Towards the start of the current crisis I was involved in a debate in Athens about what Europe’s policies towards the immigration situation should be. While presenting my argument I made the observation that the others present (including the Greek economist Antigone Lyberaki and the French politician and activist Bernard Kouchner) were likely to tell the audience that ‘nothing could be done’. Only afterwards when Bernard put down his pre-prepared speech did I see that he had crossed out the first line before his delivery. The speech was indeed due to open with the insistence that Europe could not stop the flow coming into Greece and that ‘nothing could be done’. It is a familiar cry, though when alerted to it the wiser politicians often realise that it is a potentially disastrous one. Meanwhile leading politicians including, in 2015, Britain’s then Home Secretary, Theresa May, have claimed that European countries must try to improve living standards in third-world countries in order to prevent people coming here. Yet the truth is — as many studies have shown — that it is only when living standards rise (though hardly to luxurious levels) that the mass migration truly begins. Truly poor people do not have the money to bribe the smugglers.

There are also attempts to give this view a veneer of academic respectability. In recent years a line has grown in academic discourse around the subject of migration, which insists that migration flows are actually caused by any and all migration controls. The work of, among others, Hein de Haas of the universities of Oxford and Maastricht, insists that migration controls not only do not work but actually boost migration by discouraging the normal circulation of migrants between Europe and their home countries. A favourite line in academia, this is also of course an argument that is only ever made by people who oppose any and all controls on migration.