King Nigel’s Speech: recasting ‘us’ and ‘them’

[Article published in OpenDemocracy, 13 May 2013)

In the UK political debate, boundaries are being blurred between the two hot topics on the political agenda: migration and the EU. This should be a wake-up call for the 2.7 million European immigrants living and working in the UK, says Nando Sigona.

Nigel Farage, UKIP leader

Written by the government and delivered by the reigning monarch, the Queen’s speech sets out the legislative agenda for the year ahead. As expected, David Cameron, the UK Conservative Prime Minister and his coalition government have used this year’s Queen’s speech to offer a quick if rather panicked response to the recent electoral success of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) which gained 139 council seats in the 2013 local elections.

The speech places immigration firmly at the centre of the political agenda, as if the crisis of the banking system and a poorly performing economy didn’t exist or could be attributed through some rather obscure association to the presence of non-British residents. As Alex Andreou has explained in a comment in the New Statesman, Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, ‘has merely acted as the catalyst, by stepping into an emotional vacuum left by mainstream parties’, providing a comforting but ultimately useless solution to the current crisis at a time when mainstream parties are all perceived as distant, elitist and impermeable to what is happening outside Westminster. What the Queen’s speech did is to legitimate the anti-immigration and anti-EU rhetoric of UKIP as a solution to the crisis, something that the Conservative Party right-wing had failed to achieve until now.

Besides the headline-grabbing statements against illegal migrants, speeding deportation for foreign-born criminals and fighting alleged abuses of the welfare system, the Queen’s speech is underpinned by a wider vision which at the core criminalises migrants and migration to an extent we hadn’t previously observed in recent mainstream British politics. This criminalisation also extends to EU citizens, until recently kept relatively protected from anti-immigration campaigners and politicians. This is with the noticeable exception of Romanians and Bulgarians, whose possible arrival following the lifting of the existing restrictions on access to the job market and welfare system in early 2014 is generating waves of moral panic.

By associating intra-EU mobility more closely to immigration, the Queen’s speech blurs the boundaries between the two hot topics on the political agenda: migration and the EU, and turns the moral panic generated by the arrival and settlement of Romanians and Bulgarians, the ‘new’ Europeans to paraphraseformer US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, into yet another argument in support of Eurosceptic politics.

As a researcher working on migration, asylum and minority rights for over a decade, I am familiar with the rising criminalisation of asylum seekers in the UK: the use of enforced destitution, dispersal and detention to deter new arrivals and force those no longer entitled to stay to leave the country. Furthermore, I have documented the plight of undocumented children and young people kept in legal limbo, non-deportable and yet excluded from formal citizenship.

As a foreigner myself, an EU citizen who has lived in the UK for the last 12 years, I feel increasingly uncomfortable with the tone and contents of the debate on immigration. I feel more and more part of the population I study, experiencing personally some of the feelings and anxieties that I am used to hearing from the individuals I interview.

Of course, this is not to say that as an Italian I go through the same ordeal as, for example, that of someone seeking asylum in the UK. But I can certainly say that over the last year or so I have felt increasingly more like an immigrant to whom the right to reside in the UK is granted from above (and can be withdrawn if needs be for electoral considerations) than an EU citizen, that is, part of a pan-European political community founded on the principles of freedom of movement and equality among its citizens.

With this realisation came a renewed sense of empathy for those non-EU migrants who on a daily basis have to negotiate or subject key decisions in their personal life to a faceless bureaucrat somewhere in Croydon (i.e. the UK Border Agency’s HQ) who can decide if a marriage is legitimate, if one can go to a funeral back home, or if a non-British father can be with his British partner at the birth of their child in London. For Romanian and Bulgarian migrants the boundary between being an immigrant and an EU citizen has already been blurred for a while, long before the so-called ‘old’ Europeans.

According to the Oxford-based Migration Observatory, data from the 2011 Census suggest that 2.7 million residents of England and Wales were born in other EU countries. About 1.1 million of those (41%) were born in countries which joined the EU in 2004 (Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia) or afterwards (Bulgaria and Romania). The majority of the EU citizens are therefore people like me (and it feels awkward to talk of myself in terms of my nationality): Italians, Germans, Spaniards, French, Greeks etc.

Until recently, one wouldn’t have heard politicians talk about ‘us’ in the same breath with the ‘other’ foreigners, but the economic crisis and a government in search of scapegoats are changing the terms of the debate. This is a wake-up call for many who felt that the tough talk on immigration was never about them, that somehow they were bullet-proofed from attacks by right-wingers and alike. In other words this is a wake-up call for a largely politically invisible population, with no right to vote at general elections, no spokespersons or campaign organisations, but also with rather powerful states behind them and relatively good social positions in British society.

We may realise soon that all mainstream political parties, faced with the challenge of UKIP, may be prepared to sacrifice us for the sake of electoral victory. For if the Queen’s speech marks a further shift towards the right of the political spectrum of the political debate on immigration, the Labour opposition demonstrates once again little will to fight the battle for immigrants and immigrants’ rights, as well as for the EU and EU citizens. The shadow minister Yvette Cooper more often than not attacks the government for not being able to control immigration and borders, as confirmed recently in a major speech at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). It’s hard to see how these tactical responses may lead to a different strategy and new ways of thinking on migration.

