Category Archives: Transhuman News

Is Labour being punished for flip-flopping?

On a campaign stop during the 2010 UK election an elderly woman named Gillian Duffy, later identified as a lifelong Labour voter, complained to then-Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown about high immigration from Eastern Europe into the UK.

Following the interaction with Duffy, Gordon Brown -- while still wired to a live microphone -- complained to a staffer and called the woman a bigot.

The live microphone picked up the comment, a media maelstrom ensued, and Browns floundering hopes of winning the 2010 election were dashed once and for all.

Boris Johnsons resounding win over Jeremy Corbyn last week reminded me of that incident 10 years ago. To say that Boris Johnson won seats in Labour strongholds would be an understatement.

Constituencies that had only elected Labour MPs for 70-80 years switched to the Tories, as the Conservative Party is known in the UK.

The reality is that Browns Labour bigot became a Brexiteer, and then, a Tory. This may come as a shock to the wider public but it is no surprise to most political pundits and party functionaries.

Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party campaigned against Brexit during the 2016 referendum. The Leave campaign won the referendum with strong support from Labour voters in traditionally Labour constituencies.

The Labour party seemingly got the message and voted for the parliamentary bill invoking Article 50, a procedural requirement for the UK to leave the European Union.

However, earlier this year, Corbyn did another backflip and decided to oppose Brexit, calling for a second referendum where Labour would campaign to keep the UK in the EU.

In three years, Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party was against Brexit, then for it and again, against it. It is hardly a surprise that Labour voters who strongly favoured Brexit punished the Labour party for flip-flopping.

Political expediency and flip-flopping aside, the question of why working-class voters in Labour heartlands wanted Brexit requires deeper analysis.

The signs of working-class grief and disenchantment with Labour politics was evident as early as 2010 in Gillian Duffys sentiments and Browns insulting dismissal.

Western advanced countries with ageing populations have seen labour force participation and employment numbers either stagnate or, even worse, decline.

Relatively older populations understandably feel anxious about their future and care deeply about issues of economic security.

Centre-left parties have not only failed to address the concerns of older voters but have also been tone-deaf in their economic policy posturing.

They have placed too much rhetorical emphasis on economic opportunities for the future to attract younger, urban voters, while largely ignoring issues of economic security that affect suburban and regional voters.

Centre-right parties have stepped in to fill that political void. The conservative message of trying to preserve the socio-economic status quo, or at least attempting to slow down the pace of change, resonates with older voters.

Immigration and multiculturalism is another such issue where the stars have aligned for the right, both in terms of economics and politics.

Older voters see immigration as an issue of economic security. Immigrants will either take away jobs from native job-seekers and/or lead to lower wages and lower standards of living.

And while there is no denying that the topic of immigration triggers xenophobic hysteria amongst some segments of the population, the vast majority of the voting public perceive immigration as a jobs issue.

Economic rationalists -- and I count myself as one -- wax lyrical all day about the wider economic benefits of immigration as if it were a self-evident truth that transcends politics.

The liberal, rationalist literati have been complacent and dismissive of working-class anxieties and have failed to grasp how demographic and economic structural change is shaping the political discourse of our time.

Injecting identity politics into that conversation through condescension and ridicule, be it Gordon Browns bigot or Hilary Clintons basket of deplorables, only fans the flames of discontent and disenchantment.

To be fair, right-wing politicians say equally bad things too, if not worse. But trying to find equivalence, or the lack thereof, between what the right and the left says completely misses the point.

Taking a majoritarian position in favour of preserving the status quo is always going to be more of a vote-winner than trying to give voice to the upwardly-aspirational, minority class.

Boris Johnsons honeymoon period following this thumping win will end at some point and the hard job of governing and winning the hearts and minds of the voting public will overwhelm his government too, as it does every government.

UK Labour will probably bounce back too, perhaps with a better leader, perhaps sooner rather than later.

But the underlying forces of demographic and economic structural change that ageing, western societies are experiencing will endure and continue to shape the politics of our time.

