A Matter of Distrust

I remember at the time of the first Nice referendum (June 2001) doing a survey which showed a massive jump in the previous two years of those agreeing that 'the pace of change in Irish society is much too fast'. At the time I pointed this out to several Yes campaigners as a sign that there would be a 'No' decision in the referendum. Funnily enough they didn't believe me at the time ...

Consumer confidence was plunging through the first half of 2001 as the dotcom bubble collapsed and people worried about their economic security. We were also coming out of a frenetic period of economic and social change that had taken everyone by surprise and left many people uneasy about the future direction of the country.

Fast forward seven years and we're heading in the same direction. Consumer confidence has collapsed, the economic storm clouds are gathering and we are coming to the end of a period of rapid social change, wrought especially by immigration. This I think is part and parcel of the recent surge in the No vote. As in 2001 the Don't Knows are the key group. Back then it turned out that a lot of the Don't Knows actually intended voting No, it was just that they didn't want to be seen to be flying in the face of the Political/Media consensus on the Yes side. As anyone who has ever done business in Ireland will know, nobody really likes to say 'no' - even when that's exactly what they mean. It's part of our psyche: we don't want to make the other side lose face in case we need them on our side some time in the future. And so it is in June 2008: people simply don't trust the way things are going, or where we'll end up.

Immigration is part of this - though not in a xenophobic sense (yet). The recent findings from the CSO that immigrants took up 90% of all the new jobs created in the past twelve months is truly extraordinary. I doubt that any other country in Europe would have greeted such an announcement with the indifference that greeted it here. On the one hand such indifference is a measure of our affluence, maturity and confidence such that we don't think it's a big deal: the cake has been getting bigger so there's plenty for everyone. I'm inclined to agree.

But the cake is about to get smaller (especially if the ECB pushes ahead with an interest rate rise). That I believe is behind the surging No vote. People are worried about the future as they were in June 2001, and worried about the direction society is moving in. Nobody is saying 'send the immigrants home', but more than a few I've spoken to in focus groups etc are saying 'we have enough now thank you'. Immigration is still the issue that 'dares not speak its name' in polite political circles. In the fallout from a No vote next week and an economy-wrecking interest rate rise next month I expect that all that will change. And it won't be pleasant, unfortunately.

Nor was the second half of 2001 come to think of it.

Chien Méchant

As I noticed on my last visit to France, you don't meet many Eastern Europeans here. Okay, there are a few Russians but they seem to keep themselves to themselves in well protected villas with chien méchant notices on the gates ...

Of course this is due to France's decision not to allow the recent waves of countries joining the EU access to its labour market. It does mean that you meet French people in every restaurant and shop you visit - in marked contrast to Ireland. You would also expect it to mean that France has a low unemployment rate (if that was the intention of their decision) but it doesn't. The latest Eurostat data shows France having the fourth highest unemployment rate of the EU 27 countries, as shown in the chart. Incredibly, youth unemployment (under 25s) is also very high in France (18.1%) despite the availability of the kind of low skilled, entry level jobs 'exclusively' for French people.

Ireland and the UK chose a different path - allowing the first wave of Eastern European entrants free access to our labour markets. Though the jury is still out on whether there has been a net benefit to the host countries (and will be for at least another turn through the business cycle I reckon) we do not seem to have suffered the high youth unemployment in particular that the French obviously feared. Nor are we likely to: I'm with Brendan Keenan in today's Irish Independent when he suggests that even if Irish unemployment goes as high as 8% in the next year or two we'll still have fared much better than expected given the scale of the global economy's problems.

Still, I can't help noticing that France's unemployment rate is going in the right direction (down from 8.6% in March 2007 to 7.8% in March 2008), whilst our's is going in the wrong direction: from 4.6% to 5.6% over the same period. There's no Irish demand for the economic equivalent of the chien méchant just yet vis-a-vis immigrants: but don't be surprised if it nevertheless surfaces as a major issue in the next general election as we get closer to a French level of unemployment.

Fate and Fatalism

I caught the Vincent Browne show on TV3 for the first and last time last night. There was nothing else on, honest. It was vintage, brow-beating moralising by Vincent, inflicted on his unwitting guests. But just as I was about to flick to CSI: Anywhere Else, I caught the contribution by Noel Whelan to the discussion. Noel made an interesting point, to summarise: now that 'Bertiegate' is more or less out of the way (as a major news item) we might see politics getting back to, well, politics in Ireland.

