Tonight, I wish to speak to you about migration and id. Maybe one of the best ways to start out the dialog is with a presentation of myself.
My title is Lea Ypi. I’m usually launched as a thinker, as a author, as an Albanian citizen, or as a naturalized British citizen. Once I communicate to ladies, I’m launched as a girl, generally a working girl. Once I communicate to moms, I’m launched as a mom. I’m generally launched as an Albanian with a Muslim household, and generally as one thing very completely different from a Muslim, although nonetheless an “M”: a Marxist. Typically I’m launched as one other “M”: a migrant.
However I need to begin some place else. Not with what I’m, or with what individuals assume I’m, however with what I wish to be. And because it occurs, what I wish to be can be what I would love Europe to be.
So what do I need to be? What do I need Europe to be?
A statue. Or to be extra exact, the spirit {that a} statue captures.
As you most likely know, the time period statue comes from the Latin verb stare, that means “to stand,” as a result of statues “stand” in a set place. Nevertheless it will also be related to a different phrase with the identical root as stare: standing. Standing on this case is known as “standing,” the occupying of a sure situation, the image of a sure means of being.
Statues don’t merely “stand” so we are able to take a look at them, or extra probably nowadays, take selfies in entrance of them. By way of the motion or particular person they depict, they symbolize a sure standing or situation: a situation that deserves to be remembered, carried with us in some type.
The situation that I need Europe to replicate is the situation of being human, not as people are, however as they might be. Not in actuality however as a great.
And the statue I bear in mind as an emblem of that situation is a statue you all know. In reality, you may admire it proper now (however please save the selfies for later). It stands in entrance of me, and behind you, proper right here on Judenplatz. Should you flip your heads and go searching, you received’t be capable of keep away from it.
This statue depicts a person upon a pedestal. His proper leg is barely raised, the foot resting upon a step, and the palm of his proper hand is totally open, barely stretched and introduced ahead as if he have been attempting to shake yours, opening himself to you, signaling that he’s your pal. He appears to be like on the viewer from a sure top, however not with vanity, paternalism, or condescension. There may be human sympathy in that expression, but in addition deep concern.
The statue is of the author Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Lessing was some of the eminent representatives of the age of what we name “the Enlightenment.” The Enlightenment is usually outlined because the “age of reason,” and generally captured within the motto sapere aude—to have the braveness to assume for your self, in a public spirit, stepping exterior fastened identities and social roles.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing statue, Judenplatz, Vienna. Picture by way of Wikimedia Commons
The Enlightenment can be a lot vilified nowadays, from each left and proper. It’s vilified by the precise as a result of important reflection, the “courage to think for oneself,” has at all times been a menace to the passive submission to authority that’s required to normalize exclusion. However additionally it is vilified by many on the postcolonial left, who blame the Enlightenment for the brutality, domination, and paternalism which have usually characterised the encounters between European states and different components of the world.
There may be some fact to that place, but in addition little or no nuance. The Enlightenment was in fact finally instrumentalized by elites in energy for his or her exploitative and so-called civilizing missions, however in its inception it embodied a extremely subversive stance. There isn’t a higher proof of this than Lessing himself. Throughout his life, his works have been banned, and after his dying an argument over his alleged pantheism led to a wider assault on the Enlightenment conception of purpose. That assault was taken up by reactionaries of all kinds within the two centuries that adopted, culminating in an outright ban on Lessing’s work within the fascist Europe of the Thirties. This very statue is a reconstruction: the unique was eliminated by the Nazis and melted down in 1939.
One among Lessing’s most well-known performs, Nathan the Clever, touches on a few of the themes of my speech to Europe at this time: id and displacement, tradition and battle, migration and cosmopolitanism. The play is ready in Jerusalem throughout one of many crusades. Its predominant character, Nathan the Clever, is a Jew who lives below Muslim rule and brings up an orphaned Christian lady. His family, his spouse and 7 sons, have been murdered by Christians. In his absence his home has been burned. But, all through the play Nathan harbors no resentment in the direction of both the Christians or the Muslims. “And have I found in thee one more, to whom it is enough to be a man?” he asks, refusing to be outlined by his id.