In the midst of all this disruption and evolution -- politicians of both hues have the unenviable task of setting policy agendas that will inevitably lead to winners and losers.

In the democratic interplay between actual and perceived winners and losers, centre-left parties need to acknowledge that their brand of progressive politics resonates less and less with an older, majority voting bloc.

The politics of change and reform that disenfranchises the ageing, struggling majority is a recipe for political oblivion.

Nofel Wahid is an economist.

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From Brown's bigot to Brexit and Boris - Dhaka Tribune

Former Knesset MemberGeulah Cohenpassed away today. In 1964 she had ayechiduswith the Rebbe, and published an account of it in the Israeli daily Maariv. Read her report here.

Geula Cohen passed away today at the age of 93. She was a well-known public figure from the right-wing camp in Israel, who previously served as Deputy Minister in the Israeli government, a Knesset member and journalist.

Cohen worked extensively in the public arena in the struggle for shleimus haaretz. Cohen was also one of the main opponents of Prime Minister Menachem Begins decision to hand over the Sinai to Egypt.

Thanks to her many roles, she gained a special connection with the Rebbe, including a sequence of correspondence. While serving as a senior journalist in the Maariv newspaper, she also had a unique yechidus with the Rebbe during which she interviewed the Rebbe. She later published an account of her yechidus in the Israeli daily, Maariv. A translation of her account is published below.

Courtesy of Chabad.org

The Believer

I have been in the company of wise men, men of great learning and intelligence, men who were superior artists. But sitting opposite a true believer is quite a different matter. After having met a wise man you remain the same as before you have become neither less of a fool nor more of a sage. The education of the man of learning hardly rubs off on you, nor does the artist endow you with any of his talents or inspiration. Not so with a believer. After having met him you are no longer the same. Though you may not have accepted his faith, you have nevertheless been embraced by it. For the true believer believes in you as well.

TheLubavitcher Rebbe, RabbiMenachem Mendel Schneerson, of Brooklyn, the spiritual leader of the WorldChabadMovement, is both wise and learned, but above all he is a man of faith. And if faith be the art of truth, he is also an artist whose creation is the army of believers that he commands, the army of the Jewish faith, of theGdofIsraeland the people of Israel.

What about the belief in the Land of Israel?

To ask the Rebbe this question I first had to get to him. Jewish legend says nothng about how exactly the angels were received in audience by the L-rd, but had it wanted to it might well have taken its inspiration from the manner in which I managed to be received by the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

First of all, as with every ordinary mortal, there is, of course, the secretary with fixed reception hours and a long waiting list, except that here the secretary does not ask you what you intend to discuss with his boss. That is a matter between you and the Rebbe himself. Here, even if you may sometimes have to wait for days on end, anybody and everybody is eventually admitted. And the reception hours are not in daytime, but at night all the night through. The day is for learning, the night for talking.

At 11 oclock at night? I repeated, when told by Rabbi Hodakov, the Lubavitcher Rebbes secretary, that this was the time of my appointment, for I was sure I had not heard right.

Tomorrow, at 11 p.m., came the laconic reply over the line connecting me with the Rebbes court in Brooklyn.

And why not in the daytime? When I posed this question to one of the Rebbes followers, he looked at me as ifI had come from the moon.

During the day the Rebbe studies, came the answer, in a tone that left no room for further questions.

And indeed I found myself wondering whether this was not as it should be; whether at night the heavens and the hearts of men might not be more open, more disposed to listen; at night when the barriers are down and man is closer to the truth.

Perhaps the very fact that my thoughts were turning this way was already due to the incipient effect of the secret drug that begins to work on you, whether you want it or not, long before you actually meet the Rebbe; possibly from the moment that you decide you want to see him. However rationalistic you may be, all your skeptical questions begin to blush with shame

The Rebbes Court

I dont remember a single preface in any book I have read that I did not skip. But from the long preliminaries I had to go through until I actually met the Rebbe, I learned that there are some preambles one cannot do without for the simple reason that they already constitute the beginning of the story. What the Rebbe has to say may be important, but still more important, perhaps also for the Rebbe himself and the Chassidic lore of the Chabad school, is to whom, when and where he said what he did. The atmosphere around him is no less relevant than what he actually says. The how may matter no less and perhaps even more than the what. The Rebbe starts off where his court begins. His parlor begins at the porch. His followers are no less part of his personality than, as the Chassidim believe, all human beings form part of Gd. My interview therefore began the moment I entered the Rebbes court and met his disciples.