I think he has a point. I've been following the recent debates in the UK about stem cell research and immigration; both subject to intense, sometimes heated, but usually intelligent debate about serious issues affecting citizens lives. Somewhat removed from foreign currency transactions in bank accounts in the early 1990s. Needless to say, most politicians in Ireland would run a mile from either debate, which is a pity really: they're kind of important issues.

Certainly in relation to immigration (a subject I intend writing about in more detail in a future post, as I have in the past), my own exposure to what Irish people are thinking and saying about the issue in focus groups and surveys tells me that immigration could quickly flip from being a 'non-issue' on the political agenda to being a major, divisive issue very quickly. And no, I'm not saying the Nazis are coming: I'm simply making the point that those most exposed to the economic impact of immigration (Irish manual or unskilled workers in the main) are less and less tolerant of the consequences. Consequences that may turn deeply negative in an economic downturn.

Still, with the passing of Bertie we may have also left behind the last vestiges of fatalism. As a recent article in the Globalist put it this week, the story of Ireland in the past twenty years has been a story of how we lost our deeply embedded culture of fatalism. In which case we do not have to take the consequences of change (especially negative ones) for granted.

France's Polish Paradox

I'm in the French Alps this week on a family holiday learning to ski (or attending ski school to be more precise, I'm not sure about the 'learning' bit!) I took this photo from my hotel room balcony yesterday morning, with my trusty N95. The scenery really is spectacular.

One interesting thing, paradoxically, is how many French people are here ... working in the hotels, cafes, restaurants and pubs. The experience is very different to that back home in Ireland, where (as one American tourist I met here lamented) you could stay in hotels the length and breadth of Ireland and not actually meet any Irish people (meeting Polish, Chinese and other nationalities instead, including French of course!)

Which got me wondering about the decision of countries like France not to let new Eastern European members of the EU enter their workforce after 2005, unlike Ireland (and the UK and Sweden) which opened its doors to all who wished to work (from the first wave of members anyway).

On the one hand it means that you do actually get to meet lots of French people when you holiday in France (and English waiters as well as it happens, working to fund their skiing lifestyle). On the other - and I never thought I'd say this - the service in France isn't as good as you'd get in many comparable places in Ireland in my experience: they just don't seem to have that many staff (often with one waiter looking after 10-15 tables at peak times). I have found myself occasionally wishing for an efficient Polish waiter to take my order rather than leave us waiting.

So French standards of service might have benefited from an influx of (relatively inexpensive) staff from Eastern Europe, even if the service experience might not have been the same for us tourists.

All that said, the quality of food in France remains, as ever, 'superbe'.

Will They Stay or Will They Go?

The thought struck me the other day: what if all the immigrants who have come to Ireland in the past ten years just upped and left for better opportunities elsewhere? I actually found the thought quite disturbing - guess I'm getting used to our new diversity (and the friendly service at my local coffee shop).

What got me thinking was the latest report from the CSO on the Irish labour market and the statistics on non-Irish nationals entering the workforce (see Table A1). There was a recent furore in the UK over government data showing that more than half of all new jobs there had been taken by foreigners since 1997. In contrast, we are sanguine about the (CSO) fact that non-Irish nationals took 71.6% of new jobs created in the year to Q3 2007.

Intriguingly, the CSO admits that it really doesn't know how many non-Irish nationals are actually in the workforce at present, admitting that:

The nationality figures presented have been described as tentative as they have not been revised in line with the most recent Census of Population data. Initial analysis suggests that the QNHS under-estimates the foreign national population by approximately 20–25%.

Of course our sanguine response to such findings is simply a reflection of the fact that most Irish people see immigration as a relatively benign phenomenon in Ireland - with a few caveats about asylum seekers and illegal immigrants. In marked contrast, I recently heard the Maltese Minister for The Family & Social Solidarity (Dolores Cristina) talking about Malta's problems with illegal immigration from Africa. It made me realise that Ireland's 'problems' are in the ha'penny place by comparison.

Yet there is no doubt that attitudes towards immigrants (including legal migrants) is turning negative across Europe (including Ireland) - as highlighted in this week's Economist. I have written in a previous post about the negative consequences of a rapid increase in immigration on host communities.

Equally there is no doubt that immigration is generally a good thing for the migrants (and their families) themselves. Even their home countries benefit, judging by the value of migrants' remittances to their love ones back home. Perhaps this explains the success of Western Union, which has five times as many locations worldwide as McDonald’s, Starbucks, Burger King and Wal-Mart combined.

