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Which countries have had the most successful migration policies and why?

SociologySociety+2
Anastasia Krasnoperova
  · 3,3 K
Prof Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, University of Oxford...  · 9 янв 2017

It’s remarkable how little research is available comparing the success of different countries’ immigration policies. This is partly because it is such a delicate topic, and partly because there are so many different criteria to judge what makes a successful policy. If the criterion is simply to keep people out, North Korea has the best policies. If it’s to let the most people in, well, some countries in the poorer parts of Africa have no border controls at all! 

Despite what some tabloid newspapers might think, it is generally good news if you live in a place where immigrants keep turning up. Affluent countries that have attracted high numbers of immigrants tend to be socially successful countries. The best countries for immigration are not only welcoming to immigrants but are also worth staying in, in that they have affordable housing and transport, good public education and healthcare, and jobs that are well paid. 

"If you are an immigrant in a low-paid job such as washing dishes, you will be paid three times as much as somebody washing dishes in Britain. Even cleaners in Switzerland can earn the equivalent of €30 per hour."

For large European countries, the most successful vis-à-vis immigration is Switzerland, where 25 percent of the population are immigrants. This is partly because it’s a really strangely shaped country. The most elongated a country is, the more immigrants it will have because more people live right next to it and can easily move in. If Switzerland were a circular shape, its immigration rate would be lower. 

However, the real secret of Switzerland’s success is that it is very, very economically successful, which attracts migrants and creates work. It’s also pretty equitable, which makes it a good place to be an immigrant. If you are an immigrant in a low-paid job such as washing dishes, you will be paid three times as much as somebody washing dishes in Britain. Even cleaners in Switzerland can earn the equivalent of €30 per hour. 

Switzerland allows the free movement of Europeans and it occasionally worries about that, but mostly the people there don’t complain about immigrants. Again, this is down to the low levels of economic inequality. If people are all being paid similar amounts of money, they don’t resent incomers so much – just look at Iceland. Iceland was traditionally a slave society, in that Vikings brought Celtic slaves to the country, but now those two populations have completely integrated. Nobody in Iceland describes themself as a Viking or a Celt! 

That’s another important measure of successful immigration – how immigrants have fitted in with locals. Historically there have been catastrophic mass immigrations in terms of their effect on the indigenous population – look at America, where the Native Americans were largely wiped out by the germs of the immigrants, or Australia, where the Aborigines were treated incredibly badly. At least in New Zealand the white immigrants signed a treaty with the Maoris 

In the Americas the most successful country for immigration is Canada. It has been more welcoming to immigrants in recent years than has America because Canadians are better at realising that immigrants are very innovative. They tend to have more get-up-and-go than most people and their children do better at school. In Germany, adult Syrians get exploited and do pretty poor jobs the Germans don’t want to do but their kids do well in school and go on to achieve a lot. 

The highest percentage of immigrants in the world is in Gulf states such as Qatar, but they are not examples of successful immigration because they are just cheap labour. Immigrants to the Middle East are given very few rights and mortality rates for foreign workers on construction sites are very high. 

"Occasionally far right parties will use immigration as a weapon to try to gain political support but across Europe in recent years support for far right parties has fallen."

Occasionally far right parties will use immigration as a weapon to try to gain political support but across Europe in recent years support for far right parties has fallen. There are no far right parties worth talking about at all in Spain and Portugal, which is remarkable, as Spain has had huge amounts of immigrants from North Africa. The media make the far right problem sound far worse than it is. Nobody ever writes a story about support for the far right falling! 

The immigration debate can be toxic because it is rooted in ideas about territory and tribe, about invaders coming in and taking over –1066, and all that. Politicians tell people that problems are caused by invaders, but really there are no armies of invaders coming in. It is just people moving across the world, as we always have and we always will.