The young men who crowded the premises, studying theTalmud, can hardly be referred to as students or disciples. Although they were sitting in front of an open book they did not look like people learning something they did not know before. They seemed more like people in a laboratory who are experimenting with the spirit and its manifestations just as others experiment with matter: combining and decomposing, designing and synthesizing. And all this is accompanied by their melodious humming. Much has been written about the Chassidic melodies, and much more will still be written about them. For they are tunes which have no end and no beginning. They seem to perpetuate the song which you sing so that someone else may continue it after you. Hearing that tune, it occurred to me that the Ten Commandments, the foundation of mankind, could never have been written and spoken according to a Chassidic melody. But it also occurred to me that mankind may not have been able to comply with this severe code had it not been for this softening melody.

Those who were not leaning over their books were standing about and talking among themselves. Perhaps they were talking about everyday things, but the expression on their faces was enough to indicate that they were like frontline soldiers exchanging a few whispered words before going into action. The commander might have been invisible, but his presence made itself felt through and through. No orders were being issued, but they might be at any moment; and everybody was ready to listen and obey.

The Rebbes Peace Corps

I, too, was waiting, for my orders to go in to the Rebbe. The time was a quarter past eleven, half past eleven when will it be my turn to be called in? I was just about to ask one of the young men in the court office when a well-dressed young woman came in, with a patter of high heels, her blonde hair streaming out beneath her kerchief. Before I could see her face I could hear her half-choking voice: Have you got an answer yet? Instead of answering her the young man she had addressed went over to a pile of letters, pulled out the one she had written, and told her that the Rebbes answer was right in there. The woman snatched it away, opened it and read it on the spot. For a moment her eyes froze over. There might have been tears as well of joy or of sorrow, who can tell? Leaving without a goodbye, she was back again as soon as she had gone.

I have another question. May I ask the Rebbe another question?

Of course, she is told. At any time and about anything you may wish.

Her face lights up with happiness.

Poor woman, says the man to me after she has left. All her life shes been going to psychiatrists, and they didnt help her at all. How could they help her if all they have is knowledge and no faith? They dont love her; they love only their books. How can one help without love? I became curious about this young man.

He was about twenty-five, and it transpired that he had only recently returned from a trip to Australia undertaken on the Rebbes behalf. What am I doing here? What do you mean? I have a wife and a family but one day the Rebbe told me to go on a trip and I asked no questions about where and why. Nobody questions the Rebbe. His every word is an order. He doesnt say things that might have remained unsaid or could have been said otherwise. So I took my family and went. What did I do in Australia? Whatever I was told. There are people being sent round the world to distribute food and money among the Jews, but what the Jews really need is spiritual food, a bit of love, of Yidishkeit. The Rebbes orders were for me to go and give them love, to encourage them, to bring a little Jewishness into their souls. There is social assistance and there is First Aid for physical ailments, but we are concerned with First Aid for spiritual ills. Of course we are concerned with peoples physical well-being, too. Have you heard about the Maccabees who organized the defense of the Brooklyn Jews during the riots? The man who organized them, Rabbi Shraga, is one of ours. It was a great honor for me to have been sent on a mission by the Rebbe but I am only one of many hundreds and thousands. We have a whole army here, our Peace Corps. This is our headquarters. From here the Rebbe dispatches his soldiers to the various fronts. Wherever there is a single Jew there is a front for us to fight on, with the Holy Scriptures in our hands and the love of Israel in our hearts. These are our weapons. If there is some Jewish corner in the world that is inaccessible by car, we go there on donkeys. There is nothing that can stop us. All we have in mind is that the Rebbes orders should be carried out to the full, that we should be able to come back and report to him: Mission accomplished.'

