In his speech at the opening of the academic year, Rector, Professor Juanito Camilleri, sought to address what is now being termed as the "liberal guilt” related to the disastrous effect that the indiscriminate use of fossil fuels is having on the world’s environment. He aired his preoccupations towards a possible future population shift in the Mediterranean. The Malta Independent was the newspaper that gave most importance to the demographic aspect of the Rector’s speech and provocatively headed its report ‘…migration in the Med so far 'not even an appetizer of things to come'. Our Rector’s predictions were based on what will happen in a few years’time. As a result of climate change, Malta has only a gloomy future awaiting her where population is concerned.
Yet, this population speech failed to take into consideration a number of important variables related to population growth and decline; the first one is the aspect of fertility. Fertility was only taken in the context of Malta but not for those countries from which the in-coming migrants are coming from. In our case, the low level of fertility clearly expresses the need for more immigrantsin Malta.
All the countries that are being previewed, as potential invaders of Europe, haveentered into what is called demographic transition. In simple words, they are practising methods of birth control. The rest is media sensation.
Even in a natural demographic regime - that is - among populations that do not practise any measures of birth control - fertility is not constant. Studies are showing that wars and drastic environmental changes cause fertility decline. For these reasons,the Rector’s discourse reminded me of similar declarations that the radical left made in the 70s about the causes of future wars. They pontificated that wars in the future are not going to be about the “black gold”(as fossil fuels were called back then) but for water. Today, we are living in that same future predicted inthese political speeches but no war for water (big or small) has yet materialized. The wars that are ongoing in the world are for other reasons!
The reason for all this is due to the fact that population predictions fail to take into consideration the plasticity ofpopulation growth or decline. No doubt, fertility decline will have a natural effect on future migratory movements.
In the case of climate change, I wishtoreferto works by the French scholar Jean-Noël Biraben. He had studied climate change in relation to the breakout of the plague in Europe. His demographic conclusions are that climate change brought mass mortality and fertility decline to those countries mostly hit by this phenomenon. More importantly, this was not followed by any extraordinary migratory movements. On the contrary, people on the move helped to mitigate the negative effects that these plagues had on population. In simple words, immigration and mobility were positive for those countries affected most by climate change.
The Rector forewarned us that we are going to lose our “Malteseness”. I am sure that the principal elements that constitute “Malteseness” today are totally different from those of five hundred years ago. The spokenMaltese offive centuries ago is barely comprehensible today. Our first ‘Maltese’ language document, PietroCaxaro’s poem, stands in my support and till now this linguistic shift has not been associated with migration. If one has time to read Massimo Levi-Baci’s basic textbook, A Concise History of World Population, one would be spared from these types of overstretched statements that can only serve to increase the demagogic fear that Malta is going to be invaded by “aliens” in a few years.
The Rector’s preoccupation is that forced migration (of whatever type and nature) causes social and economic dislocation. In turn this upsets the existing balance within the native society.Each time that Europe (or any other part of the World) was faced with a natural calamity, it expressed the power of demographic revival.
While the Rector sought to give importance to regional-specific evaluations, prompting him to project future demographic situations as problematic,he also failed to make allowances forpolitical blowsand natural calamities. These causes shift in demographic progression and show why mega-predictions are dodgy.
Levi-Baci convincingly shows that the timing, the scale and the duration related to population change may vary and historical situations have a significant role to play in demographic dynamics. And here is another explanation why it is risky to predict a future mass migration in Europe:not all historical situations are predictable.
Perhaps, we in Europe are conditioned by the fact that ruinous processes of depopulation are not new to history. Europeans were the main cause for the depopulation of vast areas in the American continent from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Wars, famineand diseases did not only bring on displacement of individuals but the wiping out of entire populations.
On the other hand, the current war in Syria iscausing unnecessary alarm. A former student of mine, Ms. Vanessa Camilleri,has written a brilliant B.A. (Hons) dissertation about theway Western media misread the demographic dimension of the war in Libya. The projections back then were of a mass exodus of Libyans towardsEurope. The only ‘invasion’ that took place came from the “visa” scam perpetrated by greedy and corrupt bureaucrats here in Malta. The number of ‘aliens’ who benefited from this scam exceeds by far the number of irregular migrants that till now have invaded our sacred land.
Where I concur with the Rector ison the apocalyptic dimension that the uprooting of populations, could have on a country because such a demographic impact is bigger and more devastating than deadly diseases. But unlike what he implied, the impact isdeadly for the country of origin rather than for the receiving country. What is not being saidis that historical processes show that in such situations, the traditionalconcept of the familyis destined to make a comeback in those areas suffering from population decline. For those who forecast only problems concerning demographic growth through migration, I wish to remind them what Adam Smith, the founder of modern economic thought, had to say about this matter: “The most decisive mark of the prosperity of any country is the increase of the number of its inhabitants”.