#angleterre

Inside Australia’s asylum system – a possible model for the UK

Guardian Australia reporter Ben Doherty looks at the history behind Australia’s asylum seeker policies, including the controversial practice of offshore processing and resettlement. It’s one of the options the British government is allegedly considering to deter asylum seekers from attempting to cross the Channel to the UK. Journalist Behrouz Boochani, who spent seven years in detention in Papua New Guinea, discusses the impact the policy has had

Amid a fourfold rise in small boats attempting to cross the Channel and reach the UK this year, Downing Street and ministers have asked Foreign Office officials to consider a wide range of options to deter asylum seekers, according to leaked documents last month. Proposals include offshore asylum processing centres, with one document suggesting Boris Johnson is personally involved in the plan, stating: ‘In addition to the work on OT [British overseas territory] options, the PM has asked for FCDO advice on potential third-country locations. We are asked to suggest options for a UK scheme similar to the Australian agreement with Papua New Guinea.’

Guardian Australia reporter Ben Doherty tells Rachel Humphreys about the history of Australia’s immigration policies, beginning in 2001, after the Tampa crisis, when a Norwegian freighter that had rescued more than 400 mainly Afghan Hazara refugees from their sinking vessel in international waters 140km north of Christmas Island was refused entry into Australian waters. The MV Tampa provided the conservative Coalition government with a catalyst for action. That was the establishment of “offshore detention” camps on Nauru and on Papua New Guinea, the so-called Pacific solution. The detention facilities have been the subject of serious criticism by international observers and human rights groups. Journalist Behrouz Boochani, who fled Iran for Australia in 2013, was sent to Manus Island. He describes the detention centre as worse than a prison and warns the UK to think hard before they look to replicate the Australian system. “If you do this, you lose your humanity” he tells Rachel.

▻https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2020/oct/21/inside-australias-asylum-system-a-possible-model-for-the-uk
#modèle_australien #asile #migrations #réfugiés #UK #Angleterre #audio #podcast #Ben_Doherty

Covid-19: Increased risk among ethnic minorities is largely due to poverty and social disparities, review finds - bmj.m4099.full.pdf
▻https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/371/bmj.m4099.full.pdf

Covid-19: Increased risk among ethnic minorities is largely due topoverty and social disparities, review findsGareth IacobucciMost of the increased risk of infection and death fromcovid-19 among people from ethnic minorities isexplained by factors such as occupation, wherepeople live, their household composition, andpre-existing health conditions, a government reviewhas concluded.1But the first quarterly report from the government’sRace Disparity Unit (RDU), based in the CabinetOffice, notes that a part of the excess risk“remainsunexplained”in some groups such as black men, andit said that further work was needed to understandwhich factors may be causing the disparities.The report summarises progress towards tacklingcovid-19 health inequalities since Public HealthEngland published a review on 2 June setting out thedisparities in risks and outcomes.2Since then theRDU has been working with the equalities minister,Kemi Badenoch, across government, with the Officefor National Statistics, and with academics toexamine what is driving these disparities and how totackle them.Raghib Ali, one of the government’s new expertadvisers on covid and ethnicity, said there was“goodevidence”that most excess risk among ethnicminorities was explained by risk factors other thanethnicity

#Covid-19#migrant#migration#angleterre#sante#minorite#race#ethnicite#inegalite#systemesante

Growing Scenes for London Artists: Towns and Suburbs - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/arts/design/artists-hastings-luton-croydon.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/10/21/arts/21unlovely-towns1/21crap-towns1-facebookJumbo.jpg

The pandemic has accelerated a creative exodus.
LUTON, England — “People shooting up in the alleyway here. Lovely. Welcome to Luton,” the artist Dominic Allan said on a recent afternoon as he passed two drug users in the town’s rundown former hat-making district.
Luton, about 30 miles north of London, was once famed for its hat industry, but those factories closed long ago. Its current most prominent businesses, an auto plant and an airport, have both been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. And in 2004, it was voted the worst place to live in Britain, according to an unscientific but much-publicized survey.
Yet such towns are exactly the sort of places where hard-up contemporary artists have been gravitating in recent years as unaffordable rents have forced them out of London.
Now, the pandemic is prompting a wider exodus from the British capital, pushing up real estate values in outlying regions. Months of remote working have made city dwellers reassess their housing priorities. And like many office workers, contemporary artists such as Mr. Allan — who makes art under the moniker “Dominic from Luton” — are also finding that they no longer need to be in a big city.

#Covid-19#migrant#migration#angleterre#sante#art#exoderural#banlieue#migrationinterne#crisesanitaire#economie#bienetre

#métaliste autour des #îles qui sont utilisées (ou dont il a été question d’imaginer de le faire) pour y envoyer des #réfugiés

#migrations #asile #île

ping @isskein @karine4

La possibilité d’une #île… pour migrants

Partout dans le monde, les demandeurs d’asile sont de plus en plus souvent relégués sur des îles comme on le faisait autrefois des bagnards et des lépreux. Qu’est-ce que ces prisons à ciel ouvert disent de notre regard sur les migrants ?

Un lieu le plus loin possible des regards et d’où il serait impossible de s’échapper. C’était déjà ce que les Anglais cherchaient pour se débarrasser de l’encombrant Napoléon. Ils l’avaient trouvé à #Sainte-Hélène, îlot volcanique paumé au milieu de l’Atlantique sud à près de 2 000 km des côtes de la Namibie et plus de 3 000 km du Brésil.

Deux cents ans plus tard, les voilà qui envisagent de nouveau d’avoir recours à cette improbable petite île devenue célèbre malgré elle. Cette fois, ce ne serait pas un empereur qu’on enverrait croupir sur ce bout de terre, mais des réfugiés. Oui, des réfugiés. Le ministère de l’Intérieur britannique étudie la possibilité d’installer un centre de rétention pour demandeurs d’asile sur l’un de ses territoires d’outre-mer, à Sainte-Hélène ou sur l’île de l’Ascension. Insensé ?

https://focus.nouvelobs.com/2020/10/15/87/0/2800/1400/580/0/75/0/31bf213_469335591-000-pj4kf.jpg

Ce ne seraient pourtant pas les premiers à se laisser séduire par la possibilité d’une île. Les Australiens ont déjà une longue expérience en la matière. Ne voulant pas de demandeurs d’asile chez eux, ils ont ouvert, dès 2001, un centre de rétention sur l’île Christmas, un territoire extérieur australien au large de l’Indonésie. Et depuis 2012, ils expédient tout migrant débarquant clandestinement sur leurs côtes dans des camps offshore situés sur Manus, une île de #Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinée, et Nauru, une république insulaire d’#Océanie.

https://focus.nouvelobs.com/2020/10/15/0/0/1532/1100/580/0/75/0/5fe89cf_819436187-001-tu38z-jpeg.jpg

▻https://www.nouvelobs.com/art/fdff98b8-7bb0-4806-a83f-799cec7d59e2
#îles #réfugiés #asile #migrations #Australie #Manus_Island #Nauru #UK #Angleterre

On Quitting Academia

In​ May, I gave up my academic career after 27 years. A voluntary severance scheme had been announced in December, and I dithered about it until the pandemic enforced focus on a fuzzy dilemma. Already far from the sunlit uplands, universities would now, it seemed, descend into a dark tunnel. I swallowed hard, expressed an interest, hesitated, and then declared my intention to leave. A settlement agreement was drafted, and I instructed a solicitor. Hesitating again, I made a few calls, stared out of the window, then signed.

My anxiety about academia dates back to my first job, a temporary lectureship in history at Keele University. I had drifted into doctoral research with a 2.1 from Cambridge and an unclassified O-Level in self-confidence. My friends from university, many headed for work in London, had initially been sceptical. One of them, later the deputy prime minister, worried that academic pay was crap and I’d have to read everything. Besides, decent posts were scarce. But I liked my subject, was taken on by a charismatic professor, scraped a grant, and switched Cambridge colleges as a gesture towards a fresh start. Reality had been evaded. To an extent unthinkable today, arts postgrads were left alone to read. At lamplit tutorials and seminars, held in book-lined rooms in dark courtyards, it was hard not to feel like an impostor, though, looking back, I now realise that others were also straining to suspend disbelief in themselves. Then, suddenly, I was out of time and needed a job. It was the end of what feels now like one long autumn of snug teas and cycling through mists.

The day I arrived in Keele, it was raining. I’d split up with my girlfriend and had arranged to share a house with a colleague I’d never met; my office was still in the process of being built. Ahead lay the prospect of cobbling together dozens of lectures while at the same time somehow writing up my PhD. I was gloomy and apprehensive, but things fell into place. My housemate hadn’t finished his thesis either: we laboured through early mornings and evenings, eventually submitting on the same day. The teaching was exciting and rewarding. There were a lot of mature students, some of them displaced by the closure of the Staffordshire collieries, all eager to learn. My impostor syndrome went into remission. I had articles accepted by peer-reviewed journals, passed my PhD viva, and ascended through a series of jobs. In 2007 I joined the University of East Anglia and four years later was made a professor. I published books, essays and reviews, received grants and fellowships, spoke at seminars and conferences, assessed manuscripts, supervised postgraduates, served as an external examiner and sat on committees. I had become the person I once impersonated. There were still Billy Liar moments: doodling in meetings, dreaming up titles for novels, imagining the present as prelude. But the masquerade was over. What I did was who I was.

