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Spain’s law of return, Brexit and the ‘worth’ of immigrants

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Like Brexit, Spain’s attempt to establish historical justice for the past Reconquista is just another case of the economisation of immigration.

In 2015, the Spanish government issued a ‘law of return’, inviting descendants of Jews expelled more than 500 years ago from the Iberian Peninsula to apply for Spanish citizenship. The idea was to ‘correct a historical error’, as Spanish Minister of Justice Rafael Català stated. The ‘error’ was the Alhambra Decree of 1492, which asked all Jews living in Spain to either convert to Christianity or leave the now Christian lands.

The Decree of 1492 constitutes a turning point in the history of Spain – in fact, ‘Spain’ as we understand it today did not exist before this year. The Decree marked the endpoint of the so-called ‘Reconquista’, the battle of the Christian Kingdoms against the Muslim rulers, who governed the Iberian Peninsula for 800 years; and the beginning for a new understanding of ‘Spanishness’ in light of the strengthening Inquisition. To be ‘Spanish’ meant to be ‘ethnically Catholic’; conversion was no longer an escape. New Christians, former Muslims and Jews, were subject to the ‘limpieza de sangre’, the purification of blood.

This Inquisition officially lasted right up until 1834, fostering an atmosphere of constant suspicion between Spaniards. The entanglement of the Spanish nation-state with Catholicism and monarchy, which – at least superficially – held diverse cultural entities together, has caused tensions ever since: from Francisco Franco’s suppression of regional differences; to Basque anarchist, anti-monarchist nationalism and terrorism; right up until our own times with the Catalonian crisis.

The ‘law of return’ therefore seemed like a belated attempt at historical reconciliation as well of acknowledgement of Spain’s past and present diversity. It opened the young Spanish democracy, established in 1978, to an alternative concept of Spanish citizenship, away from Catholicism and the Catholic crown.

However, this is a deception. Basque congressman Jon Iñarritu García and others have questioned the motives behind this new law. It is clearly targeted at wealthy individuals who could financially boost the stricken Spanish economy. According to Iñarritu García, the complex conditions tied to the new law and non-transparent application process are evidence of this. Amongst other things, exams on Spanish history, culture and language must be passed to qualify; as well as proof of heritage, including onomatology. Iñarritu García estimates the total cost of the application process at 6.000 Euros. This is illuminating, especially when coupled with the fact that individuals, who cannot present their exact genealogy, can still apply for the citizenship as long as they have invested substantially in Sephardic culture. Finally, the applicants have to vow allegiance to the Spanish constitution, and incredibly, to the Spanish King.

Hence, the ‘law of return’ does not establish historical justice, as proclaimed by the Spanish government, but perpetuates the ideology behind 1492. Instead of a change in the Spanish mentality, it appears that Sephardi immigrants are not perceived as having the right to reside in Spain, but are evaluated according to their financial value to Spain. The Spanish government holds the power to pick and choose the ‘good’ immigrants, showing some uncomfortable parallels with the Inquisition during which certain useful ‘New Christians’ were protected.

The economisation of immigration is not an issue unique to Spain. Most recently the Brexit movement has displayed a similar pattern. For some that voted to Leave, the sovereignty of the UK state is paramount, especially the right to choose how many and what kind of EU-nationals are allowed to come to the UK; that is, those deemed to be ‘good’ immigrants, i.e. educated Western Europeans. The UK government has done little to ease the concerns of EU citizens currently residing in the UK during the ongoing Brexit negotiations and has often been accused of using them as bargaining chips for trade deals. It appears, then, that this is not so different from the Spanish case.

The often-cited ‘Empire nostalgia’ that accompanied the Brexit vote, supports this perspective. Though the idea of the former Empire implies a certain cosmopolitanism, it can also invoke a time when non-British nationals were seen as means to an end, which is not so dissimilar to the current situation.

To view immigrants primarily through a financial lens is dangerous. It de-humanises individuals and overlooks the cultural contribution of immigration to society. Perceiving immigrants as an economic cost puts every them under the microscope and invites scrutiny: Has he or she contributed enough to the economy to be accepted by the society in which they live in?

