All workers are equal, some more than others

In the early 1860s, the Australian Governor to Queensland introduced Maltese labourers to work in the cotton fields. This decision was initially met with resistance since the Maltese were considered racially undesirable, but eventually they were deemed preferable to Asians as a cheap source of labour.

The Maltese workers were also accustomed to working hard in the hot sun.

At the beginning of the 20th century, despite ongoing fears vis-à-vis their ‘coloured race’, Maltese farmers and their families were considered suitable enough to fill labour gaps in the northern territory – a decision that witnessed the arrival of even more Maltese workers.

This situation was to turn with the onset of the First World War. The labour movement in Australia took a decisive shift against the arrival of Maltese workers, arguing that they were too willing to work for low wages and were a threat to the White Australia policy.

In 1916, the year of the first conscription referendum, the Maltese were officially designated ‘non-white’, and a ship carrying over 200 Maltese men arriving on a boat was refused entry.

The cover cartoon of the ‘Worker’ of 1916, a trade union paper, is said to represent the Maltese Trojan horse – a piebald horse carrying a dangerous cargo of coloured labour whilst pretending to be ‘white’.

The image (which also includes a little prickly pear) portrays little black Maltese men running onto the Australian shore, right past the ‘White Australia’ sign. The rhetoric is familiar – politicians and workers’ unions tapping into racism to rally the working class electorate against those ‘cheap’ (read also coloured/brown/black) workers coming here to take your jobs.

Australia’s industrial expansion and the demand for cheap Maltese labour in the 19th and early 20th century can easily be compared with the effects of globalisation and the realities of contemporary Malta.

At the beginning of his tenure as prime minister, Joseph Muscat introduced a new economic policy based on building a ‘cosmopolitan Malta’.

Scapegoating the migrant for the ills of this economic model is disingenuous, whilst tapping into people’s fears and weaponising them against the migrant worker, well, quite frankly, it stinks

The economic model, built on inviting workers and investors from around the world, sought to, in his own words, “open the doors, and embrace the challenges of globalisation. We want to be like that sailor who, at the first sign of strong winds, opens sail and does not shie away”.

Now, to be clear, there is no denying that in terms of economic growth, the plan has been impressive.  

The prime minister, at the time, went on to claim that “our aim is to spread the wealth. But to do this, you have to have wealth to spread in the first place.”

Well, herein lies one of the problems: the wealth has not been spread. What I have described elsewhere as Malta’s particular brand of neoliberal cosmopolitanism has had a profound effect on all workers in Malta – Maltese and migrant alike – and has ushered in new forms of precarity and an intensification and reshaping of social and economic inequalities.

Workers are right to be concerned, particularly for their children, who face rising job insecurity and the insane rise in property prices.

Of course, they’re scared, who wouldn’t be? But make no mistake, this is a political problem and not a migrant problem.

The challenges people in Malta face are real, and they emerge from the very policies enacted by the present government. Economic policies built on the importation of so-called ‘cheap’ labour will inevitably lead to social inequalities, suppressing labour costs and increasing wealth at the top.

In the absence of any policy recommendations that suggest otherwise, this model is also supported by the opposition party. Just like those Maltese migrants who made that long trip to Australia in the hope of a better life, the migrants’ presence in Malta today is purely utilitarian - a means to an end.

They are invited but not welcome, needed but not wanted. Scapegoating the migrant for the ills of this economic model is disingenuous, whilst tapping into people’s fears and weaponising them against the migrant worker, well, quite frankly, it stinks.

And three weeks into this election campaign, the stench of racism, ethnocentrism and nationalistic rhetoric is thick in the air. In the midst of all this, the trade unions have remained conspicuously silent, representing their own Trojan horse, pretending to defend the worker, whilst their silence contributes to the fragmentation of workers and exposes all workers to the risk of exploitation.

If we could just suspend reality for a second and pretend that the prime minister really does represent the so-called ‘party of the worker’ (il-Partit tal-Ħaddiema), would he really pit one worker against the other and apparently take pride in their legal acrobatics to ensure that the migrant worker is excluded from financial gain when possible?

Where is the rock bottom in terms of moral integrity? How low is one prepared to go for short-term political gain?

If the prime minister, or indeed others within the Labour Party and the Nationalist Party (MEP Peter Agius is whizzing down that slippery slope), steep any lower, they’ll be digging them up Down Under.

Prof. Maria Pisani

All of this sits alongside this new cross-party emphasis on ‘wellbeing’. And herein lies the paradox. Social well-being cannot and never will be attained by divisive and inhumane measures driven by ethno-nationalism and racism. Please. Do better. 

Prof. Maria Pisani is an academic from the Department of Youth Community and Migration Studies, University of Malta