Then, two years ago, things took a turn. A viable application for a big research grant fell at the first hurdle. Two articles I’d spent months on were rejected, one quite quickly, the other after a long ordeal of consideration and resubmission. Some of the assessors, cloaked in anonymity, seemed affronted by what I was trying to say. It was crushing, but also an awakening. They had pecked so viciously because I was an injured hen in the brood. They sensed disingenuousness, ebbing engagement, slippage from relevance, and, behind it all, a loss of faith. When I felt I’d been faking it I was the genuine article; now I was established I’d become an interloper. I realised I’d said all I had to say. So when my wife accepted a job in Dublin and I took a career break to look after our children, settling into non-academic life was easy. I didn’t miss it, any of it.

It used to be more interesting. In 1993, Keele still bore a resemblance to the world Malcolm Bradbury captured in The History Man (1975): lecturers taught whatever enthused them – one medievalist offered a course on the Holocaust – and the cooler professors held parties to which students were invited. There were eccentrics straight out of Waugh’s Decline and Fall: loveable cranks who had written one or zero books, drank at lunchtime and liked a flutter. They smoked in their offices and let ferrety dogs roam the corridors. They were amused by the arrival of career-minded scholars, and panicked when the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) demanded to know how taxpayers’ money was being spent. The Research Assessment Exercise found them wanting in research, and a dawning age of inspection exposed worryingly heterodox teaching methods. Immediately before a HEFCE visit, a dusty sculpture was rinsed under the tap to make a good impression, as if the inspectors were a bevy of exacting aunts rather than fellow academics pressed into public service. In my next job, a wall of photocopied ‘evidence’ was adduced in the department’s cause, and a crate of booze was bought, in contravention of HEFCE rules, to relax the inspectors. Alas, it was stolen by some students.

These were in many respects the bad old days, unworthy of anyone’s nostalgia. There was too little transparency, permitting countless small abuses. There was favouritism and prejudice; a policy of laissez-faire concealed unequal workloads and, in some cases, sheer indolence. The tightening of central controls in the 1990s introduced accountability to the system, and the expansion of the higher education sector generally, which happened around the same time, did good by allowing more young people from working-class backgrounds to earn a degree, something that, to their parents as to mine, had previously represented a social distinction as remotely glittering as a knighthood. When I began my PhD, there were fewer than fifty universities in the UK, awarding around 80,000 first degrees annually; twenty years later the number of HE institutions had nearly trebled, and the number of degrees had increased by a factor of five. In 1999 Tony Blair vowed that the 33 per cent of school-leavers then in higher education would rise to 50 per cent in the next century, a goal that was reached in 2018.

Widening opportunity in education is the noblest of social and political projects. But the cost is now clear. In the ‘bad old days’ students were, as they are today, taught with commitment and passion, but sometimes eccentricity added a spark. Provided he – and it was usually a he – turned up fully dressed and sober and didn’t lay hands on anyone, the crazy lecturer could be an inspiration. Expectations were less explicit, the rhetoric and metrics of achievement were absent, which made everyone feel freer. Even applying to a university seemed less pressured, because it was so unclear what it would be like when you got there. You absorbed teachers’ anecdotal experiences and sent off for prospectuses, including the student-produced ‘alternative’ versions mentioning safe sex and cheap beer. Even after matriculation I had only a vague sense of the structure of my course. The lecture list was to be found in an austere periodical of record available in newsagents. Mysteries that today would be cleared up with two clicks on a smartphone had to be resolved by listening to rumours. This news blackout has been replaced by abundant online information, the publication of lucid curricular pathways, the friendly outreach of student services and the micromanagement of an undergraduate’s development. Leaps of progress all, if it weren’t for the suspicion that students might develop better if they had to find out more things for themselves. We learned to be self-reliant and so were better prepared for an indifferent world; we didn’t for a moment see the university as acting in loco parentis. Excessive care for students is as reassuring as a comfort blanket and can be just as infantilising.

Academics lament the local autonomy that has now been arrogated to the centre, where faculty executive committees and senior management teams call the shots. Lecturers no longer exercise the discretion that once supported students’ pastoral welfare, and are instead trained to spot mental health problems and to advise students to consult GPs and book university counselling sessions (waiting lists tend to be long: anxiety is the new normal, sometimes reported as dispassionately as one might do a cold). Instances where essay extensions have been granted only on submission of proof of bereavement are not unheard of: procrustean bureaucracy in the name of consistency. Team-teaching is preferred to the one-lecturer show because university managers have an aversion to cancelling an advertised module should the lecturer take research or parental leave, move to another university, or run off screaming into the night. This was once an acceptable risk; now it threatens to infringe students’ consumer rights. Overseeing such concerns are marketing departments of burgeoning complexity and swagger, which manage public relations and promote the brand. National rankings based on several ‘key performance indicators’ – research, teaching, student satisfaction (a revered metric deriving from an online survey) – are parsed and massaged by these departments into their most appealing iterations, in the hope of pushing their institution as close as possible to pole position in an intensely competitive race. The Russell Group, a self-selecting club of 24 elite UK universities, content to be thought of as ‘the British Ivy League’, admits some new members and excludes others. Those refused entry make ingenious claims to be as good as those inside the charmed circle. But it’s a struggle. The Russell Group’s members attract three-quarters of all research income, which matters not least because world-class research-led teaching is a strong selling point for recruiting undergraduates.

The key factor is tuition fees – currently £9250 per annum for full-time study – which in 2012 replaced most direct funding of universities. Today half of UK universities’ £40 billion annual income comes from fees. Universities are businesses forced to think commercially, regardless of any humane virtues traditionally associated with academic life. Academic heads of department – otherwise known as ‘line managers’, some of whom control their own budgets – are set aspirational admissions targets which often prove unachievable due to the vicissitudes of an unstable market. The usual outcome, in Micawberish terms, is misery over happiness. Academics, already demoralised by declining real wages, shrinking pensions and the demands of the Research Excellence Framework – not least the demand to demonstrate the public ‘impact’ of their research – report feeling not just overburdened by marketisation, but victimised. Some administrators, especially those without teaching duties, can make ‘underperforming’ academic staff feel like spanners in the works, rather than labourers who own the means of production and create the very thing marketing departments have to sell.

University mottos, with all their classical hauteur, have been displaced by vapid slogans about discovering yourself and belonging to the future. Universities are centres of excellence, hubs of innovation, zones of enterprise. The gushing copy has limited relevance on the shop floor. Lecturers deserve more respect than is found in Dalek-like emails demanding 100 per cent compliance with this or that directive. An infinitely expanding bureaucratic universe displays authoritarian indifference to variety and nuance in the very work exalted in their promotional material. Vice-chancellors and deans always remember to give thanks and praise at graduation ceremonies and other festal moments; but what lecturers want is understanding, not least about the manifold claims on their time.

So how has all this affected ‘the student experience’? Undergraduates today can’t know how it felt to belong to a state-funded institution whose low-pressure otherworldliness allowed for imagination and experimentation, diversity and discovery. The student experience didn’t need defining because it wasn’t for sale: it magically happened within a loosely idealistic, libertarian countercultural framework. The last thing anyone at a university wanted to wear was a suit: now you can’t move for them. Today’s watchwords are value and satisfaction. Even if it’s a good thing for fee-paying students to have a say in what their money buys, a transactional mentality has led to paradoxical demands for more contact hours and the right not to use them. Whereas lectures have long been optional, seminars and tutorials have remained compulsory. This is now under threat, along with the basic principle that attendees at a lecture are passive consumers and seminar participants are active producers. These days the customer is usually right and the lecturer more like a generic service provider. Supporting observations include students’ failure to learn their tutor’s name after 12 weeks, a tendency to refer to ‘teachers’ and ‘lessons’, dependence on prepackaged fillets of text – whatever happened to ‘reading round the subject’? – and unabashed admissions that set work has not been done. Why pretend the dog ate your homework when you own the homework?

Students miss out if they duck challenges they imagine to be beyond their capabilities. Punching above your weight can be stressful and tiring, but without doing a bit of it students ironically fail to develop the independent learning skills and confident self-expression that employers value (here I’m talking mainly about the arts and humanities). Unlike other commodities and services, where typically the customer wants no involvement in the manufacture or delivery of their purchases, students get out of a degree what they put in. One of the worst outcomes would be if they unwittingly believed that fees entitled them to a good degree, and when awarded a 2.2 (or that endangered species, a third) reflexively blamed anything and anyone other than themselves. As bad would be a reluctance to award degrees below a 2.1 for fear of complaint, even legal action.

