How does the myth of indigeneity shape attitudes toward migrants?

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The myth of indigeneity makes migrants look like outsiders, even when they are essential to a nation’s prosperity
The myth of indigeneity shapes attitudes toward migrants by encouraging countries to tell creation myths in which the soil, the people, and the flag have “always been one,” rather than treating today’s population as the result of later arrivals. In the United States, this shows up in talk of “founding fathers” rather than “recent British immigrants,” and in Australia, it appears as celebration of the Anzac spirit alongside the “airbrushing out” of convict ships. The same pattern is described in Brazil, where cordialidade is glorified while the Nordestinos who fled drought for Sāo Paulo are marginalised.
Countries treat late arrivals as natives, then close the gate behind them
The core mechanism is that each country eventually anoints its “latecomers” as natives, and only after that shifts to treating new arrivals as illegitimate outsiders. The oil palm example is used to illustrate timing: after arriving in 1910, it is now regarded as “Malaysian,” while people who arrived in 2010 are not treated as similarly local. This creates a two-tier standard where belonging is framed as something that can be granted over time to non-human migrants, but denied to human migrants.
Identity politics intensifies when migrants are more visible than migrant trees
The text contrasts how migrant trees are “invisible as an identity” with how migrant people are “hyper-visible,” bringing accents, mosques, temples, and different-coloured skin. When wages and housing feel unstable, the stranger becomes an easy scapegoat, with claims that “they” take jobs, lower wages, and change neighbourhoods. The result is that the cultural threat is felt more strongly than economic evidence that long-term migration can grow the economic “pie.”
Speed and scale of human migration changes how the public perceives it
Another factor is that human migration happens “in real time,” shown through images such as a dinghy in the Mediterranean, a caravan at the Rio Grande, or a work permit queue in Kuala Lumpur. These scenes are described as flooding screens “raw and uncontextualised,” so viewers see a wave “crashing” rather than the drought, war, or poverty that pushed people to move. By contrast, seeds germinate quietly, and a family arriving at midnight is framed as an “invasion,” which hardens attitudes before any longer-term belonging can form.
Nations owe their development to migrants but still frame them as moral failures
The text argues that even when countries rely on migrant labour, they often fail to recognise that dependence in the way they treat migrants socially. It cites Malaysia’s rubber and palm oil industries relying heavily on workers from Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Nepal, and it also lists the US transcontinental railroad built by Irish and Chinese labour, Australia’s post-war prosperity supported by Greek, Italian, and Vietnamese refugees, and Brazil’s coffee boom backed by Japanese and Lebanese migrants. Against this backdrop, the growing objection to migrants is described as a moral failure rather than an economic necessity, because the same “botany of acceptance” used to celebrate transplanted palms and rubber trees is not applied to people.

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How does the myth of indigeneity shape attitudes toward migrants?

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