But the Peace Corps, as I am informed by the office manager, is only one of the many ramifications of the Lubavitcher Court.

The Sun Never Sets Over theLubavitchEmpire

People used to say that the sun never sets over the British Empire, but it is already going down. Not so with the Lubavitch Empire. We are growing stronger from day to day, he said. Have you heard about our publishing house? It is the biggest publisher of Jewish writings in the world, issuing books in over ten languages. We also have hundreds ofyeshivoswith some 30,000 students. Do you know our village in Israel? Therell be many more such communities. Once a week we publish an information bulletin, circulated by the ITA News Agency.

Who are the people who come to see the Rebbe? Well, who doesnt? Chassidim andMisnagdim, men and women, tradesmen and scholars, young and old, Jews and Gentiles, leaders and statesmen; including the present President of Israel did you know he was one of ours? As for his correspondence again, with whom doesnt he correspond? Even withBenGurion. What about? That is the Rebbes own affair. Nobody opens the letters that are addressed to him. He himself opens them all, and answers them, too.

What do Jews ask about as a rule? About matters of religion and how to make a living; about their personal affairs and about politics. In short about everything. There is no question he cannot answer. Where there is faith, one is able to answer every question. For him there are no important and unimportant questions. Every question calls for a true answer. Excuse me a minute.

I hadnt heard the bell ringing, but the secretary jumped over to the phone and immediately left the room. Unwittingly I found myself adjusting the kerchief I had tied over my head in anticipation of my interview with the Rebbe. I was just in time, for the next moment the secretary was back to tell me, with the air of one presenting a most marvelous gift: Thats it now; come along with me.

He may have said some more, but I no longer heard him because I was too busy covering up for my sudden palpitations, telling myself not to be a fool, that there was no need to get excited, that this wasnt my first midnight appointment

Midnight Appointment

When the door closed behind me and I remained alone with the Rebbe the time was twelve midnight, but the Rebbe rose from behind his desk to receive me with a smile that spelled noon rather than midnight.

If that is what you are interested in, you may see a handsome face with a kind and gracious expression, a black hat above and a gray beard below. Alternatively you may see nothing but a pair of eyes fixed upon you not in order to see but in order to discover and reveal. Then it wont be so pleasant for you if you have something to hide, if your intention was to deceive. You try to button yourself up anew, because you feel some of your buttons may have suddenly burst. Is it because the Rebbe really has magic eyes or is it because you have brought the magic along with you as a result of your nighttime experience and the purge administered by the Rebbes disciples? But the question of cause and effect no longer matters. What matters is to try and remember why one has come in the first place. And so I start by introducing myself.

Except that it isnt necessary. He knows more about me than I might be able to tell him. He knows not only what I have done but what I ought to have done, not only what I am doing now but what I am not doing and should do. His disciples had told me that he reads the papers every day and took a lively interest in Israel, but it was a little frightening nevertheless.

I understand that you are writing for the press now. Well, thats all right, but it isnt the main thing. The young generation, that is the main thing. One has to talk to youngsters, not write for them. Why arent you talking to them? Why is nobody talking to them? They are waiting for someone to talk with but nobody does. They are being addressed in lofty speeches, but nobody talks to them, and then people are surprised that they remain indifferent.

The Rebbe does not speak with me inYiddishbut in Hebrew. His accent may not be the purestSephardi, but his language is the language of the Bible. And however exciting his words, his voice remains level and calm.

What the youth is waiting for is an order which must be given in the same voice and tone in which all the great commands were issued to the people of Israel. They may obey or they may not, but that is what they are waiting for. But there is no commander to issue that order. Where are they all? No salvation can come from those who walk in the beaten path, but only from those who break new ground. What has happened to all those who were once burning with the holy fire of a holy war that they are now dealing with such bagatelles as whether people should pay a little more or a little less income tax instead of thinking about the urgent concerns of the Jewish people as a whole? Where are those who at one time knew how to issue commands? I believe physics: that energy can never disappear. Forces that have once existed will exist forever. Therefore I believe in the everlasting force of the Jewish people. Whatever forces there may once have been in its youth still exist and need only be evoked. Once there were those who knew how to evoke them where have they gone?

