Brexit Podcasts

My reading about current events is sporadic.  Some days I do a full pass of the newspapers and websites and some days I'd much rather dedicate the day's reading entirely to actual books with bibliographies.  Think of it as carbohydrates versus protein - an analogy that may not speak to you but makes sense in the context of my favorite sport:  weightlifting.

One topic that I do try to stay on top of is Brexit which hits so many of the themes I like to think about:  migration, citizenship, borders, integration, and disintegration.  It was also a topic mentioned by British participants in my study of Anglophones in Japan.

However, I would go blind if I tried to read all the words on the screen that have been published on the Internet and since the story is still unfolding I mistrust the books that are available.  Too soon for a deep, intelligent analysis of even why they voted to leave.  As for where Brexit is going all we have is speculation.

So I've turned to podcasts.  I like the sense of being privy to a discussion without having any obligation to contribute to it.  And they tend to be longer than an article (15 to 30 minutes) but still short enough that the contributors have to make their points clearly and succinctly.

The one I've been following for a few weeks now is The Guardian's Brexit Means....  The most recent discussion (June 19) is organized around the question:  What can we expect as the Article 50 talks begin?  At about 7:30 they touch on citizen's right and the rights of non-EU spouses. (Note that there is another, earlier podcast entirely devoted to EU citizens' rights.)  At 12:52 they talk about the Irish border.

Another that I've started following only recently because it is very new is BBC Radio 5's Brexitcast.  Their first offering is very similar to the latest one from The Guardian so you get two discussions from a UK perspective on the same topic.  Theirs is called Brexit Begins.

And this morning I found the Inside Politics podcasts on Brexit from The Irish Times.  Ireland definitely has a dog in this fight because they are in the EU and they have a very sensitive border with the UK.  The Irish Times doesn't have a Brexit series but the topic, as you can imagine, comes up often.  The latest is an interview with Fintan O'Toole, an award-winning Irish author/journalist who just received the Orwell prize for journalism.  Hell of an endorsement and I will take the time to read his work. And I call your attention to the DUP 2017 manifesto which O'Toole refers to.  It outlines their approach to Brexit on pages 18-19.  

Here is the O'Toole interview which I recommend highly to you:  Fintan O'Toole on Brexit, English Nationalism and the DUP

And now back to my books.

John Oliver and Brexit

I don't know about you but I sure needed a laugh this morning.  This video from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver about Brexit was the delicious cream in my coffee, replacing my usual reduced-fat milk (The New York Times/Le Monde aka Al-Jazeera sur Seine).  Hat tip to Curtis for the link.

There are so many quotations and commentary from Mencken that are appropriate to all elections and particularly timely when applied to the shipwrecks looking for coastlines in the US and UK today.   But I will go with this one since it beautifully captures my sentiments after watching Oliver.

"Consider, for example, a campaign for the Presidency. Would it be possible to imagine anything more uproariously idiotic — a deafening, nerve-wracking battle to the death between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Harlequin and Sganarelle, Gobbo and Dr. Cook — the unspeakable, with fearful snorts, gradually swallowing the inconceivable? ...

But feeling better for the laugh. Ridi si sapis, said Martial. Mirth is necessary to wisdom, to comfort, above all to happiness. Well, here is the land of mirth, as Germany is the land of metaphysics and France is the land of fornication. Here the buffoonery never stops."

Migrants and the Fantasy of Return

"Fantasies are real and true in themselves; they happen in our psychic lives and they are consequential in so much as all our thoughts influence our perspectives on life (and are influenced by our experiences). Fantasies affect our actions, to some extent, simply because of the discursive possibilities they open up (Moskowitz 1995, 552), whether or not we act upon them."

Bolognani, M. (2016). From myth of return to return fantasy: a psychosocial interpretation of migration imaginaries. Identities, 23(2), 193-209.

How prevalent is the myth or fantasy of return among migrant/expatriates?  I think it's very common. As content as we may be in our host countries, who has not mentally played out the "What if?" scenarios at different moments in our transnational lives?  For, as long as we retain citizenship, we have the option to return.    That fact that we do not exercise that option is irrelevant.  What matters is that we have a choice and every day we know that we have actively chosen to stay in our host countries. We are the actors, not the acted upon.

Two things interfere with the fantasy.  The first is that the longer we stay, the higher our personal investment in the place we call "home."  To choose to leave might mean selling the house or apartment, leaving behind a spouse and children, losing health and retirement benefits, walking away from a perfectly decent job.  There is a cost associated with return that can be higher than the price of the initial migration.

