At Ceuta’s Fence, Europe Prices Human Beings as Nuisance Goods

The spectacle at Ceuta began, we are told, not with some slow deliberation of councils, but with the sudden passage of tens of thousands from Morocco into a European enclave. It is said that people crossed in such numbers that the event has been called an attack on territorial integrity, and that accusations fly that the movement was, if not orchestrated, at least permitted by the neighbouring power. A week before, many of these same persons were workers, neighbours, or idle but harmless youth; once over a painted line, they became, by a strange magic of politics, an invasion. The human beings remained the same; only the incentives of states, officials and publics were altered.

In my inquiry into the wealth of nations, I observed that the division of labour is limited by the extent of the market. Here the extent of the market widened in an instant, yet no one speaks of new trades, only of new threats. The same hands that once served in hospitality, in agriculture, or in petty commerce, stand now in limbo on the streets of Ceuta. The labour they might have contributed is suspended between jurisdictions. States hurry to restore the old boundary, not by better commerce, but by a floating barrier in the sea and new fences upon the shore. Where roads and ports once enlarged opulence, barriers now diminish it.

We are informed that the current protocol is to treat even unaccompanied minors as regular migrants and return them to Morocco. This is a rule admirably simple for the convenience of the authorities, and admirably blind to any particular claims of weakness or desert in the children themselves. In my book on moral sentiments, I argued that we judge conduct by imagining an impartial spectator, well-informed yet disinterested. That spectator may understand the soldier who obeys orders, and the minister who fears a precedent; but he will still feel that to bundle children back across a line, as one would return contraband, lacks that praise-worthiness which alone makes obedience honourable.

No one in this drama acts without motive. Those who crossed the border hope, we are told, for a better life; those on the European side are made to fear a so‑called invasion. Between them stand politicians who, as one observer notes, play games over the lives of people on both sides of the fence. I have long distrusted the petitions of merchants; the petitions of statesmen deserve no less suspicious attention. When they clamour for stronger borders, for physical barriers, for offshore centres that may degenerate into what some already call human‑rights black holes, they speak loudly of security and humanity, and softly, if at all, of careers, party advantage, and the pleasure of appearing resolute at other people’s expense.

The visible benefit of the new rigour is enjoyed by settled voters who are assured that a door supposedly flung open by the regularisation of many thousands will now be slammed; the invisible cost falls upon three quieter groups. It falls first upon the migrants, whose labour is wasted and whose hopes are tossed from ministry to ministry. It falls next upon the labouring poor within Europe, who might have gained cheaper goods, new services, or even comrades in production, but instead are invited to see in every stranger an enemy of their wages. And it falls finally upon the European taxpayer, who must finance barriers, patrols and distant camps, when the same sums might have built schools, roads and harbours that enrich rather than merely exclude. When I followed the movement of prices in earlier days, I saw that such policies commonly sacrifice long-run opulence to short-run applause.

There are, besides, divisions within Europe itself, exposed by this crisis. Some demand ever‑stronger walls; others fear the moral and legal abysses to which offshore centres might descend. Each side is tempted by the posture of the man of system, enamoured of his own plan for ordering populations as if they were chessmen, to be pushed back or advanced at pleasure. Yet every migrant, every border guard, every anxious shopkeeper has, in the great chess‑board of society, a principle of motion of his own. A scheme that relies upon their behaving as mere counters—submissive, patient, unresentful—will, in time, discover that human beings do not stay where they are put without cost.

The state is right to concern itself with defence and the administration of justice; a territory without order is no secure market for rich or poor. But justice is not maintained by treating children as packages, nor opulence advanced by transforming a frontier of trade into a stage for moral panic. Ambitious leaders will always be tempted to purchase the glitter of firmness at the expense of voiceless strangers; they misjudge both happiness and history if they suppose such purchases yield lasting contentment. A society that prides itself on union yet meets the knock of the poor with floating fences should not be surprised if its own prosperity begins, quietly at first, to ebb away with the tide.