians, some researchers and their friends and family that the major problems of our time are linked to migration, even when this is not supported by the facts.

In your book, you talk about an obsession with migration that has been going on for twenty-five years. Why twenty-five years, roughly?

The attacks of 11 September 2001 were significant, but for the Netherlands, it was above all the rise of Pim Fortuyn around the year 2000 that was of great significance.

So how did this obsession come about?

Several processes have reinforced one another. The crisis has now become so normalised that almost no one questions the framework any longer. This is also reflected in policy and funding programmes. Some researchers adopt the idea of a migration crisis because it emphasises the urgency of their research.

Many people have also grown up with the perception of a migration crisis. Yet overall immigration figures have fallen in recent years. 

Could you tell us more about that?

Immigration as a whole has already been falling over the past three years. Even from a historical perspective, the picture is not one of migration rising continuously. Volatility is, in fact, a defining feature: figures go up and down. Moreover, immigration is often partly offset by emigration.

The media focus intensely on rises in immigration, but overlook the falls. As a result, people are given a distorted picture of the actual migration figures.

Are the media part of the problem?

An ordinary citizen who follows the news is mainly exposed to the bad news. If you start an article with: ‘This year, the number of asylum applications has fallen by 10 per cent’, or point out that crime rates are lower amongst migrants than amongst non-migrants, or that demographic trends are changing, then that’s not news. Good news isn’t news.

The media portray migration as an ongoing crisis. But migration is like an ECG trace; the line goes up and down. When something happens somewhere in the world – if, for example, a war breaks out – migration increases. At other times, it subsides. You can’t blame people for thinking that migration is always on the rise if that’s what they see in the news. Around 69 per cent – perhaps even 96 per cent – of the population overestimates the scale of migration.

What role do social media play?

If you go back to the 1960s, the 1990s or even the nineteenth century, you will see that decision-making and the way in which we form our political opinions have always been driven by a mix of facts and narratives. So the fact that we filter information and do not immediately believe certain facts is not solely the result of social media.
People used to say: ‘I don’t read newspaper A; I read newspaper B.’ Or they would swap stories around the fire. Stories contain facts, but they also convey values. They are easier to remember. That’s how we spread information. So social media isn’t entirely new.

But is social media making it increasingly difficult to correct inaccurate information?

It has always been difficult to correct them. You could also say that social media offer us more opportunities to create our own information environment. That can also have a democratising effect. In the past, we only had one or two media channels, and it was very difficult to bring a dissenting opinion to light through those channels. With social media, that barrier is much lower. We’ve seen this in the use of social media around political issues. If something goes viral, it can ultimately create political pressure.

What questions should journalists be asking?

They should ask whether migration really is the problem. If people are angry because they’re worried about the housing crisis, let’s talk about that. According to my calculations, refugees account for only about 7 per cent of the housing shortage. The remaining 93 per cent is due to other causes.
If people are worried about losing their jobs, talk to them about the uncertainty in the labour market. Don’t automatically accept the notion that migrants are taking jobs away.
Even climate change is in danger of being reduced to a migration issue: as if we had to tackle climate change in order to prevent further immigration. Yet climate change has far more fundamental effects, and migration is merely a minor symptom of these.
Many of the problems of our time have far less to do with migration and far more to do with economic neoliberalism, globalisation and technology. Migration is a symptom rather than the cause of this change.

The ‘migrationisation’ of problems – from housing to healthcare – is a way of failing to take people seriously. If you take people seriously, you listen to what they are actually saying.

I also believe that every society needs to talk about cultural change. We are not just a loose collection of individuals. We stand for something. It is good to talk about that. And for people coming to the Netherlands: you have come to the Netherlands, not just anywhere. You are coming to the Netherlands because you want to be part of this society and of what it stands for.

If you could correct one misconception in the Dutch debate on migration, which one would it be?

Migration is always an issue. Without immigration, the Netherlands would face a decline in its population. Natural population growth is already on a downward trend, and that decline is set to accelerate. Migration serves to offset this.
And yet people still do not understand what the consequences of a declining population will be. If you live in Italy or Spain, you know all about it. It means empty shops, schools and supermarkets. We must therefore also consider whether economic growth should always remain the starting point, and with that, ideas such as degrowth.

The fact that there are so many people in asylum centres has nothing to do with the influx of asylum seekers. It is down to the complexity of the regulations and the shortage of accommodation.

The protests against asylum seekers are becoming increasingly radical. Is this down to the far right? 

These protests are becoming increasingly violent because extreme language is increasingly regarded as normal in public discourse in the media and politics. Much of the debate on migration is, in fact, a debate about Islam from a racial perspective. It brings back dark memories. You can see it in the discussions about ‘remigration’, which amounts to deporting people with Dutch nationality because of their migration background, skin colour, religion or ethnicity.
This is also why, following the Russian invasion, Ukrainians were granted temporary protection with easy access to work and services, whilst Syrian refugees are treated as asylum seekers, subject to strict rules and with limited access to work and accommodation. 

If no one shows moral leadership, this Islamophobia will only get worse. That is why I say that there is no migration crisis, but a moral crisis in Dutch politics. Islam has increasingly become the focus of our obsession with migration; in the Netherlands with populist parties such as the PVV and Forum for Democracy, but also internationally. Trump has openly called for restrictions on immigration from Muslim countries, and Dutch populists are doing the same. The difference in treatment between Ukrainians and Syrian refugees shows that unequal treatment is already taking place. 

What else should politicians and journalists do?

Politicians must stop attributing all social problems to migration and diversity. Journalists must realise that by demonising migrants, they are guaranteed to lose readers and alienate a significant proportion of the Dutch public. Stop doing that and explain how things really stand. 

Peter Scholten is Professor of Governance of Migration and Diversity at Erasmus University Rotterdam and Research Director of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Research Centre on the Governance of Migration and Diversity (LDE GMD). His book was published last year The obsession with migration – How one issue continues to dominate the debate. 

Photography: Tariq Kasem

This article is part of Special Report: The Counter-Movement