The Christian response to globalisation

While we can’t build walls between people, unrestricted immigration is not an answer either, writes David Quinn

Globalisation refers to the free movement of both people and goods across borders. Some people are for both types of freedom while others are for either the free movement of goods or the free movement of peoples.

Pope Francis is a critic of economic globalisation. So is Trócaire. So is President Michael D. Higgins. They each think economic globalisation can easily lead to the exploitation of poor people, especially in developing countries when global corporations move their production overseas to take advantage of lower wages in countries like Vietnam.

Many of the Brexiteers in Britain are supporters of free trade, but not the free movement of peoples across borders.

Still others, for example the National Front in France are against the unrestricted movement of both people and goods.

Free
 movement

On the other hand, some people support the free movement of both goods and people. The late Peter Sutherland is an example of that.

Peter Sutherland presided over free trade talks in 1993 which super-charged economic globalisation following the fall of communism in Europe and China and India’s willingness to play a bigger part in the world economy.

In 2012, on the subject of immigration, he argued that the sense of homogeneity of European countries must be undermined.

Referring to immigrant countries like America, Australia and New Zealand he said: “The United States, or Australia and New Zealand, are migrant societies and therefore they accommodate more readily those from other backgrounds than we do ourselves, who still nurse a sense of our homogeneity and difference from others.

“And that’s precisely what the European Union, in my view, should be doing its best to undermine.”

This was a remarkable statement. The EU already allows free movement of peoples from one EU member-state to another and this is already bringing to an end the homogeneity of EU countries, but this would obviously be brought to a swifter end if we completely opened our borders to people from outside the EU, which Sutherland seemed to favour.

In fact, the EU itself is somewhat protectionist in its own way. That is, it does not allow completely unfettered movement of people and goods (and services) from outside the EU. This is the nub of the Brexit negotiations with Britain.

Britain wants trade with the EU to be as free and unregulated as possible because non-EU countries can’t trade as freely with the member-states of the EU as EU countries can. So, there is a limit to the EU’s belief in free trade.

They are also arguing over how freely people from around Europe can travel back and forth to Britain and vice versa and settle and work in one another’s countries easily.

Immigration was an issue in the EU referendum in Britain two years ago. Many British people felt their livelihoods and way of life were under threat from very high levels of immigration from other EU countries and from outside the EU.

Some Britons were concerned that economic globalisation generally was harming British jobs. They wanted to ‘take back control’. This was the central message of the Leave campaign.

This brings us back to the proper Christian response to globalisation. At the centre of this has to be concern for the poor.

It is concern about the poor that leads some Christians to be critics of economic globalisation. If economic globalisation harms the poor, how could they be otherwise?

On the other hand, someone like Pope Francis seems to favour something quite close to open borders, also out of concern for the poor. Shouldn’t the poor of the world be allowed to better their lives by coming to live in our more prosperous societies?

But a concern for the poor can give rise to different conclusions. For example, it is beyond doubt that economic globalisation has massively reduced levels of poverty worldwide over the last 25 years. In countries like China and India literally hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of the worst poverty because of it.

Equally, if you open your borders, or do something close to that, you have to ask yourself about the effects on the poor of your own society. If huge numbers of people come into your country over a short time, what will the effect be on demand for school places, on hospitals, on social housing, on jobs, especially jobs at the lower end of the wage scale? These are perfectly legitimate questions.

What happens to the countries the migrants are leaving? Those who immigrate from developing countries tend to be younger and fitter, and have the money to pay their way to the West. Who is left behind? The older, the less fit, the poorer, who become more vulnerable still precisely because so many of their able-bodied fellow citizens have left.

Simple

So, this isn’t simple and there is no definitive way to settle on the position Christians must adopt towards globalisation. Yes, the position must be influenced mostly by concern for the poor, but concern for the poor can lead in one direction or the other.

To my mind, we cannot, as Christians, be in favour of simply ‘building walls’ that stop the free movement of people and goods. This would hugely harm the poor of the developing world and ultimately our countries as well, because free trade and immigration up to a certain point has brought huge, if uneven, benefits.

At the same time, I don’t think we can simply eliminate borders and build nothing but bridges because of the aforementioned reasons; what it could do to the poor of your own country, and the countries people are leaving.

Therefore, while no definite Christian answer can be given to the question of globalisation, I think we can agree that the answer is not building walls and it is not doing away completely with borders either.

David Quinn’s new book is ‘How we Killed God (and other tales of modern Ireland)’. It is published by Currach Press.