Free Radikal

Posts Tagged ‘Ireland’

On 20 April 2010 I attended a roundtable run by the Equality Authority in Dublin to discuss antiracism. While several of us attending have sat in similar roundtables and other forums for the past 15 years to discuss racism and antiracism, Toyosi Shitta-bey’s killing on Good Friday has clearly moved the EA - curtailed and under-funded though it is - to convene this forum, in a genuine attempt to mobilise members of migrant and ethnic minority groups.

The main speakers were, as usual, white, settled Irish people, but around the table were leaders of migrant-led groups and networks (mostly Africans, with scant representation for Asians and Eastern Europeans, and only one Traveller, Ellen Mongan, the only Traveller who has ever sat on a local authority council). Everyone was asked to speak, and participants outlined their experiences of racism, and spoke of the anger and fear in their groups and neighbourhoods. A few  ‘usual suspects’ proposed what has been proposed so many times before: establishing an antiracism forum,  reforming the useless 1989 Incitement to Hatred Act (promised so many time by successive ministers for justice),  educating and holding information campaigns ( the government has clamped down on public awareness campaigns, but  one wonder were these ever really useful?)

However, only Chinedu Onyejelm of Metro Eireann had the courage to say that holding more forums and  meetings will make no difference in the absence of government commitment - a sentiment I am completely in agreement with.  Furthermore, the government has positively done  all it can to portray migrants as ‘a problem’ ever since the first influx of asylum seekers in the early 1990s.  Incarcerating asylum seekers in direct provision, thus making it near impossible for them to organise politically; ignoring the appalling conditions they are forced to live under (see, for instance, AkiDwA’s disturbing report on women in direct provision hostels); and making the work permit regime harder and harder for migrants to navigate - all make it patently clear that ‘integration’ is but an empty word.

That said, remember that migrants are doing a lot to integrate themselves and their groups into Irish society through involvement in hundreds of migrant-led networks and assocciations, providing advocacy, education, public information, service provision and culture.

However, too many migrant-support groups are headed by white Irish people. Thus  it was not surprising that most speakers stressed - yet again - the need for fair representation. However, when Kensika Monshengwo, formerly of the NCCRI, suggested that  Irish people often do a very good job at representing migrants’ and minorities’ needs, Ellen Mongan asked, rightly in my opinion, how long more should Travellers and migrants belong to organisations headed by white, settled Irish.

In the absence of government commitment to allow migrants to represent themselves and live a free and decent life, and its determination to deport as many ‘failed’ asylum seekers as possible (often rounded up at dawn and deported before campaigners have a chance to publicise these deportations) - the valiant Equality Authority has little chance to succeed in re- awakening Irish antiracism. Irish antiracism groups are encountering further difficulties with the recession, due to both scarce funding and more and more people blaming migrants for economic difficulties (see, for instance, media talkbacks on migrants ‘getting apartments, welfare and cars’ as the  reason for poor Toyosi’s killing!)

As antiracists we need to be less apologetic, saying  loudly and clearly, that we do not want to continue to live in a state that  racialises  Travellers (who it refuses to define as an ‘ethnic group’) and migrants (who it criminalises for seeking asylum or losing their work permits for no fault of their own, and who, when deemed ‘failed asylum seekers’, it deports mercilessly). We need to eradicate institutional and state racism before there are more killings.

He was a 15 year old who played football with Shelbourne FC.  He came to Ireland from Nigeria 11 years ago, had a lovely smile and a loving family and was popular with his Tyrrelstown school friends. On Good Friday he got into a row with two Irish men outside a house at Mount Garrett Rise sparked by racist jibes, and before he knew what was happening, Toyosi Shittabey was stabbed several times in the chest and was taken to Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown where he died an hour later.

According to initial reports the Gardai, reportedly concerned about tensions in Tyrrelstown, which has 50 per cent non-Irish residents, were thinking in terms of a racist crime. They arrested brothers Paul (38) and Michael (23) Barry, who got away in a black Nissan. After a brief investigation Paul was charged with manslaughter and Michael was charged under section 11 of the Firearms and Offensive Weapons Act with possession of a hockey stick. Both were released on bail.

What became apparent very soon after the mindless killing of Toyosi Shittabey was the haste with which everyone, from Gardai and local politicians to the local Muslim leader Dr Muhammad Umar al-Qadri and the Nigerian ambassador Dr Kemafo Nonyerem Chikwe, insisted that the killing was not about racism, and appealed for calm.