In short, contemporary rationales for both Spanish and UK immigration policy reflect far older power dynamics. A ‘historical error’ cannot be corrected. It seems that the lessons of the past have not been learned.

Susana Zickert (25) is a 2017 graduate from the MA programme ‘Religion in Global Politics’ at SOAS and lives in London.

“Our Unfenced Country”: Brexit and the Irish Border

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The Irish concern that, post-Brexit, we will no longer be able to speak of “our unfenced country” is well-voiced. The soft border has become a symbol of reconciliation and peace following the Troubles. The implications of a change to freedom of movement would be wide-ranging and deeply felt, economically, politically and personally.

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there”

A return to a ‘hard border’ is the most publicised potential change to Common Travel Area arrangements, and would be the most discernible. The dilemma of a potential hard border is highly political and politicised – yet it is largely unrecognised that a post-Brexit border would in some regards have to be even more strictly manned and monitored than that of the Troubles era. Border controls were previously implemented only during particularly unstable periods of the Troubles. Border checkpoints were therefore concerned with terrorism alone, not with customs and immigration, as would be the case following Brexit.

On the face of it, such a situation may seem unsavoury and complicated, but not impossible. It is estimated that approximately 30,000 people currently commute cross-border. The border is punctuated at 257 points (a substantial figure, given that there are 137 crossing points on the eastern EU frontier from Finland to Greece). While the UK has tabled a proposal for a ‘frictionless border’ which would possibly be controlled technologically, the realistic viability of such a plan is highly contested. The necessary infrastructure to establish an operational customs border would be conspicuous, expensive and inconvenient, and the potential for smuggling immense.

“Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?”

A further potential effect would be the reemergence of a ‘psychological border’ between Northern communities, and between both parts of the island. There is a real risk that, should a visible border reemerge on the island of Ireland, a politics of history and identity would become potent once more. EU membership provided an umbrella identity which both encompassed and transcended the politics of belonging and identity which had dominated Northern Irish politics and society for decades. Without the buffer of a common, uncontentious EU identity, and with a physical border as an inescapable reminder of partition, old questions of belonging could become relevant once more.

Were relations with the South to become less fluent and more distant, a sense of alienation would likely emerge amongst the 25% of Northern Irish citizens who identified themselves as Irish only at the time of the 2011 census.

This could undermine Northern Ireland’s efforts become more self-sufficient politically and economically. A strengthened sense of Northern Irishness, a centre-ground where both groups can meet, is the region’s best hope for future cooperation and peaceful coexistence. Traditional Unionist-Nationalist identities were binary and mutually exclusive, whereas the term ‘Northern Irish’ is nonexclusive and neutral.

United we stand, divided we fall

It is for that reason that the UK government ought to give serious consideration to the EU Parliament’s suggestion that Northern Ireland remain in the customs union, or to other suggestions that it obtain some form of ‘special status’. Not only would the soft border be protected and economic upset minimised, but the political dynamic could also be favourably and fundamentally changed.

An awareness of Northern Irish interests separate to those of the rest of the UK would foster greater cohesion amongst Northern Irish communities and would require internal politics of the past to be put aside in favour of a common vision for the future. Economic and logistical cooperation in areas such as dairy processing and the Integrated Single Electricity Market could continue with the rest of the island of Ireland, while cross-border communities could maintain their current work and living arrangements relatively unimpeded.

Ties with mainland Britain would be somewhat loosened, in that customs checks would be relegated to passage between the Isles. At the same time however, political Union with the rest of the UK would be preserved and supported. While a ‘United’ Ireland promoted by the Nationalist community refers to the merging of two parts, the ‘United’ Kingdom refers to a political union of distinct entities. Therefore, current political arrangements could theoretically continue unproblematically. Furthermore, Unionists may seek comfort in the fact that a soft border is a more resilient one.

