Notes on: Fekete, L. (2001). The emergence of
xeno-racism — Institute of Race Relations.
https://irr.org.uk/article/the-emergence-of-xeno-racism/
According to Sivanandan, racism is not directed
just at people with darker skins but at '"new
categories of the displaced, the dispossessed and
the uprooted who are beating at Western Europe's
door"'. It is not colour-coded because it is
directed at poor whites as well. Nor is it simple
xenophobia because it '"bears all the marks of the
old racism"
The old ideological enemy used to be communism,
but today it is the 125 million displaced people,
driven by poverty rather than ideology. There is a
general mobilisation against migratory movements
from overpopulated and insecure countries and the
emergence of a 'whole new anti-refugee discourse…
In popular culture'. Asylum seekers are seen as
bogus, illegal, mere economic migrants,
scroungers, and to be excluded in order to
preserve our own economic prosperity and national
identity. That is a new racism.
The EU has encouraged harmonisation of asylum
policy and the control of migration, and has
recently coalesced into an overall policy of
migration management. There is a recognition that
immigration is necessary and that refugees provide
an important source of skilled labour, so the EC
argued that the EU should open up legal routes,
and national governments followed this lead, often
adopting skills-based recruitment programs, or
managed migration, a policy of admitting guest
workers.
This has been accompanied by an abolition of the
right to claim asylum, however, a strategic
response by the first world to the breakup of the
communist zone and the impact of globalism. The
displacement of people can't be left to market
forces alone if global accumulation is to be
managed especially within '"a new legal and
economic superstructure"'. As a result, 'Fortress
Europe' refined its earlier '"zero
immigration"' approach which it had at the
end of the 20th century.
There has been considerable international
cooperation, even though targets and policies
might differ. There is a common interest which
informs regional policy, and cooperation through
bodies such as the 'International Centre for
Migration Policy and Development, founded in
1993', which developed out of consultations
between Europe and North America and Australia.
Other mechanisms include 'the Secretariat of the
Budapest Process' involving ministers and 34
states and various intergovernment organisations.
There are 'at least 30 other networks and or other
activities' set up by European states and IGos,
and many contain representatives from security
agencies and governments. They are focused on
predicting flows, and more recently 'combating
smuggling and trafficking'.
These have become dominant concerns, instead of
assistance and hospitality, changing the emphasis
of international law. Of course, smugglers are
exploitative, but the governments have played a
part in creating them by blocking legal routes and
fortifying borders. However, the 'Smuggling
Protocol of the 2000 UN Convention on
Transnational Organised Crime' specifically says
that migrants are not blameless victims but are
complicit and it is now an international offence
to help anyone in any legal border crossing even
if they are refugees.
Governments admit 'when it suits them' that
refugees are victims, but there is also a stress
on the threats to national sovereignty by
smuggling on a large scale, and this involves
'linking trafficked and traffickers in a criminal
conspiracy', in a 'War Against Trafficking'.
Breaking domestic immigration laws is redefined as
a criminal act despite the operative UN Convention
on the status of refugees. The EU shifted the
debate to treat asylum seekers as an 'homogeneous
and undifferentiated mass', which can be treated
with impersonal statistics and 'offensive
language' which includes terms like 'mass',
'horde', 'influx', 'swarm', with clear residences
with Nazis and colonialism.
The EU also thinks it is justified in imposing
immigration policies on states that tolerate
illegal migratory movements. For example at a
European Council summit in 1999, Third World
governments were turned into 'immigration police',
in line with the 'so-called "buffer states" of
central and eastern Europe'. Before then the EU
had substantially increased 'airline liaison
officers'at airports and other ports to stop
suspected illegal immigrants. They had no training
in refugee protection and also acted as
immigration staff. A particular EU Working Group
had already planned to stop refugee movement from
Afghanistan, Albania (and Kosovo), Morocco,
Somalia, Sri Lanka and Iraq' and plan to use trade
and development as 'levers' to achieve their aim
of refugee reduction.
The new policies at the summit meant that EU
policy would be achieved at the point of departure
'via pre-embarkation checks', and responsibility
for the prevention of refugee movements would be
passed to the country of origin or countries
through which asylum seekers passed on their way
to Europe [2nd and Third World countries]. Again
'trade and humanitarian aid' were tied to these
policies and to the return of rejected asylum
seekers. In one case, that amounted to ties of
£8.5 billion between the EU, Africa, the Caribbean
and Pacific in Asian trade agreements and rules
'guaranteeing the repatriations and expulsion of
people deemed to be "illegal" within the EU'.
All this helps camouflage the approach to
immigration controls and takes away the basic
state function of migration strategy from nations
that have no sway on supranational policies. That
includes countries in Central and Eastern Europe
that want to join the EU club and have to forfeit
border controls. It is just like Third World
countries having to accept World Bank and IMF
austerity measures. Those imply 'poor
authorisation and the erosion of education, social
and welfare provision' and immigration controls
'lessen the life chances of globalism's victims'.
Pooled sovereignty within Europe means losing
sovereignty in the poorer nations of the world.
There are exceptions for the 'chosen few' like the
highly skilled, doctors and nurses or computer
wizards. This also 'saps the Third World and the
former Soviet bloc of this economic lifeblood'.
So-called 'genuine refugees' attract integratory
measures, but 'bogus claimants' or 'economic
migrants' are excluded, sometimes forced to remain
in their original regions in refugee camps 'from
which Europe will "select" a quota to be brought
to Europe. for resettlement'.
The criteria for such selection involves
screening, selection, sorting into categories of
skilled and unskilled, a kind of 'economic natural
selection… A new Darwinism'. That will allow the
rich first world to maintain economic dominance…
'The skills pool, not the genes pool, is key'
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