 Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for coming along on this cool Canberra evening and spending some time with us at the National Security College to talk about a really significant topic, one on which we're very pleased to be contributing to the debate, and that's migration and security, rhetoric and reality. Now at this point I'll acknowledge the traditional owners of the land, my respects to the elders of Ngunnawal people past and present. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Rory Medcalf, I'm the Head of the National Security College here at the Australian National University, and in a moment I'll introduce our guest speaker for this public seminar that the National Security College is very pleased to host in partnership with the Crawford School of Public Policy and other partners more widely, but I first want to mention some of the other institutions and people involved in supporting Dr Colser's visit to Australia, including the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute, the Crawford School of Self, My Own College and the Australian Department of Immigration and Border Protection. Now it's a real pleasure to welcome Dr Colser to the Australian National University or back to the University I should say, because for those of you who may know Colser and his work, he's been here a number of times before in a number of capacities. He's here today I think in a particular capacity which is the Executive Director of the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund. Now this is an initiative, a countering violent extremism initiative, I probably phrase it as best, based in Geneva but with wide international support, including I believe from the Australian government, it's public private partnership, a global partnership, trying to enable the international community better to bolster grassroots efforts against radicalisation, so to help support communities, including through funding. But our guest speaker is also wearing a number of other hats, including as a non-resident fellow at the Lowey Institute, which I know well, my own former shop, the Brookings Institution, Chatham House and Chair of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Migration. So I wonder how many places you can be non-resident in at once but you're certainly aiming for the record and a significant academic appointment as well in the Netherlands. Now as many of you know, Coler just published very widely on international migration over a long period of time, including its nexus with security and this has included some quite considerable field experience from Afghanistan to the Balkans to the Horn of Africa and parts of Europe. His professional interests are very broad and range across irregular migration, immigration policy, the nexus between migration and security and particular issues around the implementation of the Refugees Convention, counterterrorism and radicalisation. In 2014 he was appointed a member of the Order of the British Empire for his services to refugees and asylum seekers in the UK and as I've said, this is not his first visit to Australia at all or his first visit to ANU. We've been pleased to host him here at the Crawford School in other capacities in the past including with in partnership with the Department of Immigration and Order of Protection. Now today's topic and I'll hand over to our speaker in just a moment but today's topic is of course very timely, very relevant given present political debates in this country and internationally on the really the intersection of migration and security and while I don't want to steal any of our speaker's thunder, I think it's really interesting to note and our participation both of us last week in a conference in Sydney, a summit in Sydney on countering violent extremism would remind us of this, that the relationship between irregular migration, asylum and the risk of importing terrorism is a very complex, a very fraught one. In particular the relationship between migration and terrorism or migration and counter-terrorism is not at all a one-way traffic and there are very good arguments to be put as to why migration is in fact a big part of the solution to terrorism or countering terrorism. Our speaker will present for about 40 minutes or so and then we'll have a very interactive discussion. I hope the question and answer session please be ready with your questions and comments. Remember we're on the record here so please take that into account but at this point please join me in welcoming Dr Khalid. Rory thank you for that immensely generous introduction just to add to your list of the activities I currently undertake. I also chair a work and group for the World Bank on Migration and Security and I edit the Journal of Refugee Studies and I'm more than happy to take questions on any of those professional activities once this this short I hope presentation is over. I'd like to pay special credit to Mari McAuliffe who's somewhere in the audience who has helped coordinate my visit. I'm very grateful indeed to you Mari. It's a real honour to have Peter Hughes here someone I've admired and worked closely with and watched closely over the last 10 or 20 years so thank you Peter for taking the time. Most of all thanks to all of you as you say Rory it's a cloudy dark nice and I'm grateful that you've taken time to come here. I will try to be brief because I want to hear from you. I'm here to learn from you as much as I hope that you might find what I'm saying to be interesting. As Rory has indicated this debate about the link between migration and security is certainly alive and well. If you look at what's happened over the last year or two globally and I'm not here to speak about Australia you can tell me about Australia I'm here to speak globally. We've had the Ebola crisis a clear link made between mobility migration trying to restrict movement of people in the hope that that would stop Ebola spreading around the world I think a misjudged effort but still clearly a link made between mobility movement and disease. We've had the terrible outbreak of polio in a Syrian refugee camp. We have been for the last few years in the final mile of eradicating polio only left in three parts of the world northern Nigeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan. Now we have an outbreak within a refugee camp and very real concerns in Europe that sooner or later some of those refugees will try to get to Europe carrying polio. It's a great tragedy that we have missed that final mile on polio. We have what my friend and colleague and many of you know him Jeff Crisp has described as military madness in the Mediterranean. A crisis evolving in the Mediterranean boats crossing the Mediterranean large numbers of people drowning the Mediterranean European response militarize it, securitize it. I think clearly you know that a similar response has been taken here in Australia three star generals in charge of your border control sounds like a military solution or response to me. We have had from Libya clear indications that in the opinion of the Libyan authorities IS Islamic State is now using boats to cross the Mediterranean to try to transport some of its fighters and terrorists across the Mediterranean big alarm bells of course ringing in Europe. We have the whole phenomenon of foreign terrorist fighters Australians as well as Brits and many other people making the seemingly incredible decision to go to Syria to go to IS territory and to undertake some fairly ghastly activities there. We have the Boston bombers and so on and so forth so wherever you look it seems to me the debate about the linkages between migration and migrants and security is alive and well I think rather depressingly. What I'd like to do again quite briefly and again perhaps drawing on some of my experience over the last 10 years or so working in this field is simply offer a number of observations on this debate between migration and security and I want to make five points. The first point I want to make is that I think it behoves us to engage with this debate however unpalatable we think the debate is. The second point I'm going to make is that even though I think we need to engage with the