At one level, Nathan is summoned by the Sultan, who interrogates him on which of the three nice monotheistic religions is superior—Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. Nathan patiently explains that the precise reply consists not previously however sooner or later. It can’t be determined in a conservative means, he says, based mostly on custom, present values, and inherited historical past. Every historical past will look superior to an insider taught to venerate custom and to consider the enemy a sure means, however very completely different from the surface. The reality of all cultures, if one can communicate of fact in any respect, is simply reconstructed, Lessing suggests, by increasing one’s gaze and looking out ahead, in a steady check of which tradition continues to show the virtues of humanity, take away prejudice, present the love promised in its foundational texts, and encourage tolerance in future generations. Certainly, all through the play, Nathan himself rejects being labeled. “We must, we will be friends,” he replies at one level to a Christian knight urgent him on his id. “We did not choose a nation for ourselves. Are we our nations? What is a nation then? Were Jews and Christians such, e’er they were men?” he asks.
There is just one level within the play at which Nathan the Clever appears to lose his mood. It happens within the opening strains, when he returns from his wanderings, and the lady who greets him exclaims: “Thanks to the Almighty, that you’re at last returned.” And Nathan reprimands her. “Yes,” he replies, “but wherefore this at last? Did I intend, or was it possible to come back sooner?” “I was forced to travel,” he declares.
As you may see right here, there may be one form of categorization that Nathan the Clever would wrestle to reject, one form of id. And that’s the id of the migrant, extra particularly the migrant with no selection, as a result of displacement is hardly a voluntary act.
A migrant is each a citizen of the world and a citizen of nowhere. A migrant is each open to the world and alienated by it. A migrant must be keen to soak up every little thing that doesn’t come naturally, to unlearn acquainted methods of being, and to undertake new ones. However a migrant additionally must be ready to stay in a everlasting state of hysteria in regards to the extent to which they will ever totally belong. For the migrant, belonging is an aspiration, one thing that for Lessing captured the spirit of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism.
And but, Nathan is an effective migrant. First, as a result of he obeys the legal guidelines of the international locations he visits. Second, as a result of he’s rich. Third, as a result of he doesn’t attempt to settle elsewhere; he finally returns to his dwelling, nonetheless late.
Tonight, I need to speak to you not nearly good migrants but in addition about dangerous ones, the numerous I’ve crossed paths with. And I need to speak to you, within the spirit of Lessing, of the futility of making use of the classes of fine and dangerous close to migration, and of the slippery slope concerned in making an attempt to take action, a slippery slope that forecloses the longer term and returns us to the previous.
***
Once I was rising up in Albania within the Nineteen Nineties, the daddy of one in every of my greatest buddies was a smuggler. We used to name him “Ben the Lame.” Ben the Lame had not at all times been a smuggler. Earlier than the nation made the transition from a communist state to a liberal one, he used to work shifts within the dockyard, the place he would make fishing nets and repaint boats.
Ben didn’t seem like a smuggler—he was tiny and anemic and walked with a limp. He didn’t select to be a smuggler—the privatization reforms that accompanied the arrival of political pluralism pressured dockyard managers to make redundancies, so Ben and his spouse discovered themselves unemployed. Nor did he consider himself as a smuggler: it was a job like every other. He was paid to assist individuals on dinghies attain Italy, and he wanted the cash to feed his youngsters.
He was just a little afraid, however not ashamed of his exercise. For many years, Albanians had been murdered by their state each time they tried to cross the border. Within the very uncommon instances through which individuals succeeded, the family they left behind have been deported. Lastly, Albanians have been free, and Ben the Lame was serving to them to comprehend their desires. He spoke of this with a contact of pleasure.
One evening, Ben the Lame disappeared and by no means returned. Some individuals stated he was killed; others that he drowned within the Adriatic Sea, eaten by the identical fish he used to construct nets for.
