1. Introduction

Go home blacks, refugees, dirty immigrants, asylum seekers sucking our country dry; Niggers with their hands out, they smell strange, savage; They messed up their country and now they want to mess ours up; How do the words, the dirty looks, roll off your backs, maybe because the blow is softer than a limb torn off.

Warsan Shire, Home

This is the only reference in the article that was not taken from Girard’s Job, the victim of his people, and yet it fits so well that it might have been cited from it. The reason why a poem by Warsan Shire sounds appropriate for an issue entirely dedicated to René Girard is precisely what will be explored through this paper, given the right premises and circumstances. The premises are easier to present, as the narrative of Job is quite self-explanatory and well framed in Girard’s analysis on the process of social scapegoating. The circumstances, instead, need to be articulated more extensively, as one might reckon the link between an intense poem about refugees and the misfortunes of Job may not be immediately understood. However, there are several connections and all very meaningful, which provide significant grounds to picture a possible application of Girard’s work on the socio-political discourses that recent migrations foster in Europe.

René Girard brilliantly explored the process of social scapegoating through the notions of mimetic contagion and the shift between worship and loathing, although he has usually applied it to the vicissitudes of single individuals in power, such as tyrants and dictators. It might be interesting to evaluate whether the same dynamics can be related to groups of people that experience shifting fortunes within society, in order to outline the process that relegates certain social groups to the margins of a community. In this sense, refugees coming to Europe via the Mediterranean route may represent an ideal case study, though the symmetry between worship and loathing must be properly revisited.

The study draws from relevant passages of Job, the victim of his people, and socio-historical researches carried out on the migratory trajectories from ex-Colonial states towards Europe. The aim of this paper is to highlight some of the possible applications of Girard’s work to the dynamics of marginalization, xenophobia and inaccurate socio-political discourses developed about migrants, in the attempt to assess the existence of an ongoing process of scapegoating.

2. The ancient path of the wicked

One of the most interesting notions presented by Girard is that of the ancient path of the wicked,¹ which is a historical thread that compares the destinies of several charismatic figures in their rise and demise. The terms ancient and wicked set the boundaries where this notion can be applied. They indicate in fact an old process that takes place continuously throughout history, for which no matter how much approval and recognition a prominent leader may acquire, their success is usually bound to be replaced by hatred and loathing.

There seems to be a symmetry between the popular acclaim that elevates an individual to power and the popular turnaround that seals their fall: those who were once followed as righteous and all-powerful leaders are destined to be overthrown as vicious and wicked tyrants. It is an ancient trail insofar as it pertains to a plethora of people from all ages and cultures; and it is wicked in that conspicuous influence centred in one person tends to be eventually recognized as ominous.

Girard’s analysis of Job points out the temporal and moral aspect of this path in detail, rendering also a very interesting comparison with other historical or mythological figures of the past.² Just like Job, in fact, one might find many leaders, who seemed invincible for a time, falling over the path of the wicked. This was true for Napoleon, Julius Caesar and Dionysius of Syracuse for example; but it is also the case of Oedipus, the mythical king of Thebes who killed his father and married his own mother, and Jezebel, the Biblical queen who enticed the Israelites to follow the cult of Baal, just to be eventually overthrown and trampled to death. The fact that myth and history are considered parallelly helps define the moral contours in which the trail of the wicked is embedded. In fact, it makes it clearer how the symmetry between worship and loathing has always played an important role in the social conscience of different cultures. If myths render narrative archetypes of humanity, then the stories about the rise and fall of prominent leaders can be included among the foundational tales on which the traditional moral compass is grounded.

3. Attraction, repulsion and envy

Girard outlines some interesting moral behaviour around the shift from worship to loathing, which shows how those who rose to power through a crowd of followers, either as the solution to a period of crisis or because they embody particular characteristics, may finish by being blamed for the crisis itself or for those characteristics they carry. This defines the odd symmetry of social scapegoating, where a crowd that first acclaims an individual for what they do, what they say and what they are, then blames them for the same reasons.

In the tale of Job, it appears clear how the human sentiments and behaviour that undergo this process of elevation-to-power and election-to-scapegoat follow a precise trajectory. What pushes a leader in their rise is an appreciation that extends to worship and trust that extends to faith. The crowd recognizes certain qualities or narratives as the solution to many or every issue, and elects those who carry them as authoritative guides. This phase of acclaim/elevation might be identified with a movement of social attraction, as people feel drawn towards a power-figure and desire the ideas, actions and words they deliver.

