by liberal japonicus
Alfred the Great was surprised by ‘the Great Heathen Army’ (a great name for a punk band) led by Viking King Guthrum and escaped disguised as a peasant. While in disguise, he was able to hide in a cowherd’s hut and the cowherd’s wife asked him to watch some oatcakes on a griddle. Alfred, thinking about his situation, let the cakes burn and got roundly scolded by the women.
Well, the Danes have slipped in again, this time invading the headspace of Labour, specifically Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, with their ideas about immigration, and while Mahmood and Labour are preoccupied with Farage and Reform, they are burning the oatcakes. Not the best analogy, but if it holds, we’ll see part of the country under some new Danelaw where non-English (whatever the f that means) spend 2 decades before a select few who’ve mastered Estuary English and are sufficiently deracinated are granted the boon of citizenship. (Ironically, Farage’s constituency is in Clacton, which is in Essex, which was under Danelaw)
At the risk of UKsplaining to all of you (and corrections are gratefully accepted), the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, proposed a set of reforms to UK immigration which include renewing a leave to remain visa every 2.5 years and requiring 20 years before asylum seekers can apply for a visa to stay. There was also some reports about confiscating jewelry and other assets, including non-sentimental jewelry. I guess it is too bad that people don’t have gold fillings anymore…
If you haven’t discerned the outlines of my take on this, it basically mirrors Green Party head Zack Polanski’s take:
The Green leader accused Labour of announcing policies that their supporters didn’t vote for, and labelled the plans ‘extreme and inhumane.’
He continued: “This is a government of cowards. The issue here is not immigration, it’s inequality.
“They went for the pensioners, they went for the disabled, and now they’re going for people fleeing war and conflict.”
Polanski said he and many others were “furious” with the government because the plans are a “totally unconscionable way to deal with things.”
I do admit that this is a bit of a rhetorical high horse. After all, I’m an American and given the way things are going down in the US, I might think about the stones I’m casting. In addition, I’m living in Japan, which has even less to offer in the way of alternatives. On some of the stuff I’ve read and listened to, the argument is made that somehow, Labour has to undercut Reform and this is a way to do it. And I’ve seen several things where it is felt that an acknowledgement has to be made of stopping the boats and defending the borders and this is somehow unavoidable, all accompanied with an appropriate amount of chin-pulling. Aware of my own position, I still want to call bullshit.
The strange thing is, the refugees in asylum hotels are prohibited from working, which has them doing nothing and leading to friction where the hotels are. I’m not sure why they couldn’t create a WPA-like scheme to start to employ them, though I imagine the private sector would get their mitts on it and skim the wages. Or use it to undercut striking agency staff who are doing scab bin collection in place of the striking bin collectors in Birmingham. This would probably result in the asylum seekers getting exposed to unionization efforts and before you know it, communism.
Of course, irony of ironies, the Danish centre-left party that has been responsible for pushing these immigration ideas just had a shitty election result.
Of course, it’s being an American living in Japan makes this sort of opinion (harkening back to the Stewart Lee post) a bit of champagne socialism. But I’d argue that if Tommy Robinson is giving you props, you probably want to do a bit of a rethink and wonder why you burnt those cakes.
It seems that backlash against immigrants is a human nature thing that happens everywhere. And also it seems that political parties historically reformist, humane, and focused on public interest will throw someone under the bus to pander to the rightwing.
Meanwhile we are under siege. Horrible, terrifying noises from above. Thunks and bumps and the interminable whine of machinery. The dogs are crouching under the coffee table.
It’s the guy blowing leaves off our roof.
It’s the guy blowing leaves off our roof.
Except he’s not blowing leaves off, he’s ripping off the shingles.
There was a ten-year period during the Blair government England had more immigration than during the previous thousand years.
CharlesWT – There was a ten-year period during the Blair government England had more immigration than during the previous thousand years.
We ain’t seen nothing yet. Climate inaction is going to redraw a whole lot of boundaries. And people are either going to be allowed to immigrate or we are going to have an unfathomable loss of life in many places.
I don’t even want to think about the effect on other creatures and on flora.
AI everywhere. 🙂
It is *SO* obnoxious seeing obviously AI-produced images, and having the obsessive need to count fingers just to suppress the “My name is Inigo Montoya” reflex.
I’m terrified of the future. The thought of millions of people dying at borders they aren’t allowed to cross–dystopia is here already and science fiction nightmares are coming true.
Meanwhile the dogs are out from under the coffee table but I got a frantic phone call about a cat. The story is that she was seen by various people laying on the pavement and was there all night–supposedly was hit by a car, but she doesn’t have any visible injuries. She spent the night at the neighbors’ where she ate and was up walking around. Today she is at the sanctuary but not eating, not drinking, not moving. The lady who runs the sanctuary is trying to get her into a vet. She’s a skinny little thing and, given the rain and the cold, she might have been hyperthermic and is just recovering. I’m bummed about it.