The Queen’s speech has thus contributed to redrawing the boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’, and for some of us this came as a realisation that the position we thought to occupy in British society as fellow EU citizens is gradually being eroded by a dangerous combination of anti-foreigner and anti-EU sentiments. This is happening without much opposition. Times of crisis also bring new opportunities. New spaces for political mobilisation may yet open up and lead to the emergence of new political subjects in British politics: ‘old’ and ‘new’ Europeans fighting back.

 

Nowhere Home in Oxford

Nowhere Home by Margreth Olin

Special screening of Margreth Olin’s award-winning documentary: Nowhere Home

When: Tuesday 30^th April 2013: 6.15pm introductory talk, 6.30pm screening

Where: The Ultimate Picture Palace, Cowley Road, Oxford

Organised by: Oxford Institute of Social Policy (OISP) in collaboration with the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) and the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford and the School of Social Policy at the University of Birmingham

Synopsis: Nowhere Home follows the fortunes of a number of young people from Salhus, a Norwegian centre offering temporary residence to unaccompanied asylum-seeking young people as they approach adulthood. While they all hope to remain in Norway, the threat of deportation when they turn 18—and uncertain futures in countries like Afghanistan or Iraq—hangs over them. A visceral and provocative film, Nowhere Home scrutinises what Human Rights Watch has called one of  the ‘major moral dilemmas’ facing Europe today.

Year: 2012 / 90m.

Distributor: Norwegian Film Institute

Watch the trailer online.

Tickets: £8 (£6 concessions). Online booking now open.

Proceeds go to Asylum Welcome (Charity no. 1092265)

UK immigration policy: we need to talk about citizens (and citizenship)

[Article published in OpenDemocracy 50:50 on 4 February 2013]

The family rules introduced by the UK government as part of its crusade to curb net migration are surreptitiously redefining the meaning of citizenship and the boundaries between the state and its subjects, says Nando Sigona.

There is nothing new about seeing immigration and immigrants used as scapegoats for popular anxiety or as a diversion from the economic crisis (see the significant following of Golden Dawn in Greece). It is even less surprising to see politicians mobilize electoral support around the moral panic surrounding new immigrant arrivals (see lately the terms and tone of the debate on potential new arrivals from Romania and Bulgaria). Still, the new immigration family rulesintroduced last summer shed light on a less visible side of immigration policy and practice: the permeability and historically contingent nature of the boundaries between citizenship and non-citizenship and the concrete ways immigration rules produce and shape not only the position, entitlements and experiences of non-citizens in society, but also the very meaning of what citizenship is and of what being a citizen entails.

The conversation on migration seems to be mainly focused on the consequences of human mobility, polarised between those campaigning for migration and migrants’ rights on the one hand, and those concerned with the impact of migration on public services, social cohesion and security on the other.  Less attention is afforded to the impact of immigration governance on migrants and even less on citizens. There are some noticeable exceptions, as demonstrated by recent work carried out at the University of Oxford. Researchon undocumented migrant children in the UK shows how, despite both international and British laws which guarantee children access to education and healthcare irrespective of their immigration status, increased demands on public authorities by the UK Border Agency (UKBA) are pushing children and families away from essential services, leaving them more vulnerable and isolated. Similarly, Bridget Anderson’s latest book examines how the ‘dangerous politics of immigration control’ shapes the relationship between Good Citizens, Failed Citizens and Non-Citizens.

UK citizens are becoming used to the gradual and pervasive penetration of UKBA into their hospitals, GP practices, universities, colleges and schools; the turning of public services into outposts of immigration enforcement. They are becoming used to being asked to present a valid visa or passport when applying for a job, or to sign a register used to assess whether they are a ‘bogus’ or genuine student when attending a lecture. These practices have become the norm for all, immigrants and citizens alike, and up to now they have faced relatively little opposition.

Initiatives such as the National Allegations Database, which encourages the public to act as UKBA informers through spying on their neighbours, or on anyone who they think, for whatever reason, might be residing illegally in the UK, have moved the bar even further, subcontracting an important task of immigration control to law-abiding citizens. Information collected via the database is to be processed by new privatized immigration officers working for Capita plc.

While this attempt to stretch immigration control well beyond the control of external borders into public services seems to be the dominant trend, there are also signs that this approach may turn out to be both politically and administratively unmanageable. The frequent scandals that have seen the UKBA and its sister agency UK Border Force accused repeatedly of poor efficacy and transparency, despite management reshuffles and various rounds of restructuring, highlight the limits of a bureaucratic apparatus that is overgrown through successive layers of legislation. These constant reforms have left behind a complex machinery, full of incongruences that make it not only extremely difficult to manage but also vulnerable to legal challenges from multiple sides.

There is nevertheless an element of novelty to the way the new family rules, almost as a side effect, intervene and interfere in one of the most intimate and private spheres of a citizen’s life. This raises important questions concerning what exactly it is that the government assesses when evaluating the impact of immigration policy, and how it defines (rather narrowly) the ‘main affected groups’ in a way that consciously leaves aside an analysis of the unequal impacts of its measures on citizens and citizenship.

