We had to start somewhere so we decided we would start from the beginning. From birth.
Let us first track who we are, I mean, exactly who we are, what we can do, or what we could do with some training.
We don’t have access to energy credits, that’s something we all have in common. And we live outside of the inside. Sounds kind of silly, outside of the inside, but English is not my language and I don’t know how to write it in a better way. Almost none of us have English as our mother tongue, but English is anyway the language we use every day here. Not so strange as this is a community of almost ten thousand people with more than a hundred (old) nationalities represented … The second language, quite unexpectedly but fortunately—and the tendency is clear as I see it—is becoming Lule Sámi, or julevsámegiella, the language of our hosts: the Sámi people of Jokkmokk. But the purpose of this message is to communicate our strategy to other outside communities all around the world, so English is the best choice.
Our strategy is, oh, it sounds very big to call it a strategy. I would fit better to say our first step. Yes. Our first step.
Our first step is to organize the safety of the births, of giving birth and of being born, the mum’s and the child’s perspective, health and well-being. How to handle it here on the outside? Most of the births go well with not much intervention, but “most of the births” still leaves lots of births in the risky zone, and we wanted to improve that.
You’ll find the technical and medical details in the attached file: a cost effective, low-tech and energy saving procedure, with ideas and input from doctors and nurses from more than ten (of the old) countries. In the other attached document, you’ll find the financial and organizational aspects of the project, the first act of our taking-back-the-public-services agenda.
– Alex, Alberto, Magda, Ibtisam, Ahmed, Rebecka, Eva! The text is almost ready, attachments included. Who wants to check my English? Alooo? Somebody at home? No? Really? Nobody at home? First time ever. Let’s have a look on the second floor. Somebody here? Ups! Yes, Alex and little Nico. Alex sleeping like a baby and you, Nico, awake with your eyes wide open, as if today were the first day of your life. Well, that was not so long ago, the first day of your life. You’re not older than a month, are you? Time flies. It feels that it was yesterday, but at the same time it feels like you’ve always been here. What are you looking at? What are you looking at? Do you like my glasses? Yes, they are red, like your trousers. Come with me to the kitchen so Alex can continue in sleeping mode. Let’s see if the cat is in the kitchen. We’re alone: you, me, Alex and maybe, just maybe, the cat. Where’s everybody? Do you know where everybody is? I’m sure they’ve told you where they’ve gone, but you’re not saying a word. And I’m sure they’ve also told me, but you know how distracted I am. Maybe we’ll find some clue written in the calendar in the kitchen? Oh yes, oh no! how could I forget that? And why didn’t anybody tell me? Of course, nobody told me because I’m always saying that I don’t like to be disturbed when I’m writing, especially if I’m writing in the basement with the door closed. But anyway, they should have told me! The Vidsel Test R.I.P., Nico, the day when we celebrate the closure of Vidsel Test Range. It seemed impossible to achieve, but we managed, somehow, we managed, and the big military companies finally left the area: no more bombs, no more tests with scary airplanes flying in the blue spring skies. We’re on the outside, yes, but this is becoming a good place to be outsiders. And maybe someday, maybe someday when you’re, I don’t know, twenty or twenty-five years old? Maybe then we’ll regain the access to the river, the river that is now controlled by the insiders and their obsession with energy resources. Or who knows, maybe we’ll not need to wait that long. Nico, what are you looking at? The window? The sun and the snow? Oh, that’s a fox. And here is Ninina, being a cat as usual. And you’re a little kid. Yes, you are. The first kid born in the new Birth House. You’ll be happy to hear about that when you are old enough to understand what that means. You know what? I’ve heard stories about the babies that are born on the inside, how they measure everything, and constantly! with thousands of tables of optimal progressions, graphs and percentiles left and right, up and down, and that was some years ago, who knows what they’re measuring nowadays. Don’t misunderstand me. Measuring in itself is not a bad thing, but getting obsessed with measurements is almost a disease, a disease that nobody is measuring. I guess they measure so much because they’re afraid. Afraid of life, afraid of death, afraid of things that they can’t control. And we? I mean, and I? Am I afraid too? Well, to an extent indeed I am. But there’s so many things that we can’t control, here on the outside, that finally you stop being afraid, there’s no point. And you never know when something bad can turn into something good, or even really good. Look at you! I remember how sad we were when the avalanche destroyed our house in Kvikkjokk. Luckily no one was injured but we needed a new place to live. We found this house, our house now, your house as well; this beautiful house with beautiful people living on it, and it was then that your parents met each other. Did you know that? Did you know that they met here? And here you are, looking at me, demanding milk, and of course your nonexistence is inconceivable. I’ve not read much philosophy, but I would call it Axiom of existence. Ok, I get it, you are really hungry, but how lucky we are, there’s plenty of mum’s milk in the fridge. I’ll warm up 120 ml right now. And after your lunch I’ll play a song for you.
