Articles written by the PÚBLICO Brasil team are written in the variant of the Portuguese language used in Brazil.
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Anti-immigration speeches have spread across Europe and, led by the voices of far-right party leaders who understand the power of social networks more than anyone else, are peddling the idea that “immigrants are stealing citizens' jobs.”
While social networks are full of viral videos that fuel these narratives, promote hate speech, fake news and xenophobic anti-immigration sentiments, a growing phenomenon goes unnoticed by both those who are outraged and those who defend immigration: the digitization of the simplest aspects of our everyday lives.
Last week I was in Helsinki, the capital of Finland, to attend an academic conference with researchers from different countries, the topic of which was the cultural and social transformation characterized by digital saturation. Today I don't come here to talk about death, but about the mental stress and physical and mental fatigue of not being able to move around without a smartphone connected to the Internet, with enough memory and a cloud storage service.
From the moment I left home, I felt a great deal of stress due to having to have my mobile phone at my fingertips at all times. During my trip, I noticed that virtually my entire experience involved scanning QR CODES, online payments, emails to confirm and receive codes for transactions. From airline and hotel check-in to purchasing a public transport ticket.
For over five days, people practically did not serve me in the simplest aspects, such as ordering coffee, because there were machines everywhere. Not to mention that Finland prides itself on being “cash-free”, meaning there is no paper money, bills or snorts. At least in my experience, I have not been able to make a single “cash” payment.
We don't have to go to rich and technological Finland to realize that those who steal jobs from its citizens are not immigrants, but machines. Several supermarkets in São Paulo already have ATMs and the number of cashiers is limited. Just like in department stores like Zara, where there are almost no employees in sight anymore and you can pay for your purchases at an ATM using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. I hope the machine reads all the items, OK! And check, because it's a shame when the alarm goes off when leaving a store or supermarket, even if everything is paid for and in order.
Over the past few days, I have felt that technology has been given power and control that is leading us to technological saturation where we can no longer relax and enjoy the journey. You always need to be vigilant and have enough battery and data for everything. There's nothing more desperate than being warned that you only have 5% battery left or that your data plan has reached its limit.
If what the European Union calls digital transformation is read as a development, I can only say that we will reach a stage where we will increasingly be held hostage by a model of society that leads us to dependency and surveillance, in such a way that we cannot have strength to fight. We passively accept the transfer of our data, the use of our facial recognition features in hotels, stores, airports, leaving our fingerprints everywhere and so on.
When I see so many functions being replaced by intelligent machines, it seems to me that the anti-immigration discourse, in addition to being wrong and unfair, includes a narrative that blames immigrants for the lack of job openings. This is in addition to hate speech that has migrated from social media and is now present on the streets, on the subway, on the bus, at the local bakery and in everyday life.
However, data shows that immigrant labor is concentrated in areas such as restaurants, construction, cleaning, customer service, care, delivery and repair services. Therefore, the sectors of the economy that make the wheel turn. As the Migration Observatory's 2023 report points out, these workers receive little more than the national minimum wage and pay more than seven times more into social security than they actually receive in subsidies.
And a question that cannot be ignored: if immigrants steal vacant jobs (in sectors where many citizens refuse to work, making immigrant labor the basis of the country's functioning), machines and robots that, in the near future, will it replace a person in several roles, will it also pay taxes? Do you intend to pay ZUS contributions?
