This week, IRR News teams up with the Border Crossing Observatory at Monash University, Melbourne, and with the International State Crime Initiative (ISCI) at Kings College, London, to bring new insights and an international perspective to bear on the Global North’s callous mistreatment of asylum seekers and refugees. Spanish civil guards shoot rubber bullets at
News Service
The globalisation of indifference
The director of the Institute of Race Relations calls for the arts to take a stand for human dignity. Europe is divided, split between its image of itself as the continent of the Enlightenment and humanitarian values, and its shadow-image as the ‘Fortress Europe’ which sets its face like flint against migrants and refugees. In
‘No one can be left without hope’: Breathing life into global action for asylum seekers
Australia’s inhuman anti-asylum policies may survive the many protests at Reza Berati’s offshore detention death, but change can come through global solidarity in pursuit of justice for asylum seekers, says Leanne Weber of the Border Crossing Observatory at Monash University. On 23 February Melbourne’s Federation Square filled with people who had come to commemorate the
Death at Europe’s frontiers: foreseeable result of state policy?
European states are morally responsible for deaths at the EU’s borders, argues the International State Crime Initiative. ‘This is the main feature of contemporary border politics. It exposes the border transgressors to death rather than directly using its power to kill.’ Khosravi (2010), ‘Illegal’ Traveller: an auto-ethnography of borders (p. 27) On 6 February, fifteen
IRR News 7 – 13 March 2014
Dear IRR News subscriber, Buzz Johnson, the founder of Karia Press, died last month. This week we publish a tribute by Chris Searle to the ‘people’s exemplar’ who was to find ‘excellence in the most unrecognised and neglected of contexts, and print and spread its message in the midst of hope and struggle.’ In news
‘We are our own educators!’: Buzz Johnson, people’s publisher
A tribute to Buzz Johnson (1951–2014), who created in the UK one of the most important and prolific black publishing houses on and for Caribbean peoples. I feel that I met Norris ‘Buzz’ Johnson nearly a decade before we actually met, human to human. In 1968, I found my first school teaching post in Scarborough,
IRR News 28 February – 6 March 2014
Dear IRR News subscriber, Anti-immigration and nativist movements across Europe are increasingly turning their ire on eastern European workers exercising free movement rights under EU foundational treaties. This week, we show how Swiss nativist parties have drawn a new line in the sand, winning the admiration of those campaigning to end EU free movement rights.
Swiss referendum: flying the flag for nativism
Swiss nativist parties have drawn a new line in the sand, winning the admiration of those campaigning to end EU free movement rights. Anti-immigration and nativist movements across Europe are increasingly turning their ire on eastern European workers exercising free movement rights under EU foundational treaties. UKIP’s position – that ‘unfettered free movement from the
Law overridden to penalise refugees
Fifteen years after the High Court condemned the prosecution of refugees for using false documents in their quest for a place of safety and parliament provided a statutory defence, they are still being wrongly convicted and sent to prison. The 1951 Refugee Convention is quite clear: penalties must not be imposed on refugees (including asylum
IRR News 21 – 27 February 2014
Dear IRR News subscriber, In a week when the Migration Advisory Committee has put forward proposals to auction off British visas to the highest bidders, Frances Webber asks whether the UK is turning into an offshore enclave for the world’s wealthiest, at the expense of the most vulnerable? The latest Race & Class radio broadcast is