*
Birth
If the way you look at me is the look of future days If the lightness of your body, make us lighter If the joy of being still with you sleeping in our arms Is a joy that is contagious and incurable.
I will tell you all the fables that I could someday forget I will walk with you to lakes that still are hidden I will sing a thousand songs, I will talk with you in words From the language that was used by our ancestors And you tell me, that you’re hungry.
Not afraid of the ruins of the city that is gone Not afraid of the future that has perished ‘Cos for you those would be stories, just some legends from the past Like the Holy Roman Empire or the Soviet.
And surrounded by the whiteness of the boreal spring And the quietness of the snow that still is falling With the firewood on the fireplace and the rocking chair for us It is time for you to eat, for me to wonder Such an energy, when you’re hungry.
Photo and recording by the author.
Miguel Ganzo Mateo is a Spanish writer and songwriter who works as a math teacher in a secondary school in southern Sweden. In 2018 he published the novel Sesenta metros cuadrados (Sixty square meters), and with the short story “Birth”he returns to Jokkmokk, the area in northern Sweden where the novel takes place. More info at www.miguelganzomateo.com.
We are currently facing the most severe migration crisis in history. In Europe, the debate on how to tackle the root causes of migration, including forced migration, happens mainly amongst established political actors such as political parties, state institutions, and large international NGOs. This debate focuses on wars, catastrophes, arms trade, and terror, which are all framed as a state of emergency.
For these actors, it is difficult to find practical, immediate solutions to the problem, because this would require addressing the root causes of those wars, going against the immediate interests of European states and international organizations. In consequence, these actors propose “development aid“ as the panacea to address root causes of migration.This aid is then tied to bilateral agreements with Arabic or African countries to prevent migration from occurring in the first place, or which make the deportation of migrants from Europe to their country of origin easier. Left-leaning critical migration researchers rightly critique this approach for misusing development co-operation as a tool for migration management.
One common response on the left is to, on the one hand, highlight the hypocrisy of trying to solve the crisis through development aid while continuing to drive these crises through arms deals and Western involvement in regional wars, and, on the other hand, framing the migrant crisis in terms of the right to free movement and the human rights of migrants.
Addressing the refugee crisis requires questioning the dominant notions of what it means to live a good life, to think global when it comes to social welfare
But this responds to only one dimension of a broader civilizational crisis. Anti-racist and migrant justice movements should not focus solely on issues of human mobility rights, the failure or even adverse effects of development aid, or Western military involvements. They also need to question the colonial division of nature and labor and what has been called the ‘imperial mode of living.’ Doing so would involve building new paths of solidarity with societies in the geopolitical Global South. In this sense, addressing the refugee crisis requires questioning the dominant notions of what it means to live a good life, to think global when it comes to social welfare and to link up with movements such as eco-feminism or degrowth. This could open up new possibilities to address social relegation due to immigration, as they exist in the Global North.
It is urgent to fight the accelerated destruction of livelihoods in the Global South
The left focus on critiquing the mainstream discourse easily leads to an equally politically problematic counter-position, an attitude that principally welcomes migration as something positive without questioning its root causes or the deterioration of living conditions in the Global South. However, can migration be something principally unproblematic that is to be welcomed and even increased? Does the defense of the right to migrate necessarily have to lead us to ignore the manifold coercions that force people to migrate? Must we not, on the contrary, acknowledge the real-life scenarios in the geopolitical Global South and our historical, economic and political contribution to these?
Today, a counter-hegemonic project must necessarily result from a collective construction process between the global North and South, which understands their interdependencies. Of course we have to object when governmental institutions differentiate between “good“ or “legal” refugees on the one hand, and “bad“ or “illegal” refugees on the other hand. However, this should not lead us to ignore global power relations or to paint a naive and euphemistic picture of migration as a natural phenomenon with positive connotations of personal choice and self-determination.
It is just as urgent to fight the accelerated destruction of livelihoods in the Global South, as it is to fight for open borders and dignified living conditions for those who have already fled.
By relying only on a “right to move” framework, we fail to address what makes this current wave of immigration unique. The decision of a German who prefers to live in the USA is radically different from that of a Nigerian who faces the dangers associated with fleeing and entering the EU undocumented. At the end of 2015, over 65 million persons were displaced globally—a historical record. In light of this situation, it is just as urgent to fight the accelerated destruction of livelihoods in the Global South, as it is to fight for open borders and dignified living conditions for those who have already fled.