debate I think we need to recognize the risks the risks involved in securitizing migration because that is what is happening and I think that process carries very significant risks nevertheless I think we should engage. The third point that I want to make is that if we are going to engage with this hysteria this this media frenzy around migration and security let's try to do it in an objective and analytical way and I'll try to suggest you a few elements of what an analytical framework might look like when we're trying to approach this idea of migration and security. Fourth point let us if not embrace at least understand complexity and I'll give you a few examples of how the link between migration and security is immensely complex and I think defies the simple analysis that all too often is taking place and my final point this evening will be let us focus on the right risks because in my opinion all too often we're focusing on the wrong risks when we speak about migration and security and perhaps taking our eye off the real risks that in my opinion do exist. So five points that I'll go through fairly briefly. The first points about engaging many people and I respect them and understand them have said to me in the past it is unpalatable, it is unethical, it is immoral, it is dangerous to even speak in public or write in public about the links between migration and security. You are risking feeding the media frenzy. You are risking fueling further misperceptions and misunderstandings of migration even to make this link in public is dangerous. I sympathise, I hear that argument, I understand the argument but I'm fairly deeply philosophically against that argument. It seems to me that whether we like it or not there is a live debate about migration and security. I've given you a handful of examples there are many more that you might be able to give me from the Australian context and elsewhere. Most national security strategies in the world today whether the UK's or Australia's and Roy of course will know all of these now mention migration and the movement of people as a potential risk. This is out there. The horse has left the stable it's no point us regretting it or resenting it or thinking it's a shame it's happened it has happened it's out there and it seems to me as academics, as government officials, as members of society, as concerned people, as people who may well be pro-migration it seems to me that it behoves us to engage with this debate. I think in this field and I'm not sure that I would extend this to other fields necessarily I think in this field to not engage with your opponents simply because you think they are prejudiced or biased is almost as dangerous as holding those prejudices and biases yourself. It seems to me that we run a real risk in migration of a polarised debate where you have two opposing polls one that's pro-migration, one that's anti-migration and the two simply don't talk. And one of my great regrets about the migration debate and you can tell me whether this is true in Australia but it's certainly true in Europe is that we are losing the space for a sensible, objective, critical debate. Usually migration is good sometimes there are risks some migrants come with bad intentions most migrants are hardworking people sometimes migration is a challenge to borders normally it's fine and we should get on with it. We need the space to have that discussion to say what's good to say what's bad and I think if we lose that space and can't have a sensible discussion we shouldn't be surprised that our policy makers are losing control of this this topic we shouldn't be surprised that the media is filling the gap. So let's be sensible, let's be objective, let us engage however uncomfortable or unpalatable or difficult this discussion is. That's the first point I'd like to make. Having said that my second point is let us make no mistake there is an enormous risk of securitising migration and I think that is what we are doing in Europe and I think that's what to an extent you've done here in Australia around certain parts of the migration spectrum. Three risks I think in securitising migration. One is that what we have done is added to the further dilution of the concept of security. Now I'm not a security studies person I didn't train as a security studies person but were I a security studies person I would lament the fact that I no longer know what security means. Hard security, soft security, human security, national security, climate security, demography and security, migration security, food security, water security it's no longer quite clear to me what the security concept is. It seems to me that that is a regrettable conceptual advance that we've made and securitising migration further muddies the security waters in my opinion. A second risk of securitising migration is that we are and I think this is happening we are risking allocating responsibility for migration with the control, security, military, intelligence, apparatus and parts of our governments. If you asked me where migration should lie in a government I think it should lie with development. I think migration is largely about development and about making the world a richer and more wealthy place and there's plenty of evidence that suggests that's largely true. Equally of course migration is a cross-cutting seam you need labor market and health and we know all of that stuff as well but it does seem to me to be a mistake if we increasingly put migration into a security apparatus within our countries and I think that's happening to some extent here and again certainly in Europe at the moment. But the third risk and the real risk of securitising migration is this if you securitise migration if you portray migration as a threat to your country you risk legitimising extraordinary responses and that is what we are doing. Now we could have a we're not going to do it we could have an interesting debate here about waterboarding or extraordinary rendition or Guantanamo Bay and I could say to you my proposal is that in the name of protecting large numbers of innocent people against a terrorist attack it is justifiable to trespass on human rights to push the envelope and to waterboard a couple of people and to keep 100 people out of judicial reach in Guantanamo Bay. Debate yes or no some of you would say absolutely not human rights are precious and this never be trespassed others might say well you know there's a balance and a priority and so on and so forth. What I'm saying is if you see something as a threat to your society and a threat to your security it's easy to enter a debate where you begin to legitimise extraordinary responses. I think that's what you're doing in Australia and I certainly think it's what we're doing in Europe we are using thank you we are using we are using uh military operations to try to turn back votes in the Mediterranean. We are in my country the United Kingdom I'm here to criticise Europe and not criticise Australia too much at least perhaps in the perhaps in the Q&A we are in the UK we are imprisoning asylum seekers in prisons with criminals not people who have made administrative mistakes we are putting children in adult prisons because there's no else to put them we are detaining people I think in an unnecessary and unacceptable form and this is just the United Kingdom we are undoubtedly in the United Kingdom sending people back to countries where their lives are not absolutely safe all sorts of ways where if you begin to portray something as a as a threat to the state you can then legitimise or at least have a discussion around some pretty extraordinary responses and I think that's a real risk so point number one it's an unpalatable difficult discussion it behoves us to engage point number two let us nevertheless recognise the risks of securitising migration. My third point is about an analytical framework if we are going to do this let's try to be analytical about it I'm not going to do this and I'm not going to write a paper but hopefully one or many of you will what would an analytical framework look like when we discuss the links between migration and security well firstly I think we need to be much clearer about definitions because when