I am just back from a postgraduate conference on migration studies at DCU, where a leading Dutch sociologist spoke about integration without mentioning racism even once. Racism, it seems, is increasingly becoming unmentionables. I do not wish to use Toyosi’s killing to make political capital, but it is important to note how quickly what was patently a racist crime became ‘not specifically a racist attack’ according to al-Qadri.

Despite the rallying of Tyrrelstown community around the Shittabeys, and the shows of solidarity, not naming racism takes us back to the pre-interculturalism age, when Irish people were convinced that there was no racism in Ireland ‘until these people came’. Migration studies scholars speak about integration without pointing at the state’s racist categorisation of migrant populations, and without linking restrictive immigration and asylum policies with street racism, that brought about Toyosi’s death.

What is not racist about two grown men insulting a young Nigerian schoolboy and stabbing him several times in the chest? Why is such wanton act turn from murder to manslaughter? Why were the killers granted bail? And – most importantly – why is everyone so afraid of the R word?

In Britain, the murder of Stephen Lawrence galvanised a powerful antiracism campaign, and led to the MacPherson Report which named police ‘institutional racism’. Though the campaign did not bring Stephen back to life and did not stop the British government from enacting its own draconian migration policies, antiracism is not dead in Britain. In the Republic, on the other hand, we are pretending that if we don’t call it by name, racism will disappear.

Many Irish-African people are justifyably angry. As Benedicta Attoh said in the conference today, Toyosi came to Ireland at the age of four; he could have been born here and be an Irish citizen. Many young African people are afraid to leave home after dark, because, whether or not they are Irish citizens, racism lurks on every street corner and we all need to mount a vigorous campaign against it, beginning by naming the problem, before it is too late.

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.

Paddy Healy published addresses of TDs, asking people to email their TDs protesting the budget. So this is what I just sent to Chris Andrews (Fianna Fail) and John Gormley (Green Party):

Dear John and Chris

As your constituent, let me express my revulsion at the budget which has targeted the poorest and weakest in society.

As a public sector worker, I accept that high earners should bear the brunt, but introducing an extra income tax band for those earning over €100,000 (a category, which,  by the way, includes me) would have brought €2bn in revenue without cutting disability and unemployment allowances, children’s allowances and taxing low paid workers.

John, in particular - I voted for you to get Michael McDowell out and belived in your green policies - you and I spoke on several antiracism platforms and I had a lot of respect for you then. I feel you and the Greens have sold out to FF
and to power and have not really achieved much progress in either social issues or green issues. And now, with this budget, you have demonstrated your downright disregard for poor people, people with disabilities, carers, parents of young children, unemployed people and low earners.

You will not get my vote in any subsequent elections (and, needless tosay, neither will Fianna Fail, ever).

Best

Ronit

Copy of a letter I sent to the Irish Times:

Ronit Lentin
Department of Sociology
TCD

Madam,

The shortsightedness of the government’s plans to subsume community development projects in area partnerships (Letters, 25 November) was eloquently articulated by four community activists on Vincent Browne’s TV3 show on the same day. Cathleen O’Neill of Kilbarrack CDP, Rita Fagan of St Michael’s Family Resource Centre, Bronagh O’Neill of the Canal Equality Campaign and Margaret O’Shea of the Kerry Network for People with Disabilities highlighted the services CDPs provide, often by volunteers, to their communities, and the loss to theses communities of taking the projects away from the people they are serving. The transfer to area partnerships has been decided upon without consultation and it is evident that now more than ever CDPs are both ‘good value’ and essential in providing services such as childcare, after school care, programmes for women and disabled people, not provided by the state and local authorities.

Likewise, migrant-led organisations and networks, whose case has not yet been championed, are also facing drastic funding cuts. Like the CDPs, they also provide much needed services to their constituencies, often on a voluntary basis. These services, including empowerment and advocacy, language training, gender-based programmes, and basic advice on rights and entitlements, are not provided by the state or local authorities. Thus, like the CDPs, migrant-led organisations save the state money while at the same time facilitating the smoother integration of migrants into Irish society and preventing the eruption of banlieu-style disturbances in the future.

The planned cuts and amalgamations are supported by leading philanthropists, whose financial largesse involves the over zealous management of CDPs and migrant organisations, often leading to the decimation of the very sector they purport to support. I call on Minister Eamon O Cuiv and Minister of State John Curran to guarantee the continued funding and autonomy of both CDPs and migrant-led organisations whose contribution is vitally needed now more than ever before.

Yours etc

Ronit Lentin