Universities obsessed with student satisfaction are finding it harder to navigate their obligations. It doesn’t help that students have been hit by waves of strikes, followed by the further disruption caused by Covid-19. As for academic staff, feelings of discontent, disenfranchisement, disillusionment and disorientation are increasing, as academic careers become less and less appealing. The financial impact of the pandemic on universities has been catastrophic, with individual losses over the next financial year predicted to be in the tens of millions. In July, the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimated a combined long-term deficit of £11 billion. Deprived of fees from foreign students (especially for postgraduate courses), revenue from rental accommodation, income from the conference trade and returns from other investments, universities are facing Herculean challenges – hence redundancies both voluntary and, in due course, compulsory. The IFS predicts that, without cutting workforces, universities will save only £600 million. I jumped while there was still a lifeboat in the water. UEA has a broad regional base, and will survive with some belt-tightening and structural changes. According to some reports, however, 13 institutions will go bust without government bailouts, which no doubt they will receive in exchange for pruning courses devoid of obvious vocational benefit.

What will the student experience be now? A new order of one-way corridors, social distancing, teaching bubbles, screened and sanitised everything, and ‘dual-delivery synchronous and asynchronous learning activities’: a minimal amount of face-to-face teaching combined with online lectures, pre-recorded so that lecture theatres can be freed up for use as spacious seminar rooms. Lecturers have been racing to refine lockdown protocols into coherent products, now widely advertised as ‘blended learning’. Many have spent their summers taking training modules in ‘generic breadth and depth e-learning provision’, the warp and weft of embedded skills that look neat on a ‘weave diagram’ but are harder to apply in real life. To keep class discussion buoyant, lecturers are told to ‘encourage students to practise the verbalisation aspect of knowledge’. Multiple ‘learning outcomes’, sacred buzzwords before the pandemic, have been supplemented with ‘learner journeys’, promising against the odds a positive experience as well as a realistic hope of achieving something. But mostly lecturers have been tasked with filming multiple bite-size video ‘segments’ suited to modern attention spans (complete with subtitles and credited imagery), setting ‘interactive tasks’ and building bespoke websites for their modules.

Who knows how long this set-up will last. Currently we can only applaud the pragmatism and stamina of lecturers, beg the forbearance of students, and wish them well. But if the R-number creeps up, or if there are more strikes (a prospect made likely by redundancies), even the contingency plan will stall and dissatisfaction will soar. School-leavers may question the wisdom of paying so much for so little. As it is, calls for universities to refund fees and rent have fallen on deaf ears. The student experience has already been compromised and the brand damaged. The path to recovery is pegged out with proposals for retrenchment, mostly effected by shedding staff.

I had dreaded telling colleagues in my field that I was quitting, imagining incredulity and a hushed inference that I was terminally ill or at least having a breakdown. Academia is vocational: people don’t usually pack it in or switch careers – although that may become more common. When I finally broke the news, most of the people I told said they would retire early if they could afford it – a few had made calculations about payouts and pensions and most had at least contemplated it in glummer moments. It’s just no fun any more, they said. One or two admitted that their self-identity was so bound up with academic life they could never give it up, but even this wasn’t a judgment on my decision: they were entirely sympathetic and acknowledged that a wonderful career had lost a lot of its glamour.

Of course, none of us is lost in space, rounding the lip of a black hole. Higher education will always be worthwhile, if only because for students it provides three unique years removed from family, school and a career. In spite of uncertainty and austerity, versatile and resourceful young people will create their own networks and forums conducive to study and sociability. Academics will carry on doing research that informs their teaching. Learning for its own sake may suffer as courses are honed to a fine utilitarian edge and students evolve into accomplished grade accountants, expert in the work required for a 2.1 – playing the system they themselves finance. But degrees will retain value, and, for those who find graduate entry-level jobs, they will remain value for money. Above all, even allowing for a likely contraction of the HE sector, our universities will still promote social mobility, having already transformed the profile of the typical student, in terms of gender as well as class. There will be no return to sixty years ago when only 4 per cent of 18-year-olds went on to higher education, most of them men. The change is permanent. I’m glad to have played my part in this revolution.

Perhaps this is why I feel uneasy, and why my future feels more suspenseful than exciting. I’ve had dreams in which I’ve strolled across a platonically perfect ivy-clad campus, been enthralled by a perfect seminar, and had engaging discussions with old colleagues, including my Cambridge supervisor and the people I knew when I was doing my PhD, back in the halcyon days when everything had a point and a purpose. There’s guilt there: a sense of loss, of potential squandered and maybe even betrayed. UEA has made me an emeritus professor, which is an honourable discharge and something to cling to, and my wife insists we can live on her salary. But I still can’t decide whether I’ve retired or just resigned, or am in fact redundant and unemployed. I’m undeniably jobless at 53, able-bodied (I hesitate to say ‘fit’), with a full head of hair and most of my teeth, and haunted by St Teresa of Avila’s dictum that more tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.

I keep thinking about a short story we read at school, Somerset Maugham’s ‘The Lotus Eater’. It is the cautionary tale of a bank manager who drives off the toads of work, gives up his comfy pension and goes to live like a peasant on a paradisal Mediterranean island. Needless to say it doesn’t end well: his annuity expires, his mind atrophies, he botches suicide. He sees out his days in a state of bestial wretchedness, demoted in the great chain of being as a punishment for rebelling against nature. I don’t see the story as a prediction, and would always choose industry over idleness, but Maugham’s contempt for someone who dodges life’s challenges – the story satirised an effete acquaintance from Heidelberg – resonates. Still, I couldn’t go back. Goodbye to all that.

▻https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n18/malcolm-gaskill/diary
#UK #Angleterre #université #ESR #quitter #fin #jeter_l'éponge #taxes_universitaires

Un an après l’affaire du camion charnier, enquête sur le marché macabre du trafic de migrants
▻https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2020/10/12/un-an-apres-l-affaire-du-camion-charnier-enquete-sur-le-marche-macabre-du-tr

https://img.lemde.fr/2020/10/09/339/0/3543/1768/1440/720/60/0/4a450f0_847437917-103-calais-dunkerque-gratacap.jpg

Lorsque le réseau outre-Manche arrête une date de départ, eux fixent les points de rendez-vous pour embarquer dans des camions, à Armentières, Calais, Lille, Amiens, Grande-Synthe, Bierne… Plus rarement dans le Calvados, sur la côte normande. Parfois, le lieu de prise en charge se situe en Belgique, à proximité du port de Zeebruges, voire sur le littoral néerlandais. Mais toujours à l’écart des villes, dans une zone industrielle reculée et discrète ou sur une aire d’autoroute. Pour rallier ces lieux, Tony et Hoang sont en contact avec de nombreux chauffeurs, le plus souvent des VTC ou des taxis exerçant illégalement et désireux d’arrondir leurs fins de mois. Selon la distance à parcourir, ces chauffeurs pourront toucher entre 500 et 800 euros par « course ». Entre octobre 2019 et mars 2020, l’un de ceux mis en examen dans l’affaire du camion charnier avait effectué 24 trajets depuis l’Ile-de-France en direction du Nord et de la Belgique.
C’est ainsi que, le 16 octobre 2019, Nhung, une Vietnamienne tout juste majeure qui arrivait de Grenoble où elle avait une attache familiale avec une personne mise en cause dans l’enquête sur le réseau des restaurants asiatiques, a été accueillie par Hoang, à Créteil, et conduite à l’appartement de l’avenue du général Pierre-Billotte. D’autres rejoindront la planque la veille du départ, qu’ils soient en France depuis des mois – certains n’en sont pas à leur première tentative de traversée – ou qu’ils aient atterri à Roissy quelques jours plus tôt, selon les éléments fournis par l’étude de leurs téléphones. (...)
Un contact en Angleterre a informé les passeurs en France que la traversée de la Manche aurait lieu dans la nuit du 22 au 23 octobre. Les coordonnées GPS transmises indiquent qu’il faut se rendre dans une zone industrielle à l’écart de la petite ville de Bierne, à trois heures de route de Paris. D’autres Vietnamiens y convergent depuis la région parisienne et la Belgique. Pour la jeune Nhung et ses compatriotes, c’est le moment d’entamer la dernière étape de leur odyssée. Une dizaine d’heures plus tard, la découverte du « camion charnier », ainsi que la presse le désignera très vite, vient contrarier les affaires des trafiquants. Tony part se mettre au vert en Allemagne. Les voyages clandestins qu’il organise cessent pendant plusieurs mois. Grâce aux téléphones retrouvés sur les cadavres, les policiers de l’Ocriest remontent toutefois jusqu’à lui et ses complices, aussitôt placés sous surveillance. Dès le mois de mars, et en dépit de la crise sanitaire mondiale, le réseau recommence à s’activer, convoyant de nouveaux clients, depuis de nouvelles planques, jusqu’à une vaste opération d’interpellations menées en France et en Belgique, le 26 mai.

