Lea, Seydou and Moussa

BarcelonaIt is very different when someone who has experienced it firsthand talks to you about immigration than someone who has not. That is why I wanted to read the essay Class boundaries (Anagrama, 2025), by the Albanian political scientist Lea Ypi, professor at the London School of Economics, author of the now famous book Free. She was able to leave her country under very difficult circumstances, when they were supposed to be free and everything was collapsing after the late fall of communism. From the sidelines, it is easy to theorize and pontificate: only let the legal ones in, hire at the source, return them while still hot... Has anyone seen the 2023 movie Me Captain, by Matteo Garrone?It narrates the dramatic journey of Seydou and Moussa, two 16-year-old Senegalese cousins who leave their hometown, Dakar, to try to reach Italy. It is based on true stories. Pope Francis, impressed, received the two actors who starred in it at the Vatican.

After reading Lea Ypi and putting yourself in the shoes of Seydou and Moussa, nothing is the same. Immigration acquires the human texture that we often strip away from it, which we prefer to ignore. The migratory phenomenon is a complicated political and economic matter, of course. But behind it are lives like ours, families and friends, tears, illusions, farewells forever, endemic poverty, fears, and hopes. Leaving home is always hard. Arriving in an unknown place with empty pockets is too. These days I have imagined Seydou and Moussa in Ceuta, heads bowed, their gaze lost, but resisting. What future awaits them?

Is Lea Ypi a proponent of the ideal of free movement for all human beings? She says one can agree that the opening of borders is a debatable issue, but at the same time she makes it clear that restrictions are, first and foremost, a class issue: borders are open "if you are white, have an academic background, and belong to the middle class." If you do not meet these conditions, they are closed or much more restricted. "And the same can be said of the obstacles to integration and civic participation" within liberal democracies. She also states that "reducing the conflict between immigrants and natives to an identity conflict between all immigrants and all natives obscures the class dimension of this conflict."

In 1870, a fairly well-known gentleman wrote: "The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers the standard of life [...] He harbors religious, social, and national prejudices against him. He behaves toward him like the poor white toward the blacks in the former slave plantations of the American Union." This gentleman was Karl Marx.

In reality, Ypi sees a community of interests between the poor citizens of rich countries and the poor citizens of poor countries, while she considers that borders benefit above all the rich citizens of rich countries and the rich citizens of poor countries. What happens, then, with the crisis of the welfare state? She denies the premise. She denies that immigration is to blame: "In empirical terms, for liberal democracies, immigrants are often more of a resource than a burden: their net economic contribution is positive even in periods of budget deficit, they satisfy labor shortages, compensate for falling birth rates, and contribute to the development of human capital in host societies."

The Albanian political scientist also makes a historical note: the migratory reality cannot be isolated from the colonial and neocolonial legacy. "Migrant workers often come from geographical regions and communities that have never been able to recover from a past of colonial violence and exploitation". It is undeniable, right? Countries that today, among many other things, continue to suffer from debt dependency. If the problem is global, why are global solutions not being thought of? But right now, under the naked emperor Donald Trump, we are heading in the opposite direction. "America first". Us, first. And the rest, they will have to manage on their own. Something that will end up amplifying the migratory phenomenon. Facts are stubborn: global turbocapitalism promotes the global movement of people... but without rights. Faced with this, Ypi warns the social-democratic lefts not to enter the political race of scapegoating immigrants. Because the far-right will win. And because Seydou and Moussa would thank them for it.