2. ACHIEVING FREE MOVEMENT Is free movement a pipe dream? Any argument for global free movement must recognise the enormous challenges of arguing for this goal in the current political context. The idea has few vocal supporters in the political mainstream, being largely confined to circles of sympathetic activists and intellectuals. Moreover, the rise in right-wing nationalist political parties and movements, deeply imbued with anti-migrant politics, make the task more difficult still. Far-right parties won around 25% of the vote in the 2019 European elections, and in South America a ‘conservative wave’ has brought to power Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Mauricio Macri in Argentina and Sebastian Piñera in Chile in recent years, all of whom have described refugees as disease-ridden or criminals.55 The anti-immigrant attitudes of Trump in the US are well-documented, and Australia recently voted in Scott Morrison, a man who promised to drastically cut migration56 and used unlawful measures to prevent asylum seekers arriving in Australia
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by boat.57 In the UK, the party which introduced the ‘hostile environment’ for migrants was last year re-elected with 44% of the popular vote. In this context, it may seem that free movement is simply not a viable political project. However, this conclusion is too hasty. Without downplaying the above challenges, the current political attitudes regarding migration are by no means uniformly negative. In the 2019 European elections, the rise of the far right was accompanied by a ‘green wave’ of broadly pro-migration parties, winning around 20% of the total vote coming second in Germany and third in France.58 In the US, despite Trump’s repeated attacks on migrants in recent years, polling data shows that almost a quarter of people want to see immigration increased and 40% would like it to stay the same. The centre ground has moved significantly on this issue with 34% of Democrats wanting an increase compared to around 20% in 2014.59 Most strikingly of all, almost a quarter of people in the US believe that we should have ‘basically