you speak about migration and security all sorts of different definitions are thrown out there look at the migration side firstly are we talking about regular or irregular migration Rory you mentioned irregular migration most of the work is around irregular migration regular migrants the Boston bombers 9 11 it's also a regular migration challenge as well what sorts of migrants are we speaking about are we speaking about internal or international migrants most of our concern is international migration I would argue that the greatest migration related threat is probably internal migration massive urbanisation huge competition in labour markets overcrowding disease food security in some of the big cities and some of the developing parts of the world we don't really focus on internal migration and security we tend to focus on international migration and our sort of global security and especially security in places like Europe and Australia are we speaking about temporary or permanent migration temporary migration tourism the underpants bomber so-called he was a tourist the 9 11 bombers were temporary migrants the Boston bombers were permanent migrants what are we talking about who are we concerned about when we speak about migration are we speaking about political or economic migration refugees or economic violence there's certainly a link between refugees and forced displacement and security we had during the Rwanda crisis in the 1990s genocid air people who had committed genocide in Rwanda who then moved into refugee camps to recoup to mobilize to get some food and went back in to fight don't think there isn't a link between refugees and asylum seekers and security don't also think there isn't a link between economic migrants and people moving in other streams and security so a lack of rigor on the definitions and the categories we're speaking about I think is a problem you can say the same about security are we speaking about national security are we speaking about human security what do we mean by national security is it about the safety of our citizens a very hard clear definition of security or is it about competition in the labor market or pressure on social welfare or welfare systems or environmental systems again it seems to me a lack of rigor and lack of clarity so let's think about definitions if we're going to do this properly and understand who and what and in what circumstances we're having a discussion I think a second part of an analytical framework would be to distinguish causes and consequences it seems to me that you can certainly make a case that sometimes migration causes insecurity large numbers of people moving across an uncontrolled border in a fairly uncontrolled manner as we did for example during the crisis in Libya into Tunisia 60,000 people a day clearly that causes insecurity and I'm not talking about a few thousand people in a boat coming to a wealthy country like Australia I'm talking about 60,000 people a day moving into a country that itself was undergoing a crisis in the revolution there's no doubt at all that in certain circumstances migration can cause insecurity equally migration can cause security I would argue that by and large migration is positive for our economies and societies and I suspect most of you would agree migrants are entrepreneurs migrants expand the labor market migrants tend to employ other people migration tends to generate economic growth so security insecurity causes consequences what about the other way around well clearly insecurity causes migration that's what refugees and ITPs about equally security can cause migration this is the famous so-called development hump if you develop a country for the first 20 years or so there is more and not less migration because with development becomes a disposable income comes access to the internet comes the ability to buy that ticket you've always wanted to buy to fly to Paris and so on and so forth so let's be a little bit more analytical about causes about consequences about positive about negative really I think missing at the moment in this debate let's also recognize complexity the language that is used in the migration security debate is so simplistic push versus pull positive versus negative agency versus structure it is just far more complex than that and in a minute I want to illustrate some of that complexity and when we're thinking about policy again let's be analytical can we make direct policy interventions yes sometimes yes other times no we clearly can't make direct policy interventions does policy have unintended consequences yes absolutely even though we can't plan ahead for it so I'm not going to do it and I'm not going to draw a picture but it seems to me that we need to be much clearer about definitions about causes and consequences about short and long term about the way that policy can and can't intervene and about the entire complexity about this process because at the moment this migration security debate is simply up in the air and people are selecting what they want to make the arguments that they want and I don't think that's satisfactory a fourth point then firstly engage secondly recognize the risks thirdly think this through in a fairly analytical manner my fourth point and I only have two left I want to keep roughly the time is about complexity and it's about getting away from some of these rather simple binary analyses and descriptions that we have about the relationship between migration and security and let me illustrate these with three examples if you spoke to an idea this often with students in europe and you can tell me where this this would be the same here if you speak to students in europe and say to them give me a couple of examples of how migration is a threat to national security so not human security and of course one is not here to underestimate the terrible hardship that migrants undertake but i'm not talking about human security give me a couple of examples of how migration intersects with national security terrorism comes up often as one of the first answers criminality migrants are criminals certainly comes up a lot in europe health is coming up increasingly especially after a bowler and the polio crisis and so on and so forth let's look at those and let me just give you anecdotal examples of how the relationship can be more complex than that again rather binary equation terrorism and migration if you force me to think about it and i've thought about it and give you an example of the best the clearest linkage between migration and terrorism in europe in the last decade i might well say to you and as bravik in norway this was a norwegian who went to an island and slaughtered i think 71 people and he slaughtered those people because they were part of a political party that believed in multiculturalism now that's a very interesting and less binary take on the link between migration and terror those people died because multiculturalism exists those people died because there were migrants in norway they weren't migrants they weren't directly supporting migrants they weren't killed by migrants but the existence of migration whipped up a hysteria amongst one sad or crazy guy and 71 people died in an outrageous terrorist attack that's i think a more interesting sophisticated analysis of the linkages between migrants and migration and terrorism then simply saying migrants are terrorists and i've seen very little evidence at all to suggest that migrants are any more inclined to be terrorists than are any of our nationals let me give you another again anecdote around health but again just tries to illustrate the complexity and move beyond some of the the simplicity that we sometimes see health it is true and it's clear and the evidence is there that in the uk in london in particular there are certain ethnic groups amongst which there are high proponents of diseases including infectious diseases why well the research is pretty clear the answer is not because they are dirty or they come from poor countries or they wipe their bottoms with their hands or all the other stuff that you read about in newspapers the main reason in london is because they do not and cannot engage with the public health system if