Could someone please tell me...
apart from a) year of departure, b) skin colour, c) religion, d)
country of origin,
...what is the difference between economic migrants leaving an
island off N W Europe for a larger less populated island off S E
Asia in the 1800s, and migrants leaving a mountanous poor
country in S W Asia for the same island in 2001.
And anyway shouldn't we have asked the actual inhabitants of the
island off S E Asia, that is the aborigenes, as to whether they
would take in the Afghans or not?
What gives one set of economic migrants priority over another - OK
the first set of migrants have been there 100 years or more, but the
people they displaced have been there 1,000s of years. I don't
recall the aborigenes saying to the British 'you stay offshore, or we
may let you onto (tiny, isolated) Christmas Island whilst we think
about it'. But of course the aborigenes wouldn't and couldn't do
this. They wouldn't, as they had no notion of private landownership,
it was all communal. They couldn't, because the first set of
economic migrants had rather better weapons than they did.
That must be the difference, the reason why the first lot of migrants
take priority, the reason why they are more 'civilised' - guns and
exclusive landownership. Aren't these N W European islanders a
nice, cultured, civilised, lot to have arrive on your doorstep as
economic migrants?
Hillary Shaw, Geography, University of Leeds
Hillary Shaw, P/G Geography, University of Leeds
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