Immigration, Asylum and Racism

Author: Liz Fekete

The British Labour government took office in May 1997 pledging electoral reform. Now, with the publication of the findings of the Independent Commission on the Voting System under Lord Jenkins, which endorses change in favour of a specific form of proportional representation (PR), supporters of voting reform have gone on the offensive. While advocates of PR within Labour come from all ideological strands of the party, both Left and Right share a belief that continental electoral systems overwhelmingly prove the case for PR. But are PR supporters guilty of misreading the situation in mainland Europe, where the far Right is advancing electorally and governments are now considering electoral reform away from PR? If an anti-racist, anti-fascist perspective is injected into the current debate, what lessons can be learnt?

Author: Scott Poynting

The outbreak of mass racist violence against young men of ‘Middle Eastern appearance’ on Cronulla beach, Sydney, in December 2005 was the culmination of a campaign of populist incitement waged in the media and by the state. The battle to reclaim control of the beach for white Australia mirrored, it is suggested here, the battle that the Howard government has waged to reclaim control of the nation.

Authors: Penny Green and Mike Grewcock

For the UK Government, and all its counterparts in the 'developed world', enforcement is the central issue in relation to refugees. The assumption that state sanctions against 'illegal immigration' must be enforced and that the state has a right to do so is a seductive one (see the otherwise excellent accounts by Morrison & Crosland 2001; Kyle & Koslowski 2001), but it is an assumption that leaves unchallenged the repressive role of the state and it must be challenged. This paper, in challenging the 'right' of states to control 'illegal immigration', suggests that in the enforcement of immigration, states are systematically involved in the commission of organised crime (see Tilly 1985).

Author: Scott Poynting and Victoria Mason

This article compares the rise of anti-Muslim racism in Britain and Australia, from 1989 to 2001, as a foundation for assessing the extent to which the upsurge of Islamophobia after 11 September was a development of existing patterns of racism in these two countries. The respective histories of immigration and settlement by Muslim populations are outlined, along with the relevant immigration and ‘ethnic affairs’ policies and the resulting demographics. The article traces the ideologies of xenophobia that developed in Britain and Australia over this period. It records a transition from anti-Asian and anti-Arab racism to anti-Muslim racism, reflected in and responding to changes in the identities and cultural politics of the minority communities. It outlines instances of the racial and ethnic targeting by the state of the ethnic and religious minorities concerned, and postulates a causal relationship between this and the shifting patterns of acts of racial hatred, vilification and discrimination.

Author: Liz Fekete

Once, the West saw its `superior' civilisation and economic system as under threat from the communist world. That was the ideological enemy as seen from the US; that was the hostile intransigent neighbour as seen from Western Europe. Today, the threat posed by 125 million displaced people, living either temporarily or permanently outside their countries of origin has replaced that which was posed by communism. For, in this brave new post-cold war world, the enemy is not so much ideology as poverty.