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With the Nobel economist Amartya Sen, we pick up the question hanging at the end of our conversation on remittances and the flood of migrant workers.
Amartya Sen [Jon Chase, Harvard News]
To wit: isn’t the immigration crisis the flip side of a development riddle? What would it take to make the lives of Mexican farmers sustainable in Mexico? How does it come to be that there are more African-trained nurses and doctors working in Europe than in Africa? Under the heading of “flood control,” what might the US be doing to address the tide of refugees from Latin America before they reach the Bush border fence?
Amartya Sen, the Lamont University Professor at Harvard, is of course an immigrant from India — in an America that he notes has always been hospitable to intellectuals and highly qualified specialists like him. Development economics is only one of his fields, and his technical studies are the least of his worldwide eminence. He is best known perhaps for the observed rule that famines simply do not happen in independent democracies with a free press; famines are invariably political and military “events,” as he first suspected on the basis of his own childhood witness of the famine in Bengal in 1943 which took 3 million lives. He is a feminist exponent of the argument that the single most important stroke in development policy (and population control) is the education of women. His new book Identity and Violence takes apart all the easy labels of ethnic and national destiny and smashes the monoliths of East and West: “Violence is fomented by the imposition of singular and belligerent identities on gullible people, championed by proficient artisans of terror.”
A courtly liberal gentleman of the world, Professor Sen seems to relish tests of wit and theory: recently with Robert Kagan, for example, on the “clash of civilizations,” and on development aid with William Easterly, dubbed by Sen “the man without a plan.” We are asking him for a reasonably grand synthesis here, and a primer on spreading out modernization and growth toward, as we say, “the next 5 billion.”
Amartya Sen
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Author of several books including Development as Freedom and Poverty and Famines
Luis Alberto Moreno
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President, Inter-American Development Bank
I wonder if the flood metaphor is appropriate. This diverts attention from the global climatic economic and political conditions that stir up the social migratory waters. The global movement of people surges and wanes, twists and turns, trickles and rages in response to the prevailing and shifting transnational economic winds, political currents, cultural waves and social topography.
Also, is it fair to only talk about the flow of people? Sure, the immediate presence of newcomers, some with different colours, customs and tongues, induces an emotional response. But what about the uneven flows of capital, information, goods, technology, military, etc, which can be often far more devastating to a social landscape?
Furthermore, should we call it an “immigration crisis”? Or should we speak of a crisis of wealth distribution? A crisis of the international economic order?
What does it mean to speak of development in a world:
Where “The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the poorest 48 nations (i.e. a quarter of the world’s countries) is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest people combined?”
http://mondediplo.com/1998/11/01leader
Where “51 percent of the world’s 100 hundred wealthiest bodies are corporations.”
http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/top200.htm
Where “The 48 poorest countries account for less than 0.4 per cent of global exports.�
http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2000/en/
Where “A few hundred millionaires now own as much wealth as the world’s poorest 2.5 billion people.”
http://www.panos.org.uk/global/reportdownload.asp?type=report&id=1000&reportid=1006
If the crisis is not immigration but equity, then we would have to say the flip side of the “modernized” and “wealthy” few is the impoverished many. There is no Pareto optimality here. Development and growth over there will mean giving up something here. There is no riddle, only a lack of will and heart.
A particuarly good and timely idea for a show. With his wisdom, common sense, learning, and every other quality in such seeming short supply these days, he usually manages to put the narrow, short-term and, it needs to be said, deadly realpolitik that tends to dominate current affairs in appropriate perspective. Time for a global petition to instate him as director of the World bank — enough of war criminals like McNamara and Wolfowitz. Ask him about the environment. Ask him about water. A recent book (can’t recall the title) says India will be out of water in 10 years. What does that portend?