they are irregular migrants and many of them are they're too scared to put their head above the parapet and engage with the health system because that would mean that they would then be exposed and possibly deported at some point if you are a muslim woman from iraq who has spent your life wearing a burqa and you come to my general practice complaining of a stomach complaint i white suit will tell you to take your clothes off because i need to investigate you're not going to do there are very interesting pieces of research coming out of the uk at the moment saying that certain migrant groups either because of legal status or because of cultural understandings are not engaging as they should with the health system so why is there a health risk around migrants not necessarily again because they are unhygienic or unhealthy or come from poor countries it's because they are not engaging as they should and deserve to and we need to promote their engagement with the health system a third example and again i'm just picking out anecdotes that i hope will illustrate some of the complexity this is a more difficult and and nuanced picture than i think many people or certainly the media and many politicians understand the third is around criminality and this is the most difficult whenever i give any version of this presentation in Geneva and you can tell me and i'll be interested if anyone's brave enough to tell me you can tell me what the answer is in camera but in Geneva i always say ladies and gentlemen if god forbid you are mugged tonight at the central station in Geneva you will not be mugged by a swiss person you will be mugged by someone from north africa or the Balkans and i guarantee that's true now that's a statement it's out there and it's basically supported by any evidence you can find in Geneva again you tell me what the truth is in Melbourne or Canberra or Sydney and let's see if we can let's see if we can have that open and critical a discussion what i'm not saying is that all north africans and all Balkans people from the Balkans are criminals what i'm saying is there is a small group and it's 20 or 30 people as it happens in Geneva that are run by a gang master that pick pockets and break into cars and do a bit of beating people up and perhaps run a few drugs around that rather seedy area of Geneva around the station this is a difficult one to to deal with first you have to really encourage people to understand it's a small group you shouldn't generalize into large questions about migrants and ethnicity and religion and so on and so forth the other way we often try to deal with this and i admit that we have failed is to try to understand the context that is forcing people to do this migrants aren't intrinsically criminally minded migrants often do this because they have no alternative the uk for example where we don't allow asylum seekers to access the labor market for six months these are people who may own money to smugglers they may be under social pressure to send home money to their family they turn to crime or petty criminality in order to fill some sort of gap i'm not saying it's justifiable i'm not necessarily accepting it but i think understanding the context the reasons the drivers the background is one way to understand why some migrants some asylum seekers perhaps some refugees are turning to criminality in our societies now sadly that argument doesn't hold especially with our friends in the media and i've done many interviews in the uk where i've tried to make that case and of course the headline that comes out is asylum seekers and criminals that's that's what you've told us forget the context forget the background what you're saying is this and i'll since this is a university and since we're here i guess vaguely under the chatham house rule i think we're being recorded but i'll tell this story nevertheless um i once did a quite a nice piece of research i thought it was a good piece of research in the uk many years ago and i was an academic and this was interviewing a hundred asylum seekers in in london it was a good piece of research cleared by the ethics committee fine methodology representative sample we used interpreters we triangulated the data all the stuff that you'd expect of it of a decent piece of research out of a decent university and what did we find we found that something like 70 percent of the people we had spoken to had in one way or another transgressed the law now sometimes this is purely criminal pickpocketing sometimes more administrative but we came to the conclusion on the basis of a pretty good piece of research a pretty solid piece of research that the majority of asylum seekers with whom we had spoken had in one way or another and by the way they were willing to admit it had in one way or another transgressed the law now a professional researcher which many of you i'm sure are what do you do you've done the research it's defensible it was a good methodology you publish of course you publish that's the that's the end goal that we're all working towards as academics we didn't because we knew that if we published the daily mail our particularly ragged right wing newspaper in the uk would publish the next day esteemed academics confirm all asylum seekers are criminals and it's a very interesting almost ethical debate what do you do when your personal feelings or politics or aspirations or or desires run into conflict with what you are doing as a professional and i don't know about you but i've certainly met people working in immigration departments who have that challenge i've met people in universities who have that challenge migration has become an area where we are increasingly conflicted our masters tell us to do one thing we don't really want to feed the masters because we find it personally difficult and there's something to be said around that anyway my fourth point letters and these are very sort of obtuse examples but let us just recognize that there is not a binary relationship between migration and security it can be far more complex and nuanced and sophisticated than i think often that is understood my fifth and final point is about focusing on the real risks i regret the focus amongst my students and amongst many other people in europe again on terror on health on crime firstly because i think it runs the risk of being binary as i've said secondly because there is very little evidence at all to demonstrate to me or to you for that matter that migrants are any more likely to be terrorists or criminals or a health risk than our nationals amongst whom they settle this is not empirically proven there's lots of myths rhetoric around this the other reason i think it's a mistake is i think it risks diverting our attention from the real risks around migration and security because much as i am pro migration much as i'm pro asylum much as as rory said i have spent many years of my life dedicated to the to try to support both refugees and asylum seekers concretely but also an objective debate about them i can still stand here and say to you that in my opinion in certain circumstances there is a risk that migration runs in some of our societies and states and again that's a statement that it's all too hard to make in many places in europe and it's this is what i mean about objective debate i can there are universities in the uk where i could stand and say what i've just said in my opinion in some circumstances migration is a risk and is a threat to society into the state and people will be saying you're a racist it's outrageous i'm not a racist and i don't think it's particularly outrageous i'm trying to share with you an evidential base that says that in certain exceptional circumstances let's not generalize let's not taint the entire population but in certain circumstances there is a link between migration and security and if we can't say that and have that discussion then again i think we're in some trouble let me give you a couple of examples of where i think the real risk lies and it's not terrorism and it's not health and i don't think it's crime one is irregular migration writ large the large scale irregular migration and i think this is a more than a conceptual point it seems to me that we