Migration to the South

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Right-wing parties in Europe are making strides that can no longer be considered small, foremost among them is the 'Alternative for Germany' party, which achieved significant gains in the recent elections in the state of Saxony located in the east of the country. In Britain, the right-wing 'Reform' party has managed to attract segments of voters in the recent local elections and is gaining increasing popularity, while the issue of migrants has become one of the most capable issues of mobilizing the streets and ballot boxes in several European countries. France is even preparing itself for the upcoming presidential elections to welcome the first female right-wing president, and some aspects of migrants have become fertile material in the political debate among competitors.

In Ceuta, the city located on the African coast and under Spanish rule, images of migrants who attempted to reach it last month are repeated, considering it a gateway to Europe. As their flow increases, voices in Europe are rising, warning against immigration, open borders, and 'foreigners' coming from the south, to the extent of threatening Spain with a ban on dealing with it through the European 'Schengen' visa. With the return of tens of thousands, there are still those who remain from that wave, estimated at five thousand people.

The European mood is changing, and one does not need many examples to notice that. Migrants have become an easy scapegoat for increasing sectors in those European countries, blamed for housing problems, unemployment, deteriorating public services, and declining living standards. In Germany specifically, Angela Merkel's decision to open the door to large numbers of refugees from Syria remains fertile political material for the right, and is cited as a reason for the decline of the German economy.

Some behaviors of the migrants themselves do not help them. There are practices, albeit few, that seem strange and perhaps provocative in societies with their own culture and laws. This is something that should not be ignored, but turning these few cases into an explanation for a broad European economic and social crisis is something entirely different that contradicts logic. The economic downturn in some European countries has much more complex reasons than the presence of migrants; in fact, the obvious paradox is that some European countries have economically benefited from migrant labor and improved their economies, with Spain being an example; the newcomers have contributed to providing labor in sectors that the citizens do not accept to work in, and it has become the best economy in Europe today. However, there is another story, a completely opposite story, and I do not think many have noticed it. As I read the Spanish novel by María Dueñas titled 'The Return to Oran', I paused at a completely opposite image to the one we see today. There was, not long ago, migration from the north to the south. Yes, with a huge number of people.

The intriguing novel states that at the end of the 1920s, between two world wars, not all of northern Europe was the land of wealth that it has become today, nor was the southern Mediterranean entirely a land of poverty from which people flee. There were poor people from Spain and its islands, France, and others, crossing the sea in large numbers in search of work and a better life in the cities of North Africa. They were driven by poverty and wars, especially the civil war in Spain.

Algeria during the French colonial period is, of course, a story with a harsh colonial face that should not be beautified; France benefited economically and settlement-wise from Algeria. But within that big picture, there are also small human stories about poor Europeans driven by need to the south. Dueñas' novel places us in the midst of that life; its heroine escapes from misery, heads to the port barefoot and destitute, and then crosses to Oran. She does not arrive as a tourist or a wealthy woman; she arrives as a woman looking for any work that keeps her alive. She moves from tobacco farms to fruit farms, washes clothes with other desperate Spanish women like herself, then works as a wet nurse for a wealthy French family, and navigates a hard life, low wages, and an uncertain future.

That was also migration, but the direction of the compass was different: from north to south. Oran and other cities in North Africa welcomed people who came to them because their homelands did not provide them with enough bread and security; some returned, some settled, and some were fortunate enough to rise socially and economically. As I read those pages and the number of poor migrants, I asked myself: Where is this memory in today's noisy European debate? I do not remember that those European migrations to the south generated the same wave of popular hatred that southern migrants face in some northern communities today. The circumstances may be different, the numbers may be different, and the modern state may be different. But the human experience is almost the same: a person leaves their country when life becomes difficult, seeking a place where they believe their opportunities are better.

Migration and history do not always move from south to north. Less than a century ago, ships were carrying poor Europeans in the opposite direction. Perhaps today's European debate needs a bit of memory; for nations, like individuals, when they forget their days of need, they become less understanding of the needs of others. The phenomenon of hostility did not appear in the south during the reverse migration! In conclusion: what we see as bullying of migrants in Europe is nothing but a new form of racism.

Quoted from "Al-Sharq Al-Awsat"