Let me say from the beginning that I most certainly agree that the affluent have a moral responsibility to help the wretched, in spite of their “basic deficiencies and hard-to-reform regressive cultures.�
But I do not agree, at all, with sidewalker that “There is no riddle, only a lack of will and heart.�
And, to an extent, I think Sen agrees. In discussing Easterly’s criticism of the World Bank, Sen writes:
To be sure, these organizations have often imposed terrible policies on developing countries, and Easterly is right to criticize their sometimes insensitive agendas, overly grand designs, and lack of engagement with the way the wretched themselves see their problems.
And my own experience living for four years a short walk (at low tide) from the squalid living conditions on Ebeye, a square mile island in the central Pacific, confirm in my mind that it is not just a matter of “will and heart,� but also a matter of “what and how.�
Sounds like a great topic. It is sure ironic that much of the anti immigration worry comes from folks in Congress who are not friendly toward family planning programs. I even hear there is still a gag order against much of the family planning funding in our aid to other nations. Our immigration issue is related to population growth and high birth rates, especially in Mexico as it is “next door.” We should be discussing population issues, but we can’t send people back to Mexico in a punitive way. Our economy is depending on them. Part of this issue is also finding ways to accomodate more people in our country through creative urban planning. Build up, instead of out, better mass transit and so forth. More sustainable lifestyles on both sides of the border.
Raymond, Sen’ quote above only seems to reinforce the point I am making. There has been a famous lack of will and heart to listen to the local people and provide them with the appropriate assistance. Too often the agendas’ of the “donors”, their organizations and the political elite determine the form of “aid”. There is equally the lack of will and heart to control parasite cooporations from exploiting sweat-shop workers so consumers can have “Always Low Prices. Always” and thus accept their own declining living standards. Which were the regressive cultures?
I’ve always wondered why Canadian People can come and go as they please and Mexican people can’t…It’s not right to deny these people a chance at a better life when most nationalities which live in this country today are from other countries…If we make it legal and give these people temporary work cards, they could generate an income to support their families and the US can collect taxes from them like they do everyone else…Can anyone still remember when a large portion of the US once belonged to Mexico until we stole it from them…These people are Human Beings…Can anyone walk a mile in these peoples shoes and say they wouldn’t do whatever it took to provide for their families? Maybe I’m just a dreamer…As an American, I challenge all other Americans to take a moment and say hello to a Mexican person the next time you see one…Talk to them…Get to know who they really are before we all cast judgement on them…We use to be a proud nation…I can’t feel very proud if I turn my back on my neighbor when he/she is down and out…The world won’t get no better, if we just let it be…I still believe those words…Thank you for the oportunity to reflect my thoughts on this issue…
Sincerely, Mike in Seattle Washington
Behind the immigration question is a more important issue; population. As our populations expand, we need to learn how to accomidate more people and still protect the environment. On the other hand, we should also be discussing how to reduce population growth. As immigration and migration point out, we are all in this world together.
“Sincerely, Mike in Seattle Washington”
right, its easy for you to say when you live rather far from the problem. i’d imagine you’d have a different opinion if we allowed unlimited immigration into washington and strained your social support systems to the breaking point and drove your wages down to the point where americans woudln’t do those jobs. i think you’d have a different take on unlimited compassion. never mind the enviromental impacts massive migration causes. sorry, these people aren’t buying prius’s when they get here thats for sure, its a pickup truck, even after they gain wealth. all your liberal efforts to fight for the enviroment will be canceled out. an issue thats staring us straight in the face, but can’t address because of white guilt. even the sierra club voted toput their heads in the sand on this issue.
i think you need to read that white guilt book by shelby steele. every land is stolen at some point. mexico didn’t exist for all eternity either.
and btw its always ok to have compassion at someone elses expense. how about we get rid of all visa limitations for skilled immigrants so they can flood our labour markets with teachers/nurses/doctors/engineers etc until they drive the wages down to a level where its no longer attractive for americans? course it would never happen. its only ok to tread on the lower classes in the name of compassion.
i’m sorry, we have to take care of those that already live here first. its our home and we are allowed to control who comes in. if you don’t believe as such perhaps you should open your house to whoever wants to live in your house or apartment. even if it cuts into your childrens meal rations, you just have no right to say no. your house ownership is just an artifical construct after all.