On the occasion of World Population Day, the National Statistics Office issued a news release showing the number of immigrants to Malta standing at 42,239 in 2023. Although this news release does not speak about the share of irregular immigrants, a major part, in fact, consists of regular migrants, who, at the immigration check point, had all their documents in line with the legal requirements.
Of note is the fact that 33,075 were citizens of non-EU countries (78.3%). The overall increase in the total population in 2023 was chiefly due to a high level of immigration.
Is the Maltese demographic, social and economic future certain with its population growth based on a natural increase of 432 persons and net immigration of 20,960 persons, as was the case in 2023? If there is such a sizeable supply of the foreign population, why are we still discussing the low-fertility issue in Malta?
Firstly, the absolute numbers of the population growth, without a structure detail, do not reveal the complexity of the situation. In 2018, the Eurostat publication ‘Migrant integration’ showed Malta as a clear outlier in terms of the highest share of the least educated native-born population 25-54 years old, as well as the highest share of the least educated foreign-born population of the same age. Eurostat warns this is hardly a recipe for successful social integration.
In addition, with such an influx of labour force with less than a completed secondary school education, it is expected that the distribution of income below poverty threshold will worsen, thus dampening all the efforts in combating poverty and social exclusion.
Secondly, calls for a higher fertility rate in Malta were never calls for a creation of some local super-race. Neither should they be seen as a further contribution to the overpopulation problem, although arithmetically it is the case.
On the contrary, as long as there is a gap between the personal ideal number of children expressed by the Maltese couples and their lower achieved number of children, we have a moral obligation to address the reasons why Maltese parents struggle to progress towards having a second child.
It appears that migrants’ permanency of stay, being set at a minimum of one year, stipulated by the conditions of demographic definition, in our case does not seem to imply the intention of remaining in the country. Neither does it imply the contribution to demographic, social and economic potential for a longer period of time. The emigration flows of both EU and non-EU citizens indicate one big rotational situation.
A nurtured, well-defined immigration volume and its profile is necessary and beneficial- Maja Miljanic Brinkworth
David Coleman (2006) describes the global migration trends affecting Europe and the US as: “The ancestry of some national populations is being radically and permanently altered by high levels of immigration of persons from remote geographic origins or with distinctive ethnic and racial ancestry, in combination with persistent sub-replacement fertility and accelerated levels of emigration of the domestic population.”
In our case, the low fertility of the non-Maltese population and the current relatively low mixed-marriage frequency (although its trend still has to be seen in the future) do not imply what Poston and Bouvier call a “tea coloured” society, at least not in our life-time.
Therefore, Maltese low fertility should not be seen as an unnecessary issue which, if solved, would exacerbate even more the problem of overpopulation. The outflows (emigration), which appear to be doubled by the inflows (immigration), effectively do not seem to help solve the problems, such as pension sustainability, neither the sub-replacement fertility. The 2022 Eurostat data show that non-Maltese population on average had less than one child per woman (0.98), hardly a cause for a rapid race-replacement concern, sometimes expressed in the social media.
Migration is like water. It always finds its way, unless it is well controlled by a set of rules of the country of destination, based on the needs of its economy, society. A nurtured, well-defined immigration volume and its profile is necessary and beneficial even in conditions of high population density such as ours, as long as the long-term, strategic urban planning guarantees the provision of a variety of the necessary services.
We need to accept the global trends, being a part of the international community. However, an authorised immigration of this volume, arriving with this speed and, more importantly, having this educational profile, needs strong justification, if it can be justified at all.
Maja Miljanic Brinkworth is a senior visiting lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts.