Educational Research - the Ethics and Aesthetics of Statistics

7 To Frame the Unframable: Quantifying Irregular Migrants’ Presence 107
7.4 Does It Make Sense To Say...
The discussion presented above shows how difficult it is to ‘make sense’ of the
divergent problems related to the group of irregular migrants. In this last part
of the chapter we move beyond the methodological matters concerning the adequacy
of various estimation methods. Let us now consider the appropriateness of
the questions put forward by policy makers and researchers. Why are these questions
seen as being so attractive, so apparently integral to the situation presented
above? Willingness to ‘count the uncountable’ is surprisingly strong. The fact that
the goal of many irregular migrants is to go into hiding does not diminish the
conviction that estimations are helpful when trying to understand the problems at
stake. Neither does the finding that it is impossible to even roughly estimate irregular
migrants’ numbers keep researchers from doing exactly that. Something more
profound seems to underlie the apparent ‘love for numbers’ that to a large extent
characterises Western societies.
Blommaert and Verschueren (1998) largely elaborate on their thesis that ‘the
‘migrant debate’ rests on the idea that the ideal society should be as uniform or
homogeneous as possible. Homogeneity is not only seen as desirable, but also as
the norm, as the most normal manifestation of a human society.” (ibid., p. 117)
In their linguistic discourse analysis, they put forward an impressive number of
examples that support this thesis. ‘“Homogeneism” is seen as the dominant ideology
that directs our thinking about foreigners. Through the abnormalisation of
the foreigner, it contains an a priori rejection or problematisation of diversity. [...]
Foreigners disturb the existing order, they threaten the status quo, their presence
alone already turns them into a problem’. (ibid., p. 146). The attempts to homogenise
the group of migrants – which seems to hold for irregular migrants too – thus come
from a defensive reflex. This attitude expresses a fear towards the unexpected, the
new and the unknown i.e. towards whatever can change or damage what has been
established.
This critique of homogenisation brings a different perspective to the question of
‘how many irregular migrants there are’. If policy makers ask this question so as to
bring about ‘reliable information’ (cf. supra) for dealing with problems related to
the presence of irregular migrants, then its contribution seems limited. The repeated
search for numbers hardly reveals anything with respect to the content of concrete
practices, as by definition it is an expression of the homogenisation tendency mentioned
earlier. What is at stake concerns attempts to ‘grab’ the situation and the
changes to that situation. Numbers help to ‘get an overview’ and in that sense to
‘control’ what is happening. The apparent ‘love for numbers’ in Western societies
seems to refer to the dominant presence of a thinking that divides the world into ‘us’
and ‘them’ and continuously looks for ‘ownership’. Numbers become the tools to
realise that ownership: quantifying reality becomes synonymous with objectifying
reality i.e. gaining control over the world surrounding us. One could even argue that
the attraction of numbers refers to what Nietzsche called Wille zur Macht: the will
to power as the driving force behind human actions.