It is important to notice, however, that what brings the same individual to their demise is not the withdrawal of attraction, but its corruption. A leader turned into a scapegoat is not only abandoned, otherwise their fall would simply end in indifference; instead, they must be also loathed, sometimes even publicly attacked and executed. As the traditional scapegoat of religious and magic rituals is identified, symbolically or factually, with certain ailments to purge, so is the social scapegoat.³ The blaming and the shaming cannot take place from collective indifference: the attention must still be centred on the leader-now-scapegoat, but the desire that drove the attraction gradually corrupts into loathing. Hence, this phase of blaming/election might be identified with a movement of social repulsion fuelled by contempt and hatred, which focuses on either real or alleged wrongs attributed to the scapegoat.

Girard brilliantly identifies how this trajectory from attraction to repulsion is driven by underlying sentiments of envy, which are embedded in the desire that crowds feel for a prominent figure. The symmetry between the two phases and the role played by envy might be defined through the following chart:

As shown in the chart, this whole symmetric dynamic is indeed sustained by the corruption of desire into loathing. Girard explains through the vicissitudes of Job how the sentiments of envy that trigger such corruption were actually developing in the initial desire. Says Job in his own words:

Who will bring back to me the months that have gone […] when I went out to the gate of the city, when I took my seat in the square, and as soon as I appeared, the young men stepped aside while the older men rose to their feet. […] They waited anxiously to hear me and listened in silence to what I had to say. […] They waited for me as men wait for rain, open-mouthed, as if to catch the year’s last showers. […] In a lordly style, I told them which course to take, and like a king amid his armies, I led them where I chose.⁴

Someone who enjoys this kind of authority is immediately exposed to envy. The potential to silence crowds and lead people as a king comes in fact with a price: sooner or later someone else will want a piece of that power for themselves. Unlike monarchical authority, which is linked to bloodlines and to social or religious narratives that establish how power can only belong to certain individuals, popular authority depends on the mood of the crowds. Common people subjected to a monarch can envy and desire the throne, but they are culturally imbued with the knowledge that even if the ruler is killed or dethroned, they could never take their place. However, this is not the case of democratic-like authorities, where someone can lead as a king but never be a king. In such social context, people know they can at least aspire to the same power they bestow upon their leaders.

Unsurprisingly, this aspiration to power may cause a rupture in the relationship between leader and followers for multiple reasons. It might be because the crisis that the leader was elected to solve, persists; or because their actions amidst such crisis cause a void of power where someone else sees an opportunity to rise. Nevertheless, what triggers a power-figure’s demise is still sentiments of envy. In the first case, in fact, jealousy fuels frustration towards someone who was granted enormous power and yet failed to fulfil the crowd’s desires; whereas in the second case, it fuels the resentment of those who want that position for themselves. In either case, the individual that was once recognized as a saviour becomes the cause of every problem, or an obstacle to remove for those who aspire to power.

Incidentally, it is worth noting how these two dynamics go hand in hand more often than not: who wants to rule may in fact exploit the frustration of the crowd towards a leader to facilitate their demise. In that case, the scapegoating is preparatory for the popular acclaim of a new ruler, insofar as it creates a comparison that highlights the virtues of a contender as opposed to the vices of the reigning leader.

4. The modern path of the migrant

Although the notions discussed so far were developed in respect to single individuals in power, there is room to consider the application of the same discourse for groups of people that appear to be experiencing dynamics of scapegoating. A viable case study for this hypothesis might be the African refugees that cross the Mediterranean looking for shelter in Europe, where they become subject to controversial socio-political narratives.⁵ By taking into consideration the historical development of migratory routes from ex-Colonial states towards their former invaders, it may be possible in fact to outline the same corruptive process from attraction to repulsion that applies to charismatic leaders. As anticipated earlier, however, this scenario can be implemented only in view of the historical circumstances underlying different waves of migrations between 1947 and 2010.

