Reykjavík Grapevine - 13.04.2007, Blaðsíða 4
0_REYKJAVÍK_GRAPEVINE_ISSUE 04_007_INTERVIEW/POLITICS
Eiríkur Bergmann is an Associate Professor
and director of the Centre for European
Studies at Bifröst University. He recently
published a book called Opið land – staða
Íslands í samfélagi þjóðanna, or Open
land – Iceland’s Place in the International
Society. In his book, Bergmann examines the
relationship between Iceland and the outside
world. While immigration issues have been
put on the agenda by Icelandic politicians
for the upcoming parliamentary elections,
Bergmann’s book offers a valuable insight
into the issue. A Grapevine reporter asked
Bergmann a few questions about the book
and about immigration issues in particular.
Tell us a bit about the book.
What I try to do in the book is to look at
the relationship between Iceland and the
outside world and try to find common roots
for Iceland’s position on issues relating to
foreign policy, such as the EU, the relationship
with the US and the former US military base
in Keflavík, globalisation, and immigration
issues. I believe there is a common root for
Iceland’s conservative position on foreign
policy that can be traced back to Iceland’s
struggle for independence.
There is a certain nationalism in our ideas
about the Icelandic nation that are different
from other European nations because
nineteenth-century European liberalism
never reached Iceland in the same way it
did other European countries. European
liberalism was based on the demand for
freedom of the individual, the demand for
freedom of commerce, etc., but here in
Iceland the focus was not on the individual
– rather on the nation as a whole, almost as
an organic bodily whole – which gives us a
slightly different idea of the Icelandic nation.
I think that this in some ways explains our
fear of immigrants, the idea of the purity of
the organic body that is the Icelandic nation.
You have claimed that Iceland has the
strictest immigration policy in the free
Western hemisphere, please elaborate
a bit.
In order to reach that conclusion, you have to
look at how the immigration policy appears
in Icelandic laws, the part that is directed at
influx restrictions, and stipulates who can
actually enter the country. These regulations
are really twofold. On one hand, there are
mutual regulations adopted from the EU
through the EEA agreement, which stipulate
that citizens from the EU area all have
employment rights here. This is a decision that
was taken jointly by the European nations in
Brussels; Icelanders never made that decision
for themselves. After the enlargement of the
EU, this applies to the countries in Eastern
European that have recently joined the EU as
well.
But once you look beyond the joint
European regulations and towards people
outside the EU – i.e. the part of the
regulations that we can decide for ourselves
– then you have the strictest immigration
policies in the free democratic world. We
have adopted Danish and, to some extent,
Norwegian immigration regulations. We
have applied the strictest parts of their
regulations, including highly debatable
clauses like the 24-year clause stipulating that
an immigrant’s spouse must be 24 years old
to acquire a residents’ permit. There is also a
66-year rule, stipulating that an immigrant’s
parents must be 66-years old to acquire a
residents’ permit. It could be argued that
these laws are in violation of the European
Convention on Human Rights, but the issue
has never been put to the test.
In addition, there is the strange decision by
the Icelandic government that work permits
for foreigners are issued to the employer,
not the employee, which means that foreign
workers are dependent upon their employers
and are not able to move freely. This could
also be regarded as a violation of human
rights, since the employee does not have
freedom of occupation, which is supposed
to be guaranteed according to the Icelandic
Constitution.
On top of that, Icelanders do not accept
refugees seeking asylum. I have not been
able to find another western country that
does not accept asylum seekers. Only one
person has been granted asylum in Iceland;
others have been refused based on the
Dublin Convention. Iceland always applies
the strictest resources and when you add
these facts up, the conclusion is that Iceland
has the strictest immigration policy in the
free democratic world. I have at least not
found an example of stricter policies.
You mentioned two possible violations
of human rights conventions in Icelandic
immigration laws. Why do you think
law-makers have taken such extreme
measures for immigration laws?
There is an underlying fear of foreigners and
immigrants in our society. Some people fear
that large groups of foreigners will come
streaming to Iceland and somehow disrupt
the fabric of our society. In reality, there is
nothing to support this fear. If you look at the
position of immigrants in Icelandic society,
you will see that there are about 25,000
people of foreign nationality in Iceland.
Immigrants are about 6% of the Icelandic
population, but they are about 10% of the
active work force in the country, which tells
us that the level of employment among
immigrants is much higher than the current
level of employment in the country, which
again tells us that foreigners are coming here
to work.
