Migration—The Only Thing I Truly Believe in

I was underground, waiting for a train to Signal Iduna Park, where Germany would play Denmark in the first round of the knockout stage of Euro 2024. A train approached and I was ready to jump on, but as the train stopped, I saw a black man stuck between seats and people on the train screaming and panicking as if they felt threatened by him. Two stewards rushed onto the train, grabbed the man and took him out. The man was standing, and he looked quite firm on his feet now. He didn’t need any help walking. He was out of his mind, though, making some weird hand gestures as if casting spells. He seemed insane. Then he made finger guns and started shooting invisible bullets at the train that was departing. I assumed he had freaked out the people on the train by doing something similar. The stewards pushed him out of the station.

Earlier in 2024, the New Pact on Migration and Asylum passed the vote in the European Parliament.¹¹ It is a package of reforms expanding the criminalisation and scrutiny of migrants. In other words, it means more control on migrants coming to Europe. Neither side of the political spectrum was too happy about the new law. The far-right found it too weak and claimed the new law would still allow for smugglers and illegal migrations. The far-left, on the other hand, was not glad because they believed the law was too harsh and would heavily endanger human rights by normalising the use of immigration detention and the deployment of harmful surveillance technologies.

When the far-right and far-left are equally upset about a certain law, I would usually say that can’t be bad. However—here is the punch—I don’t believe in good and bad per se. I believe that every good carries bad, and every bad carries good. I reckon that was what Albert Camus, in some way, meant when he wrote about the philosophy of absurdism. Ultimately, I assume—no one explains it better than Eckhart Tolle—both good and bad don’t extend beyond our personal and collective history. They exist only as long as we exist, and they dissolve as soon as our identity gets lost in the vast realm of nothingness—or, perhaps, even when our identity gets challenged by meeting new cultures.

Yes, I hear both sides of the argument. I understand that in some people’s minds, immigrants pose a threat to national security, and I also understand that in some other people’s minds, migration is the only way to save a dying Europe. Some people go as far as advocating for the exit of Germany from the European Union, while others are happy to make a compromise and, in the name of international business, have open borders. The situation is quite simple—if borders are open, they are open for people and companies. If they are closed, they are closed for everything. You can’t have it all at the same time, both control and freedom. Again, I get that some people are concerned about their jobs while others see migrants as the key to a thriving economy. But all that is irrelevant to me, as migration is the only thing I am ready to betray my philosophical beliefs for and say that ‘The New Pact on Migration and Asylum’ is a bad law.

I believe in migration because, like few other things in the world, it has the unique potential for the rise of consciousness—something beyond the world of absurdity. Therefore, it can liberate us from human-made concepts of good and bad. When a person emigrates from the surroundings they were raised, a colossal space for growth opens up. We grow when we challenge everything we know about ourselves. Once we experience a new environment, new culture, new laws, new people, and new moral values, we get an opportunity to realise that the worldview we were taught is not absolute truth. If we were brought up in a country where people respected certain laws and we moved to a new country, where different laws are obeyed, perhaps we might realise that those laws are not holy scripts and that we can’t draw our morality from law. The same goes for values. For example, let’s say we were taught that a man was considered successful for having a lucrative business while a woman was considered successful for having multiple babies, and then we suddenly happen to be in an environment with entirely different values. In this case, we may figure out that our society, family and friends have simply conditioned us to believe in a particular order of things.

When we experience an entirely new society, which has different ideas of what success is, we ask ourselves a question our identity doesn’t want to hear: “Who the fuck am I?” And once that question appears, the answer is not to be found through social constructs. There is an opportunity to rebuild ourselves according to a higher law and find our true purpose. The process can be challenging and scary as fuck, but it allows us to look at ourselves without the social conditioning we have been raised with and to view migrants and everyone else as human beings just like us, yet conditioned by some other beliefs and values. We understand we are, perhaps, not equal, but certainly of equal value. No one is good or bad. We become empathetic towards our fellow humans. We create bonds between each other. Only our conditioning makes us believe we are better or worse than someone else. Nationalism thrives on such comparisons. Yes, migration is difficult to deal with because it challenges the status quo. However, whatever challenges and obstacles come with migration—and they do come—that is the price humanity must pay for its growth and, perhaps, even survival.

In the end, Germany beat Denmark two-nil. Four players with foreign backgrounds started the match for Germany, with three more coming off the bench. After the match, I asked the German coach Julian Nagelsmann: “For the last couple of decades, Germany has been known for having many players with foreign backgrounds. Today, they played their part as well. Antonio Rüdiger was the man of the match. What does that tell us about Germany?”

Nagelsmann answered: “It’s a brilliant mix between people born, perhaps, in different countries, who feel comfortable in Germany. It is a warm community where everybody is welcome. It’s a good sign. We have a brilliant team and a brilliant mood in our camp. Every player and every character fits with each other, and we are happy with the situation.”

Imagine how stupid we would be if there were no migrants in the first place. We wouldn’t know any other perspective of the world except the one we were taught. It is not all that simple, of course. When we migrate to another country, there is a chance our minds won’t be able to let go of the social conditioning because, essentially, the conditioning gives us a sense of self and identity. Therefore, people will associate with their national values even closer, find more countrymen from their respective countries, cook their national foods and sing their national songs without letting the new culture influence them. The opposite process could also take place—they replace their old conditioning with the new one by embracing the new culture, laws and moral values as the absolute truth. In other words, they could create the new self, but based on equally shaky foundations as the previous one. Somewhere between those two options, or perhaps beyond them, is the process of becoming free of social conditioning.

Antonio Rüdiger was born to an Afro-German father and a Sierra Leonean mother. He is known as a football madman. At the end of the match against Denmark, Rüdiger blocked a Danish player, fell on the ground and celebrated as if he had scored a goal. He lifted his arms and legs off the ground. He was out of his mind, though, making some weird hand gestures as if casting spells. He seemed insane. He was a German hero.

Insanity can manifest differently. If treated with hate, it can manifest itself as it did with the guy in the underground. If treated with love and care, however, it will be considered brilliance. If anything will save us as a species, it is migrants. We should not have any limits regarding migration, regardless of what challenges it might bring in the process.