Finally, a lot later, there was a funeral for him; a funeral with out a physique, simply an empty coffin. Many individuals got here to the funeral and spoke with gratitude about the truth that he had helped their family escape, providing them the potential for selecting one other life overseas. They spoke about how the remittances these family despatched have been serving to households left behind keep afloat. Additionally they spoke about how instances had modified. About how when the Berlin Wall fell, and Albanians have been allowed to journey exterior their state, the discourse round migration out of the blue shifted and there was now way more hostility in the direction of them within the West.
It was not obscure their place. Prior to now, Albanians had been instructed that we couldn’t journey as a result of our state wouldn’t enable us to journey, denying all of us passports. However when the Chilly Battle got here to an finish, state socialism was deserted. Virtually in a single day, the state acknowledged the precise to go away. And but individuals found that having the passport wasn’t sufficient. You additionally wanted a visa for which your individual state was not accountable, and that turned out to be the accountability of one other state. Very out of the blue, all of the constraints on freedom of motion, which we had internalized by accepting that we couldn’t journey as a result of we weren’t allowed to journey by our personal state, grew to become exterior.
The West had spent a long time criticizing the East for its closed borders, funding campaigns to demand freedom of motion, condemning the immorality of states dedicated to limiting the precise to go away. Exiles was obtained as heroes. Hastily, the rhetoric modified. The heroes had now turn into criminals, harmful subversives who threatened the “European way of life.”
And but, if freedom is a price, if freedom of motion issues, it issues each in emigration and in immigration: each to go away your nation and to enter one other nation. If I’m instructed I’m free to go away this sq. however the roads that may allow me to go away town are closed, do I actually have freedom of motion? Simply when the previous socialist states have been not capturing their residents on the border, capitalist international locations started to ship boats to patrol their seas. In a single route or the opposite, migrants have been nonetheless dying. Solely the colour of the uniforms had modified, the flags below which the crimes have been being perpetrated.
Border guards, patrol boats, and the detention and repression of immigrants that was as soon as condemned exterior Western liberal states have now turn into commonplace observe in these international locations. These measures usually are not simply tolerated however celebrated as an indication of power. The West has perfected a system for excluding probably the most weak and attracting probably the most expert, all of the whereas defending borders to “protect our way of life.” And but, those that sought to to migrate did so as a result of they have been drawn to that lifestyle. Removed from posing a menace to the system, they have been its most ardent supporters.
Because the finish of the Chilly Battle, migration has been each a blessing and a curse for a lot of states world wide. It has been a blessing as a result of with out remittances from migrants, their households would have struggled with the devastating impression of the neoliberal “shock therapy” reforms that promised to show failed communist states into flourishing capitalist paradises.
It has been a curse as a result of Lessing is true. One doesn’t actually select to be a migrant. Opposite to what anti-migration propaganda would have you ever imagine, no one enjoys endangering themselves or leaving their nation only for the sake of annoying individuals in one other. Even placing apart the perils of unauthorized crossings, and even the place authorized routes can be found, migration tears households aside, and mind drain is an open wound. Yearly these states put money into docs and nurses who abandon their nation quickly after commencement, lured by the upper salaries and higher dwelling circumstances within the West.
Once you assist a selective immigration system or agree {that a} nation within the West must put money into attracting extremely expert migrants, you’re successfully endorsing a type of exploitation. Migrants from one other nation will work and pay taxes for the sick and frail to be taken care of by their docs and nurses, on your youngsters to be taken care of by their academics. Hospitals there’ll endure shortages in order that sufferers right here can proceed to obtain satisfactory care. Colleges and analysis facilities there’ll endure in order that training right here can flourish.
***
Borders are stated to be the definitive downside of our time. After all, borders are an issue, however not as a result of there may be any civilizational query that should be solved to ascertain who belongs and who doesn’t. Not as a result of there’s a downside of cultural adaptation by some teams in comparison with others. Actually not as a result of, as Giorgia Meloni lately instructed Donald Trump, Europe’s purpose needs to be “to make the West great again” and migration represents a problem to that objective.