The second concerns government policies and public perceptions.  Yes, international law is very clear that any citizen has a right to return to a country of citizenship but there is no law that says they must encourage return and welcome you with open arms.  In a sense a returnee is viewed with the same suspicion as any immigrant.  What do you have to offer?  What benefit is it to us that you are now here and not there?  Will you be a burden and not an asset? Have you returned simply to reap the benefits of our social welfare system?

It's all about age and social/economic capital.  Migration policies tend to favor the young, the healthy, the well-educated and those with significant financial assets.  These are the citizens a country doesn't want to lose and these are the immigrants they want.  Rightly or wrongly, an older returnee to a developed country is likely to be less welcome than a young, single, migrant entrepreneur from a less developed one.  Unless, of course, she is bringing back money that can be invested to build a house, create jobs, and contribute something significant to the local economy.

At some point in our migration journey reality intrudes: our home countries are either indifferent to whether we return or not, or they might wince at the thought.  Our families do care but there are not enough of them to make much difference in the home country.

Exhibit A in our day is, of course, the British living in the EU who, because of Brexit, are in a very precarious position.  This is mirrored by the precarity of EU citizens in the UK.  All of them fear (and rightly so) that the choice to stay or not will be taken out of their hands.  The fantasy of return could become a nightmare of forced return or forced citizenship.  For all the soothing words that say that calmer heads will prevail, there are reasons to think that calm heads have already looked at it and like or dislike what they see according to national interests.

An article by Elizabeth Collett and Meghan Benton on the MPI website argues that there is an asymmetrical nature of the negotiations over these migrants.  They write:

"[I]t is clear that the United Kingdom may be negotiating on an uneven platform with a number of countries. From the available data, it is clear that more than half the British population in Europe’s sunniest climes—Spain, Malta, Cyprus, and Portugal, among them—are over age 50 (and one-third in Malta and Spain over age 65). This sits in stark contrast to an overwhelmingly youthful EU population in the United Kingdom, with just a handful of pensioners from Spain and Italy... Similarly, some of the countries that have donated their youth population to the British economy are keen to see them return, as in the case of Poland. Thus they have less at stake than a UK government happy to see its older UK nationals continuing to enjoy the sunshine elsewhere."

In other words, they are suggesting that EU countries send their young to the UK, while the UK is more likely to send the the retired or semi-retired.  Thus, "return" would not mean the same thing to the UK as it would to the EU.  Yes, they would be drawing their pensions in the UK and spending it in the UK but this ignores the potential costs of having them come "home."  They will need to find housing or places in retirement homes, they will need medical care, and they will most likely not be in the workforce and not paying into the social security system.  The younger EU migrants in the UK do both.

However,  expanding our view to the EU level, British retirement migrants (65+) are estimated to be about 189,000 out of 890,000 British citizens living in EU countries.  It's only in certain EU countries like sunny Spain or the south of France where the numbers of retirees are high relative to the overall migrant population. But remember that all EU countries have a say in the negotiations over Brexit. So the question is  How do France and Spain feel about UK migrants?   Overall, are they a benefit to these countries or not?  And the answer, I would think, would depend on what contribution the 20-64 population is making to these countries.  I'm sure that governments are running those numbers and taking into account the political landscape/public perception of the let them stay vs. send them back debate.

My take on it is that retirement migrants and migrants who "age in place" are extremely vulnerable and merit extra protection.    Whatever the fantasies a migrant may have had about returning, the reality is that they have built a life somewhere else and it becomes harder and harder every year they stay to go back.  To those who say that letting them stay is a "reward" for breaking the law or is somehow contrary to national interests, I would counter that with:  Ahem.  You were very happy to have them around to revitalize small towns, spend retirement money, keep your food cheap, teach, write code, or care for the elderly.  Behind each and every one of those activities is a human being who will, like you, grow old.   I believe that the number of years spent in a country and age should confer strong protection against deportation.  In some countries it does; in others not so much.

Reflect for a moment on the vulnerability of all migrants which varies with age, socioeconomic status, country of origin, and so many other things.  States still make the rules. So we dream of options that nonetheless narrow with time and, one day we may wake up to find that in spite of our citizenship, our preferred alternative has become impractical, if not impossible.  As for our staying on, how frightening it is to learn that is up to others to decide.  In migration we are not always the captains of our fate; the end of our migration story is not always ours to write.  But I still think the migrant life is one worth living and fighting for. 

“And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo, adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on, and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same..."

Sam in The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien