DEMOGRAPHY DEBATE TOPICS
Topic 1
Summary
Relaxation of Immigration Laws
Should governments in rich countries relax the laws controlling
immigration?
Context
This is a debate primarily centred on developed countries into which many (often poor)
people wish to immigrate. At the moment the countries are only obliged to accept migrants
who the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) rule have a genuine ‘fear
of persecution’ in their own country. Most rich countries tend to only accept immigrants
who can provide either specific skills or substantial investment. In fact red tape reduces even
the number of those who enter. Proposition tends to focus on both the moral case for
improving people’s lives and an advantage to the recipient country. Opposition can use
either mainly right wing arguments about the dangers for the recipient or take a more liberal
line centred on the exploitation of the immigrants. Policy can be aimed either at individual
governments or at the UN.
Topic 2
Summary
Distorted male/female ratio
Should parents in countries with a skewed gender ratio be encouraged to
produce girls?
Context
This debate discusses nations with a large imbalance in the number of men and women within the
population. The motion refers particularly to countries where there are far more men than women and
social problems are arising as a result. Some problems that arise from this imbalance are enormous
numbers of unmarried men, an increase in trafficking of women, crime and prostitution, the
reinforcement of male superiority and damage to traditionally female industries. The motion begs the
question whether governments in these countries ought to instigate a policy to provide incentives for
parents to produce girls.
There are numerous reasons why the gender ratio becomes unbalanced. Warfare is one reason. There
was an excess of females in Western Europe after WW1. The nations with the most concerning sex
ratio imbalance currently are China and India. The imbalance in China relates to their controversial
one child policy and a cultural preference of males who are seen as better able to provide financially
for their parents in their old age. China now has 32 million more males than females under the age of
20. Selective abortion and infanticide increased when cheap ultrasound machines were distributed to
illegal mobile vans and backstreet clinics in the 1980s where women can now determine their child’s
sex for very little money. The imbalance in India relates to the dowry system which makes female
children a perceived liability. The dowry system is described as follows: “Dowry is paid in kind or in
cash by the bride’s family to the groom’s, and often includes post-marriage transfers, as well. High
dowry will ensure a proper marriage into the best possible family – hypergamy, or women “marrying
up”, being a tacit norm– and ensures additional prestige and reputation to the bride’s family.” Indian
women practise selective abortion and hereby cause an imbalanced sex ratio of boys to girls 100: 80.
Selective abortion is particularly prevalent in families where there are already a number of females but
no male children. Prenatal sex determination is illegal in India and China but this law is largely
ignored. There is also some concerning regarding nations in the Caucasus, notably Georgia, Armenia
and Azerbaijan. In Qatar, there is an unbalanced gender ratio which is a result of the influx of male
immigrant workers who cannot bring their families with them to Qatar but this is a quite different
problem from the problem which exists in the other nations mentioned and hence will not be discussed
in the debate.
Though the majority of the sex-ratio imbalance is the result of selective abortion and, in much fewer
cases, infanticide, there is a third way in which it comes about. In China, “infant mortality among
girls is 40 per cent greater than that of boys, when it should [naturally] be instead 20 per
cent lower.” Parents tend to discriminate against girls in their early years by breastfeeding them less
often, taking them to doctors less often or later on in a period of illness and allocating less food to
them.
The proposition policy is to offer financial incentives to have female children including enhanced
educational subsidies and welfare packages for female children and their parents. An example of such
a policy is the Benefits for Girls pilot program which has been launched in China’s Fujian province
whereby couples who have 2 female children (and no males) receive an annual lifelong pension as well
as preferential treatment in housing, healthcare and employment.
A possible counter-policy may be to implement more stringent policing on infanticide and pre-birth
sex selection.
Topic 3
Summary
Migration
Is large-scale migration, especially from the developing world to developed
countries, a force for good? Should it be encouraged or do both developed
and developing countries have an interest in restricting the flow of migrants?
