Two current books teach us that Homer was right
Published 04.30
“The Long Scam” by Christian Lindell & Alex Voronov
“Foreign Nation” by Ece Temelkuran
The last time have I spent reading about “The Odyssey”. One thing I have been struck by is that despite the fact that the Greek states were constantly at war with each other there were strict regulations that refugees should be received with hospitality. Freshly slaughtered calves, wine in chiseled goblets, oils and gold-embroidered chiton for the stranger were almost a duty for the recipient. When Odysseus’ son Telemachos comes as a refugee to Pylos, for example, he makes the whole kingdom come alive. King Nestor emerges from the fog of old age and offers horses and jacks to the seeker.
Anachronistically, I think of it as the Homeric refugee policy. It stands on two legs: the realization that we can all be exiled one day and that hospitality benefits the receiving country. Oddly enough, it seems Homer understand the implications of the refugees better than our Swedish ministers.
For daring to test the idea that all you have learned about immigration is wrong.
Year 2021 was published a revolutionary book by the political scientist Peo Hansen with the title “The Migration Myth”, and it claims precisely that we have not understood anything. Unfortunately, it had a much greater impact in the Anglo-Saxon sphere than here. In the book, Hansen argued that the whole idea of immigrants being a burden is based on a faulty analogy, likening states to households – with expenses that must be matched by income. That’s not how it works: States with their own currency cannot end up in a “cost crisis”, if money is missing they can only print new ones and the risk is instead inflation. That which Jimmie Åkesson to claim that the nursing home pensioners receive worse care because we take in Afghan boys is based on the wrong analogy – and is therefore pure bullshit.
Hansen turns all our assumptions about immigration on their head. The “refugee crisis” in 2015 was not a disaster for Sweden – but a success. The unaccompanied young men were a success story. Rather than being a “burden”, immigrants come here and save welfare, care, care, agriculture and depopulated areas.
Maybe the Hansens agree leaden argumentation slowly sinking into the population. The signs are scattered – but several. After the criticism against the teenage deportations reached storm force, the government reversed. The municipal lack of interest in the return migration grant was a nationwide rebellion. And in Ekot’s Saturday interview got Nooshi Dadgostar the question of whether we received too many in 2015?
Without hesitation, she answered “No”.
It hadn’t happened just a year ago.
Another sign is the newly published book “The Long Scam” by Alex Voronov and Christian Lindell. It is written with a liberal fury over how business organizations and civil opinion leaders built up a false narrative about immigration. Which in turn was swallowed wholeheartedly by both social democrats and moderates. Did you think that the employment gap between the domestic and foreign-born increased during the 21st century? On the contrary, it has greatly decreased. Do you think that more and more people are unemployed in immigrant-dense suburbs? The development is the opposite: Unemployment is decreasing in Rinkeby and Husby. And that subsidy dependency that the Tidö government is constantly talking about – it is also greatly reduced.
Several times Voronov and Lindell borrow from other immigration debaters – without citing the source. Like Hansen, they argue that refugee reception functions as a stimulus policy for depopulating municipalities. And as Sandro Scocco in “And some, I guess, are ok!” they show how “self-sufficiency” is a completely useless concept. Immigrants have a low degree of “self-sufficiency” and are thus a burden because they pay less in taxes than they receive in public payments, bourgeois opinion leaders claim almost daily. But as Voronov and Lindell show, the same can be said about, ptja, native women who perform housekeeping, child care and elderly care. Surely it would be comical if we considered these as a “burden” while an entrepreneur who builds autonomous weapons systems and steals music is seen as an asset? Well, that’s exactly what right-wing debaters do.
Even if I would have liked greater recognition of earlier research, “The Long Scam” is like fresh air in a mold-damaged room. Above all, it shows how middle-class opinion leaders and politicians raked the arena for the Sweden Democrats. By talking about immigrants in terms of dependency on benefits, exclusion, and by repeatedly pitting the costs of immigration against welfare. Do you remember Fredrik Reinfeldt “Open your hearts” speech in 2014? What has subsequently become the symbol of naive refugee-hugging. Reinfeldt’s message was in fact that we will not be able to afford to strengthen welfare now that so many refugees are arriving. Blåsippan’s road was paved by the tidy bourgeoisie. Voronov in particular should be praised for his courage, as former political editor of the bourgeois Eskilstuna-Kuriren.
But back to the Homeric refugee policy. The economic benefits are argued very convincingly by Voronov and Lindell. But the other leg, the humanistic one – that is, that it is right to welcome strangers – then?
I find that in Ece Temelkurans newly released “Foreign Nation”. She is a Turkish essayist and novelist who left her homeland in 2016 and now lives in Berlin. The book – which Karin Pettersson already written about here – is a tentative attempt to find what can be affirmed in the refugee identity. By 2070, three billion people are expected to have lost their homes. To some extent, we must all prepare to become refugees. When I read the book, I will think Gunnar Ekelöfs words: “I am not at home in this country / but this country behaves like home in me”. Teaching us to think like that is an existential homework.
“Främlingsnationen” is a lively essay that sometimes annoys me. For example, Temelkuran uses the word “fascism” so that the concept becomes nebulous and ultimately denotes everything that is wrong with the present. But if you equip yourself with patience, sometimes a poetic precision emerges. Like when she observes a man from Yemen who, in front of a case manager, points out that he is “actually a brain surgeon”. During the second conversation, the man stopped talking about his profession. And the third time he has taken off his tie. Temelkuran observes a “reverse Pygmalion” – where the parts that do not work in the new country are removed. When the man receives a residence permit, he cries “dark matter”, like someone who has just been let into a bunker.
“The Long Scam” and “Främlingsnationen” are two quite different books. But both are trying to rethink immigration and flight. The former by pointing to the many advantages of Homeric hospitality. The second by showing that we must all prepare to lose our Ithaca in the future. Our home – our shell – must become other people.
Rasmus Landström is Aftonbladet’s literature editor.
NON PROSE
» The long scam. Myths about Sweden, work and immigration
Christian Lindell & Alex Voronov
Flying
ESSAY
» The Stranger Nation. A home for the displaced
Ece Temelkuran
Trans. Nika Abiri
Word front