There was a ten-year period during the Blair government England had more immigration than during the previous thousand years.
Keep those context free facts coming Charles! There were probably as many, if not more who came from 1950-60. However, at that time, they were called citizens of the Empire, not immigrants.
There was a ten-year period during the Blair government England had more immigration than during the previous thousand years.
How do you know? Before the 1905 Aliens Act there were effectively no restrictions on immigration.
I’ll bet that in the last 1000 years England has seen more immigration than in the previous 500,000,000 years.
Percentage wise, America saw way more immigration in the 1700s than in the 19th century. Also way more in the 19th century than in the 20th century. Certainly there were peaks and valleys. And the raw numbers climbed, but as a percentage of the (non-Native American) population? No.
I suspect that we also saw more in many decades of the 20th century than we have so far in either decade in the 21st century. The usual peaks and valleys may have impacted what we’ve seen this century so far. But by now, our population is just too big for the percentages to get that high.
I’ll bet that in the last 1000 years England has seen more immigration than in the previous 500,000,000 years.
Britain was almost entirely depopulated by the end of the last glacial maxima 22,000 years ago. All of Scotland and Ireland were under the ice. Southern England was inhospitable tundra. At least on a percentage basis, the immigration after the ice started to retreat was probably larger than the last 1,000 years.
A percentage basis? You guys really know how to kill a joke.
The UK’s foreign-born population was 4.2% in 1951, 8.3% in 2001, and 16% in 2021.
Foreign-born population of the United Kingdom
London’s foreign-born population is 41%.
What is our current Open Thread? Where should one talk about the Russia-US 28 point plan giving Putin almost everything he wants?
CharlesWT – The UK’s foreign-born population was 4.2% in 1951, 8.3% in 2001, and 16% in 2021.
I’m not taking issue with you here, CharlesWT, but I am going to note, for the sake of information literacy, that the Wiki entry you cite has some problems with the data that bear scrutiny.
The 1951 and 2001 data come from one data source and the 2021 data from another. The first set counts “foreign born” population, and the last one counts “migrants.” Those two things are defined in the sources that are being cited, but a closer look at those shows that “foreign born” and “migrant” are not at all the same things, and the way that the Wiki article is written, they never foreground any difference.
If you chase the source for the earlier dates, you will find that, for example, in 1971 about a third of the “foreign born” population came from families where one or both parents were born in the UK.
That would mean that for the purposes of the data from 1971, Boris Johnson would count as “foreign born,” but had he been born in 2017, he would not have counted for the table because he would not be considered a “migrant,” since his parents were only abroad in the US temporarily while his father was attending university there.
I suspect that there are a lot of incongruities and methodological problems in that article, but I don’t expect that the average reader – even one with an undergraduate degree – would have the habits of mind to check for, or reflect on, the impacts of such problems on the conclusions being drawn from them.
This is why teaching information literacy is so challenging, and why people get impatient with academics. To paraphrase The Who, the simple things we see are all complicated, and most of us just want to get our washing done.
Substitute your lies for fact
I can see right through your plastic mac
I look all white, but my dad was black
My fine looking suit is really made out of sack
Also, not quite a punk band, but The Great Heathen Army is an Amon Amarth album (and song) title – not punk, but rather viking themed melodic death metal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK4MbGyCSXU
London’s foreign-born population is 41%.
And the percentage of foreign born residents in New York City over the years would be what?
If you’re going to cherry pick numbers, gotta expect folks here will notice.
German neonazis use stickers “American Indians did not control immigration. Now they live on reservations.”
And that was years before they Syrian civil war or Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine. Then it was mainly against Turks (These days even neonazis buy at the Turkish greengrocer. Probably the same ‘problem’ that Himmler noted that every German had ‘one decent Jew’ he did not want to get persecuted).
Berlin in the 18th century was close to immigrant majority (French Huguenots) and that was essential to the economy (Brandenburg was the 2nd most devastated region of the 30 Years War after Bohemia).
I have strong suspicions that I have Huguenots in the family tree myself.Did not help with learning French though 🙁 .
I read this NYT article
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/11/opinion/dubai-migration-trump.html
but didn’t finish it and lost the page that had the gift link. Some pages suggest that Dubai is 92% ‘immigrant’ and the article had some discussion about a rethinking of what citizenship is and means.
If you want it lj, here it is:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/11/opinion/dubai-migration-trump.html?unlocked_article_code=1.3E8.A3HK.Gd0uik9LLL9G&smid=url-share
London’s foreign-born population is 41%.
Yeah, what a hellhole. I increasingly run into US citizens relocating here…
GftNC, thanks!
