Comment

Rats in the kitchen, sodden carpets in the living room

When researcher John Grayson visited a family with disabilities living in a Mears asylum house in Rotherham, he was stunned by what he saw. ‘That’s where the rats get in.’ April [all names have been changed] was showing me round the kitchen in her Rotherham asylum house. I was visiting her with a volunteer interpreter

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Fortnightly Bulletin

IRR News (13 – 27 November 2019)

Dear IRR News subscriber, As the general election approaches, campaigners are doing their utmost to ensure that some of the most burning issues of our times are being discussed. How can we rebuild community, after decades of de-industrialisation, cuts to services and youth provision, and how can we undo the damaging austerity that has ripped

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News

Calendar of racism and resistance (13 – 27 November 2019)

A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. ASYLUM AND MIGRATION Asylum and migrant rights 20 November: Doctors, nurses, and healthcare unions call on the prime minister to scrap the ‘health surcharge’ for non-EU NHS staff accessing NHS treatment after he proposes to increase the amount

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Interview

‘You need to look closely, because Elephant and Castle is a model for other dispossession projects’

Elephant and Castle is London’s gentrification ‘ground zero’ – where a blueprint for other large scale regeneration projects is to be made. There is an ethnically diverse community of traders, workers, shoppers, passers-by and residents who all rely on the affordable services provided by the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre in Southwark. However, this appears

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News

Denmark’s ‘ghetto package’ – discrimination enshrined in law

Since IRR News last reported on Denmark’s ‘ghetto package’, presented to parliament in March 2018 to regulate life in the so-called ‘hard ghettos’ of Mjølnerparken in Copenhagen, Gadehavegård in Høje-Taastrup, Vollsmose in Odense and Gellerupparken/Toveshøj in Aarhus, Denmark has had a general election. The previous centre-right government led by the Venstre party (Liberals) was replaced

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Comment

‘If she had been a white German woman, her death would have been properly investigated’

The death of a Kenyan woman has stirred anger about the treatment of women and asylum seekers in Germany. The circumstances surrounding the death in Brandenburg, eastern Germany of Rita Awour Ojungé, a 32-year-old woman from Kenya, earlier this year, have led to refugee rights organisations speaking up about institutional neglect in accommodation centres. ‘Women

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Fortnightly Bulletin

IRR News (31 October – 13 November 2019)

Dear IRR News subscriber, This week we’re excited to announce the publication of a new edition of A. Sivanandan’s Communities of Resistance: Writings on Black Struggles for Socialism (Verso, 2019) with a preface by Gary Younge, an introduction by Arun Kundnani and a bibliography – ‘the best book on anti-racism you probably haven’t read’. Order

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News

Calendar of racism and resistance (31 October – 13 November 2019)

A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. ASYLUM AND MIGRATION Asylum and migrant rights 1 November: The international protection and other provisions law, rushed through the Greek parliament in a matter of days, aimed at curbing the sharpest increase in arrivals since 2015, will restrict

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Comment

Grieve the Essex 39, but recognise the root causes

In the wake of the deaths of 39 migrants in a lorry container, daikon*’s Kay Stephens writes on the global structures of capitalism and imperialism and the deadly border regimes that led to their deaths. On 24 October, daikon*, a group of anti-racist creatives of east and south east Asian descent, organised a vigil outside

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News

Ian Macdonald 1939-2019

Ian Macdonald, whose death was announced on 12 November, was a pioneer of committed anti-racist legal practice, as a criminal lawyer and later, as the founding father of immigration law. The son of a Scottish senior police officer, Ian started out in an ‘establishment’ set of chambers in the early 1960s, which he left after

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