#Covid-19#migrant#migration#angleterre#vietnam#france#traffic#sante#crisesanitaire#migrantclandestin#reseau

’We can’t put a barrier on the border’: Welsh town fears influx from English Covid hotspots | UK news | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/oct/11/we-cant-put-a-barrier-on-the-border-welsh-town-fears-influx-from-englis
▻https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e5f4d4d70cd1fb8b45345fe2ffa0a303d64759cc/0_224_6720_4032/master/6720.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-ali

Sharon and Tommy Gee, who run the Spar store in Montgomery, a picturesque town in mid-Wales a mile from the English border, admit they are worried. They operate a friendly shop and are keen both to serve their local community and give a warm welcome to the many visitors drawn by the town’s castle, cafes, pubs and good hiking and cycling routes.
But Covid-19 means the steady flow of tourists across the border into a rural area that has had few cases is seen as a mixed blessing.
“We’re so close to the border and not far from places that have high Covid rates,” said Sharon. “We are worried,” Tommy added. “It wouldn’t be such a concern if everyone took all the precautions. Most do, but there is a minority that don’t.”There has been growing anger within the Welsh government for weeks over Boris Johnson’s refusal to stop people travelling from areas in England that are subject to lockdown to places where there are few Covid cases.The Welsh first minister, Mark Drakeford, made it clear on Friday that if the prime minister did not take action, his government would bring in rules that would effectively stop people from English hotspots crossing the border. Montgomery in Powys, where there is no lockdown, is the sort of place the Welsh government is keen to protect.The approach from Drakeford’s government means that a person from Wrexham in north Wales, which is in local lockdown, is not allowed to leave their area unless they have a “reasonable excuse”. A day out to Montgomery would not be allowed.

#Covid-19#migrant#migration#grandebretagne#angleterre#paysdegalle#frontiere#sante#confinement#cluster#epicentre

#Métaliste autour de #structures_flottantes pour l’asile (soit des centres de détention et/ou procédure, ou alors des objets flottants utilisés à des fins d’#expulsion)

#offshore #asile #migrations #réfugiés #mer #eau #flottants #flottant #détention #procédure_d'asile #modèle_australien #frontières #frontières_mobiles

ping @isskein @karine4

The British town with a third ‘nationality’

▻https://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20200927-the-british-town-with-a-third-nationality

L’histoire d’une petite ville écartelé entre deux régions, deux cultures, t qui hésite à choisir.

https://ychef.files.bbci.co.uk/624x351/p08qcr4j.jpg

Berwick-upon-Tweed has long existed on the borders of change between England and Scotland – a predicament that’s led to the creation of an altogether different identity.

By Mike MacEacheran

28 September 2020

Here’s a quick geography quiz. Picture a town with attractions including the salmon-stocked River Tweed and Scotsgate, part of a boundary of carefully preserved defensive walls. Nearby, there is a museum dedicated to the history of The King’s Own Scottish Borderers infantry regiment. A Royal Bank of Scotland and a Bank of Scotland stand almost adjacent to each other on a main street, while The Rob Roy B&B, to the south, overlooks mist rolling in from the sea. One final clue: the local team plays in the Lowland League, the fifth tier of Scottish football. Where are you?

#identité #royaume-uni #écosse #angleterre #frontières #limite

Revealed: No 10 explores sending asylum seekers to Moldova, Morocco and Papua New Guinea | UK news | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/sep/30/revealed-no-10-explores-sending-asylum-seekers-to-moldova-morocco-and-p

Downing Street has asked officials to consider the option of sending asylum seekers to Moldova, Morocco or Papua New Guinea and is the driving force behind proposals to hold refugees in offshore detention centres, according to documents seen by the Guardian.

The documents suggest officials in the Foreign Office have been pushing back against No 10’s proposals to process asylum applications in detention facilities overseas, which have also included the suggestion the centres could be constructed on the south Atlantic islands of Ascension and St Helena.

The documents, marked “official” and “sensitive” and produced earlier this month, summarise advice from officials at the Foreign Office, which was asked by Downing Street to “offer advice on possible options for negotiating an offshore asylum processing facility similar to the Australian model in Papua New Guinea and Nauru”.

#migration #asile #déportation #externalisation #déterritorialisation

Schools in England told not to use anti-capitalist material in teaching
▻https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/sep/27/uk-schools-told-not-to-use-anti-capitalist-material-in-teaching

The government has ordered schools in England not to use resources from organisations which have expressed a desire to end capitalism.

Department for Education (DfE) guidance issued on Thursday for school leaders and teachers involved in setting the relationship, sex and health curriculum categorised anti-capitalism as an “extreme political stance” and equated it with opposition to freedom of speech, antisemitism and endorsement of illegal activity.

Sous-#métaliste sur les #villes-refuge en #Europe...

#ville-refuge #migrations #asile #réfugiés #solidarité

Métaliste :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/759145

L’#Université, le #Covid-19 et le danger des #technologies_de_l’éducation

La crise actuelle et la solution proposée d’un passage des enseignements en ligne en urgence ont accéléré des processus systémiques déjà en cours dans les universités britanniques, en particulier dans le contexte du Brexit. Même si l’enseignement en ligne peut avoir une portée radicale et égalitaire, sa pérennisation dans les conditions actuelles ouvrirait la voie à ce que les fournisseurs privés de technologies de l’éducation (edtech d’après l’anglais educational technology) imposent leurs priorités et fassent de l’exception une norme.

Mariya Ivancheva, sociologue à l’université de Liverpool dont les recherches portent sur l’enseignement supérieur, soutient que nous devons repenser ce phénomène et y résister, sans quoi le secteur de l’enseignement supérieur britannique continuera d’opérer comme un outil d’extraction et de redistribution de l’argent public vers le secteur privé.

*

Avec la propagation mondiale du coronavirus et la désignation du COVID-19 comme pandémie par l’Organisation mondiale de la santé le 11 mars, les universités de nombreux pays ont eu recours à l’enseignement en ligne. Rien qu’aux États-Unis, dès le 12 mars, plus de 100 universités sont passées à l’enseignement à distance. Depuis, rares sont les pays où au moins une partie des cours n’est pas dispensée en ligne. Les prestataires de services d’enseignement privés ont été inondés de demandes de la part des universités, qui les sollicitaient pour faciliter le passage à l’enseignement à distance.

Au Royaume-Uni, la réticence initiale du gouvernement et des directions de certaines institutions d’enseignement supérieur à imposer des mesures de distanciation sociale et à fermer les établissements ont mené plusieurs universités à prendre cette initiative de leur propre chef. Le 23 mars, lorsque les règles de confinement et de distanciation sociale ont finalement été introduites, la plupart des universités avaient déjà déplacé leurs cours en ligne et fermé la plus grande partie de leur campus, à l’exception des « services essentiels ». Si un débat sur les inégalités face à l’université dématérialisée a eu lieu (accès aux ordinateurs, à une connexion Internet sécurisée et à un espace de travail calme pour les étudiant.e.s issus de familles pauvres, vivant dans des conditions défavorables, porteurs de responsabilités familiales ou d’un handicap), l’impact sur le long terme de ce passage en ligne sur le travail universitaire n’a pas été suffisamment discuté.

Ne pas laisser passer l’opportunité d’une bonne crise

Étant donnée la manière criminelle dont le gouvernement britannique a initialement répondu à la crise sanitaire, un retard qui aurait coûté la vie à plus de 50 000 personnes, les mesures de confinement et de distanciation prises par les universités sont louables. Toutefois, la mise en ligne des enseignements a également accéléré des processus déjà existants dans le secteur universitaire au Royaume-Uni.

En effet, surtout depuis la crise de 2008, ce secteur est aux prises avec la marchandisation, les politiques d’austérité et la précarisation. Désormais, il doit également faire aux conséquences du Brexit, qui se traduiront par une baisse des financements pour la recherche provenant de l’UE ainsi que par une diminution du nombre d’étudiant.e.s européens. Entre l’imminence d’une crise économique sans précédent, les craintes d’une baisse drastique des effectifs d’étudiant.e.s étranger/ères payant des frais de scolarité pour l’année académique à venir et le refus du gouvernement de débourser deux milliards de livres pour renflouer le secteur, la perspective d’une reprise rapide est peu probable.

Le passage en ligne a permis à de nombreux étudiant.e.s de terminer le semestre et l’année académique : pourtant, les personnels enseignants et administratifs n’ont reçu que de maigres garanties face à la conjoncture. Pour les enseignements, les universités britanniques dépendent à plus de 50% de travailleurs précaires, ayant des contrats de vacation souvent rémunérés à l’heure et sur demande (« zero-hour contract » : contrat sans horaire spécifié). Si certaines universités ont mis en place des systèmes de congé sans solde ou de chômage partiel pour faire face à la pandémie, la majorité d’entre elles envisage de renvoyer les plus vulnérables parmi leurs employés.