The rapid economic growth experienced by many European countries after the Second World War shaped significantly an entire era of migrations. England, France, Germany and the Netherlands benefited highly from the arrival of thousand of citizens from their former colonies in Africa, who replenished firstly the void of manpower left by the War, and then secondly sustained the intensification of mining and industrial production between the 50’s and early 70’s. For instance, during these twenty years over 540.000 people moved to England from the New Commonwealth;⁶ nearly a million reached France from North African newly independent states, along with Mali, Senegal and Mauritania; about 460.000 arrived in the Netherlands from Indonesia and Suriname.⁷

Migrants played a fundamental role in the renovated capitalistic efforts of post-War Europe, inasmuch as they offered manual labour for lower salaries, which encouraged a new wave of mass production. Despite the common stereotype, interdisciplinary studies seem to point out quite clearly that immigrants never really took over employments from European workers, as the greater part of the latter simply gained access to better positions, while the rest coexisted with the new workforce.⁸ Those who were considered the lower class during the Industrial Revolutions, in fact, after WWII managed to achieve more profitable occupations, and rapidly reached higher levels of wealth and consumerism. Therefore, while entrepreneurs and investors were increasing their assets, local labourers were building a new-middle class, which was instrumental in fuelling the capitalistic vicious circle of ever-greater sales-for-ever-greater production. As was shown by the statistics of the time, European countries with the higher immigration rates experienced higher rates of socio-economic growth as well.⁹

However, as it is often the case, these decades of growth were destined to end ruinously: since 1973, Western economy had progressively entered a period of stagnation, which peaked with the 1979 Oil Crisis.¹⁰ Around these years, production strategies had begun to adopt a globalised approach, slowly turning towards advanced microelectronic machinery for manufacture, and focusing the investments on service industry. As a result, the demand for unskilled manual labour dropped drastically, causing a harsh wave of unemployment. Furthermore, European economies started a process of production relocation in underdeveloped countries that changed completely the migratory pattern. It was no coincidence that manufacture sites were moved to most of those countries where migratory routes originated, which reduced the costs for entrepreneurs on one hand, but worsened life conditions for many people on the other, especially for migrants in Europe and their families back home.

Anticipating the incoming setback, since 1974, the European states that had benefited the most from immigration fluxes abruptly closed their borders and became hostile towards any new arrival. At the same time, in a controversial attempt to create an outlet for the increasing social pressure, governments and media started encouraging migrants to return home, claiming that there would no longer have been enough jobs for everybody. This political narrative can be identified as a fundamental step in a long process of social scapegoating against migrants, fostered primarily by governmental policies and approaches. On one hand, such policies were surely grounded on typical Eurocentric sentiments of ethnic superiority and colonial exploitation, while on the other they have assumed specific features related to the shift from classic Capitalistic economies to Neo-liberal ones.¹¹

5. Turning many into one: a case of social objectification

It is important to note how the moral compasses of Capitalism and Colonialism merge over European immigration policies of those years. The tendency of the former to exploit and discard human labour as disposable goods, found, in fact, rich soil in the social and economic fragility induced on migrants by the latter. The economic growth of post-War Europe was literally built on the exploitation of workforce from the ex-colonies, which means that the unfair hierarchy between colonizers and colonized remained unaltered, even long after the latter gained formal independency.

Decades of European domination had left most of the African countries in misery, forcing many families to seek means of livelihood outside their homelands. Coincidentally, but not by chance as many scholars argue,¹² European nations turned to this young, eager foreign workforce to compensate for the war casualties and economic loss. Many African citizens were thereby attracted to Europe with temporary working contracts, which were specifically designed to gain as much as possible from migrant labour while giving little in return.¹³ Such contracts offered in fact low salaries, no welfare and few rights to the incoming workers, who ended up being relegated to the poorest suburbs of the city, systematically excluded from education services and healthcare. The predatory inequality of Colonial relations was replicated in the major cities of Europe, where hundreds of migrants were usefully exploited and left to live in poverty in the crowded outskirts, excluded from the wealth of the centres they were contributing to building.

This urban aspect of migratory dynamics is very relevant, insofar as it visually renders the first stages of a scapegoating process, migrants have been undergoing ever since. Suburbs, in fact, represent spatially the ejection of a social group from the main body of the community, an act of moral repulsion that results in an actual exile to the farthest areas of a city. Undoubtedly, the relegation of migrants to secluded neighbourhoods helped the process that turned many individuals and their unicity into a single, homogeneous mass.¹⁴ At this point, European public opinion, political discourse and media started referring to them simply as immigrants and foreigners, becoming blind to the wide diversity of nationalities, cultures, languages and social backgrounds they came from.¹⁵ Incidentally, the spatial identification offered by the outskirts created a physical reference for this new political category, which instrumentally objectified migrants. As a matter of fact, once an heterogeneous group of individuals is turned into one social body connected to a specific place,¹⁶ it is easier to project on it the faults and wrongs that afflict a society.

