The word is everywhere.
On tongues in the local square, among politicians playing the crowd, commonplace with analysts and commentators, and even in the veritable Times of Malta and other media outlets. It has become a ‘truth’, an unquestionable ‘fact’, a given about which we need not quibble or debate.
In short, Malta is officially and popularly ‘overpopulated’. But what does that actually mean?
The gap between asserting it and understanding it could not be wider. It is similar to the new popular catchphrases ‘quality workers’ and ‘quality tourists’ – it sounds right but defies unpacking.
For very many, the verdict of ‘overpopulation’ is unassailably proven. Only the dim or devious would disagree. ‘Malta is full’ is its crudest and most insidious version, used normally to whitewash illegal and immoral government behaviour on migration and to exclude particular migrants (but never all migrants).
When the phrase ‘overpopulated’ is trotted out, people immediately ‘know’ who and what is being talked about – it’s ‘them’, isn’t it? There are just too many of ‘them’. Overpopulation is almost exclusively associated with ‘them’, never with ‘us’ even though the term cannot be equated conceptually with crude ‘foreign’ demographics.
‘Overpopulation’ is routinely weaponised to divert attention from the country’s deep and deepening economic, social, and political decline.
It implies that foreigners (most often those of that ‘other’ colour) are the problem. ‘They’ are deemed to be everywhere, ‘taking over’, working at all levels, using ‘our’ schools and hospitals, and even having the bad manners to participate in our festas.
‘They’ throng our streets, fill our buses, threaten our security, and even undermine our culture in mysterious ways. The list of ills associated with ‘their’ overpopulation of our land grows by the day.
The term has a long and very dubious history. It is associated politically and culturally with the great white replacement ideology, with forms of extreme right-wing nationalism and with traditional theories of Third World overpopulation and its suggested solutions.
In Malta’s current model of overdevelopment or, more accurately ‘maldevelopment’, ‘overpopulation’ is an especially useful tool as it feeds many agendas. It dangerously points the finger at entirely the wrong culprits, it plays into established prejudice, it offers an easy target for public anger and it fosters anti-democratic action.
If ‘overpopulation’ is the source of our ills, and ‘they’ are the personification of that ‘overpopulation’, then ‘they’ are the cause of our ills. A very simple and ‘sellable’ equation.
Clearly, Malta has a growth deformity. A corrupted growth ‘at all costs’ deformity, one without anything approximating adequate planning or regulation – a ‘wild west’ growth as it were. Without question, there are many places across Malta that are characterised by that unsustainable deformity. Our infrastructure is fundamentally broken (or, more accurately wilfully ‘smashed’) as it attempts to absorb everything and anything thrown at it or done to it.
For example, it is self-evident that we have far too many cars, all trying to squeeze through easily identified bottlenecks and all at the same time. Everywhere we have far, far too much out of control construction without even the most basic oversight. We possess long, long lists of laws and regulations unenforced and often unenforceable.
And as is obvious to everyone, our environment is being fundamentally and irreparably damaged in our collective rush for spoils. Across the board and in all dimensions of our politics and society, we are spectacularly failing in all key metrics.
Our ‘development deformity’ and our overall condition thus begs the question – who is responsible, ‘them’ or ‘us’?
Is it those who travel by bicycle or bus or those who have two, three or four cars? Is it those who earn their living on a moped or in a humungous SUV? Is it those who live in a small flat often alongside others or those with a villa and a holiday home in Gozo? Is it those who own a yacht or a cruiser and those who can only dream of doing so?
Is it those who insist that a swimming pool is a basic need or who feel having more five-star hotels is a must? Or worse, those building on ODZ land, flouting what passes for planning law and those who scream from the rooftops ‘more, more, more’?
Is it those who don’t have enough or those who can never have enough? This is the stuff of the real debate on ‘overpopulation’.
We already know the answer to such questions, but we prefer to avoid them, choosing instead the lazy option – blame ‘their overpopulation’. We cynically fiddle with certifying ‘foreign’ workers, waffle about ‘quality’ and quotas and restrictions while merrily ploughing on with our deformities.
We reserve the right to work ourselves into a lather about ‘overpopulation’ while simultaneously insisting on the ‘good life’ that is made possible by those who are ‘overpopulating’ our land.
Instead of imagining and devising an appropriate, just, and sustainable plan to shape the present and the future, we opt instead for a nasty game of blame, expecting ‘others’ to pay the price while reserving the right to attack them for doing so.