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2 - Immigration and Freedom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Johannes Knolle
Affiliation:
Imperial College London
James Poskett
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
Chandran Kukathas
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Filippo Grandi
Affiliation:
United Nations Refugee Agency
Eva Harris
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Kavita Puri
Affiliation:
BBC
Venki Ramakrishnan
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Iain Couzin
Affiliation:
Universität Konstanz, Germany
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Summary

Immigration is the subject that dominates politics in our time, most particularly in the liberal democratic Western countries of Europe, North America, and Australasia. While immigration has become an issue in many other nations – from Singapore looking to manage local attitudes to its large expatriate population, to Colombia facing an influx of desperate Venezuelans – in the liberal democracies it has provoked a backlash against outsiders as politicians as well as analysts of various stripes identify it as an existential question. Immigration for many is not just a source of unwelcome competition in the labour market or a problem for citizens struggling to gain access to over-subscribed public services from transport to health care. The threat it poses is not a financial one, or a matter of inconvenience, but an existential one.1 Immigration poses a threat to fundamental liberal, democratic (American, Australian, Canadian, British, or European) values. It is for this reason above all that immigration must be controlled: to protect those values; and, by doing so, for these countries to take (back) control of their destinies. To some extent, it is the fear of losing control more broadly speaking that drives the imperative to control immigration.

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Chapter
Information
Migration , pp. 18 - 49
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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