IMMIGRATION is part of the Metacrisis.  We do not seem to talk about it in these spaces.  At least not the degree that it engages the rest of the world.

We'll get to Denmark in a minute.  First, we could notice this general reluctance (across our liminal leading-edge developmental, transformational, and regenerative communities) to discuss issues that are highly charged.  We love ecological futurism, spiritual growth, technological innovation, and trans-partisan positions.  Frequently, this leads us away from popular topics that are contentious and triggering.  One such topic exists at the border between humanitarian decency & the flourishing of sovereign homelands.

From a vantage point high up the metacognitive stack, we can look down on the “flatland" argument between pseudo-traditionalists, neo-liberals, and woke progressives.  We are cynical about the extremes of the so-called Left and Right while also suspecting that Liberal Centrists might be the real problem. 

Okay, great.  But what kinds of potential solutions emerge from this lofty perspective?  What does the evolutionary spiral suggest for complicated real-world circumstances wherein strong conflicting values converge upon issues of migration, border control, and national cohesion?


Progressive Membranes?

That brings us to Denmark. 

For the last few years, the Danish government has been reorganizing its approach to immigration and refugees.  This has caught the attention of other countries wrestling with similar problems.  Videos like Denmark Solved the Immigration Crisis have been circulating internationally. 

Part of this interest comes from a resurgent spirit of unsettling intolerance that has spread globally.  However, it is inadequate to assume that strong border control and pro-nation sentiments are necessarily signs of degenerative xenophobia. 

Here's a New York Times article in which Denmark cautions other countries -- affirming the need to keep nuance, subtlety, and humanitarian values in mind while experimentally tweaking refugee policies, making borders robust, and amplifying the conversion protocols that evolve immigrants into citizens.

Border security has become more salient to the European mind following the extended Russian incursion into Ukraine and Donald Trump's clarification of the fact that America is not currently a reliable military ally.  The European nations, individually and collectively, are in an interesting position.  They have a history of peaceful cooperation and a history of war.  They have both old, unique ethnic identities and arguably the most cosmopolitan, humanitarian, and socially progressive policies in the world.

This complexity makes them an excellent experimental zone for determining whether strong boundaries, flourishing economies, human rights, and socialist sensibilities can integrate together into a worthwhile futurism. 

The current Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, leads the Social Democrats.  It is a little bit odd to think that progressively-minded socialists are outdoing the Liberals and Conservatives on the topic of border security and stricter immigration policies.  However, this oddness may be a sign of something starting to operate beyond the usual political polarization and old dualities. 

Perhaps the association of robust borders with populist, ethno-nationalist parties has only been a side-effect of the refusal of progressives to demonstrate pragmatism and strength in this regard.  Would Bernie Sanders have been swept into the American presidency if his popular plans to upgrade American capitalism had been supplemented by being  “tough on immigration and border security?" 

We cannot know, but it is certainly plausible that important issues default to low-education reactionaries if they are not demonstrated more competently by more complex, educated, and empathetic political forces.   


National Cohesion

The spirit of a People is an ongoing creation.  If existing nation-states do not actively cultivate a shared tangible  “spirit," then the result is likely to be an endless competition between spirited subgroups vying to take control of the machinery of the State.  But what kinds of humane measures can nudge us toward prioritizing these larger zones of cultural solidarity?

It is provocative to consider the Ethnic Integration Policy that has been active in (highly successful) Singapore since 1989.  The EIP is a rule for state-sponsored housing that places upper limits on the number of people who can live in proximity to each other while sharing a common ethnic identity.  While it is somewhat clumsy about which identities it chooses to recognize, the purpose of the policy is very interesting.

The idea is to promote national cohesion and daily interactions between diverse communities -- fostering broad social harmony at the expense of the natural formation of subcultural enclaves.  The policy of Singapore is that people of all backgrounds must prioritize being a citizen rather than behaviorally isolating themselves into a particular ethnic, religious, or language zone.

Self-similarity and simple algorithmic sorting mean that the natural tendency of human beings is to select into social hives where they steep in local sensibilities and symbolic identities.  These identities, while deeply meaningful, frequently diverge from general well-being.  To oppose that tendency is both unnatural and also a rational investment in the cultivation of a shared diverse cultural ethos.  It gets tricky.

We can have abstract debates about whether the current nation-states represent an actual holonic level (in the language of Ken Wilber) of organization between provincial and planetary.  Or whether, on the contrary, they are an artificial imposition that blocks the organization of bio-regions and cities into a mutually beneficial global civilization. 

The debate is philosophically viable, but in principle, the land, money, and military are already organized by the nation-state system, and it may be the only major factor preventing multinational corporations from destabilizing human and ecological well-being (while the metamodern bio-digital network society slowly grows in the cracks, hubs, and intentional communities of the world).

