Re: the lump of labour madness
Luckily, none of my tutees have ever put forward anything as
offensive as the SEBWTCF thesis, but some of them do read the Daily
Mail, and the anti-asylum seekers stance appears to have
infiltrated some sections of the acceptable right-wing, so I feel it
is worth developing and discussing the counter-arguments to my tutees
As a basis for trying to argue against this rationally, I use the
example of the North of England, where one of the greatest economic
boosts the region received to help it out of the Depression of the
1930s was an influx of refugees, who were then, as now, dispersed to
the regions.
One of our Alumni, himself a refugee from Nazi Anti-semitism and
founder of a large local company, wrote an M.Phil thesis on the role
of refugees in the postwar development of the North East; he managed
to find some 80 firms that had been set up by asylum-seeking Jewish
immigrants, including Kangol (hat-wear manufacturers) and Albright
and Wilson (large Cumbrian chemical firm).
>From this, it is easy to refute the arguments that asylum seeking is
a cost, and can link it to contemporary politico-economic debates
about asylum-seekers.
I suppose I am a little disappointed that I have to make an economic
case when there is such a clear case of social justice at stake, but
my students do appear to at least able to grasp the simple economic
case.
The Economist newspaper (when I last saw it) were fairly
pro-migration on similar grounds, that even economic migrants tend to
be the most entrepreneurial sections of a society, and so had a
higher propensity to start new businesses and to assimilate into the
cosmopolitan sections of their host society. I am also not happy
with this argument for the same reasons.
Paul.
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Paul Benneworth
Research Associate
CURDS
Newcastle University E-mail [log in to unmask]
Newcastle upon Tyne Office (0191) 222 8015
NE1 7RU Home (0191) 258 7437
Mobile: 0780 1538 758
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'http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/p.s.benneworth/
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