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Against Racism, for Social Justice

An immigration specialist, looking at the future for EU citizens seeking to work in the UK, argues that migration, whether from Europe or elsewhere, has always been controlled in the interests of the economy.

The Westminster attacks provided the occasion for anti-immigration, anti-refugee politicians the world over to vindicate their positions in the public narrative.

A Birmingham resident fiercely objects, in the wake of the recent deadly terror attack at Westminster, to the depiction of her city as the hotbed of extremism. 

Aisha Maniar examines the UK government’s policy of carrying out language analysis tests on undocumented asylum claimants.

The assault on the family life of migrants inevitably leads to the creation of ‘immigration offenders’, to detention and deportation.

John Grayson, a campaigner from South Yorkshire, examines the market in asylum housing in the UK.

As refugees and migrants die in Greece's 'hotspots', military camps and in transit, the EU, the UNHCR and Greek institutions must be held to account.

The Last Rights project, set up in 2016, aims to ‘create a new framework of respect for the rights of missing and dead refugees and migrants and bereaved family members’. The project’s co-convenors, Catriona Jarvis and Syd Bolton, have since the summer of 2015 been frequent visitors to Lesbos, doing volunteer work. They spent winter 2015/16 there and were at Moria on 30 January 2017. They comment on the recent deaths in Greece below:

Radical educationalist Chris Searle examines the response to recent exclusions in the Slovak Roma community in Sheffield in a lecture at the School of Education, University of Birmingham in December 2016.

In the second part of her examination of EU deals with third countries to stop migration, Frances Webber examines the closure of Africa’s borders against migration, demanded by the EU as the price for development, trade and aid.

Anger is building at the return of refugees from Europe to war zones and the EU’s deals with dictators and torturers to prevent refugees from leaving their own countries.  In the first of two articles, Frances Webber looks at the EU’s deals with Afghanistan and Turkey. The second article will examine the deals with African states.

A number of experts comment on the recently published ‘Casey Review: A review into opportunity and integration’.

Legal translator Aisha Maniar looks at the impact of privatised court interpreting services in England and Wales over the past five years and the new justice sector contract which came into force on 31 October.

Below we publish an edited version of a speech given by a spokesperson for the Berlin anti-fascist documentation centre Apabiz at a symposium held at the HAU Theatre, Berlin*. 

More police failures in the case of the National Socialist Underground (NSU) have emerged after the discovery of the body of a child who disappeared fifteen years ago.

Theresa May's 'one-nation' policies are incoherent and divisive.

The round-ups for deportation of elderly people with generations of family in the UK indicate the ruthlessness we can expect from a government all too ready to ‘take back control’.

Below we publish an article by Malcolm James* on a visit he paid to Chios in Greece and what he witnessed while volunteering in early 2016 and the contradictions between caring for refugees and the cruelty meted out to them.

Below we reproduce the IRR submission to the Labour Party Inquiry into anti-Semitism and other forms of racism, including Islamophobia.

Frontex plays a key role in screening of new arrivals on Europe’s southern borders, with its interpreters often deciding nationality. Aisha Maniar shows the inappropriateness of this role, given Frontex’ quasi-military role in policing the borders.

An important conference on securing justice for young people with precarious citizenship is taking place in London on 1 June, organised by the Migrant and Refugee Children's Legal Unit at Islington Law Centre in conjunction with Birkbeck College.

Nearly 300 people face criminal charges for aiding refugees in Denmark in September 2015, and the government continues to create a hostile environment by cracking down on migration.