Luke's HP Site

First-Generation “Immigrants”

Assuming that there are real differences between the culture dominating magical Britain and non-magical Britain, some authors express frustration with first generation magical users like Hermione who come into this new world essentially as immigrants, and yet make no effort to learn about their new society before both making value judgements and demanding that everyone change to conform to the non-magical value system and culture.1 Per this view, it is the responsibility of the first generation magical user to learn about the magical culture just like it would be my responsibility to learn about French culture should I move to France. Just as France and French citizens would have no special obligation to me, the magical world has no special obligation to these first generation magic users.

On the face of it, there is some merit to this argument; it is persuasive, seems consistent, and certainly puts the first generation magical user on the defensive. This argument has, however, some significant flaws. Both Harry and Hermione chose to attend Hogwarts, but neither were given full information. Would Hermione have chosen to immigrate to a society where she would be a third class citizen? Even if she would have, would her parents have allowed such a decision?

Rowling does not tell us what happens to a first generation child who does not choose to accept the invitation to Hogwarts, but the common speculation falls into two camps. Either the child is simply not allowed to decline, or the child’s magical ability is “bound” or “suppressed” in some way, and the knowledge of magic removed with spells such as obliviate. Assuming that either of these is true, then the analogy to immigration utterly falls down. The first generation witch or wizard has been forced to enter this society, at “wand point.” If you force me to join your society, then you do bear some responsibility for teaching me to succeed in it.

The common defence of forcing first-generation magicals to join the new society is the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy([ISWS]). The argument goes that an untrained witch or wizard would be unable to control their accidental magic, and would expose the existence of magic to the non-magical society. This is probably reasonable. Eventually someone would gain sufficient conscious or even unconscious control over their magic to start using it in very public and very undeniable ways. This would eventually lead to investigations into the abilities, the people who have them. These investigations, done by any competent government or reasonably sized organisation, would probably eventually detect enough of the hidden society to deduce its overall existence.

The [ISWS] was only signed by Wizarding Governments, which seem to have a tenuous relationship with their non-magical counterparts. In Britain, there is a separate legislature, separate courts, and a separate “minister,” who, based on the interactions we see, informs, not reports to the non-magical Prime Minister.2 This makes for a fairly strong case that while the magical government may in some nebulous sense still recognise the Crown (though that is certainly not stated and thus is debatable), it is otherwise an entirely separate government.3

I am told that under non-magical British law, a child does not automatically gain citizenship merely by being born within British borders.4 The British magical society seems to take the opposite view, that anyone born within its jurisdiction is automatically a citizen, and thus under its jurisdiction. While children do not normally get to contest what government rules them, their parents typically do.5 Here we have a situation where a child, by virtue of being born with a particular trait, is said to be of a different nationality from the parents said child cohabitates with. The [ISWS] dictates that this all be kept secret from the non-citizen parents, and prejudice ensures that these non-citizen parents have no rights.

Should the child, or the parent acting on behalf of the child, either break the laws, or even create a situation where the laws are likely to be broken (by not training the child), the secret government has enacted regulations such that the child can be irrevocably harmed6 and the minds of both parents (who are NOT under the jurisdiction of the secret government) and child manipulated and modified.

Since the [ISWS] was signed after the separation of the magical and non-magical governments into effectively separate countries with overlapping territory, it is unlikely that the non-magical government had much input into its provisions, rather they were almost certainly simply informed after the fact, if at all. A government might well consider itself bound by a treaty signed by a preceding government, but not by some essentially unaffiliated government. The requirements of the [ISWS] leave the non-magical government no recourse should (as essentially happens in Book 7) the magical government become a threat to the non-magical population. This might have worked in the age of absolute monarchs, but even in the 1680s and 1690s, Parliament was curtailing the rights of British monarchs, though not to the extent seen today. No government that rules by the consent of the governed can sign away the rights of its citizens to safeguard their children the way the [ISWS] does.

When the children arrive at Hogwarts, they are only then told, and that piecemeal, that they have in fact joined a new society. Since the consequences of withdrawing from that society are never spelled out, it is safe to say that they are not known to the children before they arrive at school. Hermione would not have risked practising at home before first year7 if she knew it was illegal. This new “world” they have joined has customs that they are expected to know, but will not be taught, laws that they must follow, and no way out. Note that I am not challenging the principle that ignorance is no excuse for failing to obey the law. That principle presupposes that one knows that there is a law making body to obey. While it may be a a universal maxim in a practical sense, in a moral sense, if, for example, I honestly do not know not only that

  1. I am in Britain, or
  2. even that it exists, and
  3. have a legitimate reason to believe that I am somewhere else,

then I cannot be held culpable for failure to obey Parliament. The fault must belong to the person(s) who created that situation (by placing me there without my knowledge, or otherwise causing me to believe I lived somewhere else).

