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Johan Leman, 9 December 2023

Positively in the current development is that research shows that just about all people accept that migrations are a fact of life and that they accept the presence of migrants. On the negative side, many (one estimates around 30-40%) experience that presence since ‘nine eleven’ as a threat to their own culture. This sense of threat is fuelled by 2 elements: the impression that governments have insufficient control over the arrival of migrants (who? how many?) and that there is insufficient consensus on which set of values should be secured anyway. The latter is not an object of science, but of temporary consensus after dialogue.

Québec made an interesting experiment years ago by building dialogue from the bottom up to achieve a widely supported ‘accommodement raisonnable’. It also showed that the priority in integration should be employment, i.e. bringing in added value because via the newcomers.

Inclusion in the labour market, consensus on a minimum set of values (which should have more substance than referring to legislation, as this can often lead to multi-directional decisions) and management of migrants’ arrival. These are the priority tasks for a policy in this area.

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