shouldn't expect too much any longer in this current day and age of our states but one thing we should expect of our states is that they should be able to control the border and know who is and isn't on the territory and what those people are doing and i think that's a reasonable thing to expect and it seems to me that large-scale irregular migration is a threat to the exercise of states and again i'm not talking about three or four i can't remember the last numbers but a relatively modest number of people arriving by boat what was it a third of the melbourne cricket ground would have been filled but you know let's get some perspective i'm talking about large-scale 60 000 people a day crossing into tunisia hundreds of thousands of people day leaving Syria into turkey and so on and so forth it seems to me that where you can no longer control your borders because of large-scale irregular migration that is a genuine concern and if you like a genuine threat i think there's a case to be made that there are public security concerns around migration in certain circumstances i can take you to places in london geniva many european cities you can probably take me to the similar places in melbourne and sydney and who knows camera where there is a concentration of prostitution of drug running of other illicit economies taking place many of which are run on the back of migrants most of the prostitutes in the uk and certainly in switzerland are migrants and there are pockets in cities that are becoming increasingly unsafe and out of reach because of those activities but note one thing that i'm saying i'm not saying that the migrants are criminals i'm saying that they are being exploited by criminals that's an important distinction but nevertheless some linkage between parts of our cities again in europe and certainly in north america that are out of reach that are increasingly unsafe and the linkage with migration i was in south africa last week certainly some of the areas in the big cities in south africa that are increasingly out of reach are places where you have zimbabweans and mozambican settling and in a very sort of disruptive manner so public security concerns seems to me to be a more genuine and sensible link or argument to make when you're thinking about the links between migration and security the big one and i have confounded myself on this and i no longer know where i stand is of course around integration i think what i can say is that integration isn't working or at least isn't working as effectively as we had hoped it would in places like europe the fact that you have third generation migrants and i don't think they are migrants frankly the the grandson of someone who came from pakistan 50 years ago deciding to go off to syria and cut people's heads off on camera strikes me as firstly immensely stupid and secondly some sort of really deep fundamental failing of our society what did we get so wrong that even now after 30 years you're wearing your Manchester United football shirt you went to university in the uk you are still doing this because somehow you feel alienated or disenfranchised or marginalised there's something going on with integration so i think there's a big debate we might have a discussion about integration and a failure of integration and how that is certainly destabilizing let me give you a much more parochial example of integration and and the way that it can and its failure can be a problem for society i've got a good friend who is a school teacher in central london and and he's left-wing and pro-mig I mean my sort of my sort of guy your sort of guy um he says to me teaching in this school was difficult 10 years ago because it was a class of 20 and you had three Somalis and that's kind of a challenge you've got 17 english kids or or british kids and you've got three kids who come from a difficult background who probably arrived as refugees who have a different mother tongue at home who are not fluent in english who follow a different culture you know these kids are watching tv and understand whatever neighbors eat alcove and east enders these kids do something different they have a prayer routine they eat different food it's kind of hard to make it work he says now what I have is a class of 20 with four english kids uh three Somalis two Sri lankans there's a couple of afghans and a couple of Rohingya and he says I can't I can no longer manage the class this has become an impossible class to teach and don't be surprised that the middle-class english parents are taking their kids out of the school as quickly as possible because migration has destroyed the education system in their eyes this is it's very interesting the um the the left-wing I was going to say libel but I know that's a different concept here but the left-wing the left-wing intelligentsia celebrate cosmopolitanism and transnationalism and diversity I think on the coal-faced diversity is really difficult to manage and I think that school example is a reasonable example of that a couple more and I could go on and on but a couple of more the labor market now we traditionally have understood that migrants tend not to compete in the labor market because the old line is that migrants either do work that we can't do because they're so highly skilled they're doing work that we simply not skilled enough to do think about your Indian IT engineers and so on and so forth all the work that we won't do because we consider it to be below us it's dirty dangerous difficult you know the sort of language I think increasingly and especially during a time of global recession that we're still going through there is competition in the labor market between migrants and nationals even away from those two extremes and that's certainly generating a lot of the the resentment and the xenophobia and the anti-anti-immigration political traction that we're seeing in Europe at the moment I think there is a challenge there again that needs to be analyzed and thought about two more one is the environment I don't think it applies to our countries it may I mean Australia's a fragile environment but you don't have enough migrants I don't think to damage it but you know to give you an example I did my PhD in Malawi many many years ago when one in three people in the country was a refugee this was massive deforestation this was a huge poisoning of the water table this was irrevocable damage to the environment that seems to me to be a genuine thing to lay at the door of migration large-scale migration large-scale displacement can be a genuine lasting threat to environmental security in some poor countries around the world the final point I'd make on this before concluding and I I'm probably stretching the definition of security one of my great concerns and I think I see it in Australia and I certainly see it again in in Europe the place I know best another challenge that migration is posing is that the public no longer trusts the government to run migration there is a draining of public confidence I promise you if you spoke to a hundred people in the UK and again you can tell me whether it's true in Australia if you spoke to a hundred people in the UK and said do you trust the government on migration 80% would say no the government has no idea what they are doing it's out of control there are hundreds of thousands arriving they're carrying a bowler they're committing crimes they're stealing my hospital place my kids can't get a decent education I can't even get a house and so on and so forth there's a real sense I think it's 90% wrong but there's a real sense that the government has lost control of migration and we will know and Peter certainly will know as a policymaker as a politician once you lose public confidence it's very hard indeed to win it back and the best way to win it back of course is to flex your muscles and to stop the boats and to send people home and to evict people and enforce and prosecute and persecute and so on and so forth so I think we're getting in this vicious cycle public has lost confidence in the government the government is overreacting to try to win back public confidence we're in short three four five year democratic cycles and I think we're beginning to spin our wheels