Certainly, there may be nothing extra insulting to the knowledge of Nathan the Clever, with which I started, than this concept that there’s one civilization, one lifestyle, that embodies the reality and values of dwelling collectively. Not even European civilization. As Nathan insists to the Christian knight in Lessing’s play, “all lands produce good men.” The knight challenges this assertion. “Here more, there fewer sure?” he suggests. However Nathan rejects this too. He is aware of that greatness finally comes at a price, and that the price of cultural hierarchy is the destruction of the opposite, of anybody perceived to be a menace, anybody deemed unlikely to suit.
In case you are in any doubt about what precisely that price appears to be like like when it’s taken to its excessive penalties, simply take a look at the memorial behind my shoulders, a memorial to the victims of probably the most devastating venture of constructing one thing nice once more that humanity has ever identified: the Holocaust. This too is a product of European, Western values, a venture that promised to purge society of its undesirable components, to remove Jews, communists, Roma, the disabled, homosexuals, anybody deemed to not match.
This should be the start line of any dialogue of migration in Europe, reasonably than attempting to differentiate between good and dangerous migrants, migrants who’re helpful and migrants who usually are not, migrants who’re a profit and migrants who’re a burden, migrants who obey the regulation and migrants who comply with their very own guidelines, financial migrants and asylum seekers, migrants who solely come to remain for some time after which return to their houses and migrants who aspire to settle, migrants who deserve hospitality and migrants who should face deportation. To reckon with migration as an issue is to grasp that it’s not an issue as such. It’s to grasp the harmful slippery slope concerned in normalizing this very stance in political discourse.
If we take a look at migration solely when it comes to numbers and flows, the information means that whereas the variety of individuals dwelling exterior their nation of delivery has been rising in absolute phrases, that rise is in step with the rise in world inhabitants and subsequently proportional to migration flows previously. If we take a look at the contribution of migrants in host societies, there may be little proof for concluding that migrants are a burden in absolute phrases. Migrants assist counter demographic decline, they pay into social safety techniques, and so they contribute to host societies. This even goes for irregular migrants, in instances when paths to regularization can be found. And naturally, if visas have been simply accessible you wouldn’t have irregular migration in any respect.
But migration continues to be invoked as an issue in political discourse.
The issue is political, not cultural. The problem has nothing to do with migrants themselves however every little thing to do with the disaster of liberal democracy, a disaster which migrants didn’t result in, and which is definitely not deepening on their account—if something, it’s the reverse. The issue is the precise’s hegemony over the discourse on migration, and an incapacity, a “lack of courage” (to return to the Enlightenment) to assume critically, to assume past the ideology and propaganda that makes an attempt to steer us in any other case.
However another struggles to emerge. As a result of even those that reject particular migration insurance policies have purchased into the politics of it. As a result of many progressives have deserted universalism, and as an alternative of difficult the cultural phrases with which migration is framed, they merely provide their very own interpretation of the phenomenon. As a result of the left has deserted the language of sophistication and embraced the language of tradition; as a result of it has changed a socio-economic analysis of the issues of the world with an identity-based one.
***
Protester at Lea Ypi’s Speech to Europe, Judenplatz, Vienna, 16 Could 2025. Picture by Sarah Waring
For a very long time now, liberal societies have been failing on many fronts. Let me record simply three right here. First, the failure of democratic politics, the rising hole between representatives and the represented, a celebration system that works more and more like a enterprise cartel, a relationship between politicians and the those that resembles the relationships between companies and customers. Second, a failure of social justice: an financial system unable to cater to the considerations of probably the most weak (each residents and non-citizens), to handle an financial system that works for everybody, and to ensure mechanisms for combating towards the organized pursuits of oligarchs, massive capital, rich donors, and company digital platforms—in brief, anybody who makes use of their cash to buy political affect. Third, a failure of worldwide solidarity: the incapacity to supply another imaginative and prescient of a worldwide order that would come with a reform of worldwide establishments to make them genuinely consultant of weak individuals and weak international locations, to introduce a mannequin constructed not on antagonism however cooperation.
That is the advanced image of the world from which the worldwide inequalities that produce uneven migration emerge.
