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: Government policy
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 Integration or Imitation Game?
Integration is a two-way process. Simply blaming migrants for failing to integrate or learn English isn’t a viable way forward. So it’s vital that migrant communities are involved in any discussion and development of a UK-wide integration strategy argues MRN Director, Fizza Qureshi.
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) The Calais Jungle – a beacon for the fight against refugee injustice
The Jungle camp in Calais has challenged the indifference of official Europe to the plight of refugees for close on two decades. It has survived previous attempts at demolition. As long as the grievances that gave rise to remain it will come back to haunt the conscience of the continent.
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) Workplace immigration checks and raids: What needs to be done
The cooperation of the management of Byron Hamburger’s with Home Office immigration enforcement officers in a sting operation earlier in the summer symbolises everything that can go wrong for migrant workers when employment law and immigration policy merge.
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: Byron Hamburgers: When employers fail to do right by migrant employees
What else could Byron’s have done? The social media world was awash with attempted defences of the hamburger chain after it collaborated in the arrest of 35 of its migrant workers earlier in July. Our answer is they didn’t have to go along with the shabby act of entrapment of its staff, and they could have done so much more to push back against punitive, anti-worker rules.
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’ 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 »The Finnish government’s eighty-point tightening of immigration policy is all politics and saving face, nothing more
The Finnish government of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä announced Tuesday an eighty-point tightening of Finnish immigration policy, according to YLE News. The new plan by the government means very bad news for asylum seekers and refugees living in Finland.
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: Lessons of Paris – Borders won’t protect us: Solidarity with refugees remains the best hope
The Friday 13th attacks in Paris are being interpreted by many commentators as politicians as a watershed moment in public attitudes towards refugee policies in Europe.
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: Frontier anxiety: Living with the stress of the everyday border
What happens when we bring the anxieties of life at the border into the heart of our all our communities? How can we contend with life in a space where identity is constantly checked and people subjected to the question: Why are you really here? MRN director Don Flynn asks this in an article published this month in Soundings, a journal of cultural politics and simultaneously on the website of Eurozine. The full article can be accessed here.
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: So we are better off because of migration, but why aren’t the politicians getting that message across?
Don Flynn* The blizzard of commentary that accompanies the annual budget statement also included a memo from the OBR saying “Mr Chancellor, immigration is good for us.” So will he, and other politicians, act on this message? The news that projections for economic growth for the period ahead are being upgraded because
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: Immigration statistics to be debated for 3 hours in the House of Commons
Awale Olad MPs are set to debate the political minefield of migration statistics this Thursday, 26 June. The Lords will also debate the right to work for asylum seekers. Read full blog entry here. The Westminster Hall debate will be led by Bernard Jenkins MP, the Chair of the Public Administration Select
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: Is a new Immigration Bill to be announced in the Queen’s Speech?
Migrant Tales insight: Events in the United Kingdom resemble a self-fulfilling prophesy for white English and an ever-worsening and ever-hostile place for migrants and visible minorities. The treatment and approach to immigration of Prime Minister David Cameron’s government is shameful. It reveals more cowardice than sound judgement. The worst matter in the United Kingdom isn’t
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: The anti-immigrant message stumbles, but who will come out on top?
By Don Flynn* Only a few days left before the vote in the European and local election poll. The anti-immigrant hardliners are taking flack after an inept radio interview performance by the leading Ukipper. But has the liberal mainstream the gumption to allow it forge past them with an optimistic message about diversity? For
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: Brokenshire vs. Cable – Is immigration good or bad for the economy?
Don Flynn* Is immigration just an accident, prompted by the selfish behaviour of the metropolitan elite, or a vital component in the functioning of a globalised economy? That was the issue at the heart of the spat between two government ministers last week. Decision on who is right will decide the future direction of immigration
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: Migration statistics are difficult reading for Cameron but prove critics right
Awale Olad* The latest quarterly statistics from the independent Office of National Statistics found net migration soaring to 212,000 by the year ending September 2013. The Home Office’s response was that it was cracking down on the abuse of ‘freedom of movement’. The figures show a statistically significant increase in Western European (EU15) citizens arriving
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: An atlas of migration that tells the story of globalisation and barriers to freedom
Don Flynn* David Cameron’s intervention during the EU leaders’ summit meeting in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius last week has made it clear enough that the issues of immigration and Europe are going to be heavily intertwined during the political debates of the coming period. Read full story here. Cameron’s claims that the
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: What is driving the ‘hostile environment’ idea (in the UK)?
By Don Flynn* The announcement of yet more changes to the immigration rules will cause anxiety to run down the spine of many a legal migrant as they struggle to understand whether it has implications for them. The government has declared that the intention behind the new Immigration Bill currently being considered
Read on »Migrants’ Rights Network: Immigration is an important factor in Conservative rise in the polls
MT comment: Solid analysis by Awale Olad on what role the anti-immigrant message will play in the polls and upcoming elections in the United Kingdom. The delicate balancing act involves anti-immigration rhetoric, which could be ignited by the government’s Immigration Bill, and scaring away those votes it needs to capture, according to Olad. With
Read on »Migrant Rights’ Network: UKIP has an advantage that is not based on concrete policy proposals
By Awale Olad The aftermath of the UKIP surge in the polls in the local elections has led to a lot of soul searching in mainstream politics. To the detriment of the Conservative Party whilst also hacking away at both the support of the Labour and Liberal Democrats parties, UKIP emerged as the third most
Read on »Migrant Rights’ Network: Voters’ verdict: Immigration not as important as the economy, Europe, or taxes
By Awale Olad Election junkies in the UK and Europe have had a satisfying fix over the last couple of weeks. From the historical win of Francois Hollande in France to the local election gains in the UK mid-term elections for the Labour Party and Greece’s new political turmoil and looming elections – a further
Read on »Finland also locks up asylum seeker children
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- A child in the Joutseno Immigration Removal Center.
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