It takes a lot to make the subject of immigration respectable for liberals, at least if you’re pointing out its problematic aspects. But Paul Collier, an Oxford economist specialising in the world’s bottom billion, has, in the 270-odd pages of his new book Exodus, opened up the issue for the left — well, for all comers, actually. Which, for a book suggesting among other things that, left to itself, there is no natural limit to immigration, is quite something.
‘The overwhelming reaction I’ve had,’ he told me, from his Oxford berth at the Centre for the Study of African Economies, ‘is that people thank me for making the subject discussable. I had an email from one man who had been a senior economist at two government departments… and he said that, to his shame, he had been unable to analyse this issue even when he was chairing two committees about it.’
Discussion of immigration has long been taboo among liberals. The subject is conflated with racism and associated fears of inter-ethnic violence. ‘I am concerned to raise the quality of public debate,’ Collier says. ‘There’s been a lot of sloppy and ideological thinking.’
Indeed, when he started on the book, he was warned repeatedly by well-wishers that he shouldn’t, you know, write anything that might start trouble. Though given his benign demeanour and that he sounds like Rowan Williams, it’s hard to think of him as a rabble-rouser. ‘People assumed I was going to be saying what a good thing immigration is and let’s have more of it. That’s the party line.’
So why is Professor Collier in a position to say the unsayable, viz, that while some immigration is good for everyone there is such a thing as too much diversity? One reason is that his approach is broader than that of most pundits.
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