Dear IRR News subscriber,

This week, we learned that the Home Office is facilitating the exploitation of migrants working in the construction of the £2.6bn Beatrice windfarm off the Scottish coast, by granting an immigration waiver to employers bringing in non-EU workers, who in many cases have been paid a fraction of the UK minimum wage. Next weekend, Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 November, the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, sitting at Friends House in London, will be putting on trial the government policies which have allowed the exploitation of migrant and refugee people in fields as diverse as agriculture, logistics and care, pushing them into destitution and ill health, and will also hear of migrants’ self-organisation and resistance. The IRR is a co-convenor of the hearing. Register to attend here.

Anti-migrant policies to be examined by the PPT include indefinite detention, which causes huge distress and exacerbates pre-existing trauma – and as we note in the calendar, suicide attempts among immigration detainees have risen at a frightening rate. This week on IRR News, Aisha Maniar discusses the importance for detainees’ welfare of professional interpreting facilities in immigration removal centres, in the context of Stephen Shaw’s 2018 ‘progress report’ on the Home Office’s implementation of the recommendations he made in his 2016 review of vulnerable adults in immigration detention.

As Eliane Edmond-Pettitt reminds us, the hostile environment extends to Calais, where she describes continuing police harassment of the refugees and displaced people there, as well as the volunteers helping them stay alive.

Our regular calendar of racism and resistance chronicles the alarming growth in the confidence of far-right, anti-migrant movements in the UK and across Europe, which makes it ever more vital to stand with migrant and refugee people. And finally, the October issue of Race & Class is now available, and includes pieces on #Grime4Corbyn, C. L. R. James and memorial tributes to A. Sivanandan.

IRR News Team