by Hiroki Matsukura

This world where we live is endangered. Why? This is because albeit through two destructive wars with cruel inhumanity, we, it seems, have not found where the monster of mass-destruction is hiding himself. However, in fact the monster has not perfectly hidden himself from our eyes. He showed his tail. The economic or monetary crisis in 2007 and its aftermath seen as the euro crisis in these days might be his ‘tickling.’ There is no longer need to say the detail about these crises, which shows that without any doubt this world got tied closely together through the market which is deregulated well by the policies of liberalism.

Free trade, reducing taxation, and deregulations… These liberal or neo-liberal ideas and systems, which are sometimes too extreme and too drastic, made our world smaller and more efficient (Balaam and Dillman 2011, pp.43-46). As the thoughts and the structures going, we grew up technologies, especially information technology. I can easily know what my friend on the back hemisphere doing now with handy devices. Not only that, we can fligh overseas quite easily and more inexpensively, compared with the just a few decades. We can express about ourselves as we live in the transnational way. However, in the aspects of international immigration, we cannot say we get such convenience on it. We can find some obstacles on living in other country, for example as workers. Of course, EU assures its citizens of the free immigration inside its territory though this must be one extreme exception (Nugent 2010, pp. 335-339).

Why do not states try to completely let the immigration free? From realistic view, the reason will be that the governments, which race their powers in this international society, cannot tolerate, for their respect on victories of relative gain, the flow of too much wealth from their states to others because of immigrants’ remittances (Balaam and Dillman 2011, p.57). Or it is difficult for them to accept living in transnational ways in the first place because it may lead to an outflow of resources such as people who are talented for keeping and raising states’ status and powers. In addition, the borders are one of the items which the governments more easily and more directly deal with compared to the market.

As one of other perspectives, which I would like to emphasise on this post, the reason might be that the free migration implies nothing but the diffusion of poverty at the same time of movement of wealth. On the theory of liberalism, free trade including labour and financial commodities finally makes benefits on society as such forms as elimination of poverty (Balaam and Dillman 2011, pp.33-38). However, we know what the theory led to through the crises. States got too much of deficits, banks and companies are pushed to the brink of bankruptcy. What we can imagine the free migration leads to is the loop of poverty. On the global level, people will start to search for jobs, or the places they sell their labours. That will make wages cheaper and cheaper. They continuing the process, the wealth will be monopolised by the really small limited group of people. We perhaps can say the realisation of free migration means more tangible way of man-made catastrophe than the finance, which cannot be seen as substance, did.

The monster seeks the chance of barking. Interdependence liberals vociferously asserting will turn into MAD, the mutually assured destruction. We should keep it in our minds that each of us has an invisible switch of mass-destructive weapon through global economics guaranteed by the extreme liberalisation. The weapon, Global Poverty, will globally kill people i.e. us. On the point of it, one of our last forts might be paralysing the completed liberalisation of migration at the present.

Bibliography

Balaam, D. N. and Dillman, B. 2011. Introduction to International Politics Economy. 5th ed. Boston: Pearson Education.

Nugent, N. 2010. The Government and Politics of the European Union. 7th ed. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.