Context
International migration can take place for economic as well as non-economic (e.g. political, religious)
reasons. Since the end of World War II most international migration has been motivated by economic
reasons - by the prospect of earning higher real wages and income abroad. The costs and benefits of
foreign labor is one of the most controversial issues in international economics. Floods of asylum
seekers created by wars are also a very pressing issue, particularly for the United States, Australia and
the European Union. These governments have committed to ensuring the human rights of refugees
through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention Relating to the Status of
Refugees, the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War and
through other international agreements. However, today it appears that although bound by international
conventions, governments find themselves unable to cope with more and more immigrants for
economic and social reasons. Governments generally seek to make a distinction between welcoming
asylum seekers fleeing war or persecution, and turning away economic migrants seeking better
opportunities abroad, unless they are especially skilled or wealthy already. The attitude of the countries
of origin for migrants varies. Some see it as an issue of political and social control and seek to prevent,
or at least severely restrict, any emigration. Others allow it but have policies which, intentionally or
otherwise, create disincentives for potential migrants, for example by making it illegal for nonresidents to own property, making it hard for migrants to later return. Still others rely heavily upon the
income generated by emigrants sending remittances back home.
Topic 4
Summary
Mother Tongue Education for Immigrants
Should mother tongue education for large groups of immigrants be
subsidised by the government of the receiving state?
Context
In 2008 Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Germany, surprisingly for a national
leader visiting a country with a large number of Turkish migrants he declared assimilation a “crime
against humanity” and argued that Turks in Germany should study in their mother tongue, the
language of one’s parents which is usually that learned from birth in the home, in schools and
universities.
Large immigrant groups can be found all over the world. The United States and Canada are
particularly known as immigrant nations but immigrants go elsewhere as well and there are many
countries that are net recipients of migrants such the European Union and it is not restricted to richer
states, Oman and Malaysia were among countries with more immigrants than emigrants from 2008-12.
Examples relevant to this debate are Hispanics of Mexican origin that reside in the United States, the
Turkish and Polish population that is currently living in Germany or Austria and also large Asian
communities living in Canada.
The form of stimulating (or subsidizing) mother tongue education for large immigrant groups taken in
this debate is allocating money from the national education budget to permit foreign parents that are
part of such a group to build and implement school programs taught in their native language.
A different model of implementation would change the line of reason, the advantages and
disadvantages of the motion and therefore the debate. Ideas will still be valid if they are the
consequence of your proposed policy.
It is difficult to generalise about the situation of mother-tongue learning among immigrant groups.
Some countries demand more integrated than others. In Europe migrants are often perceived as
forming closed-circle societies with low and sometimes no interaction with people who are not
immigrants, in the United States the opposite is the case and it is assumed a migrant will integrate. In
reality almost all states are somewhere between the two poles. Parents that are the first and sometimes
the second generation of immigrants understandably choose to talk to their children and within the
family in their mother tongue. This phenomenon leads most of the times in children who are struggling
to get education and achieve a better integration with the local people.
Topic 5
Summary
Context
Mandatory Retirement Age
Should there be a law instituting a mandatory retirement age?
The concept of mandatory retirement arises most frequently in debates centring on access to closely
integrated, self-regulating professions such as medicine or law, or dangerous or strenuous jobs,
including roles in the military, mineral extraction and air traffic control. The principle is simple.
Individuals in certain occupations can be required by their employer to stop work at a certain age.
Alterations to existing employment laws would enable- or even mandate- employers to expel
employees in this way.
A mandatory retirement age is usually justified by reference to the deleterious effects of aging. It is
generally accepted that as individuals approach senescence, they will become physically weaker and
less mentally agile. In jobs that involve high risk physical or cognitive tasks, such as surgery or
military operations, a fleeting loss of strength or concentration could have severely damaging
consequences. However, mandatory retirement ages have previously been determined on an arbitrary
basis, rather than being dependent on continual assessment of workers’ physical health and mental
acuity.
In most western liberal democracies, the armed forces, the medical profession and operators of critical
IT systems (such as air traffic controllers) are made subject to mandatory retirement policies.