Parallèlement, les sociétés prestataires d’edtech, qui sollicitaient auparavant les universités de manière discrète, sont désormais considérées comme des fournisseurs de services de « premiers secours » voire « palliatifs ». Or, dans le contexte actuel, la prolongation de ces modes d’enseignements entraînerait une précarisation et une externalisation accrues du travail universitaire, et serait extrêmement préjudiciable à l’université publique.

Les eaux troubles de l’enseignement supérieur commercialisé

Au cours des dernières décennies, le domaine universitaire britannique a connu une énorme redistribution des fonds publics vers des prestataires privés. Les contributions du public et des particuliers à l’enseignement supérieur se font désormais par trois biais : les impôts (budgets pour la recherche et frais de fonctionnement des universités), les frais d’études (frais de scolarité, frais de subsistance et remboursement des prêts étudiants) et par le port du risque de crédit pour les prêts étudiants (reconditionnés en dette et vendus aux investisseurs privés)[1].

Lorsque les directions des universités mettent en œuvre des partenariats public-privé dont les conditions sont largement avantageuses pour le secteur privé, elles prétendent que ces contrats profitent au « bien public », et ce grâce à l’investissement qu’ils permettraient dans les infrastructures et les services, et parce qu’ils mèneraient à la création d’emplois et donc à de la croissance. Mais cette rhétorique dissimule mal le fait que ces contrats participent en réalité à un modèle d’expansion de l’université fondé sur la financiarisation et le non-respect des droits des travailleurs dont les conditions de travail deviennent encore plus précaires.

À cet égard, les retraites des universitaires ont été privatisées par le biais d’un régime appelé Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), dont il a été divulgué qu’il s’agissait d’un régime fiscal offshore. Par ailleurs, les universités britanniques, très bien notées par les agences de notation qui supposent que l’État les soutiendrait le cas échéant, ont été autorisées à emprunter des centaines de millions de livres pour investir dans la construction de résidences étudiantes privées, s’engageant à une augmentation exponentielle du nombre d’étudiant.e.s.

Le marché de la construction des résidences universitaires privées atteignait 45 milliards de livres en 2017, et bénéficiait souvent à des sociétés privées offshores. Les étudiant.e.s sont ainsi accueillis dans des dortoirs sans âme, fréquentent des infrastructures basiques (par exemple les installations sportives), alors qu’ils manquent cruellement d’accès aux services de soutien psychologique et social, ou même tout simplement de contact direct avec leurs enseignants, qu’ils voient souvent de loin dans des amphithéâtres bondés. Ces choix ont pour résultat une détérioration dramatique de la santé mentale des étudiant.e.s.

Avec des frais universitaires pouvant aller jusqu’à £9 000 par an pour les études de premier cycle et dépassant parfois £20 000 par an en cycle de masters pour les étudiant.e.s étranger/ères (sans compter les frais de subsistance : nourriture, logement, loisirs), la dette étudiante liée à l’emprunt a atteint 121 milliards de livres. La prévalence d’emplois précaires et mal payés sur le marché du travail rend à l’évidence ces prêts de plus en plus difficiles à rembourser.

Enfin, le financement de la recherche provient toujours principalement de sources publiques, telles que l’UE ou les comités nationaux pour la recherche. Candidater pour ces financements extrêmement compétitifs demande un énorme investissement en temps, en main d’œuvre et en ressources. Ces candidatures sont cependant fortement encouragées par la direction des universités, en dépit du faible taux de réussite et du fait que ces financements aboutissent souvent à des collaborations entre université et industrie qui profitent au secteur privé par le biais de brevets, de main-d’œuvre de recherche bon marché, et en octroyant aux entreprises un droit de veto sur les publications.

Les edtech entrent en scène

Dans le même temps, les sociétés d’edtech jouent un rôle de plus en plus important au sein des universités, profitant de deux changements du paradigme véhiculé par l’idéologie néolibérale du marché libre appliquée à l’enseignement supérieur – ainsi qu’à d’autres services publics.

D’abord, l’idée de services centrés sur les « utilisateurs » (les « apprenants »selon la terminologie en cours dans l’enseignement), s’est traduite concrètement par des coûts additionnels pour le public et les usagers ainsi que par l’essor du secteur privé, conduisant à l’individualisation accrue des risques et de la dette. Ainsi, la formation professionnelle des étudiant.e.s, autrefois proposée par les employeurs, est désormais considérée comme relevant de la responsabilité des universités. Les universitaires qui considèrent que leur rôle n’est pas de former les étudiant.e.s aux compétences attendues sur le marché du travail sont continuellement dénigrés.

Le deuxième paradigme mis en avant par les sociétés edtech pour promouvoir leurs services auprès des universités est celui de l’approche centrée sur les « solutions ». Mais c’est la même « solution » qui est invariablement proposée par les sociétés edtech, à savoir celle de la « rupture numérique », ou, en d’autres termes, la rupture avec l’institution universitaire telle que nous la connaissons. En réponse aux demandes en faveur d’universités plus démocratiques et égalitaires, dégagées de leur soumission croissante aux élites au pouvoir, les sociétés edtech (dont la capitalisation s’élève à des milliards de dollars) se présentent comme offrant la solution via les technologies numériques.

Elles s’associent à une longue histoire où le progrès technologique (que ce soit les lettres, la radio, les cassettes audio ou les enregistrements vidéo) a effectivement été mis au service d’étudiant.e.s « atypiques » tels que les travailleurs, les femmes, les personnes vivant dans des zones d’accès difficile, les personnes porteuses de handicap ou assumant des responsabilités familiales. L’éducation ouverte par le biais par exemple de webinaires gratuits, les formations en ligne ouvertes à tous (MOOC), les ressources éducatives disponibles gratuitement et les logiciels open source suivaient à l’origine un objectif progressiste d’élargissement de l’accès à l’éducation.

Toutefois, avec le passage en ligne des enseignements dans un secteur universitaire fortement commercialisé, les technologies sont en réalité utilisées à des fins opposées. Avant la pandémie de COVID-19, certaines universités proposaient déjà des MOOC, des formations de courte durée gratuites et créditées et des diplômes en ligne par le biais de partenariats public-privé avec des sociétés de gestion de programmes en ligne.

Au sein du marché général des technologies de l’information, ces sociétés représentent un secteur d’une soixantaine de fournisseurs, estimé à 3 milliards de dollars et qui devrait atteindre 7,7 milliards de dollars d’ici 2025 – un chiffre susceptible d’augmenter avec les effets de la pandémie. Le modèle commercial de ces partenariats implique généralement que ces sociétés récoltent entre 50 à 70% des revenus liés aux frais de scolarité, ainsi que l’accès à des mégadonnées très rentables, en échange de quoi elles fournissent le capital de démarrage, la plateforme, des services de commercialisation et une aide au recrutement et assument le coût lié aux risques.

L’une des différences essentielles entre ces sociétés et d’autres acteurs du secteur des technologies de l’éducation proposant des services numériques est qu’elles contribuent à ce qui est considéré comme le « cœur de métier » : la conception des programmes, l’enseignement et le soutien aux étudiant.e.s. Une deuxième différence est que, contrairement à d’autres prestataires d’enseignement privés, ces sociétés utilisent l’image institutionnelle d’universités existantes pour vendre leur produit, sans être trop visibles.

Normaliser la précarisation et les inégalités

Le secteur de la gestion des programmes en ligne repose sur une charge importante de travail académique pour les employés ainsi que sur le recours à une main-d’œuvre précaire et externalisée. Ceci permet aux sociétés bénéficiaires de contourner la résistance organisée au sein des universités. De nombreux MOOC, formations de courte durée et des diplômes en ligne en partenariat avec ces sociétés font désormais partie de l’offre habituelle des universités britanniques.

La charge de travail académique déjà croissante des enseignants est intensifiée par les enseignements en ligne, sans rémunération supplémentaire, et alors même que de tels cours demandent une pédagogie différente et prennent plus de temps que l’enseignement en classe. Avec la transformation de l’enseignement à distance d’urgence en une offre d’« éducation en ligne », ces modalités pourraient devenir la nouvelle norme.

L’université de Durham a d’ailleurs tenté d’instaurer un dangereux précédent à cet égard, qui en présage d’autres à venir. L’université a conclu un accord avec la société Cambridge Education Digital (CED), afin d’offrir des diplômes entièrement en ligne à partir de l’automne 2020, sans consultation du personnel, mais en ayant la garantie de CED que seules six heures de formation étaient nécessaires pour concevoir et délivrer ces diplômes.

Dans le même temps, les sociétés de gestion de programmes en ligne ont déjà recruté de nombreux·ses travailleur/euses diplômé·e·s de l’éducation supérieure, souvent titulaires d’un doctorat obtenu depuis peu, cantonné·e·s à des emplois précaires, et chargés de fournir un soutien académique aux étudiant.e.s. Il s’agit de contrats temporaires, sur la base d’une rémunération à la tâche, peu sécurisés et mal payés, comparables à ceux proposés par Deliveroo ou TaskRabbit. Ces employés, qui ne sont pas syndiqués auprès du même syndicat que les autres universitaires, et qui sont souvent des femmes ou des universitaires noirs ou issus de minorités racisées, désavantagés en matière d’embauche et de promotion, seront plus facilement ciblé·e·s par les vagues de licenciement liées au COVID-19.

