Free Radikal

Archive for January, 2010

Prof. Rivka Carmi
President of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Office of the President
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
P.O. Box 653
Beer-Sheva  84105  ISRAEL
Tel:  +972-8-647-930
Cell:  +972-526-839-367
Fax:    +972-8-647-2991
Email:  board@bgu.ac.il
berkan@exchange.bgu.ac.il
justman@bgu.ac.il
ngordon@bgu.ac.il

23 January 2010

Cc.
Prof. Moshe Justman, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Dr. Neve Gordon, Chairman of the Department of Politics and Government
Staff
Ms Anne Berkeley, Liaison Officer to the Board of Governors

Dear Prof Carmi,

We, Israeli, Palestinian and British academics, are writing to express our deep concern at the treatment of Dr Ahmad Sa’di, a Senior Lecturer at Ben-Gurion University’s Department of Politics and Government, who was subjected to racist treatment on 3 January 2010 when he arrived at Ben-Gurion University train station, as he does every teaching week.  He was humiliatingly searched, yelled at and embarrassed by the security staff at Mexico Gate, which we find offensive and unacceptable.We believe that Dr Sa’di’s reaction on the date was exemplary; he did not block the entrance nor did he insult the security staff.

Following the incident Dr Sa’di complained to the university authorities on 3 January 2010 and again on 10 January 2010. Dr Sa’di strongly believes that his treatment at Mexico Gate on 3 January was only the last in a whole series of racist encounters and harassment he has faced in the past ten years of his employment at Ben-Gurion University. Other incidents included his car being stopped, his bags searched and security staff making calls to ascertain whether he should be allowed to enter the university.

We are extremely concerned that Dr Sa’di’s formal complaint about his treatment on 3 January has neither been looked into seriously by Ben-Gurion University nor been met with anything like a response that it requires from your institution’s senior management. Although Ben-Gurion University acknowledges that Dr Sa’di was insulted and humiliated on 3 January, no further disciplinary action were pursued.

Ben-Gurion University claims to be like other European universities. Yet the response by Ben-Gurion University is another indication of an entirely different sort of system where racism is accepted as routine.  Had a complaint of this nature been made in the UK, there would have been automatic suspension with pay of the individuals involved.  This would then be followed by an investigation by the university department of Human Resources. Yet the fact that Dr Sa’di complaint of racism was dismissed, almost instantly, by the Director of the Department of Security says volumes about your attitude to racism.  You simply are not taking this complaint of racism seriously and we emphatically object.
We also believe that Dr Sa’di’s treatment by Ben-Gurion University is very typical of a wide range of experiences of racist encounters made by Palestinian citizens of Israel, in their face to face, day in and day out confrontations with your security.  This makes life near impossible for many Palestinian academics teaching for Israeli institutions.  It also makes travel to international conferences difficult.  Academics moving in and out of other Israeli institutions have similar experiences to those of Dr Sa’di’s.  It is this that we find so appalling.  It dehumanises those who do some of the very best work.

We call on Ben-Gurion University to take measures preventing further harassment of Dr Sa’di and we hope you realise that such racist treatment and the lack of any serious redress by senior management at Ben-Gurion seriously damages the reputation of your institution and offends the international family of academics to the core.

Sincerely,

Signed by

Professor Avi Shlaim, Oxford University, UK
Professor Nur Masalha, St Mary’s University College, UK
Dr Ronit Lentin, Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland
Dr Paul Kelemen, University of Manchester, UK
Keith Hammond, Glasgow University, Scotland
Professor Nira Yuval-Davis, University of East London, UK
Professor Lila Abu-Lughod, Columbia University, New York, US
Professor Gabriel Piterberg, UCLA, US
Dr Nadje Al-Ali, SOAS, University of London, UK
Professor Ilan Pappe, Exeter University, UK
Professor Elia Zureik, Queen’s University, Canada
Dr Laleh Khalili, SOAS, University of London, UK
Dr Stephanie Cronin, Oxford University, UK
Professor Mary Grey, St Mary’s University College, UK

Paper presented at the ‘Better Questions’ seminar series in Seomra Spraoi, Dublin, Tuesday 19 January 2010

Introduction

‘Only one world… Let foreigners teach us at least to become foreign to ourselves, to project ourselves sufficiently out of ourselves to no longer be captive to this long Western and white history that has come to an end, and from which nothing more can be expected than sterility and war. Against this catastrophic and nihilistic expectation of a security state, let us greet the foreignness of tomorrow’ (Alain Badiou, 2008: 70)

‘If the world cannot be changed, the (neo liberal) argument went, the left should concentrate on small-scale projects, moral concerns and the protection of vulnerable identities. Multiculturalism could replace radical change, membership of Amnesty that of political organisation’ (Costas Douzinas, The Guardian, 1 January 2010)