The introduction of the new family policy has made family reunion for citizens and migrants with non-EU partners more difficult, and subject to a complex and time-consuming procedure which can take months to complete. This has obvious consequences for relationships, and particularly for children. The rules set a new minimum income threshold of £18,600 for bringing to the UK a spouse or partner, fiancé(e) or proposed civil partner of non-EU nationality, with an even higher threshold depending on the number of dependent children. These measures are part of the UK government’s grand plan to curb net migration to ‘the tens of thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands’, in the words of British Prime Minister David Cameron. The use of net migration, that is the difference between in-migration and out-migration, as a compass of immigration policy is highly questionable and has been criticised on a number of grounds, not least because it relies on the level of emigration, an independent variable that is not directly or significantly affected by immigration policy.

There is also a further aspect to consider. As Agnes Woolley has explained, the immigration rules do not impact all citizens in the same way. The analysisof the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory clearly shows that some groups of citizens are affected significantly more than others, including the more than 40% of British people in employment who do not qualify due to their low income. Those who will not qualify are mainly women, young people in their twenties, or residents of Wales, Merseyside, North West England, and Yorkshire and Humberside. A look at the recently released Census dataconfirms that there are a very large number of UK citizens from a variety of social backgrounds who increasingly live in mixed status families who could be impacted by the new family rules. If we turn numbers into words, we could say that the government’s goal to control immigration and immigrants has become a vehicle for class politics, or, perhaps more crudely, that the citizenship rights of many Britons are being threatened by a policy designed to serve the interests and visions of a London-centric, ageing, male-dominated elite.

Families directly affected by the new rules are starting to speak out in an effort to create public interest and support. Stories are beginning to surface of families torn apart by the new rules, of young couples no longer able to live together, of children separated by one of their parents, of elderly family members left behind in order to comply with the new rules. Many of these stories are being collated in a new blog entitled BritCits, the name of which is in itself revealing, suggesting as it does an analysis of the devastating impact of these new immigration policy from the perspective not of would-be entrants, but of British citizens. The inefficiency of the system is also back under public scrutiny following the recent revelation of yet another backlog; victims here include wealthy British citizens kept away for months from their American wives because applications are sitting in boxes unopened. These stories challenge unspoken assumptions regarding who it is that is the target of immigration policy, and also who should feel the urge to oppose them. This realisation may ultimately succeed in creating a larger social movement against effects and side effects of current immigration policy which, in contrast to an immigration discourse that polarises immigrants and citizens, unites them in a common cause.

New migrants, (super)diversity and micropolitics of mixing

The charts below are an initial exploration of Census 2011 data on live births in England and Wales. They show respectively the number of births from foreign born mothers (Chart 1), their country of origin (Chart 2) and the oveall number of live birth by the country of origin of mother and father (Chart 3). They should be read in the context of the overall significant increase in the foreign born population over the last decade: 13 % (7.5 m) of residents of England and Wales on 27/3/2011 were born outside of the UK , of whom half of them arrived in the last 10 years. Data on the country of origin of foreign born mothers show that a significant part of them are likely to be new migrants.

Before moving on, it is worth noticing that the 7.5m foreing born residents mentioned early on are not all immigrants as many are naturalised British citizens or British citizens born abroad – some Tabloids don’t seem to appreciate the difference. In particular, according to the Census data, nearly 4.8 million residents hold a non-UK passport, of which 2.3 million are from EU member states.

UK-born children to foreign born parents count for about 25.5% of live births in England and Wales, and the proportion has stayed about the same in the last four years [Chart 1]. In London, where the presence of non-UK born residents is significantly higher than in the rest of the country - about the 37%  of the population - the children born to mothers born outside the UK reaches 56.7%, with peak in boroughs like Newham (77 %) and Brent (75%), that is respectively 4 out of 5 and 3 out of 4 newborns are born to foreign born mothers.

Data on live births are particularly interesting because they open a (partial) window of how the population of Britain will look like in the near future in terms of ethnic and religious make-up [Chart 2], an obsession of the anti-immigration lobby. The case of places like Newham is a fascinating one for its capacity to destabilize established assumptions and understandings around whiteness, alienhood and Britishness.

Children born in the UK to EU nationals (especially Poles and Germans) and to citizens of Middle East and other Asian countries – the way the Census groups nationalities would deserve a separate discussion – are the main contributors to this group.

Chart 3, instead, focuses on the country of origin of new parents. The inclusion of information on both mothers and fathers is a relatively new and important addition to the Census and offers some insights on the microlevel of family relations and can inform reflection on the relationship between legal status (public sphere) and intra-hosehold relations (private sphere), with an additional intergenerational dimension if we take into account the experience and positions of children born in the UK. This has interesting resonances with current litereature on the biopolitics of mixing.

Chart 3 should be read together with the data coming from the Census 2011 ethnic/racial categories (problematic as they are!) that shows that 12% (2 million) of households includes members of different ethnic groups in 2011, a 3% increase on 2001.

(Source: Office of National Statistics, Census 2011: Data sets and reference tables)