,
24 tweets,
4 min read
Read on Twitter
Thread: So Trump has said he will cut aid and development funding to central American countries. Bad news of course. But the reaction of many liberal commentators to this is extremely worrying. [1/22]
Their response has been roughly: “without that aid money there will be even more migration from central America into the United States” [2/22]
Hang on a minute. Since when was the purpose of aid and development spending *preventing migration*? Is this really what all sorts of liberal commentators think aid money is for? [3/22]
Why is it that many of the same people who were rightly outraged by family separation, the border wall in general and the travel ban are suddenly saying cutting aid money is a bad idea *because* it will increase migration? [4/22]
What changed? The migrants that were the object of sympathy when they were subjected to a brutal border regime are now such a threat that aid money should be deployed to make sure they stay put. Really? [5/22]
So what's going on here? I suspect the truth was always that for some commentators it was Trump's brutal approach to migration they objected to. They would be roughly ok with preventing migration in more "humane" ways. [6/22]
Ok ok I get it. That’s not what *all* the liberal commentators mean. Some are saying that the policy doesn’t make sense, or is self defeating event by Trump’s own logic. And that is a fair comment. [7/22]
But it’s still the case that some liberal commentators who express outrage at the US border regime are not really advocates of freer movement and more open borders. They are not really advocates of people being able to make their home wherever they want. [8/22]
And they reveal this in the fact that when the aid budget is slashed their reaction is not “that’s a terrible thing because a lot of people will suffer as a result”. Their reaction is “Oh dear, that will result in more migration to the US”. [9/22]
There is another version of this argument that has been doing the rounds too. To paraphrase: “if the US diverted money for the border wall into aid, development and resilience programmes in Central America, this would be a more effective way of preventing migration”. [10/22]
This is worse really. It’s still assuming that an overriding policy objective should be stopping people from migrating. These liberal commentators are just saying “let’s try to do it nicely.”… [11/22]
… but at the end of the day they are still saying “Look we’d really prefer people didn’t move to the US anymore”. It’s still an anti migration and anti migrant line of argument. It still says that migration and migrants are undesirable. [12/22]
The idea of it being a “more effective” way of preventing migration is also worrying. They are saying they have better policy in terms of dollar-cost per migrant stopped. That’s not a liberal argument. That’s a neo-liberal argument. [13/22]
We have a similar discourse around aid and development in Europe. Since people started attempting to cross the Mediterranean in increased numbers much has been made of deploying aid and development money in African countries to prevent this migration. [14/22]
The argument has been deployed by liberals in an attempt to defend Europe’s aid and development spending. The rise of nationalist populism in Europe has meant aid budgets are increasingly under threat. [15/22]
So European liberals have been desperately casting around for populist / nationalist arguments for retaining aid and development spending. And they have hit on the idea of deploying aid to prevent migration to Europe. Or at least *saying* that's what it achieves. [16/22]
It's a good thing that aid and dev money helps people strengthen their livelihoods. But suddenly people who in the past might have been advocates of freer migration are saying “... and let’s do that because people with secure livelihoods are less likely to migrate”. [17/22]
Whether they mean to or not they have bought into a racist logic. They are now not challenging that logic, but rather they are engaged in a discussion about how best keep migrants out of Europe. [18/22]
The idiocy of the situation is that none of it will work anyway. It is not only poor people who migrate. In case you hadn’t noticed, there is migration right across the income spectrum. You cannot necessarily prevent people from migrating by improving their livelihood. [19/22]
And this is where it gets really really dangerous. Because if the liberal is that aid money is a “more effective” way of reducing migration than creating a brutal border regimes of fences and detention centres ... [20/22]
... what happens when it transpires (and it will) that aid money doesn’t necessarily prevent migration? Their case for aid and development spending is completely destroyed as it has been made in part on using aid to prevent migration. [21/22]
And because their argument against detention centres and militarized borders was based on them being “less effective” than aid spending, the argument against brutal border regimes is weakened too. [22/22]
Final point: rich countries should of course keep funding their aid and development programmes. But given what climate change is doing to people across the world, some of that aid money should be use to help people migrate if they want to.
@threadreaderapp unroll