Everybody is in a rut, following a course of dull mediocrity. And, as you know, there is nothing worse than conformity. To be carried away by the current is very much like dying. Creativity begins by swimming against the current. What is needed is someone to start swimming against the current. I am not preaching, Gd forbid, revolt, only protest against the set pattern of conformity. If the present set-up has turned into a prison, one must find ways to break away from it. That does not mean breaking the law, but fighting against the law. Yet everybody, the entire Jewish nation, is conforming to the set pattern, and there is no one to lead the way out

The Rebbes voice is filled with deep despair, but without pathos. Have you ever calculated how many precious youth-hours are going to waste every day? The use of every such hour could work wonders. Instead of giving orders the leaders make speeches and the young people go to cafsand waste their precious irretrievable time. Do you remember them during the Sinai campaign, how they rose like one man because there was a commander whose orders were such as they had been waiting for, even if they did not know it beforehand? Just give them an order as was done during the Sinai campaign never mind the particulars, all that matters is that it should ignite some spark as it did then and you will see how all the latent forces will rise up again

It would hardly matter if everything were as it should be in the Land of Israel and in the Diaspora. But it isnt. All the ideals and all the panaceas have failed and only very, very little has so far been accomplished. Never in the 3,500-year history of the Jewish nation was there a period without any prospects; sometimes the chances were used and at other times they were allowed to escape. But never in the whole history of the Jewish people has there been a period which offered as many opportunities as the present, and never has there been a period when so few were utilized.

TheTorahAlso Needs a Commander

Until I suddenly heard the sharp ringing of a bell I had not realized the vast silence that dwelt in this room. The ringing came from outside; from the office, presumably. I gathered that my time had run out. But it did not occur to me to get up, and I went on sitting there as if there had been no ringing. Despite the repeated exhortation of the bell, the sound of the Rebbes voice assured me that this was not yet the end.

Every day that goes by is a tremendous loss. What it takes ten years to do in the Diaspora can be done in ten days in the Land of Israel, provided one gets down to the latent spark. A fire can go out, but a spark never. Our youth are asleep without knowing it, and those who address it with speeches are surprised at their not hearing. Unless they hear their own words, they are not aroused.

What exactly are the words of our youth? I cannot tell. The words will follow with the inner force of the imperative. They must come from deep inside. The main thing is the awakening, the pioneering spirit. Once the vanguard is there, the banner may follow. Now there are many banners, but what are they all worth without anybody to walk ahead of them and carry them? Take those boys in Israel who throw stones on people who desecrate theSabbath I believe they have the spirit, there is something they really care about. I am not suggesting that they should throw stones, Gd forbid, but I feel that they care, that there is something burning inside them, and that is the main thing. Then I can try to convince them that they are using the wrong means, to divert their fire into the right channels

On the other hand the young people who are coming from the Land of Israel to study at foreign universities they are not pioneers. What can they learn abroad that they cannot learn in the Holy Land? If a man leaves his home to go to the North Pole or climb a mountain at the risk of his life to satisfy his thirst for knowledge one may call him a pioneer. A young man who goes from Brooklyn to theNegevand risks his life on the border may be called a pioneer. But leaving Israel to study at a university in Brooklyn that is mere hankering after comfort, not pioneering.

Take ouryeshivahstudents they study, too. But in order to teach they go everywhere in the world where there are Jews, not to sit there in a yeshivah but to open new academies. They knock on every door. They find their way to non-religious kibbutzim in Israel and to assimilated homes in the Diaspora. The spirit of Judaism is the one ideal that has not failed like all the rest. Only the values of religion persist unscathed and unaltered. So far nothing has been found to replace them. And that is precisely why no compromise is possible in this respect. Everything may be done to facilitate its teaching, but nothing to facilitate its observance. Attempts to compromise will only alienate our youth rather than bring them closer to our religion. Israels youth want no compromises. But here, too, no leader has been found, no commander who will issue the order, as in the Sinai campaign.