The issue, as I see it, is that we’ve got chosen a mannequin of society at odds with the humanism attribute of Lessing’s spirit, a mannequin the place the pursuit of revenue subordinates relations between people to the imperatives of the market. A political neighborhood that blames its failures on those that usually are not a part of it, or don’t have any declare to be a part of it, or are seen as undeserving of being a part of it, doesn’t have to take accountability for its failures: it could possibly proceed responsible such failures on probably the most weak and faux to have options on provide as soon as “the other” is not a menace.
The promise held out by the precise is that this: should you resolve the query of who belongs, you should have solved the conflicts of our time.
However migration, as I discussed earlier, is just not the supply of the issue; it’s reasonably a symptom of the disaster. And right here is the place the failure of the choice lies. The query of political progress is now solely seen as a query of summary regulation and rights, of who shapes and enacts legal guidelines, of who’s included and who’s excluded. In different phrases, it has turn into a query of regulating the phrases of political membership. Migration is perceived as an issue as a result of political membership is seen as the answer. Tradition wars are so salient as a result of they’re about policing the boundaries of a social group, together with the query of who can communicate on behalf of that group. If there isn’t any various accessible to problem this mind-set about the issue, if we’re unable to rethink the function of tradition, its connection to democracy and the destiny of democracy below capitalism, it’s laborious to see how any proposed resolution is not going to find yourself taking part in into the fingers of the precise.
And but, it’s not tough to deconstruct the precise’s discourse on migration. Borders as such usually are not an issue, as a result of borders have at all times been (and can proceed to be) open for some and closed for others. The correct’s very method to the query confirms this level.
To see the case, think about two dominant latest tendencies. The primary pattern applies to the very poor. Leaving apart the present tasks to deport failed asylum seekers to 3rd states in violation of worldwide norms, the trail to citizenship is not simple even for normal migrants. From minimal revenue necessities to qualify for residence to linguistic and civic integration checks when making use of for citizenship, these seemingly innocuous measures can flip into insurmountable obstacles that condemn newcomers to being everlasting second-class members of host societies. At this degree, migration is nothing however a conflict waged on probably the most weak. When individuals don’t have any political voice, they’re much simpler to take advantage of.
The second pattern applies to the very wealthy. For them, borders are extra open than ever; certainly, it has turn into more and more simple to earn citizenship in a brand new state by merely buying it. Think about a latest instance: in the identical weeks through which the White Home was posting movies of irregular immigrants actually boarding deportation flights in shackles, Donald Trump introduced his plans to promote US residence and a path to citizenship for 5 million {dollars} to wealthy people making use of for “gold” inexperienced playing cards. That is under no circumstances an remoted case. The world over, monetary buyers, property builders, or people keen to pay a considerable payment in trade for a special passport are placed on an accelerated and facilitated path to naturalization.
Each tendencies communicate to a radical reversal in the best way we now perceive id and belonging. The hope of social democracy within the early twentieth century was that democracy would carry in regards to the abolition of variations of sophistication, gender, race, and so forth. Within the phrases of the German politician and Marxist theorist Eduard Bernstein, the founding father of social democracy, “the parties and the classes supporting them soon learn to recognize the limits of their power.” The correct to vote makes residents digital companions in a cooperative enterprise advancing the great of the political neighborhood as a complete. This was the daybreak of an age through which the boundaries of property, literacy, and technical experience have been being eliminated on account of political mobilization to broaden the franchise.
The circumstances for such an optimistic evaluation, if it ever was justified, are not in place. The present pattern is in truth exactly the reverse. If within the golden age of expansive citizenship, democracy promised to heal the political neighborhood from the possibly damaging results of sophistication battle, within the age of restrictive citizenship the wrestle can not be institutionally mediated, it could possibly not be contained in the usual channels of political participation. As soon as citizenship turns into once more citizenship for a restricted few, a commodity to be purchased, bought, and exchanged, democracy degenerates right into a type of oligarchy by means of which rich elites management political energy. When citizenship is purchased and bought, as an alternative of being a automobile of political emancipation, it turns into a automobile of oppression.