“There is no road that is right entirely”

There is no simple answer to the ‘Northern Irish question’ – that much at least is obvious. The flexibility and imagination proffered by both sides must be actually substantiated aspirations of soft border maintenance to be realised. With regard to Brexit, change is the only certainty, and therefore cooperation and concessions from all sides will be necessary. The positive side of such uncertainty is that there is no place for fatalism – nothing is predetermined. Were political will to be harnessed, there is no reason why obstacles cannot be overcome. “[I]n brute reality there is no road that is right entirely”, but all parties agree that a road without a hard border is a step in the right direction.

Grace McLoughlin is a student of English Literature at Trinity College Dublin. She spent last year in Berlin, where she was an active member of Agora’s sister think tank, Polis180.

Securitisation of the ‘other’ and climate change as a blind spot

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The rise of populism in the West presents serious dangers for our ability to tackle racism and deal with climate change. Populations across the Atlantic must work together to reclaim the fight against both.

In his first year of presidency, Donald Trump has kept the world in suspense with populist rhetoric as well as unilateral domestic and foreign policy decisions. Two recurrent themes have been central to his discourse: the hoax of climate change and the threat of Muslims and immigrants.

Only several weeks after being elected, President Trump changed the US’ climate change policies. Not only had he instructed environmental agencies to delete all content related to climate change from their website. He also ordered NASA to stop their research on the topic. He appointed as his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of Exxon Mobil (one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies). Executive orders to authorise the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines and the announcement of a US withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement soon followed.

At the same time, the President has increased rhetoric and policy against Muslims and immigrants. His bans on immigration from predominantly Muslim countries, the denial of substantive freedoms to green-card holders with the ‘wrong’ nationality, and his plan to build a wall along the US-Mexican border are all these measures that create a divide between the favoured American self and an ‘other’, which supposedly poses a threat to common security.

The convergence of climate change denial, racism, and Islamophobia might be most obvious in Trumps’ government, but it is not just an American phenomenon. Nigel Farage, former leader of the right-wing UK Independence Party and a prominent proponent of stricter immigration laws, raged in a speech at the European Parliament in 2013 “we may have made one of the biggest, stupidest collective mistakes of history by getting so worried about global warming”. In accordance with Trump, UKIP aims to withdraw from the 2008 Climate Change Act and Paris agreement as announced in their 2017 manifesto. They further proclaim human-made climate change as “ridiculous”. They have also declared immigration is a “threat to ‘our way of life’”.

In fact, epitomising this logic, Canadian author Mark Steyn writes in his book America Alone about “the real threat” of a violent takeover of Muslims, imposing Sharia on Europe as opposed to the “hypothetical” threat of rising sea levels. As Andreas Malm from Lund University ironically puts it in a speech at the University of London, “global warming is a hoax, it is the Muslim invasion that is drowning us”.

This trend in current populist Western political discourse suppresses minorities within and outside a perceived society. Through the conjuring of a feeling of crisis, which can increase demand for populist ‘strong’ leaders, it becomes easier for private interests to dominate the political agenda. The current populist elite can then push through the vested interests of their economic allies; the fossil industry in the US providing the obvious example.

This is equally significant in a UK context where UKIP has seen increasing popularity (although this did decline at the 2017 general election). UKIP’s energy policy does not exclude renewable energy “when they can be delivered at competitive prices”. However, it dismisses the Climate Change Act on the ground of alleged £18bn yearly costs and clearly focuses on coal, fracking and nuclear power. The cost efficiency of the latter, however, throws up several questions. The 35-year commitment by the British government to buy electricity from EDF at a fixed price doubles the current wholesale price. This hardly represents the interests of UK taxpayers. Falling wholesale prices led to the ballooning of total costs to consumers from £6bn in 2013 to £30bn today. With its reference to the unaffordability of renewables or of international agreements on curbing down carbon-hydrate emissions, the UKIP therefore treads, indeed, on thin ice.