A recent report by Eurostat values remittances abroad by immigrant workers in Ireland at €0.5 billion in 2006. €0.4 billion of this was intra-EU 27. That is money out of after tax income. So if you apply a multiple of, say, x6.6 to get total after tax income (assuming a 15% 'remittance or savings rate'); and then apply a multiple of, say, x1.45 to get gross income before tax, that gives total earnings for (we suspect) mainly Eastern Europeans and remitters from developing countries of nearly €5 billion last year. Though this is likely to be an underestimate as not all immigrants remit money (or save for that matter).

The point is that most immigrants in Ireland have come here because it is economically advantageous for them to do so. If their economic circumstances change - or better opportunities arise elsewhere or back home - then many will move. Those receiving the remittances may insist on it. So it is a brave man (or government minister) who trys to predict the future of immigration in Ireland: our own migration experiences of one-way tickets to America or Australia may not be much of a guide to the future in an age of €10 Ryanair tickets to Bratislava.

Maybe we should ask Western Union for their prediction?

What is the Irish for 'e pluribus unum'?

I was part of a discussion on Karen Coleman's Wide Angle show on Newstalk 106 this morning. One of the topics we explored was that of integrating immigrants into Irish communities. I referred to the recent work Robert Putnam (of 'Bowling Alone' fame) has done on the impact of immigration on host societies (in the United States, Canada, Holland and other countries). His conclusions are challenging:

"It would be unfortunate if a politically correct progressivism were to deny the reality of the challenge to social solidarity posed by diversity. It would be equally unfortunate if an ahistorical and ethnocentric conservatism were to deny that addressing that challenge is both feasible and desirable. Max Weber instructed would-be political leaders nearly a century ago that ‘Politics is a slow boring of hard boards.’ The task of becoming comfortable with diversity will not be easy or quick, but it will be speeded by our collective efforts and in the end well worth the effort."

Putnam's paper is entitled 'E Pluribus Unum' - 'one out of many'. The motto has historically been that of the United States Government, referring initially to the unity of the different states that came together after the war of independence (we had one of those) and subsequently for some to the 'melting pot' ethnic mix of America after the civil war (we had one of those too).

The bottom line for Putnam is that immigration tends to undermine the 'social glue' that binds communities together (people are less trusting, watch more TV by themselves etc when they experience rapid immigration). He acknowledges the point made by others that the benefits of immigration are evident at a national level (productivity, economic growth, labour supply etc) but the costs are experienced by local communities (pressures on housing, education, health etc). By the way, for interesting attempts to quantify the economic impact of recent immigration from Eastern Europe on the UK economy see here. I wonder what a similar analysis for Ireland would reveal?

How then to avoid the loss of social capital through immigration at a local level? Putnam points to the importance of local sources of community bonding and integration. In Ireland there are at least two:

1. The Catholic Church (not very palatable to many in the media, but the reality for the majority of citizens in Ireland).
   
2. The GAA: possibly even stronger than the Catholic Church these days in rallying local energies and commitment.

But that's probably not enough given the waning incidence of church going and the lack of familiarity with hurling and gaelic football among immigrants. Putnam points to one other source of social cohesion between immigrants and host communities in the USA besides religion and sport, namely: the army.

Should we therefore have conscription into Ireland's defence forces to create our own 'melting pot', especially among second generation immigrants? Personally I would be very much against such a move (civil liberties and all that). But what about a wider concept of 'National Service'? What if, instead of transition year, all secondary level students went straight through to Leaving Cert and then were required to spend a year (away from home) doing their 'National Service' in voluntary groups, charities, sports organisations or indeed the defence forces? It would break down social class barriers (probably more pervasive and damaging than ethnic differences right now), as well as integrating young people from all backgrounds into a shared experience.

Even this, of course, is not a palliative for the 'costs' of immigration. In Britain, the debate on this issue is well under way, and it would seem that the ideology of multi-culturalism (which essentially denies that there are any adverse consequences from immigration other than those caused by the actions of the host population) appears effectively to be dead. As always, we have the opportunity to learn from Britain's mistakes and to avoid them. I suspect that, as always, we will fail to do so and blunder on with making the same mistakes. But you never know: our Taoiseach is a big fan of Robert Putnam (who was over speaking to the Cabinet recently) and it might do no harm to get him back to kick start a national debate before it becomes a national row ...