Cela signifie également qu’ils/elles seront utilisé·e·s – comme l’ont été les universitaires des agences d’intérim par le passé – pour briser les piquets de grève lors de mobilisations à l’université. Ce système se nourrit directement de la polarisation entre universitaires, au bénéfice des enseignant·e·s éligibles aux financements de recherche, qui s’approprient les recherches produites par les chercheur/ses précaires et utilisent le personnel employé sur des contrats uniquement dédiés à l’enseignement [pour fournir les charges d’enseignement de collègues déchargés]. Il s’agit là de pratiques légitimées par le mode de financement de l’UE et des comités nationaux pour la recherche ainsi que par le système de classements et d’audits de la recherche.

Avec le COVID-19, le modèle proposé par les entreprises de gestion de programmes en ligne, fondé sur l’externalisation et la privatisation des activités de base et de la main-d’œuvre de l’université, pourrait gagner encore plus de terrain. Ceci s’inscrit en réalité dans le cadre d’un changement structurel qui présagerait la fin de l’enseignement supérieur public. Le coût énorme du passage en ligne – récemment estimé à 10 millions de livres sterling pour 5-6 cours en ligne par université et 1 milliard de livres sterling pour l’ensemble du secteur – signifie que de nombreuses universités ne pourront pas se permettre d’offrir des enseignements dématérialisés.

De plus, les sociétés de gestion de programmes en ligne ne travaillent pas avec n’importe quelle université : elles préfèrent celles dont l’image institutionnelle est bien établie. Dans cette conjoncture, et compte tenu de la possibilité que de nombreux/ses étudiant.e.s annulent (ou interrompent) leur inscription dans une université du Royaume-Uni par crainte de la pandémie, de nombreuses universités plus petites et moins visibles à l’échelle internationale pourraient perdre un nombre importante d’étudiant.e.s, et le financement qui en découle.

En dépit de tous ces éléments, l’appel à une réglementation et à un plafonnement du nombre d’étudiant.e.s admis par chaque institution, qui permettraient une redistribution sur l’ensemble du secteur et entre les différentes universités, semble tomber dans l’oreille d’un sourd.

Un article sur le blog de Jo Johnson, ancien ministre de l’Éducation et frère du Premier ministre britannique, exprime une vision cynique de l’avenir des universités britanniques. Sa formule est simple : le gouvernement devrait refuser l’appel au soutien des universités moins bien classées, telles que les « instituts polytechniques », anciennement consacrés à la formation professionnelle et transformés en universités en 1992. Souvent davantage orientées vers l’enseignement que vers la recherche, ceux-ci n’ont que rarement des partenariats avec des sociétés de gestion de programmes en ligne ou une offre de cours à distance. Selon Johnson, ces universités sont vouées à mourir de mort naturelle, ou bien à revenir à leur offre précédente de formation professionnelle.

Les universités du Groupe Russell[2], très concentrées sur la recherche, qui proposent déjà des enseignements dématérialisés en partenariat avec des prestataires de gestion des programmes en ligne, pourraient quant à elles se développer davantage, à la faveur de leur image institutionnelle de marque, et concentreraient ainsi tous les étudiant.e.s et les revenus. Ce qu’une telle vision ne précise pas, c’est ce qu’il adviendrait du personnel enseignant. Il est facile d’imaginer que les nouvelles méga-universités seraient encore plus tributaires des services de « soutien aux étudiant.e.s » et d’enseignement dispensés par des universitaires externalisés, recrutés par des sociétés de gestion des programmes en ligne avec des contrats à la demande, hyper-précaires et déprofessionnalisés.

Lieux de lutte et de résistance

Ce scénario appelle à la résistance, mais celle-ci devient de plus en plus difficile. Au cours des six derniers mois, les membres du syndicat « University and College Union » (UCU) ont totalisé 22 jours de grève. L’une des deux revendications portées par cette mobilisation, parmi les plus longues et les plus soutenues dans l’enseignement supérieur britannique, portait sur les retraites.

La seconde combinait quatre revendications : une réduction de la charge de travail, une augmentation des salaires sur l’ensemble du secteur (ils ont diminué de 20% au cours de la dernière décennie), s’opposer à la précarisation, et supprimer les écarts de rémunération entre hommes et femmes (21%) et ceux ciblant les personnes racisées (26%). Les employeurs, représentés par « Universities UK » et l’Association des employeurs « Universities and Colleges », n’ont jusqu’à présent pas fait de concessions significatives face à la grève. La crise du COVID-19 a limité l’option de la grève, alors que l’augmentation de la charge de travail, la réduction des salaires et la précarisation sont désormais présentées comme les seules solutions pour faire face à la pandémie et aux crises économiques.

Dans ce contexte, le passage vers l’enseignement en ligne doit devenir un enjeu central des luttes des syndicats enseignants. Toutefois, la possibilité de mener des recherches sur ce processus – un outil clé pour les syndicats – semble limitée. De nombreux contrats liant les universités et les entreprises de gestion de programme en ligne sont conclus sans consultation du personnel et ne sont pas accessibles au public. En outre, les résultats de ces recherches sont souvent considérés comme nocifs pour l’image des sociétés.

Pourtant, un diagnostic et une réglementation des contrats entre les universités et ces entreprises, ainsi que celle du marché de l’edtech en général, sont plus que jamais nécessaires. En particulier, il est impératif d’en comprendre les effets sur le travail universitaire et de faire la lumière sur l’utilisation qui est faite des données collectées concernant les étudiant.e.s par les sociétés d’edtech. Tout en s’opposant aux licenciements, l’UCU devrait également se mettre à la disposition des universitaires travaillant de manière externalisée, et envisager de s’engager dans la lutte contre la sous-traitance du personnel enseignant.

Bien que tout cela puisse aujourd’hui sembler être un problème propre au Royaume-Uni, la tempête qui y secoue aujourd’hui le secteur de l’enseignement supérieur ne tardera pas à se propager à d’autres contextes nationaux.

Traduit par Céline Cantat.

Cet article a été publié initialement sur le blog du bureau de Bruxelles de la Fondation Rosa Luxemburg et de Trademark Trade-union.
Notes

[1] La réforme de 2010 a entraîné le triplement des droits d’inscriptions, qui sont passés de 3000 à 9000 livres (soit plus de 10 000 euros) par an pour une année en licence pour les étudiant.e.s britanniques et originaires de l’UE (disposition qui prendra fin pour ces dernier.e.s avec la mise en œuvre du Brexit). Le montant de ces droits est libre pour les étudiant.e.s hors-UE, il équivaut en général au moins au double. Il est également bien plus élevé pour les masters.

[2] Fondé en 1994, le Russell Group est un réseau de vingt-quatre universités au Royaume-Uni censé regrouper les pôles d’excellence de la recherche et faire contrepoids à la fameuse Ivy League étatsunienne.

►https://www.contretemps.eu/universite-covid19-technologies-education

#le_monde_d'après #enseignement #technologie #coronavirus #facs #UK #Angleterre #distanciel #enseignement_en_ligne #privatisation #edtech #educational_technology #Mariya_Ivancheva #secteur_privé #enseignement_à_distance #dématérialisation #marchandisation #austérité #précarisation #Brexit #vacation #précaires #vacataires #zero-hour_contract #externalisation #ESR #enseignement_supérieur #partenariats_public-privé #financiarisation #conditions_de_travail #Universities_Superannuation_Scheme (#USS) #fiscalité #résidences_universitaires_privées #immobilier #santé_mentale #frais_universitaires #dette #dette_étudiante #rupture_numérique #technologies_numériques #MOOC #business #Cambridge_Education_Digital (#CED) #ubérisation #Russell_Group

Cast away : the UK’s rushed charter flights to deport Channel crossers

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Warning: this document contains accounts of violence, attempted suicides and self harm.

The British government has vowed to clamp down on migrants crossing the Channel in small boats, responding as ever to a tabloid media panic. One part of its strategy is a new wave of mass deportations: charter flights, specifically targeting channel-crossers, to France, Germany and Spain.

There have been two flights so far, on the 12 and 26 August. The next one is planned for 3 September. The two recent flights stopped in both Germany (Duesseldorf) and France (Toulouse on the 12, Clermont-Ferrand on the 26). Another flight was planned to Spain on 27 August – but this was cancelled after lawyers managed to get everyone off the flight.

Carried out in a rush by a panicked Home Office, these mass deportations have been particularly brutal, and may have involved serious legal irregularities. This report summarises what we know so far after talking to a number of the people deported and from other sources. It covers:

The context: Calais boat crossings and the UK-France deal to stop them.

In the UK: Yarl’s Wood repurposed as Channel-crosser processing centre; Britannia Hotels; Brook House detention centre as brutal as ever.

