Immigration. It’s the gift that never stops giving to the political right and consequently remains a constant thorn in the side of the political left.
While the post-war history of Britain (think Enoch Powell and Nigel Farage) and the United States (think Southern governor George Wallace, the Tea Party and Donald Trump’s MAGA) may delude us into thinking a non-polarising solution to this issue is impossible – think again.
In fact, I think the history of how the democratic establishment has managed the immigration issue points to two things:
- what makes the issue so persistent and explosive
- how we can turn down the temperature
To make my case for both, I need to take a brief detour into the history that brought us to where we are now.
A potted history of immigration politics in the UK, USA and Australia
Immigration is key to the success of capitalist economies. because it drives the growth essential to managing the interest on national debt, which lifts national living standards.
It provides a steady supply of skilled and unskilled labour to business, ensuring the jobs citizens don’t want are filled (ie: seasonal fruit picking) and that the best talent can be obtained at lower prices.
Since 1976, Australians haven’t been having enough children to replace ourselves, so immigration is the only way governments can ensure births outpace deaths. This is critical to ensure there are enough younger people to pay for services to the unemployed, disabled, and the aged.
I detail the above points because for the past generation in Australia – longer in the US and even longer in Britain – politicians have stopped explaining to their constituents why we allow migrants into our countries at all.
IMAGE by Lennard Kollossa
Why? Because they’ve believed that doing so gives the issue oxygen fuelling racist sentiments that in Europe, led to the Holocaust of six million Jews, in the US drove the social and economic oppression of blacks in the post-slavery South and in Australia gave rise to the White Australia policy.
This is a reasonable concern. For example, when Enoch Powell gave voice to the feelings of being displaced by young male migrants from the Caribbean and Southeast Asia in his ‘rivers of blood speech,’ violence against non-Whites in Britain increased, with some of the violent attackers chanting Powell’s name.
This was also the case in Germany, with Hitler’s rhetorical and legal attacks on Jews exploding into violence against Jewish people and property and in the US and Australia, where anti-Islamic sentiment in the wake of the 9-11 attacks led to increased threats and violence against each country’s Muslim communities.
That’s why establishment figures in the UK and in Australia moved as one to shut down figures like Powell (in the late 1960s and 1970s) and Pauline Hanson (in the 1990s). Centre right parties denied them leadership roles and endorsements and, in Australia, joined with centre left parties to deny Pauline Hanson preferences she needed to retain her seat in parliament.
Can immigration be discussed without legitimising racism?
Some people who worry about immigration are racist. Others are not, but are concerned about the pace of change in regard to infrastructure and amenity, or the health of the environment.
The problem is whatever the motive or intent of those who want more regular and honest discussions about immigration, such discussions provide the opportunity for racists to contribute views we know elevate the risks of violence and humiliation for multicultural members of the community.
Image by Fotos
But while the impulse to avoid the conversation to avoid the violence is understandable, suppressing speech and ideas can lead to the kind of backlash that gave the win to Brexit in the UK and in the US, has seen an unpopular twice impeached, three times indicted and one time convicted President re-elected on the promise of mass deportations of ‘illegals.’
All of which suggests the fears and anxieties that led to anti-immigration sentiment and advocacy do not go away when ignored. Instead, they must be heard and managed in depolarising ways by the listener.
Hearing means listening, not agreeing or doing
History shows attempting to shut down those with racist ideas and resentments by ignoring them only makes them louder, more obstinate and more sympathetic in the eyes of those who may not be fully on board with their substantive views on immigration or the ‘white race,’ but who don’t like ‘elites’ conspiring to shut down the voices of ‘ordinary’ people.
This does not mean that in a multicultural and ethical society racist sentiments and policy prescriptions must be heard in ways that validate or support those positions. Instead, the purpose of giving the ideas airtime – in particular ways and in particular contexts – is to seek to deeply understand the fears and concerns behind the viewpoint so the person feels heard in ways that allow the viewpoint to moderate.
Why does this work?
When people don’t get their way, they believe it’s because their opponent or representative wasn’t listening. Convinced they’ve not been heard; they dig their heels in and become louder and more shrill.
In fact, research shows they’ve been heard just fine, but just weren’t persuasive.
But what if we were good enough at listening to others that despite them failing to persuade us on immigration or anything else, we could nonetheless make them feel heard? Indeed, make them feel so heard that we all experience the beneficial downstream benefits, which include their feeling more connected and included, more trusting and more willing to work together collaboratively to find a solution that works for everyone.
Strengthening Australian democracy requires empathetic listening
Listening to understand, or what is sometimes called whole-body listening, is a hard skill to effectuate in the contexts that matter. I know this personally from my service on panels, committees, board and tribunals where the legal criteria that must be satisfied to grant the requests of petitioners is so strict and limited that we are rarely empowered to do as they want. This makes the challenge of ensuring those petitioners nonetheless feel heard part of my daily bread.
This is why I know while it’s challenging to make those whose views are hard to empathise with, or who you can’t help, feel you’ve give them a fair hearing – it is possible. Further, my experience is that when people feel they have had a fair hearing they are more likely to accept the decision, even when it wasn’t what they wanted.
What makes them feel the hearing they go was fair? Taking the time to understand what the person is trying to tell you. This includes by asking clarifying questions and repeating back what you’ve surmised from their evidence, which gives them a chance to make additions and corrections and confirms they’ve been understood.
I’ll never forget the man who thanked me personally for making him feel so heard. ‘Whatever you decide, I felt ya really listened,’ he said. His view echoed the title of a book I noticed not long after on my workplace bookshelf. It’s called, Ethical Loneliness: the injustice of not being heard.
Where to next?
In a wide-ranging interview with The Conversation’s Michelle Grattan, former deputy secretary of the Australian Department of Immigration under the conservative Howard government, Abul Rizvi, observed that in the last 15 years:
Both major parties have lacked a will to explain our long-term directions in terms of population and net overseas migration. And as a result, I think they have left a vacuum. And that vacuum is now being filled […] by extremists such as neo-Nazis and others.
Perhaps the real shortcoming of the last generation of politicians was not just their reluctance to talk to voters about the various imperatives that shape Australia’s immigration policy, but also to listen to them in a way that provides people with the justice of being heard. Not just in the easy cases where you agree with them and can act on their desires, but in the more plentiful hard cases where you don’t or you won’t or you can’t.
Politicians could better explain the reasons immigration is needed. Image: Equal Stock
Does this take humility and patience and skill? Absolutely. Are these precisely the skills that 21st century leaders need to survive and thrive in our polarising times? Absolutely, because we know that they work.
This article first appeared in Unreceived Wisdom
Leslie Cannold is an Associate Professor of Ethics and Impact / Resident Ethicist at the Cranala Institute for Ethical Leadership