I was struck by the close of that article, which was:
“Maybe we are done putting down roots and will just keep moving.”
In reality, there have always been those who put down roots, and those who kept moving. As far as I can see, that is still true today.
There were also those who, from necessity, picked up and moved, sometimes a very long way, before stopping and putting down new roots. (I am put in mind of a story I read long ago about a guy who moved from Europe, but having arrived in New York City, never went west of Ocean Parkway.)
I suppose you could make a case that, at least in the US since the middle of the last century, it became more common for entire families to pull up stakes and relocate multiple times. They put down roots serially though; they weren’t really moving constantly.
The one thing I think has changed is that those who just keep moving are now able to form lasting connections online. Before, they were largely isolated. Being able to make lasting connections allows them to form communities. Just communities not based on geography. That makes them more visible.
I suppose
In reality, there have always been those who put down roots, and those who kept moving. As far as I can see, that is still true today.
Is it really? I have tried to put down roots here, and I think I’ve done a good job, but given that it has been a conscious effort, I have to say that those roots aren’t deep, certainly not as deep as Japanese from here. And even for my wife, who is from Hokkaido, those roots aren’t so deep. And certainly, those roots are shortened even for those who are from here, with cultural touchstones fading and replaced by consumption events. At some point a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind.
I have tried to put down roots here, and I think I’ve done a good job, but given that it has been a conscious effort, I have to say that those roots aren’t deep, certainly not as deep as Japanese from here.
It’s true that those who have moved tend to have shallower roots than those who have lived somewhere for a lifetime. And also, it’s not surprising that some are better than others at developing new roots when they move. But I would point out that, while you feel your new roots are shallow, you are hardly someone who is perpetually moving. (I’d put the threshold for “perpetually moving”/rootless at relocating every couple of years or less.)
I acknowledge that my perspective is probably skewed by my personal experience. The US is called “a nation of immigrants” (suck eggs, Steven Miller!) for a reason. And California is a bit extreme, even for the US.
Growing up, I lived in a little farm town, just starting to evolve into a suburb. When my parents moved here, after WW II, the population was under 500. By the time I graduated high school, my graduating class was around 500. For all that there were a couple of families who had been here for a century, pretty much everybody in town was from somewhere else. Often, the kids in my classes had moved a couple of times already. Today, the town is up to nearly 50,000.
That sort of thing continues. I’m in the long time rooted category because, although I’ve lived in a half dozen different places over the years, they’ve all been within a hundred miles of here. But my family, my friends, my neighbors? All have moved or lived previously, far away. I’ve got a brother who, in his 20s and 30s, lived “in Europe” — never settled anywhere for more than a couple of months, as far as I could tell. Definitely in the perpetually moving category.
But I would point out that, while you feel your new roots are shallow, you are hardly someone who is perpetually moving. (I’d put the threshold for “perpetually moving”/rootless at relocating every couple of years or less.)
We seem to be reaching a point where everyone will be more like me: perhaps not perpetually moving, but moving enough that the idea of being rooted in a place no longer holds. I feel like that inflection point is coming in the next few decades, helped along by the fact that climate will make the places we live so different from what they were. People may not be perpetually moving, but the place they are living will change with enough speed and strength as to make everyone strangers in their own towns.
So what happens to nationalism if many more people are either moving from place to place or or at least relocating from where they were raised? Does it become stronger among the relatively few who stay put? How do they handle being outnumbered by “the others”? Do the movers become citizens of the world?
There’s going to be conflict over land and resources. How will the lines be drawn? How rapidly do those lines shift? How large will the factions or coalitions of factions be?
Thinking about the future feels like forming the basis of a dystopian sci-fi novel. I might update my resume to tailor it to a position as a warlord.
So what happens to nationalism if many more people are either moving from place to place or or at least relocating from where they were raised?
It depends…
If people are relocating across national boundaries, that could reduce nationalism, because they are not rooted anywhere. Say if they relocate because their job moves.
Or increase it, because they have moved on the basis of “I want to go to this particular place” (vs “I need to leave where I am.”) See the immigrants to the US who embrace America to the point that they, or their children, volunteer for the US military.
On the other hand, there are those who relocate within a single country. It seems like they might embrace nationalism, simply because that is the level of group they still belong to. If you relocate from Alabama to Texas, you may not have strong ties to either. But you still have strong ties to the country overall.
I was posing those questions as an extension of lj’s mention of climate change forcing people to move, thus the conflicts over land and resources. In that case, it will mostly be “I have to leave” with a good amount of crossing national boundaries.
I wouldn’t expect someone going from Alabama to Texas to lose their sense of Americanness, at least not simply because of that move.
(If things had really gone to sh*t and someone was moving from what used to be Alabama to what used to be Texas, Americanness might not mean much anymore.)