The flights: detailed timeline of the 26 August charter to Dusseldorf and Clermont-Ferrand.

Who’s on the flight: refugees including underage minors and torture survivors.

Dumped on arrival: people arriving in Germany and France given no opportunity to claim asylum, served with immediate expulsion papers.

The legalities: use of the Dublin III regulation to evade responsibility for refugees.

Is it illegal?: rushed process leads to numerous irregularities.

“that night, eight people cut themselves”

“That night before the flight (25 August), when we were locked in our rooms and I heard that I had lost my appeal, I was desperate. I started to cut myself. I wasn’t the only one. Eight people self-harmed or tried to kill themselves rather than be taken on that plane. One guy threw a kettle of boiling water on himself. One man tried to hang himself with the cable of the TV in his room. Three of us were taken to hospital, but sent back to the detention centre after a few hours. The other five they just took to healthcare [the clinic in Brook House] and bandaged up. About 5 in the morning they came to my room, guards with riot shields. On the way to the van, they led me through a kind of corridor which was full of people – guards, managers, officials from the Home Office. They all watched while a doctor examined me, then the doctor said – ‘yes, he’s fit to fly’. On the plane later I saw one guy hurt really badly, fresh blood on his head and on his clothes. He hadn’t just tried to stop the ticket, he really wanted to kill himself. He was taken to Germany.”

Testimony of a deported person.

The context: boats and deals

Since the 1990s, tens of thousands of people fleeing war, repression and poverty have crossed the “short straits” between Calais and Dover. Until 2018, people without papers attempting to cross the Channel did so mainly by getting into lorries or on trains through the Channel Tunnel. Security systems around the lorry parks, tunnel and highway were escalated massively following the eviction of the big Jungle in 2016. This forced people into seeking other, ever more dangerous, routes – including crossing one of the world’s busiest waterways in small boats. Around 300 people took this route in 2018, a further 2000 in 2019 – and reportedly more than 5,000 people already by August 2020.

These crossings have been seized on by the UK media in their latest fit of xenophobic scaremongering. The pattern is all too familiar since the Sangatte camp of 1999: right-wing media outlets (most infamously the Daily Mail, but also others) push-out stories about dangerous “illegals” swarming across the Channel; the British government responds with clampdown promises.

Further stoked by Brexit, recent measures have included:

Home Secretary Priti Patel announcing a new “Fairer Borders” asylum and immigration law that she promises will “send the left into meltdown”.

A formal request from the Home Office to the Royal Navy to assist in turning back migrants crossing by boat (although this would be illegal).

Negotiations with the French government, leading to the announcement on 13 August of a “joint operational plan” aimed at “completely cutting this route.”

The appointment of a “Clandestine Channel Threat Commander” to oversee operations on both sides of the Channel.

The concrete measures are still emerging, but notable developments so far include:

Further UK payments to France to increase security – reportedly France demanded £30 million.

French warships from the Naval base at Cherbourg patrolling off the coast of Calais and Dunkirk.

UK Border Force Cutters and Coastal Patrol Vessels patrolling the British side, supported by flights from Royal Air Force surveillance planes.

The new charter flight deportation programme — reportedly named “Operation Sillath” by the Home Office.

For the moment, at least, the governments are respecting their minimal legal obligations to protect life at sea. And there has not been evidence of illegal “push backs” or “pull backs”: where the British “push” or the French “pull” boats back across the border line by force. When these boats are intercepted in French waters the travellers are taken back to France. If they make it into UK waters, Border Force pick them up and disembark them at Dover. They are then able to claim asylum in the UK.

There is no legal difference in claiming asylum after arriving by boat, on a plane, or any other way. However, these small boat crossers have been singled out by the government to be processed in a special way seemingly designed to deny them the right to asylum in the UK.

Once people are safely on shore the second part of Priti Patel’s strategy to make this route unviable kicks in: systematically obstruct their asylum claims and, where possible, deport them to France or other European countries. In practice, there is no way the Home Office can deport everyone who makes it across. Rather, as with the vast majority of immigration policy, the aim is to display toughness with a spectacle of enforcement – not only in an attempt to deter other arrivals, but perhaps, above all else, to play to key media audiences.

This is where the new wave of charter flights come in. Deportations require cooperation from the destination country, and the first flight took place on 12 August in the midst of the Franco-British negotiations. Most recently, the flights have fed a new media spectacle in the UK: the Home Office attacking “activist lawyers” for doing their job and challenging major legal flaws in these rushed removals.

The Home Office has tried to present these deportation flights as a strong immediate response to the Channel crossings. The message is: if you make it across, you’ll be back again within days. Again, this is more spectacle than reality. All the people we know of on the flights were in the UK for several months before being deported.

In the UK: Yarl’s Wood repurposed

Once on shore people are taken to one of two places: either the Kent Intake Unit, which is a Home Office holding facility (i.e., a small prefab cell complex) in the Eastern Docks of Dover Port; or the Dover police station. This police stations seems increasingly to be the main location, as the small “intake unit” is often at capacity. There used to be a detention centre in Dover where new arrivals were held, notorious for its run-down state, but this was closed in October 2015.

People are typically held in the police station for no more than a day. The next destination is usually Yarl’s Wood, the Bedfordshire detention centre run by Serco. This was, until recently, a longer term detention centre holding mainly women. However, on 18 August the Home Office announced Yarl’s Wood been repurposed as a “Short Term Holding Facility” (SHTF) specifically to process people who have crossed the Channel. People stay usually just a few days – the legal maximum stay for a “short term” facility is seven days.

Yarl’s Wood has a normal capacity of 410 prisoners. According to sources at Yarl’s Wood:

“last week it was almost full with over 350 people detained. A few days later this number
had fallen to 150, showing how quickly people are moving through the centre. As of Tuesday 25th of August there was no one in the centre at all! It seems likely that numbers will fluctuate in line with Channel crossings.”

The same source adds:

“There is a concern about access to legal aid in Yarl’s Wood. Short Term Holding Facility regulations do not require legal advice to be available on site (in Manchester, for example, there are no duty lawyers). Apparently the rota for duty lawyers is continuing at Yarl’s Wood for the time being. But the speed with which people are being processed now means that it is practically impossible to sign up and get a meeting with the duty solicitor before being moved out.”

The Home Office conducts people’s initial asylum screening interviews whilst they are at Yarl’s Wood. Sometimes these are done in person, or sometimes by phone.

This is a crucial point, as this first interview decides many people’s chance of claiming asylum in the UK. The Home Office uses information from this interview to deport the Channel crossers to France and Germany under the Dublin III regulation. This is EU legislation which allows governments to pass on responsibility for assessing someone’s asylum claim to another state. That is: the UK doesn’t even begin to look at people’s asylum cases.

From what we have seen, many of these Dublin III assessments were made in a rushed and irregular way. They often used only weak circumstantial evidence. Few people had any chance to access legal advice, or even interpreters to explain the process.

We discuss Dublin III and these issues below in the Legal Framework section.
In the UK: Britain’s worst hotels

From Yarl’s Wood, people we spoke to were given immigration bail and sent to asylum accommodation. In the first instance this currently means a cheap hotel. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the Home Office ordered its asylum contractors (Mears, Serco) to shut their usual initial asylum accommodation and move people into hotels. It is not clear why this decision was made, as numerous accounts suggest the hotels are much worse as possible COVID incubators. The results of this policy have already proved fatal – we refer to the death of Adnan Olbeh in a Glasgow hotel in April.

Perhaps the government is trying to prop up chains such as Britannia Hotels, judged for seven years running “Britain’s worst hotel chain” by consumer magazine Which?. Several people on the flights were kept in Britannia hotels. The company’s main owner, multi-millionaire Alex Langsam, was dubbed the “asylum king” by British media after winning previous asylum contracts with his slum housing sideline.

Some of the deportees we spoke to stayed in hotel accommodation for several weeks before being moved into normal “asylum dispersal” accommodation – shared houses in the cheapest parts of cities far from London. Others were picked up for deportation directly from the hotels.

In both cases, the usual procedure is a morning raid: Immigration Enforcement squads grab people from their beds around dawn. As people are in collaborating hotels or assigned houses, they are easy to find and arrest when next on the list for deportation.

After arrest, people were taken to the main detention centres near Heathrow (Colnbrook and Harmondsworth) or Gatwick (particularly Brook House). Some stopped first at a police station or Short Term Holding Facility for some hours or days.

All the people we spoke to eventually ended up in Brook House, one of the two Gatwick centres.
“they came with the shields”

“One night in Brook House, after someone cut himself, they locked everyone in. One man panicked and started shouting asking the guards please open the door. But he didn’t speak much English, he was shouting in Arabic. He said – ‘if you don’t open the door I will boil water in my kettle and throw it on my face.’ But they didn’t understand him, they thought he was threatening them, saying he would throw it at them. So they came with the shields, took him out of his room and put him into a solitary cell. When they put him in there they kicked him and beat him, they said ‘don’t threaten us again’.” Testimony of a deported person.