The students might not have been kidnapped, in that they can go home for a few weeks at Christmas, and two months or so each summer, but they will quickly find they fit in less and less at home. They cannot show their parents anything from school. They know nothing of what has gone on in the non-magical society for the last four to ten months. Their non-magical education is frozen at age eleven, so they lack all sorts of key concepts to even converse with their peers and, increasingly, with their parents. I suspect that even by the 1600s, this mattered. While few non-magical families would have significant amounts of book-based education, that is to say, few would be significantly literate, there were still skills to learn. If you did not come from a farming family, the mundane child was probably apprenticed out at a young age anyway. The longer the magical child remains at Hogwarts, the more likely he or she has missed out on this opportunity. As non-magical society moved into and then through the industrial revolution and into the modern era, the apprenticeship model changed, but not in ways that would reduce the friction between non-magical expectations of how family works, how society works, and the more stagnant magical society.

It is in this context that they are then criticised for wanting things to be the way they were raised to expect. Those who come from old, aggressively magical families rightly complain that first generation magical users always want to change things. They are, however, at fault. Going back to my example, they have placed the child, unbeknownst to that child, in a foreign culture with expectations that it is in fact their native culture. The child, being a child, expects to be able to succeed according to the patterns he or she has learned for the first eleven years of his/her life to expect. The child, being a child, has a right to support from society in being shaped to appropriately fit in with and succeed in his/her culture.

The magical world has created the divide between cultures by refusing to stay connected with the non-magical world on one hand, and by forcing the immigration of the first-generation users on the other. If they want their static society, they have options:

Instead I suspect that some percentage of the magical culture actively desires a permanent underclass that cannot succeed.8 They intend the first generation “emigrants” to become the next generation of peasant workers in their shops, manufactories/workshops; to fill the secretarial and clerical positions in the Ministry. While this may not be formally slavery, it is still repugnant.

[ISWS]: ./International Statute of Secrecy [Ministry of Magic]: ./Government

  1. you see this in a number of works, but I currently remember:

    • Shygui. A Fateful Walk Chapter 8. Updated: 2018-09-05; Published: 2016-09-15; Last Viewed: 2021-02-20.
    • Sinyk. Angry Harry and the Seven Chapter 7 Updated: 2013-10-22; Published: 2013-10-09; Last Viewed 2021-02-20.
    • kb0. Harry Potter: Air Elemental Published: 2016-06-12. Updated: 2016-10-29. This view is actually fairly mild in this work, but the idea of mostly undefined “Wizarding Traditions” that should be known and practised, and that when not cause the person or family to stand out and be excluded is mentioned several times.
    ↩︎

  2. Mrs. J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince p. 8. Pottermore Publishing. American Kindle Edition. This is probably the clearest reference, though really the entire chapter proves the point.↩︎

  3. It is worth noting that nearly every author who spends significant time trying to build upon the backstory decides that there is a a treaty between the magical population and the monarch of Britain to establish the [ISWS], the [Ministry of Magic], or both. A monarch does not sign a treaty with his/her subjects. The Magna Carta for example was a charter not a treaty.↩︎

  4. Ms. Clare Feikert-Ahalt. “Laws Concerning Children of Undocumented Migrants: United Kingdom” Section III: “Pathways to Legal Residence and Citizenship for Illegal Immigrants” Subsection A: “Children”. Library of Congress Law Library 2017-09-??↩︎

  5. Illegal immigrants and others who, because they have broken the law, are themselves beyond or exempt from its protection are the exception to this general principle.↩︎

  6. I am assuming the child’s ability to use magic is, for lack of a better word, bound. In other words, the child is rendered incapable of violating the [ISWS] in a permanent and lasting way. I strongly suspect the United Nations would consider crippling a child’s ability to use any skill harm.↩︎

  7. Mrs. J. K. Rowling. Book 1, better citation needed.↩︎

  8. See also Class and Blood and Class Consciousness↩︎