Bypassing the fact that migrants are often the ones most affected by poverty, unemployment and illiteracy, European societies conveniently started blaming them for the impoverishment of the locals, along with many other issues unrealistically attributed to foreigners. Such process that led a group of individuals to be politically objectified into a single entity is the ideal cornerstone where to anchor Girard’s analysis of the social scapegoat. Once governmental policies and media identify a multitude of people with one, generic social category, in fact, the rest of the community slowly stops seeing their individuality and learns to address them through that category as well, which in this case is that of the immigrant. In other words, the personal differences seem to disappear, and what remains is a variety of people treated as one.

This unification is a fundamental step, in that it opens the way to the typical process of blaming that would usually apply to a single individual. Bearing in mind that Girard refers to the crisis as a mysterious illness introduced into the community by an outsider, and that the only possible cure lies in ridding the community of such malignant element,¹⁷ the dynamic at play stands out more clearly. Through the political discourses addressing the 79’ crisis, immigrants in their totality became the social body elected to scapegoat, and the same faith reserved to Job fell on them collectively. Because of a consequential but twisted logic driven by mimetic contagion, the category of the immigrant started being considered as a threat for the locals, and was transfigured into the embodiment of a crisis of which they were really the first victims. It is also worth noting how their identification with the malignant element responsible for the crisis, was facilitated by the fact that migrants are the outsiders by definition.

6. Exploitation, rejection and scapegoating

The cultural atmosphere that was developing about foreigners in general, but specifically over African migrants during those years, gradually worsened into open xenophobia and racism. Such a situation might be best described by the words of Job on his own downfall, which create a striking symmetry with what he said regarding his golden days:

To every one of my oppressors I am contemptible, loathsome to my neighbours, to my friends a thing of fear. Those who see me in the street hurry past me; I am forgotten, as good as dead in their hearts, something discarded. I hear their endless slanders, threats from every quarter, as they combine against me, plotting to take my life.¹⁸

This statement from Job resonates at different levels with the vicissitudes of ex-Colonial migrants in Europe, although the start of their scapegoating process is not situated in the shift from worship to loathing, but rather in a consequential relation of use and discard. Despite this inevitable difference, it is still possible to highlight relevant similarities with the analysis offered by René Girard.

The social trajectory of foreign labour within European societies shows in fact many parallels with the rise and fall of charismatic leaders, and a striking resemblance with the symmetry between attraction and repulsion. For instance, the short-termed social contracts offered to migrants to sustain the post-War economic recovery may be identified again with a movement of social attraction. European governments, entrepreneurs and middle classes were drawn to the opportunity of an economical source of labour to be hired with less social obligations, whereas migrants were caught in such a weak position that they could do little but accept the unfair arrangement. In point of fact, given the large gap in bargaining power between the two parts, it would be more appropriate to define it as a movement of social exploitation, especially because this gap was grounded on the inequity of previous Colonial relations.

Needless to say, what made migrants desirable to European crowds¹⁹ was most definitely not the ideas they delivered or a charismatic aura, but rather the fragile socio-economic background they came from. They were not chosen to be a leading force; they were chosen to be exploited as economical labour with few rights and no benefits. Nonetheless, this movement of social exploitation is grounded on human sentiments and behaviours close in kind to those that undergo the elevation to power of authoritative figures.

The leaders taken into consideration by Girard are usually chosen by crowds in the face of incoming or ongoing crises, because they are expected to solve the situation or at least bring some sort of relief. Therefore, although it is not immediately obvious, it is fair to say that a power figure is deemed useful because of certain traits they show, in that such features are identified as a functional instrument for restoring the community’s well-being. This instrumental logic applies to Colonial migrants as well, since they were attracted to relieve the void left by World War II and sustain the reinstatement of European societies’ wealth.

By comparing the different trajectories of Girardian leaders and Colonial migrants, one might infer that the corruptive process desire-envy-loathing could be read also in terms of need-discard-repel. This parallel symmetry seems to indicate that the scapegoating against migrants is not really a theoretical adaptation of Job’s tale, bur rather a different shade of it. At the end of their trajectory, leaders are discarded in favour of a another power figure, but remain useful in that they become the focus of the crowds’ frustration, for they are morally or physically sacrificed as scapegoats to relieve the social pressure. In this sense, the instrumental logic that put them in power is altered but not dissipated, since they are still used to bring relief to instances of social pressure, although not as leading figures but as sacrificial scapegoats.

