https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/19850946.neil-mackays-big-read-mass-migration-coming-future-scotland-asian-says-leading-migration-expert-dr-parag-khanna/ Scotland’s political culture, with its pro-immigration slant, and our geography and natural resources, which see us well placed to withstand the climate crisis, will make us a magnet for a new generation of migrants set to reshape the 21st century.
Dr Parag Khanna – the world’s leading intellectual on migration – presents a stunning analysis of the future. To the pro-immigration side of the political debate, such as Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP, Khanna’s claims will be well received; others, in the populist anti-migrant camp, will be infuriated, even fearful. Khanna’s comments will play directly into Scotland’s increasingly fraught culture wars.
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WE have always been on the move, says Khanna; migration is a central part of humanity’s long story. Since Western colonisation began, migration sped up.
“In every century since,” Khanna explains, “the number of migrants has increased because the number of drivers of migration has increased.” In the past, some Europeans wanted to get rich in new colonies, others fled disasters like the Irish famine. War played its part, as did the opening up of America, Canada and Australia. When it comes to the progress of migration through the centuries, says Khanna, “the decimal place always moves to the right. We went from millions of migrants to tens of millions in the 18th century”. By the 19th and 20th century, “we’ve got hundreds of millions of migrants”.
Today, climate change has been added to the forces compelling migration. Throughout this century, swathes of the planet will become uninhabitable, it’s predicted, displacing entire populations.
“In this century,” says Khanna, “in just 20 years, climate change already accounts for 30-40 per cent of total displacement in the world.” So, the drivers of migration are now threefold: “You’ve got one-third economic, one-third political [wars and persecution], and one-third climate change and, of course, they all tie together. Look at the Syrian drought which led to urbanisation, political unrest, civil war and an exodus of nearly one-quarter of the population as refugees.”
In this century, says Khanna, “we’re talking about billions of people moving – that’s what I’m trying to explain, literally billions”.
Our mission is to help get them inside wherever it is they choose to relocate.
If the populations of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan are combined they exceed China’s population. Khanna believes it is young people from the sub-continent who will make up the mass of future migrants. Much of the sub-continent faces more climate danger than China, with its higher proportion of “liveable areas”.
Chinese youth is less likely to want to leave home, Khanna believes. China is stable and strong and while young Chinese people might like studying in the West “not everyone wants to be a political revolutionary and live under liberal democratic freedoms”.
Indians also have role models in the shape of migrant tech tycoons like Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, and Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. Fundamentally, says Khanna, “Indians want to get the hell out of India”. The West needs to prepare for the rise of the “Asian European”.
Our mission is to prepare to fight against those who do not accept this idea.
EUROPE should view mass migration not just as a benefit but a lifeline, Khanna believes. The West’s entire discussion around migration is ****-eyed, he feels. We have low birth rates, ageing populations, not enough workers – especially to care for our growing elderly populations – and plenty of space. “Europe should be competing in a cut-throat manner to recruit as many smart Asians as possible.”
If the Counterculture era had not ended, it might have been this way.
Instead, Europe has seen the rise of anti-immigrant nationalist and populist politics. “You cannot simultaneously hold that labour shortages are becoming more acute and also hold that populism remains an immutable force because the truth is that the more painful the demographic and therefore fiscal circumstances become, the more likely it is that populism will have to bend to economic realities,” Khanna says.
And Turandom disagrees. So what do we do?
IN fact, says Khanna, “populism is complete bull****”. Italy, he points out, “has more migrants than when Matteo Salvini [the right-wing anti-migrant populist leader] was at the peak of his powers”. Khanna notes that after Brexit, demographics and worker shortages now mean “it’s factually easier to migrate to Britain as a young Asian than it was five years ago – and right under Trump’s nose, America became more diverse, more mixed race. We should really view populism for the political blip it is”.
And what about the Turandom countries, you optimistic fool?