I Shall Come when theMessiahArrives

It is getting close to two oclock. The bell has stopped ringing. It has probably given up. But ringing in my own ears was the redoubled sound of my question:

Why wont you come and give the order?

My place is where my words are likely to be obeyed. Here I am being listened to, but in the Land of Israel I wont be heard. There, our youth will follow only somebody who has sprung up from its own ranks and speaks its own language. The Messiah will be a man of flesh and blood, visible and tangible, a man whom others may follow. And he will come.

He has been on his way for quite a while, I found myself saying.

But he is very near and we must be prepared for him at any moment, because he may have come just one moment before.

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Israeli Journalist who Interviewed the Rebbe Passed Away - Anash.org - Good News

Civil Society, Development & Aid, Environment, Global, Headlines, Human Rights, Migration & Refugees, TerraViva United Nations

Opinion

Lasse Juhl Morthorst* is a freelance writer and researcher. He mainly works on international politics, development, refugee- and human rights issues.

Credit: United Nations

COPENHAGEN, Dec 17 2019 (IPS) - According to political scientist Zaki Ladis La tyrannie de lurgence (The tyranny of emergency) from 1999, crisis and emergency situations leave no time for analysis, prevention or forecasting. As an immediate protective reflex, they prevent long-term solutions and pose a serious risk of jeopardising the future.

In emergency situations, participants lack perspective, and durable solutions to human problems are treated according to the logic of immediate results and expectations of direct outcomes.

The effects of globalisations deepening and fragmenting landscape highlights how governance with short-term efficiency has become normative when dealing with contemporary challenges.

The so-called European refugee crisis from late 2014 and, if we buy its premise, its aftermath have come to symbolise such an emergency situation.

Contemporary political responses expose the electorate and the parties, who respectively gain and lose in the processes of globalisation.

This socio-political cleavage has allowed centre-right parties to take advantage of nationalistic values, with migration viewed through the lens of security limitation of migration flows and the fight against terrorist groups law and order, while the centre-left have had to bridge the working classs fear of cheap labour and economic competition with the middle-classs liberal socio-cultural preferences.

The European Unions reaction towards the crisis and its aftermath cannot be seen as a political crisis reaction per se, since the solutions it initiated to manage migration built on existing legislation and practices, helping to consolidate these as routinising emergency in order to naturalise migration politics.

There is a clear political red line between addressing so-called root causes and managing migration by securing external borders and preventing movement of third-country nationals.

This is anchored in the European Commissions comprehensive approach in the 1994 Communication to the Council, reconfirmed through the integrated approach at the 1999 European Council meeting in Tampere, and developed at the 2002 Seville meeting, where combating illegal migration and addressing root causes were top of the agenda.

What we are witnessing is rather a political crisis, which has lasted for more than a quarter of a century.

Lasse Juhl Morthorst

As a result of a sceptical post-1973 oil crisis scenario, addressing root causes of migration emerged in the 1980s, with the aim of improving socio-economic conditions in the countries of migrants origin, to prevent unwanted migration towards Europe.

When the European Community was developing the single market, with the fluidity of the EUs internal national borders to facilitate free internal mobility as an outcome, the fear of losing control of external migration became an increasing concern for member states.

The EUs migration policies have, with their primary focus on securitisation, come to symbolise a harmful politicisation of humanitarianism, which seems to persist into the new Commissions 2019-2024 period and very like beyond.

In the following years, little progress was made towards a unified European migration policy. As a result, the Commission proposed the idea of a comprehensive approach to migration in 1994.

This consisted of a threefold focus: action on migration pressure through third-country cooperation, controlling immigration to make it manageable and optimisation of integration policies for legal migrants.

The root cause approach was to be seen as a long-term humanitarian development solution to the migration problem. The ideas of cooperation and addressing root causes have become the popular political take on the EUs migration challenges, which rhetorically attempt to circumvent the negative connotations of strict migration control and hostility.