The same dynamics can be applied to the case of African migrants in Europe, who were chosen in the face of a crisis and discarded when deemed no longer useful to the interests of the community.²⁰ As much as in the desire that crowds feel towards a charismatic leader there is already embedded a poisoned seed of envy, similarly, the logic of utility that attracted migrants to Europe anticipated their inevitable rejection, once they were no longer needed. After all, what they brought to the table in Capitalistic terms was not the potentiality of different cultures, ideas and points of view, but simply the possibility to be exploited as poorly paid manual labour. Hence, when the economic dynamics at play changed and the request for unskilled work dropped, African citizens were pushed into the functional role of scapegoats to ease the increasing social pressure, and took the blame for society’s shortcomings much like fallen leaders. The following chart might best render the unravelling of this dynamic:

Beneath the suggested process of use and disposal it is possible to isolate a component of envy as well, induced by none other than governmental policies and media discourses. As after 1974, European governments closed the borders and invited foreigners to return home, claiming that there were no longer jobs for everyone, they implicitly denied the responsibility of their political and economic choices, unrealistically blaming the crisis and growing poverty on them instead. In result, locals uncritically embraced such biased discourses and progressively developed certain stereotypes migrants still have to face to this day. As a matter of fact, behind the recurring claims of foreigners stealing jobs from local workers, or spreading criminality and diseases, it is possible to highlight certain sentiments of envy brought upon them by the immigration policies of those years.

7. Conclusive remarks

Even though the process of scapegoating against migrants in Europe shows inevitable differences to that of charismatic leaders, it still proves to be an interesting ground for the application of the dynamics highlighted by René Girard. In a way, the mentioned variations seem to enrich the tale of Job with new aspects rather than creating an insurmountable hiatus. In the shadow of their differences, in fact, there lie relevant similarities that support the applicability of Girard’s work to modern migratory issues, especially for what concerns the destiny of migrants once they land in Europe.

The comparison between the scapegoating process of charismatic leaders and post-War foreign workers highlights a double symmetry between the two dynamics, one internal and one external. The internal one concerns respectively the spiral from attraction to repulsion and from exploitation to rejection; whereas the external one can be established between the trajectories of historical power figures and ex-Colonial migrants, one in view of the other. It appears that in spite of superficial discrepancies, the moral corruption from worship to loathing and the circumstantial shift from exploitation to rejection are actually grounded on the same sentiments of envy and logics of usefulness.

The application of Girard’s analysis highlights how the peculiar characteristic of the election of migrants to scapegoat set the coordinates where the moral compasses of Capitalism and Colonialism merge; which is to say, where the unfair exploitation of human labour meets the feelings of ethnic superiority that fuel episodes of racism and xenophobia in Europe. Even though just a small window of the migrations towards Europe was discussed in this article, the applicability of Girard’s analysis of the social scapegoating seems already fruitful enough to extend it to other historical periods.

Trans-continental migrations have changed completely since 1989, when the disintegration of the URSS and the fall of the Berlin wall altered profoundly the pattern of international relations and paved the way for a new global season. The turmoil in Eastern Europe and Russia, of which the Yugoslav Wars were the bloodiest, forced thousands of people to seek shelter as refugees away from their homelands. Since then, the asylum seekers have become the dominant migratory category and have been met by different discourses and policies from the European governments. Years later, the Arab Spring of 2010 started yet another wave of asylum seekers, which was met again with controversial measures in Europe.

All these different migratory patterns and the discourses they prompt in the receiving societies determine peculiar dynamics of attraction, exploitation and scapegoating, which deserve further analysis and might benefit greatly from the work of René Girard. In the same way, Girardian studies may be enriched with ethnographic researches and perspectives on the latest migrations, opening to new, interesting considerations.

Abstract

International migrations towards Europe, especially from Africa, have become an all-encompassing topic of political, social and somehow economic discourses over the last five decades. More often than not, migrants are instrumentally used for political reasons, to either justify social issues that affect European societies, or to redirect public opinion’s attention from the ever-growing economic inequality. This situation might be approached via the work of René Girard on social scapegoating and the effects of mimetic contagion, specifically by taking in consideration his analysis of the Biblical tale of Job. In Job, the victim of his people, Girard offers in fact a broad overview of different social and moral dynamics that undergo the rise and fall of charismatic leaders throughout history, who often end up being targeted as sacrificial scapegoats by the same people that gave them power. This article intends to evaluate any possible application of Girard’s thought on the socio-political discourses that affect migrants in Europe.

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