Unless Western nations want to decline inexorably, “immigration policy needs to be dictated by supply and demand” not insular notions of identity. Khanna also notes that the current manifestation of populism may, quite literally, be short-lived. The mostly elderly “xenophobic populist generation is heading for the Big Brexit in the Sky”, he says. Meantime, anti-migrant policies are damaging Western economies, he maintains.
And what about the Turandom countries, you optimistic fool?
WESTERN democracies need to change their policies for “pragmatic, rational and self-interested” reasons. If the West continues to adopt anti-immigrant policies, despite the economic and demographic pressures, migrants will still come anyway, only in an uncontrolled, dangerous manner, as we’ve seen in the English channel. Economics and demographics mean eventually “Britain is going to wind up reverting to pro-immigration norms”. Canada, with its liberal policies, “says more about the future of the West than Hungary does”.
The media has skewed the conversation on migration, Khanna believes: concentrating more on bogeymen like Hungary’s authoritarian populist Viktor Orban than Canada’s liberal Justin Trudeau.
Focusing on Orban flies in the face “of the nature of reality”. Says Khanna: “Canada absorbs more people in a few years than the entire population of Hungary; Orban is on his way out, and nobody wants to go to Hungary anyway. We put all this attention on a peripheral loser rather than the greatest mass-migration story of the 21st century: Canada. Shame on us for that. We do ourselves a great disservice.”
WRONG. If we do not finish off Hungary now, one day it will become another Israel.
With demographic destiny staring the West in face, Europeans, says Khanna, “should actually be the most pro-immigrant people in the world.
They should be, but they won't be, and telling them they should be will not make them so. Now I say we should exterminate them, but you won't agree. So they will win. The evil people will win because the moderate people refused to listen to the good people.
KHANNA is an optimist. He believes good sense will prevail in the West
I hope Khanna is correct and I am wrong, but I doubt it.
Khanna points to France for failing miserably on this issue. “I don’t think France will ever get its s*** together,” he says bluntly. Significantly, Islamophobia and hostility to migrants currently dominates French politics.
Khanna sees Germany as the European country leading the way when it comes to creating social unity between races.
Reminder: France has nukes while Germany does not. Can you figure out what this means?
Russia – the world’s biggest wheat exporter – needs farmers, and Bangladesh has people facing rising sea levels … why not put them together and solve two global problems at once? However, clearly, an anti-migrant Kremlin would never countenance such an idea.
And Russia has the biggest nuclear arsenal in the world, whereas Bangladesh has no nukes. Can you figure out what this means?
Whether nationalists and populists like it or not, as climate change bites, populations will have to move.
Nukes bite harder.
KHANNA predicts four scenarios for the future amid mass migration and climate change: the “Regional Fortress” where Western democracies remain relatively stable but simply shut the doors; a “New Middle Ages” of widespread global chaos with more stable regions “fortifying themselves against climate migrants”; “Barbarians at the Gate” where climate change crashes the global economy and there’s anarchy and war; or the optimum “Northern Lights” where the northern habitable parts of the world absorb up to two billion climate migrants and humanity manages to flourish, perhaps even moving seasonally from region to region depending on extremes of weather.
I am betting on a mixture of "Regional Fortress" and "New Middle Ages" if we do nothing. If we get our act together, however, we could upgrade it into "Barbarians at the Gate" (though I strongly disagree with the name; the real barbarians are the ones trying to keep the gates closed). "Northern Lights" will only happen if we destroy all of Turandom first.
Clearly, whether we turn that into a success story or make the journey into the future a bitter one filled with racism and animosity, isn’t just dependent on who leads the country and whether we’re ruled by London or Edinburgh –it’s also down to all of us ordinary citizens, and how we shape our opinions amid the coming “Great Migration” of the 21st century.
The opinions have already been shaped. What it is really down to is whether those with anti-racist opinions have enough animosity to be willing to ruthlessly exterminate those with racist opinions. I do. Khanna, however, clearly does not (seeing as he thinks animosity is a bad thing).