in rather a dangerous way I could go on but but I don't want to bore you with any more anecdotes let me conclude I think the migration security debate is alive and kicking I think it behoves us to engage with the debate however difficult or uncomfortable or unethical or immoral you might think it is and you might I hope some of you disagree I hope some of you think it was dangerous for me to even stand up and say this and it was a mistake but I believe that we should engage I believe that if we are going to engage we equally need to recognize the risks entailed in securitizing migration and I hope I've been clear that I see those as very significant risks especially because we risk legitimizing extraordinary responses I think if we're going to engage in this debate we should try to do it in a far more analytical way than we have so far and I look forward to someone doing and I mean that's by the way another observation there's very little research on migration and security there's very little written about what I'm saying because it's become such a politically sensitive issue I dare you to try and get a book published by Oxford University Press making the argument that I've just made I think it would be very difficult we are living in a politically correct politically challenging climate where it's difficult to say to say some of these things around some of these issues fourthly complexity I gave you three rather wacky examples about terrorism and health and crime but the point is where migration and security are related let's recognize that the links are complex and finally let us focus on the real risks and in my opinion they are not terror and crime and health they're the more difficult issues around integration and public confidence and the environment and irregular migration and public security that's where the debate I think should be and that's where the policy focus should be. Thank you. I think you've challenged us in a very both balanced and provocative way and I particularly appreciate that your point about the risks of securitizing migration have been made under Rabana of the National Security College so there's a note of irony there but I think I think one of the points of debate that we might engage in is is securitizing a problem automatically a pathway to justifying extraordinary measures because it would be nice if security could be seen in an inclusive way as a way to actually encourage in wider community buy in the solution but that's just a debating point maybe through under the conversation. I'll open the floor to questions and comments. I've got one or two questions to my own but I don't want to monopolize so I'll start perhaps with a comment or a question from the room. Thank you. My name's Shobha Varki I'm an ex-UNHCR worker. I also live in Canberra Australia for the last 35 years. I agree with you completely. The media, the xenophobia, the ignorance and the resource scarcity are causing these issues to flare up. If we had 30-40 years ago you come as a migrant to Australia welcome with open arms there's lots of food there's lots of work etc etc my questions are we have 200 nationalities living in Australia why is it suddenly becoming an issue about migration? That's a question. I liked your definitions and I wish we had clear definitions as people muddle it all up. What is a migrant? What is a refugee? What is an asylum seeker? And people use them interchangeably which is unfortunate. Dr. Koza if you stay longer I'd like you to see how multiculturalism is thriving and well in Canberra. We have as I said 200 countries people from 200 countries who live here. ISN and Al Qaeda etc they are using vulnerable youth young people and radicalising them. What do you think of Australia's current issue with revoking citizenship? When are the water and food wars going to start or have they already started? And what can Australia do because this is all preventable and it's just as I said earlier that's what's causing it. Thank you. We have three questions there and I think that gives you the right to answer only one or two. It is a very useful commentary please. Shall I make a list or do you want to take an address? Okay thank you thanks and I wish you could have a long very briefly. I mean there's a big there's a as you said 30 or 40 years ago people came to Australia and indeed Europe and were largely welcomed and the concept is there was an interest convergence it was in their interest to come it was in our interest to take them and what do we have to do to rebuild that interest convergence and I think in Europe and again I'm not here to speak about Australia because I don't know Australia well enough and I don't come here often enough. In Europe there is the potential for interest convergence we are facing a demographic time bomb we need millions more workers we need migrants what migrants are young fertile people who work hard that is exactly what Europe needs as I mentioned one of the things I do is work with it not work voluntary work with the world economic forum and most of our work is about trying to bring the private sector together with government and the private sector in Europe is saying please let us bring in millions of migrants we need them and your obsession with and it's understandable of course you've got a responsibility but your obsession with security and visas and slowing down the process and bureaucracy and red tape means that we are losing out so please can we find a way to resolve that so can we find a new form of interest convergence I don't know but we need to think about it. I think your point is really well taken I had this debate with at least one person in this room earlier yes are we talking about migrants as in people who have arrived during their lifetime and indeed many of those have now become citizens or are we talking about Australian citizens who's happened to have a grandmother who is Sri Lankan and I think that's a really I mean in my analytical framework that's a really important point because I don't define I'm the son of a migrant but I don't define myself as a migrant I have some sympathy towards migration and but I'm not a migrant so if I go off the rails I don't think it's a failure of migration I think it's a failure of the UK right so I think we do need to make that distinction um and again I'm we're on the record so I'll be very careful I don't know enough about the debate about the dual citizenship here but I would say two things it seems to me that a country has a responsibility towards its citizens and secondly it does seem to me that cutting out one part of citizenship and making this another country's problem isn't the most charitable way to go. Thank you very much for your wonderful talk my name is Jeff Lazarus I'm school teacher taught lots of kids from from migrant backgrounds and I just thought to sort of make the observation that the problem in Australia is really more so in terms of refugees and attitudes towards refugees and for many decades Australia I think was a very successful multicultural society which was able to incorporate different migrant groups sort of successfully largely successfully into the country but the problem we have is in the last 20 or 30 years and this applies to Europe is that our major political parties seem to be influenced far too much by the sort of corporate sector there's far too much transference of wealth going on to that sort of top 1% and it's left a group of Australians who were on incomes of maybe 30,000 to 50,000 haven't got a good trade not university sort of educated experience highly was a financial and economic insecurity and that is the driver for a lot of the sort of racism in Australia right there's widespread racism in Australia but it's actually very superficial and it's the financial economic insecurity which drives it and I think I suspect that it is the case in Europe even more so and in a sort of funny way you're talking about Europe and I'm thinking about Australia reflecting on Australian things oh god thank god we haven't got that problem we haven't got this problem we haven't got that problem but the potential is is obviously there but that wonderful work done by Professor Joseph Sticklitz and there's an