It becomes clear that the rhetoric of an immigration crisis, if intended or not, can help powerful and vested interests in energy politics. In the meantime the interests of those that suffer the most from global warming – the poor or indigenous people in both advanced and developing economies – are ignored. Economic and political elites, who focus on the media-effectiveness of policies over the objectively crucial issues, not only override the economic interests but also the political rights of the broader part of society.

It is time for Western democracies to wake up, publicly condemn efforts to disguise the pursuit of private profit and to bring public interest back on the agenda of global and national policy. This is not only necessary to avert the most dramatic changes of the worlds’ ecosystems, it is also crucial in order to restore the credibility of liberal democracies in general. Otherwise they will loose their core function, namely to represent the interests of their sovereign: the people.

Felicitas Fischer is on Agora’s Board of Trustees.

Make the UK climate policy global again

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Prime Minister Theresa May’s “Plan for Britain” called for a new and increased role for the UK in the climate arena. With the release of the “Clean Growth Strategy”, the country now aims to lead the world in climate action. In Bonn, the UK will show the world if it can truly take on this role.

In November 1989, when Margaret Thatcher delivered her provocative speech on global warming at the United Nations General Assembly, she warned that the ability to stop or limit damage to the environment would be the greatest test for the world community to act together. The statement marked a turning point for the UK, which had previously been better-known for its poor climate record. Since then, the UK, along with other European countries, has committed itself to being a global pioneer in climate action. Indeed, different governments have attempted to promote the image of the UK as a climate champion.

After the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, Britain pledged to reduce its total greenhouse gas emissions by 12.5%. This was followed by the approval of the Climate Change Act in 2008 and the decision to reduce emissions by 80% by 2050 (compared to levels in 1990). More recently, in 2013, the UK launched – alongside six other countries, including Sweden, Ethiopia and Colombia – the “Global Commission on the Economy and Climate”, a panel of experts assessing how countries can achieve economic growth while coping with climate change. Additionally, from 2012 to 2017, Britain has stepped up its efforts on providing climate finance for developing countries, supporting countries through its programmes that have targeted “over 34 million people dealing with the effects of climate change”, according to the 2017 Climate Finance Results report.

Many argue that the UK climate policy may be weakened by leaving the EU and that its strategy will, consequently, lack tangible results. Presumably, this will occur if the UK government does not find credible alternatives to the EU climate policies and it does not clarify its position on the EU Emission Trading System (ETS).

In recent years, climate action has gained further momentum and become a recurrent issue on the national political map. In the 2016 Queen’s speech, British public were assured that “the UK government would have used its global presence to tackle climate change”. Prime Minister Theresa May then echoed these words during the latest general election campaign. In the 2017 Conservative Manifesto, the plan for a Global Britain envisaged the UK as a world-leader in environmental protection and international action against climate change.

For the time being, it does not seem that exiting the EU has dampened the country’s ambition on climate action. The UK executive has recently unveiled the “Clean Growth Strategy”, a multi-billion-pound programme that shall pave the way to the decarbonisation of the UK economy.

However, Britain is still heavily reliant on fossil fuels; according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), coal, oil and gas accounted for 80% of its total primary energy supply in 2016. The implementation of the strategy will prove whether the UK can embark on a path towards a more environmentally friendly economy.

The spotlight is now on COP 23 in Bonn, where the UK government has a real opportunity to transform the electoral promises into concrete initiatives. Last September, during a meeting with Justin Trudeau, Canadian Prime Minister, Theresa May vowed to phase-out coal as an electricity source by 2025 in the UK. In October Claire Perry, the UK’s Minister for Climate Change and Industry, together with her Canadian counterpart, Catherine McKenna, announced the intention to champion a global alliance on the transition from coal as an energy source at the UN climate conference.

In the short-term, it is going to be difficult to gauge whether Britain can really lead the world towards a low-carbon future. Most of the country’s success will hinge on how relevant climate action will be in the UK’s future foreign policy and its capacity to decarbonise the national economy. It will be essential to see also if the EU member states will decide to back and join the new global alliance.

Fabio Orlando is head of Agora’s Energy & Climate Programme