Suchergebnisse

Borderline Justice describes the exclusionary policies, inhumane decisions and obstacles to justice for refugees and migrants in the British legal system. Frances Webber, a long-standing legal practitioner, reveals how the law has been (mis)applied to migrants, refugees and other 'unpopular minorities'. This book records some of the key legal struggles of the past thirty years which have sought to preserve values of universality in human rights - and the importance of continuing to fight for those values, inside and outside the courtroom. The themes and analysis cross boundaries of law, politics, sociology, criminology, refugee studies and terrorism studies, appealing to the radical tradition in all these disciplines.

As the UK economy unravels and collective action in defence of livelihood and life spreads, the author explains how 2022 reveals the way the government is reacting to an expanding list of 'enemies', heedless of legal and moral restraints. Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have pursued authoritarian responses on many fronts: with increasingly brutal policing of racialised minorities, migrants, asylum seekers and protesters, and 'crackdowns' announced or promised on investigative journalists; university campuses; striking nurses, ambulance workers, teachers, rail and postal workers; and 'human rights' – against a background of an impoverished and anxious population and a public sector in shreds. This review, though not exhaustive, highlights key aspects of the policing of society and particularly the introduction of new pieces of legislation in the past year.

The history of British citizenship is a history of state racism – from the differential treatment of 'non-patrial' citizens who acquired citizenship through a colony rather than through British ancestry, which led to the 'East African Asians' scandal of 1968, and the quiet withdrawal of British citizenship from former colonial citizens when their countries became independent, which led to the Windrush scandal, through the dilution of the right of citizenship by birth in the UK ( ius soli) in 1981, to current laws which apply the logic of deportation and exclusion to black and brown citizens. British citizens are divided into those claiming only British citizenship, who can never lose it whatever they do, and those who, although they may have been born here, have another citizenship and can lose British citizenship on the say-so of a minister. The latter group, with a second-class, disposable, contingent citizenship, are mostly from ethnic minorities – and the changes to citizenship law which have created these classes of citizenship were brought in to target British Muslims of South Asian and Middle Eastern heritage. While the government claims that only those whose actions pose grave threats to national security, or who have committed abhorrent crimes, will lose their citizenship, the division of citizens into those with secure and insecure status affects vastly more people.

In this article, the author provides a roundup of the UK Conservative government's legislative programme in 2021, arguing that, in the service of an authoritarian agenda, it uses law to undermine the rule of law and executive accountability, and to criminalise marginalised and/or racialised groups, including asylum seekers and those helping them, black youth, protesters and human rights defenders, and Gypsies, Roma and Travellers. Through an analysis of various new bills that attack human and civil rights, including the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, the Nationality and Borders Bill, the Overseas Operations Act, the Elections Bill and the Judicial Review and Courts Bill, she demonstrates the cumulative impact of the legislative programme that has entrenched the demonisation of minorities and human rights defenders, whilst giving unprecedented powers to police, hobbling the courts, nobbling other regulators and blocking effective legal, political and public accountability for ministers. The result, she argues, is an erosion of human rights and the entrenchment of impunity for the government and its agencies.

Looking back, in December 2020, at the year since Boris Johnson's Conservatives were swept back into government with a huge majority, the author identifies a raft of new laws, Home Office measures and government proposals in the fields of policing, crime, and immigration and asylum which embody long-held rightwing projects. Coming on top of already discriminatory practices, these include restrictions on the fundamental right of peaceful protest and freedom from invasive and racist policing, the subjection of migrants and asylum seekers to dangerous and inhumane conditions and the removal of legal protections for asylum seekers. Simultaneously, Bills going through parliament restrict or remove altogether the legal accountability of state actors, including soldiers on overseas operations and police informants, for crimes including torture and murder. Citizens' recourse to the courts to challenge unlawful ministerial decisions is also under threat.

The indictment presented to the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal London Hearing in November 2018 on violations of the human rights of migrant and refugee peoples. It concentrates on the ways in which a 'hostile environment' has been created in the UK removing rights, enshrined in EU and international laws and conventions, to housing, health, livelihood, liberty, freedom of assembly, family and private life, freedom from inhuman and degrading treatment. Migrants and refugees with or without permission to be in the country are, the author argues, possessed of no rights but, at best, privileges that can be removed at any time.

In the face of the worst refugee crisis since the second world war, the leaders of Europe are slamming the doors, enacting exclusionary policies which daily become more brutal. The controversial book Refuge by Collier (ex-World Bank) and Betts (academic in refugee studies) provides, according to the reviewer, their moral justification. Collier and Betts argue that allowing refugees into Europe is wrong and counter-productive, denying states in conflict the people they will need to rebuild post-conflict, and that refugees' need for dignity and autonomy is best met by extending special economic zones in nearby host countries to provide opportunities for work.

The EU's response to the global 'refugee crisis' has involved the returning of refugees to war zones, for example in Afghanistan, in breach of human rights conventions. But it has also been so determined to stop further asylum seekers reaching European waters or shores that it has entered into the most dubious of agreements with countries outside the EU. Using bribery (aid, promises of investment, even the prospect of membership of the EU) and blackmail (threats of withdrawal of support for educational and health programmes), the EU has inveigled and browbeaten countries around the Mediterranean and as far afield as sub-Saharan Africa, to undertake immigration controls on its behalf. This has involved the EU in agreements with repressive regimes such as Turkey, Sudan and Eritrea, designed to block the movements of millions of people in the Middle East and Africa necessitated by war, famine, climate change and religious conflict. The outsourcing of migration policy to countries run by known dictators and war criminals has come at the expense of Europe's humanitarian tradition, argues the author, who looks at the implications of policy by country and region.

In this wide-ranging survey of recent UK government pronouncements, policies and new legislation relating particularly – but not limited – to 'security', migration and refugee issues, the author exposes a consistent pattern in which human rights concerns are being systematically downgraded. But, at the same time that government is systematically minimising its own accountability over possible abuses committed by its agents or in its name, it is ramping up the policing of the UK population in a catch-all programme that places duties of surveillance on individuals and professionals in almost every sector of society – from nursery nurses to private landlords, from lorry drivers to university lecturers. And, even while professionals from every sector are attempting to question the validity of the government's current policy programme, particularly its so-called counter-radicalisation strategy, the right to freedom of expression among Third Sector organisations is being incrementally whittled away.