economist at Oxford University who's also brought a book out on that type of analysis I think it's incredibly important as an underlying shape shaping of people's attitudes and behaviour thank you will you want to respond to that again it's helpful I came here to learn from you about Australia that's a gradient side into Australia and this is not an Australian problem for sure across Europe from whatever from Ireland to Poland you can draw the line there is a real rise of xenophobia of anti-immigration sentiment of let's be honest anti-Islamic sentiment this is this is an Islamic issue at least in in in my part of the world it is of political parties making huge capital out of this and of a real sense that Europe's in trouble I mean we are the the the left-wing the sensible debate on migration has been lost and I think you're right a lot of it is about nationals who feel that they're losing out and they haven't got enough money and so on and so forth and I'm sure that's part of the process Hi Dr Cozer look David Goyne I was very taken by your point about a loss of faith in government and I wonder if just the immigration sector is just a symptom of a much wider loss of faith in government right across the spectrum of government it just strikes me that you know we've got this uh switched to parties of the left or right at extremes in a way we would not have had 20 years ago because people have lost faith in the ability of government to manage their lives thanks so well when I I I once a couple of years ago taught a group of american students and I made this point that in my opinion in your country america as well as in europe the public has lost confidence in the government on migration how would you respond to that and these students all said to me we've lost confidence in the government to do anything not just migration as you say migration is just a symptom but what I would say and I I I I reflect on this elsewhere I think a mistake that migration policymakers make is not to learn lessons from other spheres of public policy um because you we have had food crises we've had nuclear crises we've had crises over all sorts of things where public confidence has drained away and has been recovered it can be done and I think it sort of behoves if I'm right and there is a draining of public confidence for migration let's see how the japanese public's confidence was rebuilt after that nuclear disaster let's see how britain's belief in eating beef was rebuilt even though we slaughtered every single cow because of mad cow disease and so on and so forth it can be done let's see how it was done and I think I often think that migration people and policymakers don't look enough at other sectors to think about that and I think you're you know you're largely right and of course you'll know that the research published by the wonderful oxford university press he says looking straight at the camera um increasingly this is true for migration as in many other things this is about cities this is no longer about the the state and I think increasingly cities will become an important part of our governance structure in many issues but especially around my mostly migrants go to cities if there are problems they're in cities if there are benefits they're in cities let's get the city mayors involved because that's where that's where the action is I think thanks for all the waiting for another question from the group and there is one up the back there I'm just going to jump in with a I guess a broader question about about terrorism and migration but terrorism and multicultural society I think one of the risks that many of us see is not purely in the scale of a potential terrorist act and often the casualty numbers are really small but the impact on social cohesion now in multicultural societies whether it's Australia whether it's united kingdom whether it's europe or elsewhere it would be interesting if you could make a comment on I guess how you see the link between terrorism as a tool as a tactic and multicultural society is almost as a target in other words the target is tolerance and trust within a country now how how do you see government managing the risk of the aftermath of terrorist attacks maintaining social cohesion in the context of migration it's a it's a you're more expert than I worry on this and I haven't thought through it in much detail I did once write a blog I think for Lowy where I said that far from migrants being the source of terrorism migration is the way to stop terrorism because there's no better way to stop terrorism than multiculturalism if we can generate understanding in our societies then hopefully less people will go off the rails and become extremists and so on and so forth so I see multiculturalism as part of the answer not not the other way around I'm not sure that many I don't know but I'm not sure that many terrorist groups go out to attack multiculturalism I think they might go out to attack our way of life and our standards and what we believe in and perhaps our particular religion and I'm not sure that multiculturalism is necessarily their target neither do I and I hope I haven't been being I hope I haven't underestimated our public I don't think the public fall for it I don't think many people in the public at least in in the continent where I live in Europe would would make the mistake of saying that terrorism is a demonstration that multiculturalism somehow is a problem I think most most people celebrate multiculturalism and recognise that one or two terrorist are people who have gone gone off the rails and let's not forget you know the great and we haven't mentioned the work I'm doing for the global fund the great burden of extremism terrorism lies in Nigeria and Syria and Pakistan the Charlie Hebdo attack was terrible and it killed 19 people your link cafe attack was awful and it killed a handful of people the burden of this is in often not multicultural single culture places in other parts of the world yeah thank you just a general member of the public so I have nothing to announce before my question but I was just curious about the idea of extraordinary measures and you know the debate and how it can lead to that sort of being justified and particularly in reference to asylum seekers and refugees about what is maybe initially deemed as an extraordinary measure but then slowly becomes normal as that sort of you know become part of I guess the infrastructure and I think for example offshore detention was perhaps the beginning viewed as extraordinary and now has become sort of accepted as a tool in addressing asylum seekers and today you know there's been a lot of focus on direct payments to people smugglers and whether that took place and whether that's justified as an extraordinary measure to turn people back and deter irregular migration so I guess you know here extraordinary measures that definition of what is extraordinary keep shifting as things become acceptable and I'm just curious that's happening here in Australia and there's been conversation that perhaps in Europe some of these policies might actually be copied to address some of the issues there so I'm just curious to what you think about whether these are extraordinary anymore and whether you see that shift continuing as people sort of going down this ends justifies the means sort of logic if I've articulated myself clearly. You have, superbly, yes I mean one of the one of the realities of extraordinary measures is they become normalized fairly quickly you know I'm sure 10 years ago we were all up in arms about Guantanamo Bay that was the the poor example I used and now it's just one of those things and you know President Obama promised to close the campaign hasn't that we understand why and so we just kind of put up with it and I guess I guess the same in Australia you know I'm sure there was I'm sure there still is huge outrage amongst advocates about some of these offshore processing and turnbacks of boats and so on and so forth but it's now policy and we kind of put up with it and it's off the headlines and so on and so forth so not only and I take your point Rory you know securitization isn't doesn't have to be a bad thing but not only he in this context is