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Asylum: Labour’s latest export tradeRob Peutrell
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ew Labour’s asylum policy is all about putting up fences, ‘out there’ as well as ‘in our heads’. Border controls, forced removal, detention, taking away the right to work, accommodation centres, a language that plays fast and loose with racist xenophobia are all about stopping people moving and meeting freely. New Labour’s attack on asylum is not about stopping migration per se, but about reasserting state control over migration and defending the ‘integrity’ of national, and increasingly supranational, borders. New Labour wants immigration, but only of the right, market determined and strictly regulated, kind.New UK government proposals to set up a network of asylum and refugee camps outside European Union borders, which were presented to the EU at the end of March, involve fence building in both the physical and ideological senses. The aim is to end the spontaneous arrival of refugees and other irregular migrants in the EU, by paying governments in countries outside to accept ‘Transit Processing Centres’ on ‘their’ territory, and by establishing so-called ‘Refugee Protection Zones’ in areas of conflict.
Croatia, Romania, the Ukraine and Albania have all been mooted as sites for transit centres. All asylum seekers arriving spontaneously at EU borders would be removed to these centres where their asylum claims would be processed. Those given refugee status would be offered resettlement in the EU. Protection zones would be set up in places such as Morocco, Turkey and Iran, and provide UN ‘protection’ for six months.
Human rights and refugee groups have condemned these plans, pointing out that managing (and being seen to manage) numbers
— and not giving protection — is what motivates the government. They argue that, if introduced, the plans will lead to the unravelling of already inadequate international agreements on refugee protection, particularly when poor countries see wealthy ones ‘exporting’ their international obligations. More than this, the burden of ‘care’ will be put in the hands of an under-resourced UNHCR, which lacks the capacity to guarantee humanitarian protection, as the massacres in UNHCR protected areas in Bosnia and Rwanda demonstrate. Women isolated in camps, campaigners argue, will be particularly vulnerable.Refugee groups point out that the ‘refugee burden’ already falls overwhelmingly and disproportionately on poor countries; that many of those countries being suggested as sites for transit centres have extremely poor human rights records; and that the already inadequate legal protections given to asylum seekers would be further eroded by these measures. This would lead to the forced removal of so-called ‘failed asylum seekers’ back to the countries from which they have fled, as well as an increase in the number of permanently displaced people.
Finally, there is concern about the way the proposals link migration controls explicitly to development aid and see ‘refugee crises’ as a way of legitimating future ‘humanitarian’ military intervention.
Global management
The wider context for these new measures is, of course, the problem of ‘globalisation management’. Like all capitalist governments, New Labour wants it both ways: the free movement of money, the controlled movement of people. The question is how do they open up global territory for capital, whilst keeping out those who want a share in the economic pie or those escaping the upheaval, conflict and repression that are part and parcel of the globalisation process? What these new proposals exemplify is the gradual integration of those tools of global management, including migration control, military intervention and economic regulation, which differentiate monetary and migratory movement.
Out of sight, out of mind
In this context, the new proposals build on Blunkett’s fear that letting asylum seekers integrate into the community poses a risk to asylum control. As Blunkett recognises, if no-one knows they’re there, no-one notices when they’ve gone, but when people do notice, removal becomes politically and legally more difficult. Community anti-deportation campaigns have been able to stop deportations, and shown that, whatever the tabloids say, asylum seekers can be made welcome. They have shared their sense of outrage at the sheer negligent cruelty of the Home Office
— of operatives and ministers alike. The result is that at least some local people get to realise that asylum seekers are people too.Blunkett’s answer to this problem is crude but effective: stop refugees and local people from meeting in any meaningful way. In this sense, transit centres simply extend the segregatory logic of existing asylum policy. Anti-deportation campaigns get behind people facing deportation and, along with other grassroots initiatives, cut through the fences the government is busily erecting.
Bill Morris of the Transport and General Workers’ Union has argued that "dumping refugees on other countries, especially ones that are poorer, often less politically stable and in many instances close to conflict zones, is straight out of the moral Dark Ages."
In the current asylum climate, even simple acts of friendship are political acts and necessary if the attack on asylum is to be challenged with any effect. More formal EU discussions are planned for June, but opposition to this act of fence building needs organising, and urgently.
Rob Peutrell
Read more:
Statewatch Asylum in the EU: the beginning of the end? www.statewatch.org
Amnesty International Fortress Europe in Times of War [email protected]
Asylum Aid Women’s Asylum Newsletter February 2003
www.asyIumaid.org.uk— from Freedom, 17 May 2003