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Global Health Econ Sustain Latin American Liberal migration policies

from the Global South to the Global North (around 35% ). has been regarded by policymakers as an economic
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When it comes to refugees, 85% are hosted in the Global process — a question of the production, exchange and
South. consumption of resources. “With a combination of
Yet that’s not a reality that journalists and scholars in the privatization, liberalization and deregulation, globalization
Global North often focus on (…) what they see is an influx should bring maximum prosperity, liberty, democracy and
of people coming to Europe, especially since 2015. So that’s peace to the whole of humankind” (Scholte, 2005, p. 2).
the story they tell, which has become the dominant, North- However, the reality is other: far from bringing prosperity,
led narrative. Decolonizing the story means that the writing liberty, democracy and peace, the new economic regime
on migration, the research, the storytelling should be led by underpinned by the neo-liberal doctrine, which is oriented
scholars from the Global South working with scholars in the to privatization, deregulation, and flexibilization — the
Global North.” passage from a Fordist to a post-Fordist industrial model
— led to considerable social dislocation, not only in the
Several factors contribute to the discrepancies between less developed countries but also in the developed ones.
facts, numbers, and narratives with respect to South-
North and South-South migration. In Europe and the In a context of economic challenges and social tensions,
USA, migration has turned into a central issue in the the notion of “universal and extemporal problems with
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political debate between the political forces that are in ‘strangers in our midst’” (Baumann, 2015), inherently
favor of globalization (the “globalists”) — supporting a linked to the phenomenon of migration, has gained
supra-national order — and those in favor of the national heightened significance. Hence, a widespread mantra —
sovereignty (the “sovereigns”) and for a de-globalization. echoed by European politicians — asserts that developed
The political forces in favor of globalization can assert that countries cannot possibly welcome all the “misery of
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most manifestations of global connectivity have reached the world.” This brings to the forefront what James
unprecedented levels during the past half-century “jet Hollifield has termed “the “liberal paradox” — embracing
travel, intercontinental missiles, satellite communications, globalization versus safeguarding state sovereignty: “Since
facsimiles, the Internet, television, transborder production the end of World War II, international economic forces
chains, intercontinental retailers, global credit cards or (trade, investment, and migration) have been pushing
anthropogenic ecological problems that encompass the planet states towards greater openness, while the international
as a whole” (Scholte, 2005, p. 4). The ones who oppose 14 “Strangers tend to cause anxiety precisely because of
can object that this connectivity does not correspond to being ‘strange’—so fearsomely unpredictable, unlike
equal development among the areas of the world. On the the people with whom we daily interact and from
contrary, the income gap between poor and rich countries, whom we believe we know what to expect” (Baumann,
which is “grotesquely” wide, has not reduced due to the 2015).
global growth process (Baumann, 2015). Instead, extreme 15 This sentence has been pronounced the first time by
global inequality has eventually increased, leading to the French prime minister Michel Rocard the 6 of June
th
accelerated migration that has been described by Castles 1989: “Il y a, en effet, dans le monde trop de drames,
and Miller (Marmora, 1997). de pauvreté, de famine pour que l’Europe et la France
Does migration contribute to reducing the income gap? puissent accueillir tous ceux que la misère pousse vers
elles,” déclare ce jour-là Michel Rocard, avant d’ajouter
Regrettably, the answer is generally negative, mainly due to qu’il faut “résister à cette poussée constante.”
the fact that the surge in migration is more a by-product https://www.liberation.fr/france/2015/04/22/
than a planned part of globalization, which was misere-du-monde-ce-qu-a-vraiment-dit-michel-
13
predicated on the idea of decreasing barriers to trade and rocard_1256930/
capital (not people). Framed by the “neo-liberal” doctrine, The same idea was expressed in an interview the third
which is based on laissez-faire economics, globalization of December 1989: “Nous ne pouvons pas héberger
toute la misère du monde. La France doit rester ce
12 https://gmdac.iom.int/gmdac-migfacts-international- qu’elle est, une terre d’asile politique […] mais pas plus.
migration […] Il faut savoir qu’en 1988 nous avons refoulé à nos
13 In an interesting article of 2008, Hatton and frontières 66 000 personnes. 66 000 personnes refoulées
Willianson explore how history can inform modern aux frontières ! A quoi s’ajoutent une dizaine de milliers
debate about immigration’s impact on developed d’expulsions du territoire national. Et je m’attends à
economies. Examining the relationship between ce que pour l’année 1989 les chiffres soient un peu plus
migration’s labor market impact and capital flows forts.”
before 1914, the first global era. Differently from https://www.liberation.fr/france/2015/04/22/
today, in the nineteenth-century states, especially those misere-du-monde-ce-qu-a-vraiment-dit-michel-
in the New World, actively encouraged immigration. rocard_1256930/

Volume 1 Issue 1 (2023) 5 https://doi.org/10.36922/ghes.0861