Immigration and benefits. Immigration and benefits. Immigration and benefits. I can barely remember a time when these weren’t commanding headlines or the imaginations of politicians. One might say that this is no surprise, seeing as they are both hot button issues for the public – though it might be said these issues are fabricated and amplified by those with vested interests to do so.
Left critics of this kind of pernicious scaremongering rightly call it out for what it is: the politics of divide and rule. I’ve done it myself. That, however, is as far as it goes. Too often the deeper political economy, the economic pressures of which politics is but a concentrated impulse, either remain unexplored with regard to these matters or, when they are analysed, they tend toward crude conclusions and deeply problematic politics. Continue reading