Many of them are only working here
temporarily on big building projects that are
underway and that explains the great influx
of foreign work force right now, but there is
nothing that suggests that this will continue,
not unless people want to build an aluminium
smelter in every town. If we compare this, or
set up an equation, then there are 30,000
Icelanders living abroad. That is, there are
more Icelanders living in foreign countries
than foreigners living in Iceland. We are at
a deficit; we are 5,000 foreigners short of
breaking even.
In addition, all studies suggest that
immigrants financially benefit the Icelandic
society. Two recent economic studies – one
by Kaupþing bank, the other by Landsbanki
bank – both show that in 2006 every person
in the country greatly benefited financially
from the foreign workers in Iceland. We
would have been further in debt without
them, inflation would have been higher, and
we would have had less money between your
hands if they were not here. The question
then is, what explains this fear that we are
witnessing in the public discourse.
Well…?
The only explanation I can find is rooted in
our ideas about the Icelandic nation. Historian
Guðmundur Hálfdánarson has shown that in
Iceland a different kind of idea of nationality
developed, different from the rest of Europe
where more liberal ideas developed which
focused on freedom of the individual
and freedom of commerce. Here, a more
conservative idea of nationality developed,
where the onus was not on freedom of the
individual, but freedom of the nation, where
the nation is personified as an organic bodily
whole, or a body of its own. A great influx
of foreigners changes that body. It becomes
a different body, and people start to fear
things such as diseases and politicians start
talking about looking for tuberculosis in
foreigners and so on. I think that is rooted
in this idea of nationality and the fear that
the national body will become impure and
deteriorate with the influx of foreigners.
What you are saying is that there is no
logical reason for this fear of foreigners,
but rather it is all based on the Icelandic
ideology of nationality?
Yes, I think that is at the heart of it. You
cannot find any factual support for this fear,
other than the idea of the composition of the
nation and the fear that it will change. But
this is in line with a certain axis of conflict
that has always been present in Iceland.
That is the conflict between what we might
call “isolationists” and “internationalists.”
Almost every controversial issue regarding
the relationship between Iceland and foreign
countries has been affected by the conflict
between those two groups, whether is was
over membership of EFTA, membership
of NATO, the EU, fear of globalisation,
protecting the pure Icelandic language,
protecting the pure Icelandic agriculture, etc.
The immigration issue is the conflict about
the pure Icelandic nation.
There has always been a conflict between
those who want to open up society and those
who want to close it, and right now there
is a conflict between the isolationists and
internationalists over the immigration issue.
I believe Iceland still has a chance to develop
a successful co-existence of immigrants and
natives, but you do not do that by stirring
up the peace with immigrants like some
Icelandic political parties have done. You
do that by forming and installing an active
and integral assimilation policy. Such a policy
does not exist in Iceland right now. The
Minister for Social Affairs recently introduced
an assimilation policy which mainly focuses
on the language barrier. There are other
things needed for successful assimilation.
What are you thinking about specifically?
We need to address such issues as ghetto
formations for example. In neighbouring
countries, we have seen how immigrant
ghettos have formed, where immigrants have
moved into the cheapest neighbourhoods
in the city. As foreigners move into the
neighbourhood, the natives move out and
then the politicians lose interest in the
neighbourhood and it starts to deteriorate.
Next thing you know, you have a ghetto,
which will polarise society and eventually
you will have a conflict like what we saw in
France recently.
We can see the first signs of this
development in certain neighbourhoods
here in Reykjavík, and this is what we need
to eliminate here in Iceland. We can do that
by installing an official policy for distributed
residence of immigrants, where we would
encourage immigrants to move to certain
neighbourhoods by granting them financial
incentives. This would be easy to do, city and
state officials grant different kinds of financial
assistance to different sorts of groups. That
is how we manage society. Another thing
that needs to be done is to provide financial
incentives for civil society to get immigrants
involved in its operations. The government
pays large sums of money to organisations
like sports clubs or the scout movement. If
you use some of this money as an incentive
to get foreigners involved in their operation,
you are making the whole community active
in the assimilation. That is what an integrated
assimilation policy looks like.
Pure Body – Pure Nation
Text by Sveinn Birkir Björnsson Photo by Skari
Two recent economic studies both show that in
2006 every person in the country greatly ben-
efited financially from the foreign workers in
Iceland.