COVER -> DAY ONE
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During the weekend of the Easter Festival the not-so-good ship Etireno -- which means, ironically, "end of story" -- plied its way across the Gulf of Guinea. We may never arrive at a complete narrative of the dreadful, if not abnormal events. It is clear, however, that children from the age of four are being trafficked from rural villages in Benin, Mali and Burkina Fasso to the villas and cocoa plantations of Gabon and the Ivory Coast. This ship was supposed to be carrying some 250 such child slaves but when the passengers disembarked there were only a 10th that number and they were all, apparently, accompanied by adults.
Regardless of the precise details, there is no doubt -- nor even denial -- that there is a flourishing trade in child slaves in West Africa, built upon the tradition of arranged migration of poor children to wealthier relatives.As, however, the poor countries are anxious to export labour and richer countries are equally anxious to import it cheap, the whole plutocratic and plantocratic edifice, note in palm with every government, has a strong incentive to see that the traffic continues effectively but quietly.A glance at the map and the post colonial history of the countries involved shows that they could not, individually or collectively, do anything effective to stifle the trade, even if they wanted to.
Meanwhile, as dawn broke over Cotonu, Benin's seaport, to which the Etireno returned after its unaccustomedly famed voyage, a new and sumptuous mansion was set alight on a hillside above Phoenix, Arizona. The city, which has grown by 40% of population - mostly people of Hispanic origin - during the past decade, may be the fastest growing urban sprawl in the world and a new breed of eco-terrorists has sprung up to protect the desert from suburban depredation and degradation.
A week later, perhaps some of the very same terrorists threw rocks at the Montreal RCMP who replied with water cannon and tear gas while, inside the conference centre, George Bush called for a free trade area for the Americas from the Arctic to Cape Horn.
What we are witnessing in countless footsore treks, confinement in container trucks, hazard in rusting hulks, desperately repeated assaults on barbed wire immigration points and routine attempts to swim the Rio Grande, is the natural labour market response to globalisation and the triumph of unashamed inequality.Tar Stalinism with whatever brush you like, lay at its door countless murders -- perhaps even more than were perpetrated by the Nazis under Hitler -- but concede that its objectives were as generous as its analysis and implementation were disastrous.
Even up to the end of Jimmy Carter's Presidency and the Premiership of James Callaghan in Britain, it was possible to have a rational dialogue about the extent to which the redistribution of income and wealth in the name of justice could be accomplished without damaging the generation of that which was to be redistributed.
We were all anxious to preserve the goose that laid the golden eggs but we held it in common. It was not claimed to be the yard pet of the few.
Now I dine with people who count themselves moral and enlightened who barely comprehend the idea of redistribution. Equally, in some mysterious way which I cannot comprehend, they allege that the poor have brought poverty on themselves.
Before we become too glib, it is necessary to understand the connection between economic development and migration.
The classic scenario is that of the impoverished, low skilled person looking for work who somehow gets into a rich country with a shortage of manual labour. At some point the influx, either through excess or an economic downturn, is perceived to be too great and there is a call for the surplus, and even children born in their new, rich country, to be "sent home".
The call from the liberals at this point is that if "home" were a nicer place the poor would not think of leaving it. But it is precisely because the places where the poor dwell are slightly better off than they were that people have the aspiration to emigrate. It is the highway that has been built down the spine of Togo that has generated southwards human traffic which feeds the slave trade.
It is the opening up of the hinterland of Papua New Guinea which has brought the highland people sharp up against the coastal people.
It is the media and visceral visibility of the rich to the poor, the aspiration to jump the canyon, which generates upheaval in global labour markets.
Twenty years ago the great development economist Michael Todaro calculated that an unemployed young male in sub Saharan Africa would head for the city with a 14 : 1 chance of employment.
There are no easy answers, but part of the solution is to accept that there must be a broadly globalised labour market to parallel the capital market.
Those who oppose such a free market are not a homogeneous force. Some of the warriors of Seattle supported the regulation of labour markets out of entirely naive but generous motives while others simply wanted to ensure a narrowing in labour market conditions between rich and poor countries, making it harder for the poor countries to compete. Likewise, simply viewing the Americas, it is impossible to imagine a free trade in goods without a free market in labour. The problem for places like Phoenix is not what to do when times are good but to learn how to cope when times become hard, when there is indigenous, white unemployment while new or even third generation immigrants are still in work. Looked at that way, it's difficult to know quite which side the terrorists will be on.