Yet despite their continued dominance, these nation-states reveal themselves as anemic & nihilistic if they cannot generate the shared sacred civic ethos that makes responsible citizen participation feel more valuable, virtuous, empowering, and humane than allegiance to any particular background or subculture. 

Flourishing requires an adequate level of general coherence rooted in shared practices, identities, boundaries, efforts, and needs. 


All Babies are Immigrants

And what should we do about all these  “refugees" from the Cellular World who are sneaking into our country via the womb? 

Babies are social parasites.  They do not have jobs.  They do not speak our language.  Honestly, they do not even respect property rights or the rule of law.  This is slightly facetious, but it makes a point. 

We understand that babies need to be cultivated into functional and responsible citizens who are fluent in a shared mode of communication, virtues, and identities.  We (hopefully) raise them to a point of technical, moral, emotional, and cognitive capacity whereby they can internalize, and therefore act upon, the virtues that produce collective & adaptive thriving in our countries. 

We instinctively grasp two key things about babies.  Firstly, they represent a developmental situation.  And secondly, there are cultural norms that these infantile immigrants must internalize (through education, action, and responsibility) to deserve the benefits of a particular civilized society. 

There are, of course, certain pragmatic parameters that determine our considerations about the sheer number of people who ought to be allowed into a country.  If our birth rates are low, or if we cannot find the labor or expertise we need, then an influx is necessary.  At the same time, there is also an upper physical and social limit on how many people a given system can handle without going into a generalized crisis. 

Beyond these basic practical considerations, we ought to be looking at the question of adaptive cultivation.  Just like we do with children.  To become native or indigenous (despite the fact that we sometimes reserve these words for particular ethnicities) is the result of a process of growth and adaptation. 

We recognize this when we speak of a naturalized citizen.  Naturalization is a form of becoming.  And although we typically treat locally born humans as automatic citizens, especially if their family has been around for a few generations, there is no strong reason to assume that birthplace or bloodline makes you superior in the process of becoming native to an ecological place and cultural zone. 

The Danes seem to be recognizing that, in addition to being stricter about temporary refugee status, they have to re-arrange the incentive structures and legal requirements for immigrants to accelerate their constructive fluency in the Danish way of being.  In principle, this is a developmentally informed experiment but obviously, it is only viable if it is done with as much nuance as strength. 

Denmark may have a better chance of getting the balances correct than would many other nations.  Countries that are notoriously not very good at converting their own babies, over decades, into decent, smart, heartful, productive, innovative citizens will likely exhibit even more difficulty in sanely and humanely combining strong borders with the competent prioritization of integrative processes for immigrants. 


A World of Migrants & Mutants

Relatively speaking, we are all im/migrants.  It takes time and practice to transform any invasive species into a naturalized species.  

It would be foolish to treat people like reliable citizens merely because they are “here now" or “in need."  None of that tells us about how well adapted they are, or can become, to participating in the safe flourishing of a national cultural zone.  

It would be equally foolish (and racism-adjacent) to think that there is a magical difference between natural-born citizens who are “from here" and some nebulous categories of foreign immigrants.  

A more integrative and developmental approach needs to get beyond simplistic dichotomies in our thinking and feeling.  The only thing dumber than either a closed border or an open border is an endless argument between two non-viable extremes.  

The global situation has changed.  Today, there are massively more humans than at any known point in history.  Combine that with accelerating climatological, political, and techno-economic change, and 
that will force more circulation of humans than ever before on this planet.  And there are more vectors of transportation than ever before.  That means human beings can and must move more.  

The existing momentum of the world is that people changing location quickly is going to increase for the foreseeable future.  So, one way or another, we must become more competent, more complex, more sensitive, and more powerful in how we manage migrations of all kinds.  

Since we do not know the answers, we must undertake and learn from national experiments.  These experiments might be viable options if they find ways to balance various conflicting values.  Our policies and procedures must secure meaningful and thriving zones that demonstrate both local peculiarity and universal values.  They must do this in ways that take in different numbers of people at different times, and that strike a functional balance between strict boundaries and humane assistance.  These approaches must also be informed by a developmental or culativationist ethos in which it is understood that all national citizens, regardless of their place of birth, are the result of processes of adaptation that can and must be improved, accelerated, incentivized, and enriched.  

This article is not an endorsement or a condemnation of any particular approach, but rather it is a general consideration, for the overlapping liminal networks, to take the challenge of national cohesion, sovereignty, population, and crisis migration seriously through a more developmental and cultivation-oriented framework.  

As for Greenland, that's a topic for another day...