With all due respect to Bernstein, this consolidates reasonably than erodes the category character of the state. To say that the state has a category character is equal to saying that the state loses its skill to behave because the political platform by means of which conflicts between social teams are balanced and mediated in a good means by means of democratic illustration. As a substitute the state turns into an instrument that serves to reward members of teams with extra money and energy and to constrain and punish the remainder. As a substitute of being the instrument by means of which to mood the excesses of markets by means of democratic illustration, when citizenship is purchased and bought it turns right into a commodity like every little thing else.
While in concept nonetheless paying lip service to an emancipatory very best of citizenship, progressives world wide are surprisingly silent on the transformation of citizenship based mostly on these exclusionary tendencies. Neither social-democratic official coverage papers nor the electoral manifestos of left-wing events appear to indicate any concern with discovering measures that would oppose the present pattern and discover remedial measures. The collapse of civic politics into ethnopolitics and the discount of the common, progressive very best of citizenship right into a particularistic, conservative one proceeds undisturbed for probably the most half.
What does a real various require? Refusing to play ball. Rejecting the discount of democracy to membership and of political battle to cultural battle. Situating the query of migration within the context of wider social injustices caused by the decline of welfare states, adopted by the impunity of profit-seeking employers who pit poor individuals (whether or not native or immigrants) towards one another. It requires an extra dialogue of why there are wars world wide, and the way their weaponization contributes to uneven migration flows. Briefly, it requires a dialogue of how the disaster of social democracy is linked to not the rise of cultural conflicts however to a long time of social and financial insurance policies, each at dwelling and overseas, designed to empower organized capital and disenfranchise weak individuals.
Once more, the issue is just not the straightforward existence of borders, or the presence of borders which are extra open or extra closed, as some want to assemble the migration dilemma. The issue is that exclusions each throughout the state and between states mutually assist one another and serve to additional entrench an financial order that’s unchallenged at its core. The observe of promoting citizenship to the wealthy and of limiting entry to it for these with few materials means, training, or civic abilities tells us an vital story in regards to the relation between capitalism and the allegedly democratic state. If we don’t change the best way we conceive that relation, we’ll enter a slippery slope on which they first come for irregular migrants, then they arrive for resident non-citizens, after which they arrive for residents whose names are Mohamed and Abdallah, simply as they used to come back for the Goldschmidts and the Levis. Is it laborious to see how it will occur? Can we are saying that we’ve by no means been there earlier than?
In conclusion, I need to return to Lessing. The cosmopolitan stance Nathan the Clever embodied shouldn’t be confused with Good Samaritanism or with the humanitarian ethics which are generally invoked in defending the rights of migrants. The Enlightenment was for a lot of of its champions a political and never only a ethical venture: the rejection of establishments that fail to signify each human being; the general public critique of concepts that favor one ethnic, non secular or racial group, one class, or one political neighborhood over one other. The Enlightenment urged individuals to reject values that don’t stand as much as rational scrutiny, to embrace a important outlook versus the hypocrisy of these in energy, and to withstand any declare to authority, together with the authority of those that promise to have our pursuits at coronary heart. This abandonment of the spirit of the Enlightenment simply when it’s most wanted is tragic however not fully a coincidence. Obedience requires ignorance; ignorance helps obedience. And we’re more and more changing into used to not pondering however to following tendencies.
That’s the reason I started by invoking the spirit of that statue. As a result of there could also be extra humanity in its silent stone than within the actions of many European leaders at this time. The values Europe so proudly proclaims—so unilaterally, so uncritically—are price little or no in the event that they apply solely to some. They should be grounded in a broader dedication to nationwide and worldwide social justice, to a future that decisively rejects any eager for previous greatness, any phantasm of civilizational superiority, and any compromise with world egalitarian and radical democratic beliefs. Migration, the injustices that migration reveals, are on the frontline of this wrestle. As a result of it’s not within the promise to make the West nice once more that Europe’s guarantees are most critically examined, however within the dedication to freedom, equality, and a world through which no one is pressured to go away their dwelling.
A joint occasion by Wiener Festwochen, ERSTE Basis and the Institute for Human Sciences in cooperation with the Jewish Museum Vienna delivered on 16 Could 2025.
