One day in 1972, as Jean Raspail looked out at the Mediterranean from the Côte d’Azur in Southern France, he asked himself: “What if they came?” He had been alarmed by the demographic forecast that, by 2000, seven billion people would inhabit the earth, only 900 million of whom would be white.
“They” are a million migrants from India who escape their destitution by getting into boats and sailing to France, invade it and overrun it. His novel The camp of saints was born.
Raspail was a conservative Catholic. He felt inspired by St John’s Book of Revelation where Satan leads hordes of devils to attack “the camp of saints”. For him, the camp of saints is “the Western world, the Judeo-Christian civilisation”.
Raspail regarded the problem of poverty in the Global South and the migrant crisis as “absolutely insoluble by our present moral standards of humanism, universal equality and human rights”. The Western conscience has been corroded by the “slow cancerous progress of compassion...”
If the Christian White West was to save itself, it must not recognise the fundamental humanity of all human beings. His novel became very popular after German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the European continent’s borders in August 2015 and 764,033 people marched into Europe. Raspail became the spiritual father of identity politics.
He said: “There are only two ways to deal with immigrants. Either we accommodate them (and the culture and civilisation of the West would disappear)… In my view, that is what is going to happen. Or else, we do not accommodate them at all, which means we stop sanctifying the Other… Christian charity will suffer a bit... It will have to steel itself and suppress compassion of all sorts. Otherwise, our countries will be submerged.”
He warned: “We are only at the beginning. The situation we are experiencing is nothing to what awaits us in 2050. There will be nine billion people on earth. The migrants will come largely from Africa, the Middle East and the far reaches of Asia. Overpopulation and religious wars will make the situation difficult.”
Learning to live together
Raspail believed that life in the global village can only be a zero-sum game where cultures can only clash in destructive conflicts. For him, integration, inclusion and diversity do not work: “All peoples are fascinating but when you mix them too much, it is much more animosity that develops than sympathy.”
But there is another way forward, very difficult, but not impossible: to learn to live together, as Herman Hesse says, not “… to become each other; it is to recognise each other, to learn to see the other and honour him for what he is”.
At the end of last year, 24 million (five per cent) of 447 million living in the EU were non-EU citizens.
Although no migrant invasion has taken place, 70 per cent of Europeans are concerned about the impact of migration on their lives. The concern is higher in Malta where 122,930 (22 per cent) of 542,051 people living on the island are foreign-born, mostly non-European.
These concerns are to be taken seriously.
Effective integration must satisfy the needs of both nationals and migrants in a world that becomes unfamiliar to both, where both feel uprooted, displaced and distrustful. It is very challenging to overcome the primeval fear of the stranger. Caring, hope and integration requires more hard work than hatred, fear and segregation.
Malta has one of the highest density of people, buildings and cars in the world. In this congested reality, the government wants to “develop a welcoming, diverse and inclusive society… how best to work together to achieve effective integration…. including both those who were born here as well as those who were not but who now consider Malta to be their home as well as those people who arrived in our country in the recent past”.
How many more people, buildings, cars and the corresponding increase in schools, hospitals and general infrastructure can we cater for without collapsing?- Evarist Bartolo
It has launched a consultation document where “as a government, we are once again reiterating our commitment to a social diversity. We must never allow racism to take root and manifest itself in society”.
The document suggests that the main problems to be tackled seem to be the racist behaviour and attitudes of the Maltese and if we fix those, everything will fall into place and we will all live happily ever after.
It lacks an action plan although it refers to the European Commission’s Action Plan of Integration and Inclusion 2021-2027 whose main actions are inclusive education and training, improving employment opportunities and skills recognition, promoting access to health services and adequate and affordable housing.
An action plan for integration must be part of a bigger national strategy and vision to ensure that our social and economic development is sustainable and our country liveable. How many more people, buildings, cars and the corresponding increase in schools, hospitals and general infrastructure can we cater for without collapsing?
Sea arrivals of migrants have fallen sharply from 3,406 in 2019 to 444 last year. More attention can be given to the integration of the less than 9,000 who have arrived here irregularly by boats, mostly from Libya. Most of these are granted very restricted subsidiary protection which denies them family reunification that is so essential for integration.
The state is doing all it can to stop human traffickers sending boat loads of migrants from Libya. Yet, human traffickers in Asia and Malta operate a thriving slave trade on the backs of thousands of unskilled migrant workers brought here by plane to work. They often experience marginalisation, xenophobia and poor living and working conditions.
The point is not to create new rights for migrants but to guarantee equality of treatment and the same living and working conditions for migrants and nationals. The inferior living and working conditions of migrants among us ultimately undermines also the living and working conditions of the Maltese people.
Evarist Bartolo is a former Labour foreign and education minister.