Dear IRR News subscriber,

There’s a fight going on to preserve multicultural London as we know it. From Southall to Brixton, from Tottenham to Elephant & Castle, BAME communities are amongst those speaking out against the demolition of social housing and highlighting the threat redevelopment poses to ethnic businesses and community street markets, the mainstay of life for poor communities, particularly migrants, fast being priced out of the capital. To find out what it means to live through regeneration and to explore its race, class and gendered aspects, this week on IRR News, Jessica Perera, author of The London Clearances: Race, Housing and Policing, speaks to north London resident and activist Tash Bonner, founder of the Temporary Accommodation Group (TAG) for Love Lane estate in Tottenham.

As we highlight in our calendar of racism and resistance, policing measures are currently being expanded in the UK. In the year to March 2018, black people were 40 times more likely to be stopped and searched in England and Wales than white people. We also draw attention to how nearly 6,000 British citizens were stopped for immigration checks between January – October 2018. Bringing it all together, the Racial Justice Network and Yorkshire Resists have recently launched a campaign STOP the SCANdal, which highlights the links between policing and immigration forces and calls for an end to police mobile fingerprint scanners linked to the Home Office immigration database.

Meanwhile, across Europe, another fight is still on going. As states continue to neglect their responsibilities towards migrants and asylum seekers, civil society is moving in to ensure those without papers do not go hungry on our streets, freeze to death in Alpine passes, or drown in the Mediterranean Sea.  Anya Edmond-Pettitt, co-author of the IRR’s recent report When Witnesses won’t be silenced:  citizens’ solidarity and criminalisation, draws attention to the latest prosecution for a ‘crime of solidarity’. Norbert Valley, an evangelical pastor, from the Swiss Alpine city of Le Locle is accused of ‘facilitating illegal stay’. His crime – giving assistance, food and shelter, to a rejected asylum seeker from Togo.

IRR News Team