As already mentioned, this process is rooted in the international division of labor, and, more specifically, the exploitation of nature (‘resources’) and cheap labor in the Global South to ensure unlimited consumption options in the North. Because of this, the geopolitical South is increasingly faced with “accumulation by dispossession” as the Marxist geographer David Harvey put it, to satisfy the demand for commodities of the North and new middle and upper classes in some southern countries. This greed for raw materials has led to a massive expansion and acceleration of extractivism: the export of oil, minerals or cash crops is often the only possibility for Southern economies to integrate themselves into the existing world market. As the reports of several human rights organizations show, these processes destroy the material conditions necessary for the lives of increasing numbers of people. The destruction is not only environmental, but often includes the very social fabric of the concerned regions. People are forced to migrate, and are dispossessed of their social bonds and cultural contexts and knowledges. The so-called ‘green economy’, often mentioned as a ‘clean’ solution to combine ecological concerns with economic growth – for example wind or solar energy production or electric cars – also requires resources such as rare minerals, cobalt, lithium or copper, whose exploitation leads to destructive social-ecological conflicts elsewhere.
At the same time, the globalized world market ensures that production chains and power relations, and effects like environmental destruction and exploitation which are inscribed in all consumer goods, remain abstract or are systematically obscured. However, those global value chains and power relations constitute a causal link between the imperial mode of living in the geopolitical North and the root causes for flight and migration in the South. In most cases, migration is not a freely-chosen emancipated decision, but a reaction to a specific concurrence of constraints, for example capitalist, gender-specific, ecological and/or (neo)colonial ones. Many of those people who play cat and mouse with the European border-regime today would rather have stayed in their own cultural and socio-economic contexts, if this had been a viable option.
Who has the right to the imperial mode of living?
The imperial mode of living divides the North from the South, because the prosperity of the former is historically rooted in the exploitation of the living environments and (often unpaid) workforce of the latter
The term ‘imperial mode of living’, coined by Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen, does not seek to describe a certain lifestyle practiced by specific social milieus. Rather, it refers to the hegemonic patterns of production, distribution, and consumption in combination with related cultural imaginaries and subjectivities. These are deeply embedded in the day-to-day practices of the majorities in the global North and increasingly find their ways into the upper and middle classes of countries in the global South.
This mode of living is imperial insofar as it assumes unlimited access to all resources – the space, nature, cheap labor, and sinks of the entire planet – only for a small and privileged minority of the global population. This mode of living is only possible while such unlimited access is secured either by political and judicial means, or by military means and violence. The imperial mode of living connects the geopolitical North and South insofar as it represents their shared hegemonic ideal of a successful and good life under current capitalist conditions, an ideal closely related to the promise of ‘catch-up development’. But at the same time, it divides the North from the South, because the prosperity of the former is historically rooted in the exploitation of the living environments and (often unpaid) workforce of the latter.
Without doubt, open borders and global mobility have to be fought for, especially against nationalist or right-wing environmentalism. But new questions arise around these claims if we consider the global division of labor and nature and the imperial mode of living. Does the claim to open borders and the right to move translate into the right for every human to participate in this mode of living, including those from the global South, if necessary, via migration? This is impossible for two reasons: firstly, while the multidimensional ecological crisis is already threatening the material conditions for the reproduction of life on our planet, the ecological destruction necessary to sustain this mode of living would be intensified. Secondly, because the imperial mode of living always requires an ‘elsewhere’, a foreign space to where exploitation and destruction can be externalized. But when applied to everybody, such an ’elsewhere’ would no longer exist. Without a doubt, many migrants indeed come to Europe hoping to participate in the imperial mode of living, which in most cases reveals to be an illusion, due to the manifold mechanisms of a “selective inclusion“ in place. However, the real question should be: do they, do we, or does anybody at all have the right to a mode of living that exploits and destroys the livelihoods of other people?
New perceptions of the good life
A critical left perspective on refugees and migration that is in solidarity with the global South requires a comprehensive paradigm-shift. The hegemonic discourse of what is considered a good and successful life is based on a number of problematic assumptions: that life as it is today in the Western World represents the highest stage of development of human civilization, and that modifying it would necessarily constitute a loss; that happiness inevitably relies on mass consumption and the accumulation of material goods; that the path of history is one and linear and that other modes of living that are less permeated by capitalist logics and based on different world views are necessarily inferior, backward and underdeveloped on this path; that the advancement of technology is only possible via multinational corporations; that it is the state which has to provide social welfare in a centralized manner; and that – as the idea of socialism in the 20th century suggested – one single, universally applicable master plan is needed before we can initiate change.