securitization risking legitimizing extraordinary responses but those responses soon become accepted and absorbed and part of the commonplace which means you have to go even further and ramp it up even further to try to make a difference so the normalization of the extraordinary I think is is a point I don't know enough and I don't think the evidence is there yet on this question of where the boats are being paid to go back but if they are it's a pretty astounding finding so let's wait and see what happens there because that's that's a that's a pretty extraordinary response to be paying criminals to take people whose lives are in risk back to a country where there isn't a protection system I think is an unfortunate thing the final thing I'd say is there's been much you know I'm in Geneva and Geneva is rather critical of Australia and many other places are there's been a lot of attention in Australia and I think Australia's policies have been rather extraordinary but we have equally extraordinary responses in Europe as well this isn't just an Australian issue I think you've been more exposed or more extreme or more explicit about it but you know and I'm on the record behind closed doors in Europe lots of policymakers are quite jealous of what Australia's doing we wish we could do it thanks dr. Kosser since the last change of government we've seen the settlement and multicultural affairs functions of the Department of Immigration move over to the social services portfolio and I was wondering from what you've seen internationally is this part of a trend and what do you think are the ramifications of such changes it's nice to see you Chris thanks for the question again I certainly don't know enough about what's happening in terms of the institutional changes here in Australia let me just make a couple of non-Australian specific observations which may or may not apply to Australia one is that you see I think around the world a sort of and I kind of I think this was one of the risks of securitisation I mentioned a sort of a lack of clarity and a lack of consensus about where immigration and different parts of immigration integration immigration social services lies and I think there's a different and there's a I think an unfortunate amount of change around the allocation of responsibilities with institutions for these different parts how you slice up migration how you allocate it I think changes quite often one of the implications European context you can tell me whether it's true here or not is a huge sense of insecurity and dissatisfaction amongst people working in those departments and I you know I remember giving a presentation to every head of immigration department in Europe and I basically said to these whatever it was 25 men I think they're all men would you describe your departments as happy are your staff satisfied and they basically said no and so too much insecurity too much change too much political fiddling I don't think it's I don't think it's good for for morale for confidence for public servants doing what they're supposed to do thanks one more question that I might ask you while we're waiting for another question from the floor and this is about about legal migration about regular and legal migration because a lot of the concerns that you've identified in changing political attitudes or changing social attitudes or securitisation obviously has a bearing on the way key countries respond to irregular migration how is it affecting their responses to or their management of legal migration because of course there would be policy makers in Australia who would argue that in fact a greater emphasis can or should be placed on on legal migration to really substitute for large large numbers of irregular migrants thanks and I guess here I can speak with Australia I think you know I would go out there and say that I think Australia is a still a model and a champion on legal migration I think you've got a a legal migration system that is the envy of most of the world everyone always says Australia and Canada are the two kind of models and there are criticisms but they're out there you do resettle refugees which is is I think something that really needs to be reinforced you may be treating asylum seekers in a particularly in a not particularly palatable way but you are still I think the second or third largest resettlement country in the world it's still not enough by the way but it's certainly more than the UK and any other European country so I think Australia is good on legal migration and is making some difficult policies on irregular migration and perhaps that's justified in the European context they are bleeding into one another we have I mean we you know the European Union free movement of labour we have British parties on both sides of the spectrum lamenting the fact that so many Poles and Eastern Europeans are coming and working and paying taxes in the UK this so this xenophobia has lost its distinction it's not just about irregular migrants or about the asylum seekers who are not genuine refugees it's just a concern about migration in general and I don't I may be wrong but I don't sense that in Australia yet but I certainly do sense that in Europe I think there would be less concern here about the the payment of taxes per time now look that's that's um that's I guess a useful point of context and I I certainly don't throw that in as a kind of a a balance or a defensive measure from an Australian policy point of view but it's interesting to see that in some countries there's a risk of legal migration being challenged or threatened by the concerns that you raise and that's something we obviously are very keen to avoid here um we can take one or two more questions from the the room before we uh we close proceedings and I invite you all to join us for a a drink afterwards so please if there's any more um there's one one lady up the back thank you do you think a migration poses much of a risk to gender equality in western societies um thank you it's a great question I I haven't thought about it I mean if what you're I guess what you're suggesting is that some migrants come from patriarchal societies and and are not respecting women's rights even when they're settling in our countries I I imagine what you're suggesting and it's absolutely a problem I mean the again in the UK and the european context it is we have a we have migrants coming from pretty patriarchal pretty difficult societies and not adjusting quickly enough to what our standards and way of living is and you know I'm very strong on this integration is a two-way process you the migrant have got to make as much effort as I the state and you know and without being very crass about this if you're coming as a as a guest or even a refugee then I expect you to make the effort I expect you to certainly obey the law I expect you to make the effort to learn the language and I expect you to make the effort to to you know not give up your culture I'm not I don't need to the French model of assimilation I don't need to become a French person I don't think that's the way to go but at least I expect you to to understand and sympathize and behave in a way that I consider to be and my country considers to be decent so no female gentle mutilation no no educate your children make sure that women have the right to go to work and leave the house and those sorts of things and it is a problem I mean I don't think it's a huge problem in in the UK but there is there is an element of that yeah thank you look at there are no more questions from the from the group I'll I'll call proceedings to a close Dr Kelza that was a really I think illuminating and provocative presentation as we hoped and expected we we take that away and we we we hope that we'll have it play its part in wider research thinking and policy debate in this country I'm very pleased that the National Security College has had the opportunity to work with the corporate school and are the host of your visit in convening this event today we look forward to you joining us all for a drink and to meet our audience shortly but friends and colleagues I want to now invite you all to show your appreciation of today's event please join us for a drink