Credit: United Nations

During the last decades, the EU has been searching for a new strategic rationalist raison dtre for its common asylum policy, through harmonisation of the EU asylum legal acts, the Common European Asylum System and attempting to solve the stalemate between member states and intra-institutionally, regarding the Dublin systems tightening Gordian knot.

The EU has failed to solve the structural and systemic impasse in approaching migration flows, which will not end by continuing harshened border controls and security measures, earmarked development aid, externalisation processes or dubious bilateral agreements.

The EUs migration policies have, with their primary focus on securitisation, come to symbolise a harmful politicisation of humanitarianism, which seems to persist into the new Commissions 2019-2024 period and very like beyond.

Nothing new from Brussels?

Ursula von der Leyens new Commission is taking office in a situation shaped by vast global challenges of geopolitical turbulence and internal fragmentation, towards which she has proposed a rather pragmatic and strategic approach.

Through her manifesto and mission letters to the designated Commissioners, von der Leyens new geopolitical Commission will focus on making the EU an outward-looking politically influential global powerhouse, which must protect the Union from omnipresent geopolitical and external value-based challenges.

She has proposed a fresh start on European migration policy, via a new pact on migration and asylum, a relaunch of the Dublin reform and a new way of burden sharing (the Achilles heel of the Dublin reform).

In charge of this agenda will be Commission Vice-President for Promoting the European Way of Life Margaritis Schinas (Greece), who will work closely with Ylva Johansson (Sweden), the Commissioner for Home Affairs, and Development Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen (Finland).

There are clear tensions and ambiguity in von der Leyens agenda towards migration and development, which has toxically been coined with security politics, as it has to find a common ground on migration by working towards a genuine European security union.

The external dimensions of migration management are explicitly present in the mission letters to both Schinas and Johansson. In these letters, they are instructed to cooperate with the new High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (Josep Borrell, Spain), to develop a stronger cooperation with countries of origin and transit in the case of Johansson and ensure the coherence of the external and internal dimensions of migration for Schinas.

The EUs interaction with third countries and partnerships of border control are narrow and ultimately self-eroding.

Beyond the initial internal focus against the backdrop of the eurozone and financial crises, this aligns closely with the Juncker Commissions focus on the external dimensions of migration.

In 2015, the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa was founded to intensify cooperation with third countries. Migration is also, beyond the Trust Fund, a central element in EU foreign policy and it has further come to divide views in the debate regarding development policy.

It appears that the Union is proposing to work even more closely with partner countries to tackle human trafficking, secure borders, optimise effective returns and tackle root causes of migration through development initiatives. Schinas confirmed this at his hearing on 3 October 2019.

A reminder from the field

The collaboration with third countries regarding externalisation of borders is vastly problematic, since in some cases, as a trade-off through the funding of development aid earmarked for increased border control, it comes to support militias and authoritarian and hybrid governments.

A large amount of the support often ends up in quasi security organs of rebel groups, which have been seen continuously abusing human rights.

This can presently be witnessed in nations in the Sahel, Maghreb and MENA regions where tight border control has led to the diversification of pre-colonial circular and reciprocal migrant routes into increasingly perilous areas and methods, along with the risk of promoting economic stagnation, recession and militia isolation.

The diversification of migration routes ultimately creates a favourable environment for the human smugglers that the Union is trying to eliminate.

The EUs interaction with third countries and partnerships of border control are narrow and ultimately self-eroding. These policies do not tackle any root causes of migration; by aiding regional security units and military forces, they risk limiting democratic accountability and aggravating repression some of the actual root causes of migration.

Agreements of principles and statements of intention do not compensate for the deflection of focus of an international communitys failure to get to grips with the need of todays migrants for protection and recognition.

Von der Leyens agenda seems like an anachronistic reverberation of the unsuccessful policies introduced more than three decades ago, despite the opportunity to begin abolishing the tyranny of emergency.

*This article first appeared in International Politics and Society (IPS) published by the International Political Analysis Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin.

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EU Policies Dont Tackle Root Causes of Migration They Risk Aggravating Them - Inter Press Service