Exodus: How Migration Is Changing Our World

“Does this diversity of policy reflect sophisticated responses to differences in circumstances? I doubt it. Rather, I suspect that the vagaries of making policy on migration reflect a toxic context of high emotion and little knowledge.”

Collier pairs a rhetorical question with a direct rebuttal to give his argument clarity and authority. This debate-like structure brings up an idea only to discard it. His word choices—“vagaries” and “toxic context”—reinforce the dismissive tone of his reply. The language implies that policy-making on migration rests on a chaotic, emotionally driven basis rather than on rational, evidence-based criteria.

“In Britain, one high-profile anti-immigrant speech in the 1960s clearly crossed this line: opposing the immigration of people of African and South Asian origin in lurid terms of impending interethnic violence. That foolish speech by a long-dead minor politician, Enoch Powell, closed down British discussion of migration policy for over forty years: opposition to immigration became so indelibly linked to racism that it could not be voiced in mainstream discourse. Powell’s manifestly ridiculous prediction of ‘rivers of blood’ not only closed down discussion, it came to define liberal fears: the great lurking danger was supposedly the potential for interracial violence between immigrants and the indigenous.”

While Collier outright rejects Powell’s predictions as baseless fear-mongering, he uses the example to illustrate how extreme rhetoric can derail nuanced discussions, reflecting The Power of Narratives in Migration Policy. Heated rhetoric entrenches binary thinking—either immigration is wholly good, or opposition to it is wholly racist. His criticism is directed not only at Powell, but also at the broader cultural and political environment that allowed this dynamic to persist.

“Whereas Europe provides an example of differing economic narratives, the contrast between America and South Sudan illustrates differing political narratives. President Clinton famously won an election campaign on the slogan ‘It’s the economy, stupid!’ A society in which this sentiment resonates is going to use a given set of political institutions quite differently than one in which the narrative is ‘The Dinka have been wronged by the Nuer.’”

A society’s dominant narrative reflects its values and priorities, but it also determines the effectiveness and focus of its political institutions. Where narratives are divisive, institutions are likely to become tools of factionalism, as in South Sudan. Collier uses this contrast to argue that