Migration Cannot Be Cast

In Terms Of Individual
Rights
by Paul Collier on 8 December 2016

Paul Collier

The Jungle in Calais is closed and the deal with Turkey is in place. Is the refugee
crisis over?

Not at all. The refugee crisis is first and foremost about refugees, not about
migration to Europe at all. It became very salient once refugees or some
refugees, a relatively small minority, started moving to Europe but the roots of
the crisis were that weve got a refugee system which doesnt work for refugees.

And so we urgently need to reform that system so that it works for refugees and
for everybody else. It has been unreformed since around 1950 and is completely
unfit for modern purpose. It was designed for a completely different set of
problems and manifestly it doesnt work.

The German Chancellor has introduced the idea of a migration partnership

first and foremost with Africa. What kind of cooperation with African
countries is most needed?
Well, first of all, Im very glad that the German government is indeed now giving
very serious attention to African economic development. I think thats the right
thing to do and now is a good time to do it because Africa faces rather
challenging economic circumstances and so its important that we do what we
can to help. I think its unfortunate that its cast as a strategy to prevent
migration. Ive been working for 40 years on trying to help Africa to catch up
with the rest of the world and I think thats a vital first order matter.

I dont see it as mainly vital in order to stop migration, but rather because there
are a billion people living in environments which are not now offering any
credible hope of decent lives. And so both out of elementary concern for other
human beings and out of enlightened self-interest we should do something
about that. Do what we can. Having a neighbouring continent that falls behind or
that is a long way behind is obviously both a tragedy for that billion people and a
potential source of global instability.

When you talk about catching up and helping Africa to catch up what role does
migration play in this process? Your book Exodus talks in great detail about the
ambiguous role of migration

Yes, thats exactly the right word. Migration is always a matter of numbers and
thats why it cant be cast in terms of individual rights. If one person migrates
thats good, if 100 million people migrate thats bad. Not just for the host country
but for the country thats losing people. A lot of small poor countries are losing
too many of their most educated and most enterprising people and that is

Thats the brain drain argument.

Yes, and having some emigration is beneficial, you can have too much as well as
too little, so its a matter of trying to work out how much is ideal and researchers
have tried to do that. And the conclusion is that many poor countries, especially
the smaller ones, which is typical of Africa, are losing too many of their brightest
and best educated people.

So brain drain is not a myth in that context.

Yes, thats right. And in fact its not just a matter of Africa; its also true of the
poorer countries in Europe. There was a study by the IMF just last month which
concluded that emigration from Eastern Europe had delayed catch-up. But, of
course, the people themselves benefit and the host countries benefit. But there
are many people left behind and the solution cannot be that a whole country
empties. Obviously, that is not an appropriate or a feasible solution. And so
policies have to be driven primarily by the idea of what helps the people who
stay in the country to catch up as fast as possible.

But dont remittances play a positive role? They are basically on par with
foreign direct investments in many cases

The typical migrant sends back about $1000 per year so about $3 a day.
Meanwhile, the country has lost the output that those people would have
produced had they stayed in the country. And so youve got to ask would they
have produced more than that and if theyre bright and educated and
enterprising the answer is: Pretty likely. So having remittances is better than not
having remittances but the remittances come at the price of the lost output of
the people who have left. And the lost output may well be bigger than the
remittances.

Thats why what the G20 is focusing on is how can we raise investment into
Africa. The focus is not on how we can stop people coming at all. The focus is on
how can we raise investment and hence raise output and productivity in Africa,
consequently creating more opportunities. Africa has to be a continent of hope
for the people who live there.

That seems to make a lot of sense as a general objective, doesnt it?

Yes, I think so. Hope not based upon wild dreams but hope based upon practical
things: Better infrastructure, better environments for firms to produce things.

Exodus also mentions the concept of a safety valve effect. Do you feel that in
an age where migration is increasingly unregulated we will witness the end of
revolution? Because people will just not call for change; they will just try to
find a better life somewhere else.

Well, clearly the people most likely to promote the required change are younger,
able, educated people. Some exposure to Western societies helps. So, for
example, when students come from Africa to study in Europe and then go back
thats very helpful to Africa. Not only does it bring back skills but it brings back
ideas which we can show assist the process of change. So migration which
involves people going back is, I think, very beneficial.

Theres some transmission back of ideas from diasporas but return migration is
really effective. And the safety valve point you were setting out, yes, I think
theres long been an idea that people who are living in a dysfunctional
environment have a choice between voice and exit. And the more they choose
voice the better for everybody. The more they choose exit, it might be better for
them but its worse for everybody else.

You have frequently travelled to Germany in the last couple of months. How do
you perceive the German debate on migration?

I think quite generally in Europe discussions have become unpleasantly polarised

and sort of unpleasantly moralised. As if there are good people and bad people.
And what I would hope to see is the emergence of a moral consensus that we do
have some responsibilities to help much poorer societies.

We have responsibilities towards refugees but the way to fulfil these

responsibilities is not to take a lucky few out of those contexts but to do things
that work for all. In the case of young Africans wanting hope, clearly the solution
to that cant be to bring every young African that wants to live in California to
the United States. It clearly has to be to bring the opportunities to their
societies.

In the case of refugees, the heart of the refugee problem is flight motivated by
fear. Half of the population of Syria has fled their homes out of fear, obviously
well-justified fear. That population of displaced, about ten million people, that
should be our focus of concern. Most of those people are still stuck in Syria
because the neighbouring haven countries have at times closed their borders.
And the reason theyve closed their borders is that the neighbouring countries
have been given so little international support until much too late.

