Are walls and tighter border controls the answer to the big questions on immigration? Do they achieve what their advocates set out to do? Or should the world aim to return to a time when less xenophobia and more trust in people was the order of the day?
Read on »Posts Tagged: EU migration
Migrants’ Rights Network: Immigration controls, but at what cost?
PM Theresa May has now set out her vision for a UK outside the EU. UKREN Coordinator Alan Anstead takes a look at what this could mean to real families where one partner is from an EU country and the other a Brit. Along the way he shares his personal story as someone in just this situation.
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: The challenges facing migrants’ rights campaigners in 2017
MRN’s new Director, Fizza Qureshi, welcomes the New Year and the major challenges it brings. The picture may look bleak, but that’s no reason for pessimism. It’s a spur to building alliances and campaigning harder for a rights-based approach to migration.
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: [UK]Government agenda – Roll back the rights of all migrants
The policy pronouncements at the Conservative conference show how far the government is prepared to go to turn migration into a rights-free zone. Both EU and the third country migrants will lose out under these plans. We need a campaign that unites them all if rights are to be preserved.
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: Brexit and potential human rights implications
A small majority of UK voters said that the UK should leave the EU in the referendum on 23 June. UKREN’s Alan Anstead looks at some of the main human rights implications of the UK government invoking article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and starting the countdown to leaving the EU.
Read on »Migrant’s Rights Network: The referendum vote – what will happen to the rights of migrants?
We respond to the outcome of the referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union.
Read on »Migrants’ Right Network: Saving the gains of the Schengen agreement requires European solidarity on protection for refugees
Much of the news commentary on Europe seems to assume that the Schengen open borders arrangement will vanish in the next few months. That would be a disaster. Saving it will require a reversal of the current refusal of solidarity with countries at the frontline of the refugee flows.
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: 2015 – The year when immigration became an indissolubly European issue
Halfway through December seems like a good time to sketch out some ideas on what 2015 might come to mean in a history of immigration which has yet to be written.
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: Calais crisis: 15 years of ‘tough cop’ policies have failed – we need a new plan
Don Flynn* The UK government has given all the indications of being badly wrong-footed by the latest developments in the refugee crisis at the French Channel port of Calais. Higher fences and brawnier policemen are not the answer. A renewal of our commitment to humanitarian solutions is. Three thousand migrants have congregated in the area
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: David Cameron’s EU migration speech – what impact on migrants’ rights?
Ruth Grove-White* Today’s (28.11) speech from the Prime Minister has made a pitch for a new tough approach on EU migrant access to welfare, but it has taken us further away from the evidence-based debate on immigration that we need. Read full story here. David Cameron’s speech on EU migration, delivered earlier Friday, was
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: Note to Party leaders: Misleading voters about what can and can’t be done on immigration will still get you nowhere
Don Flynn* Emergency brakes and benefit caps were put on offer by party leaders this week. Both are intended to get across the message that immigration can be got back under control. But aren’t there bigger truths that we should be trying to get across, like how the movement of people is all a part
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: Is migration blocking the way to post-national global outlooks?
Don Flynn* We are living in a world that is evermore global in the way it lives its daily life. So why does public opinion seem to be becoming more nationalistic? Is the experience of migration a part of the reason? An interesting new book considers these questions. Read original posting here. Here is a
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: ‘Too Many Immigrants?’, ‘Big Romanian Invasion’, or ‘Glasgow Girls’: Which got closer to the truth in telling the story of immigration?
Don Flynn* You wait for weeks for a programme that allows migrants to tell the stories of their lives, and then three come along at once. The media critic Ben Bagdikian once complained that trying to be a first class reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach’s ‘St
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: UKIP’s strong showing challenges supporters of migrants’ rights to do better
By Don Flynn* There’s no point hiding the fact that the right wing party made effective use of public anxieties about immigration to build its position. But all the evidence on how the argument is running shows that it can still be turned round. But we’ll need a new upsurge of activism in support
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: Public moods on free movement: Should we just follow the herd?
Don Flynn* The new report on free movement in the EU from IPPR argues that pro-migration groups have to triangulate their advocacy with the antagonistic moods that currently hold sway. But do they need to go quite so stridently in the direction of arguing that they dictate the need for a ‘new
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: Refusal to face the realities of migration opens the door to racism
Migrant Tales insight: This excellent piece by Don Flynn sounds very familar to what the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS) are doing in Finland to get people to vote for them in the MEP elections on May 25. PS chairman Timo Soini has spoken at Ukip gatherings on a number of occasions and are in many respects
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: Why we need a new anti-racist movement if we are to secure the rights of migrants
Don Flynn* Anti-racism and the battle for the rights of migrant seem to have moved some distance apart in recent years. It is time to reverse that, and re-forge a unity between the two that will be able to take on the challenges that come from growing xenophobic moods. The coalition of groups supporting the
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: When single markets and the inequalities of global trade provide the basis of a ‘right to migrate’ (Part 3)
Don Flynn* This is the final blog in a three part series which sets the reasons why we need a clearer and more precise idea of the rights which migrants need if they are to prosper in the modern world. Here we argue that the assertion of a ‘right to migrate’ is
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: Wanted: Truth and clarity about migration to the UK today
MT comment: Is it a coincidence that the same issues but in a different context are taking place in Finland and elsewhere in Europe? Even if elections are supposed to be a time when we celebrate our democratic rights, for some, like migrants and minorities, it has come to represent a day of uncertainty, even
Read on »
Recent Comments