However, the concept of security of tenure that exists within both academia and the judiciary
complicates matters somewhat. Justices of the US Supreme Court have life tenure, and cannot be
removed from their positions for any reason other than gross misconduct. Despite their vital role in
arbitrating on the content of the US’s constitutional documents, it is not unusual for Supreme Court
judges to continue working until well into their eighties. Superior Court judges in the United Kingdom
are said to be “judicially competent” until they reach their seventieth birthday, at which point they are
obliged to retire. The same limit applies to first instance judges in the civil, criminal and high courts,
although the retirement age for the general population is 65.
The most significant recent attempt to implement a more wide ranging form of mandatory retirement
took place in the United Kingdom in 2006. The UK government implemented secondary legislation (a
modification to the law made by the executive with minimal consultation with the legislature) that
enabled employers to dismiss any of their employees aged sixty five or over summarily and without
redundancy pay. This law was repealed in 2011.
Topic 6
Summary
Context
Fighting Disease in Developing Nations
Should developed countries increase their contributions to the Global Fund?
Topic 7
Summary
Context
International Adoption
Should international adoption be banned?
AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis kill over six million people worldwide each year, most of them in poor
countries with limited resources. As well as the direct human suffering and loss these three killer
diseases bring, they also help to keep poor countries poor by greatly reducing the ability of sufferers to
work productively, both in the labor force in support of their families or in education.
AIDS in particular can devastate poor communities by killing mostly adults (over 3 million in 2002,
and rising), leaving many orphans and overburdening social structures. In developed countries public
health systems generally have the infrastructure and funding to treat those suffering from such
illnesses, and to operate prevention strategies (e.g. the USA allocated $17.5 billion for Fiscal Year
2005 for domestic programs against HIV/AIDS). Yet, in the developing world, such help is often
either unavailable or unaffordable, and even in richer countries that are able to pay for courses of
antiretroviral drugs for HIV/AIDS costing thousands of dollars a year, there is still no vaccine against
HIV.
To address these challenges the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was set up in
2002. Although independent of other international bodies such as the United Nations, it works closely
with the World Health Organization and UNAIDS to deliver programs in over a hundred countries
worldwide. Since its creation in 2002, the Global Fund has spent 21.7 billion US dollars. Programs
supported by the Global Fund have saved an estimate of 6.5 million lives through providing AIDS
treatment for 3 million people, anti-tuberculosis treatment for 7.7 million people and the distribution of
160 million insecticide-treated nets for the prevention of malaria ( to date: April 2011).
This money comes from donor states as well as private business and charities, but most is supplied by
individual countries who pledged their support when the Fund was established. So far the United
States has provided a third of the Global Fund's contributions (European countries have collectively
donated just over 50%), after the Bush administration in 2009, Obama promised to increase the
funding for the Global Fund. Currently the US donates 1.05 billion US dollars annually.
America also puts billions more dollars into US-run international anti-AIDS initiatives, which have
been seen by some as by-passing the Global Fund and undermining its work through conflicting
policies.
The current implementation of the Global Fund is that it manages the funding that is pledged by
countries and private companies. Through different projects they allocate funds to specific developing
countries. Where there are signs of corruption, the Global Fund stops financing projects in that country
until they research the issue.
International adoption is the adoption of foreign children and their subsequent immigration into their
adopted parents' home nation. With the on-going media coverage of ill-treated children in Chinese and
Romanian orphanages and the increasing numbers of infertile couples in the developed world,
proponents of international adoption claim it appears to solve two problems at once. However, recently
Romania has stopped all international adoptions amid claims of corruption and human trafficking.
Similar stories have clouded adoptions from Guatemala. Despite these difficulties international
adoptions by US citizens have tripled in the past 5 years and legislation has been passed to make it
easier for these adopted children to obtain citizenship. The numbers of international adoptions now
reach as many as 45,000 worldwide. Opponents argue however that some children complain of a
feeling of cultural dislocation and reject claims such cases are exceptions to the general sentiment of
delight with their new homes and dual identity. The long-term effects of such migrations are hard to
predict but many opponents call for more efforts to be made to house children in their country of birth,
with proper support for domestic orphanages and adoption schemes.