But still four or five million people have crossed the borders out of Syria and
where they choose to go to is the neighbouring havens. And theres very good
reason for that. Its easy to get to, its easy to get back from, when the conflicts
over and the challenge then is to bring employment opportunities to refugees in
those havens.

Weve got a model of dealing with refugees, UNHCR, which is still stuck in 1950
where refugees are seen to be needing food and shelter. That would be true if
refuge was a matter of a few months or a few weeks but 90% of refugees, the
refugees who have fled Syria and globally, actually ignore UNHCR because their
top priority is not food and shelter. If youre going to be a refugee for some years
your top priority is to be able to earn a living. And at the moment the haven
countries for quite good reasons dont provide the right to work. Because their
own populations feel threatened. And what we as an international community
should be doing is bringing work to the refugees in those havens.

How can that be facilitated?

Given modern globalisation that is entirely feasible. Germanys been doing that,
bringing jobs to Turkey for years and now we can scale that up. Thats starting to
happen in Jordan. Its very exciting, its also starting to happen globally, thats
why Chancellor Merkel went to Ethiopia to see an industrial zone which is now
scheduled to provide jobs both for refugees in Ethiopia and jobs for Ethiopians.
We can make deals which work both for the haven governments and for the
refugees.

It is much more feasible to do that than to bring refugees to Germany or

anywhere else. At the moment, if we look at global figures, were spending 135
dollars or Euros for every refugee who makes it to Europe for every Euro that we
spend on the refugees who stay in the havens. This is a massively skewed
distribution of assistance towards a privileged few and, of course, the refugees
who reach Germany tend to be young, male and educated, very
disproportionately. The least needy category of refugees.

You mentioned the convention relating to the status of refugees from 1951,
the UNHCR refugee convention. Do you feel that this needs updating?

Its become largely irrelevant to look at the convention. It was designed to help
individuals who were persecuted by governments where there was no prospect
of the regime changing so that the focus was on resettling people in the West.
The original convention was also limited geographically to western Europe and
was limited temporarily so it wasnt to apply to anybody who became a refugee
after January 1950.

Its still there in a placid piece of Eurocentrism. In 1967 it was declared to be a

global convention. It isnt a global convention, it never has been and it never will
be. Most refugees are in ten haven countries, none of the governments of those
ten countries were signatories to the convention. So its irrelevant. Modern
refugees are overwhelmingly not persecuted individuals, they are groups fleeing
disordered state breakdown, famine, that sort of thing.

So weve still got this label, refugees, but theyre a completely different problem
and they need a completely different response. The decisions that matter for
refugees need to shift out of court rooms into board rooms because what will
provide jobs for refugees is not some judge, its the boards of the major
international companies.

Can you elaborate?

There are two components to the present refugee regime, one is this convention
which is basically irrelevant, its not even worth revising, its just irrelevant. And
the other component is an agency: UNHCR. UNHCR is a purely humanitarian
agency: it doesnt have an economic competence or mandate. And so it is not
remotely equipped to meet the needs of refugees. Thats why 90% of refugees
ignore it.

So either UNHCR needs to be completely reinvented, re-equipped, re-staffed,

re-mandated, or the job needs to shift out of UNHCR to the economic agencies
like the World Bank. So, for example, earlier this month the World Banks board
approved concessional loans to provide jobs and to provide education to
refugees in Jordan and in Lebanon. The amazing thing was not that these steps
were taken, but that they were the first refugee loans the World Bank had ever
done. At last agencies like the World Bank are stepping up to fill this void, at last
they feel that they have permission to try and do that. UNHCR has been a big
sort of keep off my turf agency for many years.

So you are not overly optimistic in terms of changing the mandate or

reinventing UNHCR, but are rather suggesting to basically just sideline it?

Im agnostic. I dont mind and I dont care as long as it is done. What I think is
needed at the very least is competition between agencies. Monopoly is always
bad and having a monopoly agency has been very damaging. And so yes, we need
other agencies at the table, not just public agencies, theres NGOs, businesses,
but they need to be aligned on what is the real thing were trying to do and it
starts, first and foremost, with jobs. Thats what refugees most need. They need
to be able to earn a living and get dignity from a job and hold their families
together whilst theyre refugees. In the process we can actually incubate the
post conflict economies whilst theyre still in conflict if we can get firms to go to
the havens. Incubating the post conflict recovery even before the conflict is over
is a very sensible thing to do.

But it should be done in Jordan, not in western Europe if I understand you

correctly.

Of course. Germanys not an appropriate place to providing employment, in

Germany, for refugees, because Germany is the ultimate high-skilled training
qualifications/ certifications society. It has a very productive labour force but its
based on long period apprenticeships. It is ill-suited for a big sudden influx of
refugees who are there temporarily. I saw a survey reported in the Financial
Times back in June, the top 30 German companies

About the 54 refugees?

The 54 refugees. Germany has taken the brightest and best that Syria had to
offer and then not used them. If youd taken jobs to those people it would have
been much more feasible.

Paul Collier spoke with Michael Brning, Head of the International Policy Department
of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. A German version appeared first in Internationale
Politik und Gesellschaft.

Filed Under: Columns & Interviews, Politics

About Paul Collier

Sir Paul Collier is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of
Government, Oxford University. His latest book is 'Exodus: Immigration and
Multiculturalism in the 21st Century' published by Penguin and Oxford University
Press.