Free Radikal

Posts Tagged ‘migrants’

Religion is fast replacing other ideologies such as Marxism-Leninism and anti-colonialism as determining social and political relations in our postmodern world. One result of the post September 11 world has been the demonization of Islam and the ‘politics of fear’ around the discourse of Islamic fundamentalism. This is despite the fact that fundamentalism, that potent ‘f word’, is originally Protestant, not Muslim, put forward in California in 1910 in a pamphlet titled The Fundamentals: A Testimony of Truth, which was circulated in 3 million copies, aiming to stop the erosion of what they saw as the ‘fundamental’ beliefs of Protestantism.
I do not need to re rehearse here the consequences of discourses such as ‘the clash of civilizations’ and the racial profiling of Muslims in the wake of 9/11 and the attacks in Madrid and London, which have resulted in what has been named the war on/of terror, waged mostly against Muslims.
One interesting consequence of this demonization has been the Swiss referendum put forward last November by the Swiss People’s Party aiming to ban the construction of minarets in Switzerland.
There are 400,000 Muslims in Switzerland (a small minority in a population of 6.4m of whom 1.96m have ‘immigrant background’), and only four minarets. Minarets, therefore, are not a huge problem, yet, according to the SVP, they are ‘a sign of Islamisation’. More than 57.5% of Swiss voters in 22 out of 26 cantons - or provinces - voted in favour of the ban, which was condemned by most world leaders from the Pope to Muslim leaders, yet has remained surprisingly undiscussed. There are unofficial Muslim prayer rooms in Switerland, and planning applications for new minarets are almost always refused. However, supporters of a ban claimed that allowing minarets would represent the growth of an ideology and a legal system - Sharia law - which are incompatible with Swiss democracy.
In the face of the success of the minaret ban, it is startling to think of the other Swiss referendum, put to voters in March, proposing to adopt the rights for animals to be legally represented. The proposal is based on an existing system in Zurich, according to which creatures such as goldfish and canaries, pigs, budgies and other animals should have legally enshrined rights including the right to be regularly exercised and cared for. This proposal was rejected by nearly 80 per cent, but the implications are interesting.
On the one hand, Switzerland has voted to outlaw the right of its Muslim citizens and residents to exercise their religious rights by praying and congregating in a publicly sited mosque, complete with a minaret. On the other, the Swiss seriously considered extending legal rights to animals – symbolically placing animals above people of the Muslim faith.
According to Maynooth media scholar Gavan Titley, the minaret ban – which means Muslims in Switzerland have to continue to pray in private facilities and thus keep their religion in the private domain – is part of a perceived ‘crisis of European multiculturalism’ which is accompanied by an ‘unapologetic demand for disintegrated migrants and Muslim populations to display loyalty, adopt ‘our’ national/liberal/universal values, and prove the legitimacy of their presence and belonging’.

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.

After weeks of speculations, the Minister for Finance delivered his verdict, targeting public sector workers, unemployment allowances, children’s allowances, medical card holders, and other recipients of welfare allowances.

Yes, he did reduce public sector workers progressively – some high earners will lose more money, but lower earners will lose more proportionately.

I am not an economist and will not do a detailed analysis of the cuts. But I do want to reflect on the rhetoric of ‘we are all in it together’ and ‘we all must sacrifice’ for the ‘common good’. As Fintan O’Toole showed clearly in his recent book A Ship of Fools, the deep recession Ireland finds itself in, is due to both stupidity and corruption. As the rich became richer – aided by their friends in government – the less well off were somewhat better off during the boom, but also incurred greater debts, being forced to buy over inflated houses and pay over inflated mortgages.
What interests me here, once again, is the complete silence on the position of migrants in the debates about the budget cuts. While the community development sector rightly fought against their foreclosure and against the forced amalgamation with area partnership, the consequences for migrants and migrant-led organisations has not yet been spoken about.

So let’s reiterate. There still are some 6,000 asylum seekers in holding centres, living in limbo and awaiting decision on their residency status. In receipt of bed and board and a paltry allowance, not raised since 2001, asylum seekers are often desperate, often having to resort to a variety of strategies to make ends meet, including, in extreme cases, selling sex to put food on the table. Secondly, a large number of migrants who came here as labour migrants – to fill labour shortages in the construction, hospitality, agricultural and care sectors – now find themselves unemployed, and in many cases undocumented. Organisations catering for homeless people report growing percentages of migrants among their clients. Yet nobody speaks a bout them. Indeed, research has shown that people who formerly were reasonably supportive of migrants, particularly ‘useful’ labour migrants, are now saying they have other problems – migration is no longer on the radar.

Anecdotally, racism is on the increase. From vile online anti-Roma and anti-migrant postings, to the recent finding by the EU Fundamental Rights Agency, that Ireland is among the top ten in discrimination against ethnic minorities. 54% of Sub Saharan Africans in Ireland report racial discrimination. Yet no one speaks about it.

Cuts in education, in health, in housing, in training and cuts in allowances such as children’s allowances are all bound to affect migrants, yet no one speaks about it.

In the aftermath of the resignation of Niall Crowley, Chief Executive of the Equality Authority, the Minister for Justice made ‘no apologies’ for cutting the Equality Authority’s budget, privileging instead police spending. This is in line with seeing equality work as defending Irish society’s problematic marginal populations, rather than maintaining equality for all, which was what the EA was about.

Denying racism and declaring itself post- and anti-racist, Ireland, like other EU member states, in restricting immigration, limiting it to those migrants who are useful to ‘our way of life’, and castigating Travellers and poor people for not playing their part, particularly now that the economic boom is over.

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