Modes of living which require less material consumption do not necessarily mean a loss, but can give rise to genuine enrichment.
In my opinion, the key way to challenge this narrative lies in the connection between anti-racist struggles for the right to migrate and struggles for a different, less alienated, less accelerated, and individualized life. Such struggles do exist in Europe and the geopolitical North and have gained strength over recent years. The degrowth movement and ecofeminism undermine the basis of chauvinist feelings of ‘entitlement’ to prosperity and of widespread fears of being socially deprived by the presence of migrants or refugees, insofar as these struggles fundamentally question the narrative that the western, European way of life equals prosperity or a good life. As Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen puts it, “we inhabitants of the northern hemisphere are materially well-supplied or even over-supplied, but nevertheless we experience needs. The big problems of our times are individualistic isolation, loneliness and existential fears, as well as the recourse to racist, nationalist patterns of conviviality as we lack of emancipatory concepts.”
Movements such as degrowth and ecofeminism tackle consumption patterns of the imperial mode of living in their everyday dimension, thus opening up possibilities of active transformation for people in the geopolitical global North. These movements make it possible to collectively learn that modes of living which require less material consumption do not necessarily mean a loss, but can give rise to genuine enrichment.
Of course, our social reproduction and the fulfillment of our needs do have a material dimension. But this material dimension a) does not necessarily have to be governed exclusively by money – see for example the debate and practice around commons and commonism – and b) is not the only dimension there is to poverty and wealth. Notions of abundance, value, and wealth related to quality of relationships, self-determination, self-reliance, the ability to redistribute, the experience of finding meaning in life, and the effective power to act are systematically made invisible by the poverty indicators which dominate the development discourse: quality of life is reduced to money, consumption and, at best, access to public services.
In the last decade, the alternative paradigm of Buen Vivir(living well) – emerged from some Latin American countries as a counter-narrative to capitalist wellbeing. It considers humans as part of Nature, thus promotes harmonic relations with all other beings, and puts emphasis on communitarian construction from below in a territorial sense, leaving plenty of room for diversity. Other important principles are equilibrium, reciprocity and complementarity instead of accumulation, progress, growth and competition. Buen vivir, if it is developed from the bottom up and, above all, in democratic ways – will inevitably have different shapes in different contexts. This is why emancipatory debates in Latin America increasingly speak of los buenos vivires in plural.
Movements such as degrowth or the commons can connect with struggles around Buen Vivir, post-extractivism and post-development in the global South, opening up a perspective through which people in the geopolitical North and South can work together to overcome the hegemony of the imperial mode of living. These approaches also take on responsibility for challenging imperial day-to-day practices and can directly and simultaneously address the root causes of forced migration, often caused by compensatory mass-consumption elsewhere, and the roots of the global ecological crisis.
Considering social welfare globally
Finally, what about the alleged threat that migration poses to the welfare state? If we are consequently striving for social equity, we can only consider welfare or social security in a truly global manner. Although this might sound threatening at first, in my opinion nobody has a birth right to certain social benefits. Some of the feminist debates around care and commons are path-breaking here. If it is impossible to globally extend the social welfare state, as it has existed only in a small part of the world, and only for a few decades – on the basis of cheap energy and centuries of previous value transfer from the global South – then we need to replace the utopia of the social welfare state with alternative concepts. The commoning of care might be a possible pathway, while at the same time reducing the hours dedicated to paid labor – without abstaining from the state altogether, which would still need to provide the ideal conditions for this kind of commoning.
If it is impossible to globally extend the social welfare state then we need to replace the utopia of the social welfare state with alternative concepts.
Consequently, anti-racist movements and critical migration research cannot be content with fighting the European border regime by advocating open borders.. As an offensive strategy against racist prosperity-chauvinism, their critiques should just as much focus on the imperial mode of living and the associated uneven North-South relationships, as well as hegemonic perceptions of a good life. An up-to-date perspective on inter-peoples-relations should clearly tackle the root causes of forced migration by effectively reducing the energy and matter consumed in the global North, and, at the same time, develop new approaches for a global social welfare that do not consider welfare as a privilege related to one’s dwelling place or birth right.
A version of this article first appeared on Degrowth.de.
Miriam Lang is professor for Social and Global Studies at the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar in Quito, Ecuador. She studied Latin American Studies at Free University of Berlin and holds a PhD in Sociology. In the 1990s she was active in the anti-racist movement in Berlin. She has lived in Latin America since 2003, and for the last 12 years in Ecuador.
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