On 11 June 2004 the government of the Republic of Ireland put forward a referendum to amend article 9 of the Constitution to remove birth-right citizenship from children born in Ireland to an Irish citizen (or entitled to Irish citizenship). Birth right citizenship prevailed since the establishment of the Republic in 1922. The amendment did not include the children of the 1.8 million holders of Irish passports not born in Ireland who have one Irish grandparent and therefore entitled to Irish citizenship without having to set foot in Ireland. 79.8 per cent of the electorate voted in favour.
My argument is that the nation-state, theorised by David Theo Goldberg (2002) as a ‘racial state’, remains the focus of any analysis of racism, viewed by Foucault as ‘inscribed as the basic mechanism of power, as it is exercised in modern States’. Foucault argues that ‘the modern State can scarcely function without becoming involved with racism at some point’ (Foucault 2003: 254).
I view racism as ‘a political system aiming to regulate bodies’, rather than as individual prejudice (although individual citizens voted in favour of the Citizenship Referendum). Without suggesting Ireland as an ideal type ‘racial state’, I employ social theory to argue that like other nation-states, Ireland has evolved from being a ‘racial state’ – in which ‘race’ and ‘nation’ are defined in terms of each other – evident, for instance, in the ethnically narrow framing of the Constitution (Lentin 1998) – to a racist state, where governmental ‘biopolitics’ racialising indigenous groups and regulating immigration and asylum form the discursive construction of Irishness and otherness..
Until the onset of the recession, racial terminology of categorisation and control on the one hand and discourses of ‘cultural diversity’ on the other underpinned the Irish state’s response to the arrival of growing numbers of immigrants since the 1990s, in the shape of ‘intercultural’ and ‘integration’ politics.
I begin by outlining the application of Goldberg’s racial state theory to Ireland. I then briefly discuss Foucault’s theorisation of the modern nation-state as a ‘state of population’, monitoring and controlling the nation’s biological life which becomes a problem of sovereign power (Agamben 1998). I further argue that the tendency to re-define the nation-state’s boundaries means controlling not only immigrants, but also existing minority collectives within. During Tiger capitalism, state actors used contradictory discourses, claiming that Ireland ‘was getting it right’ in avoiding (French) assimilationism and (British) multiculturalism on the one hand, and on the other, insisting that in order to integrate, migrants must do things ‘our way’.
However, since the recession, racism, immigration and integration discourses have disappeared and I conclude by challenging social movements to re-orient their activism to racism and immigration. Read the rest of this entry »

Since the onset of the recession, it became clear that the state’s integration policies and all the talk about ‘cultural diversity’, ‘interculturalism’ and so on were becoming redundant. What started with draconian cuts in the integration and antiracism sector and the demise of bodies such as the NCCRI very quickly turned into complete silence on the subjects of immigration, integration, and interculturalism, and culminated with the axing of many community development projects. The new Minister for Integration was nowhere to be seen, and even though the government was boasting that Ireland was ‘getting it right’ by avoiding the pitfalls of both (French) assimilationism and (British) multiculturalism, it became clear that in the recession the state was not interested in migrants, no longer seen as the engine of Ireland’s economic boom.

In recent days the media reported somewhat triumphantly that ‘foreign nationals’ were going home. Using PPS statistics, a downward trend was reported across the workforce. According to December 2009 CSO figures, ‘57,112 of the 117,983 foreign nationals who received PPSNs in 2004 were still either working or claiming welfare in 2008’. In the absence of statistics for those who actually left Ireland, it was less clear ‘what happened to the rest, but it is very likely that they left the Republic’.

Last week further reports suggested the halving of ‘foreign nationals’ registering for work or social services. This trend was most apparent among migrants from the 12 new EU members; the number of Polish migrants registering for work went down from 42,500 in 2008 to 13,700 in 2009.

Migration statistics, in other words, are still limited to labour migrants, and depend very much on work permits and PPS numbers; however, according to the Immigrant Council of Ireland, such statistics are misleading. Not all labour migrants need to renew their permits annually, and people originally living here on the basis of work permits now have long term residency rights or citizenship, yet they are still migrants, whose needs – social, cultural, political – go beyond labour statistics.

Polish people living in Ireland deny the impression that all Poles are going home; indeed many prefer to stay here, and others continue to come even now, because surprisingly, they regard life here as gentler, less pressured. Furthermore, according to Piaras Mac Éinri, UCC lecturer in migration studies, many migrants from destinations such as Romania, though not entitled to work in Ireland, work semi illegally, doing jobs that even other East European migrants won’t do, and are often horribly exploited.

And these statistics do not include asylum seekers, many still living in holding camps, not allowed to work and often suffering from serious mental health problems as a result; nor do they include other non EU migrants with citizenship or leave to remain, many of whom live in appalling accommodation, isolated and desperate to make some sense of their life here, safer as it may be than what they had fled from.

Although for these migrants there are no integration or intercultural measures, now so hopelessly last year, many migrants are not waiting for state initiatives, and are busy enacting their own ‘integration from below’ social, cultural, advocacy and service provision networks and organisations. However, with spending cuts and increasing indifference to any contribution they can make, they face a serious danger of disenchantment, which we need to carefully watch out for.