A hotspot, to explain, is the idea of detaining arriving migrants and refugees at one spot for processing, the hotspot RIC (Reception and Identification Centre). It is another instrument to add to a growing collection for a common European asylum policy. But that is a myth, for the common policy is only called upon when…
The privatisation of criminal justice practices is an affront to human dignity. When we are acted upon for profit as well as for justified ends, the proper link between coercion, rights, and authority is lost. Ministry of Justice proposals could mean that all collection of court fines — powers normally exercised by Civilian Enforcement Officers, employees…
On the paradoxical semantic ambivalence at the root of the unrooted concept ‘host’ On Wednesday 22nd June 2016, during Refugee Week, Adbul Rahman Haroun was sentenced to nine months in prison under the Malicious Damage Act 1861, prosecuted for ‘dangerous obstruction’ of traffic. This ‘obstruction’ of which it speaks concerns the evasion of high speed…
Once gunships have driven them back to their shores, boats need to be confiscated and burned on a huge bonfire.” Katie Hopkins, UK Conservative Pundit (2015) We understand that by withdrawing this rescue cover we will be leaving innocent children, women and men to drown who we would otherwise have saved. […] when word [got]…
For decades Australia has been the subject of international institutional condemnation that has focused on Australia’s policies of mandatory detention and off-shore processing of asylum seekers. In 2002 in the aftermath of Tampa, SIEV X, the spurious ‘children overboard’ allegations and beginning of the ‘Pacific Solution,’ the UN High Commission for Refugees articulated concern about…
Yarl’s Wood is not a typical English wood. Next to it is Yarl’s Wood detention centre, a prison where people can be kept for years without trial. On a fine winter’s day, the first fine day after weeks of storms and rain, I went for a walk in the country. I found myself in a…
Excessive legality can make the racialised live in a world that has been slowed down, made dysfunctional and even unbearable.We rightly celebrate that we live in a society where law and order prevail. The capacity to follow established rules allows for the smooth operation of the many necessary transactions that make up our everyday life.…
When it comes to disregarding human rights and international legal obligations, Guantanamo is easily matched by the 400 migrant detention centres across Europe.One of the reasons why President Obama’s mandate has fallen many miles short of expectations is his clear lack of will — let’s dispense with euphemisms — to deliver his promise to close…
Crocodile Tears In the space of just over a week the world watched in astonishment as two ships sank off the Italian coast, giving rise to staggering death-tolls (359 on the 3rd of October, more than 50 on the 11th) and various expressions of grief. Among the mourners were those directly responsible for asylum and…
On 22 May 2013, the Dutch State Secretary of Security and Justice and Minister for Migration offered the House of Representatives a memorandum issued by the Council of State concerning ‘the options to administer food and drink to an alien in detention who is on hunger and/or thirst strike, against his will.’ This essay sets out to unpack the main premises of these recommendations in the framework of biopolitics, its colonial heritage and contemporary deployment in the Netherlands. Whilst understood in a historical continuum, this little document gains relevance as it represents a significant step over the threshold of the human …
In the Netherlands, the attempt by the “Wanted for Love” campaign to support LGBT activists in Africa renders “Africa” the “homophobic Other” of Dutch homonationalism. One of the dangers of awareness campaigns centred on social media is that they risk being online popularity contests. The [Dutch] national “Wanted For Love” campaign—a collaborative initiative of Hivos…
Exterminating people by ‘rubbishing them’ is always less dramatic than when it is done through massacres. As my facebook friends know, I take my status updates seriously. This does not mean that I only treat serious topics, or that I take myself overly seriously. Indeed I can be very frivolous and I always maintain a…
The only progressive legal step is to introduce social and economic rights into UK law The debate over the future of the Human Rights Act (‘HRA’) has been somewhat surreal. The Labour position is schizophrenic. Labour introduced the Act but was justifiably accused of violating most of its principles in its obsession with security. But…
<<< Part I State of exception, resurgent sovereignty? The Australian government has attempted to assert that the entire RSA process is an exercise of non-statutory executive power and as such, status assessors and independent reviewers are under no obligation to afford an applicant procedural fairness or to decide applications according to existing law. However late…
At least 28 Iranian and Iraqi asylum-seekers drowned yesterday within sight of the Australian territory they were aiming for. The media keeps emphasizing that there were “women and children” on board. If they were all men, would we not need to feel bad about it? is there a universal innocence about women and children that…