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Brook House

Brook House remains notorious, after exposure by a whistleblower of routine brutality and humiliation by guards then working for G4S. The contract has since been taken over by Mitie’s prison division – branded as “Care and Custody, a Mitie company”. Presumably, many of the same guards simply transferred over.

In any case, according to what we heard from the deported people, nothing much has changed in Brook House – viciousness and violence from guards remains the norm. The stories included here give just a few examples. See recent detainee testimonies on the Detained Voices blog for much more.
“they only care that you don’t die in front of them”

“I was in my room in Brook House on my own for 12 days, I couldn’t eat or drink, just kept thinking, thinking about my situation. I called for the doctors maybe ten times. They did come a couple of times, they took my blood, but they didn’t do anything else. They don’t care about your health or your mental health. They are just scared you will die there. They don’t care what happens to you just so long as you don’t die in front of their eyes. It doesn’t matter if you die somewhere else.” Testimony of a deported person.
Preparing the flights

The Home Office issues papers called “Removal Directions” (RDs) to those they intend to deport. These specify the destination and day of the flight. People already in detention should be given at least 72 hours notice, including two working days, which allows them to make final appeals.

See the Right to Remain toolkit for detailed information on notice periods and appeal procedures.

All UK deportation flights, both tickets on normal scheduled flights and chartered planes, are booked by a private contractor called Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT). The main airline used by the Home Office for charter flights is a charter company called Titan Airways.

See this 2018 Corporate Watch report for detailed information on charter flight procedures and the companies involved. And this 2020 update on deportations overall.

On the 12 August flight, legal challenges managed to get 19 people with Removal Directions off the plane. However, the Home Office then substituted 14 different people who were on a “reserve list”. Lawyers suspect that these 14 people did not have sufficient access to legal representation before their flight which is why they were able to be removed.

Of the 19 people whose lawyers successfully challenged their attempted deportation, 12 would be deported on the next charter flight on 26 August. 6 were flown to Dusseldorf in Germany, and 6 to Clermont-Ferrand in France.

Another flight was scheduled for the 27 August to Spain. However, lawyers managed to get everyone taken off, and the Home Office cancelled the flight. A Whitehall source was quoted as saying “there was 100% legal attrition rate on the flight due to unprecedented and organised casework barriers sprung on the government by three law firms.” It is suspected that the Home Office will continue their efforts to deport these people on future charter flights.

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Who was deported?

All the people on the flights were refugees who had claimed asylum in the UK immediately on arrival at Dover. While the tabloids paint deportation flights as carrying “dangerous criminals”, none of these people had any criminal charges.

They come from countries including Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan and Kuwait. (Ten further Yemenis were due to be on the failed flight to Spain. In June, the UK government said it will resume arms sales to Saudi Arabia to use in the bombardment of the country that has cost tens of thousands of lives).

All have well-founded fears of persecution in their countries of origin, where there have been extensive and well-documented human rights abuses. At least some of the deportees are survivors of torture – and have been documented as such in the Home Office’s own assessments.

One was a minor under 18 who was age assessed by the Home Office as 25 – despite them being in possession of his passport proving his real age. Unaccompanied minors should not legally be processed under the Dublin III regulation, let alone held in detention and deported.

Many, if not all, have friends and families in the UK.

No one had their asylum case assessed – all were removed under the Dublin III procedure (see Legal Framework section below).

Timeline of the flight on 26 August

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Night of 25 August: Eight people due to be on the flight self-harm or attempt suicide. Others have been on hunger strike for more than a week already. Three are taken to hospital where they are hastily treated before being discharged so they can still be placed on the flight. Another five are simply bandaged up in Brook House’s healthcare facility. (See testimony above.)

26 August, 4am onwards: Guards come to take deportees from their rooms in Brook House. There are numerous testimonies of violence: three or four guards enter rooms with shields, helmets, and riot gear and beat up prisoners if they show any resistance.

4am onwards: The injured prisoners are taken by guards to be inspected by a doctor, in a corridor in front of officials, and are certified as “fit to fly”.

5am onwards: Prisoners are taken one by one to waiting vans. Each is placed in a separate van with four guards. Vans are labelled with the Mitie “Care and Custody” logo. Prisoners are then kept sitting in the vans until everyone is loaded, which takes one to two hours.

6am onwards: Vans drive from Brook House (near Gatwick Airport) to Stansted Airport. They enter straight into the airport charter flight area. Deportees are taken one by one from the vans and onto Titan’s waiting plane. It is an anonymous looking white Airbus A321-211 without the company’s livery, with the registration G-POWU. They are escorted up the steps with a guard on each side.

On the plane there are four guards to each person: one seated on each side, one in the seat in front and one behind. Deportees are secured with restraint belts around their waists, so that their arms are handcuffed to the belts on each side. Besides the 12 deportees and 48 guards there are Home Office officials, Mitie managers, and two paramedics on the plane.

7.48AM (BST): The Titan Airways plane (using flight number ZT311) departs Stansted airport.

9.44AM (CEST): The flight lands in Dusseldorf. Six people are taken off the plane and are handed over to the German authorities.

10.46AM (CEST): Titan’s Airbus takes off from Dusseldorf bound for Clermont-Ferrand, France with the remaining deportees.

11.59AM (CEST): The Titan Airways plane (now with flight number ZT312) touches down at Clermont-Ferrand Auvergne airport and the remaining six deportees are disembarked from the plane and taken into the custody of the Police Aux Frontières (PAF, French border police).

12:46PM (CEST): The plane leaves Clermont-Ferrand to return to the UK. It first lands in Gatwick, probably so the escorts and other officials get off, before continuing on to Stansted where the pilots finish their day.

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Dumped on arrival: Germany

What happened to most of the deportees in Germany is not known, although it appears there was no comprehensive intake procedure by the German police. One deportee told us German police on arrival in Dusseldorf gave him a train ticket and told him to go to the asylum office in Berlin. When he arrived there, he was told to go back to his country. He told them he could not and that he had no money to stay in Berlin or travel to another country. The asylum office told him he could sleep on the streets of Berlin.

Only one man appears to have been arrested on arrival. This was the person who had attempted suicide the night before, cutting his head and neck with razors, and had been bleeding throughout the flight.
Dumped on arrival: France

The deportees were taken to Clermont-Ferrand, a city in the middle of France, hundreds of kilometres away from metropolitan centres. Upon arrival they were subjected to a COVID nose swab test and then held by the PAF while French authorities decided their fate.

Two were released around an hour and a half later with appointments to claim asylum in around one week’s time – in regional Prefectures far from Clermont-Ferrand. They were not offered any accommodation, further legal information, or means to travel to their appointments.

The next person was released about another hour and a half after them. He was not given an appointment to claim asylum, but just provided with a hotel room for four nights.

Throughout the rest of the day the three other detainees were taken from the airport to the police station to be fingerprinted. Beginning at 6PM these three began to be freed. The last one was released seven hours after the deportation flight landed. The police had been waiting for the Prefecture to decide whether or not to transfer them to the detention centre (Centre de Rétention Administrative – CRA). We don’t know if a factor in this was that the nearest detention centre, at Lyon, was full up.

However, these people were not simply set free. They were given expulsion papers ordering them to leave France (OQTF: Obligation de quitter le territoire français), and banning them from returning (IRTF: Interdiction de retour sur le territoire français). These papers allowed them only 48 hours to appeal. The British government has said that people deported on flights to France have the opportunity to claim asylum in France. This is clearly not true.

In a further bureaucratic contradiction, alongside expulsion papers people were also given orders that they must report to the Clermont-Ferrand police station every day at 10:00AM for the next 45 days (potentially to be arrested and detained at any point). They were told that if they failed to report, the police would consider them on the run.

The Prefecture also reserved a place in a hotel many kilometres away from the airport for them for four nights, but not any further information or ways to receive food. They were also not provided any way to get to this hotel, and the police would not help them – stating that their duty finished once they gave the deportees their papers.

“After giving me the expulsion papers the French policeman said ‘Now you can go to England.’” (Testimony of deported person)

The PAF showed a general disregard for the health and well-being of the deportees who were in the custody throughout the day. One of the deportees had been in a wheel-chair throughout the day and was unable to walk due to the deep lacerations on his feet from self-harming. He was never taken to the hospital, despite the doctor’s recommendation, neither during the custody period nor after his release. In fact, the only reason for the doctor’s visit in the first place was to assess whether he was fit to be detained should the Prefecture decide that. The police kept him in his bloody clothes all day, and when they released him he did not have shoes and could barely walk. No crutches were given, nor did the police offer to help him get to the hotel. He was put out on the street having to carry all of his possessions in a Home Office issue plastic bag.
“the hardest night of my life”

“It was the hardest night of my life. My heart break was so great that I seriously thought of suicide. I put the razor in my mouth to swallow it; I saw my whole life pass quickly until the first hours of dawn. The treatment in detention was very bad, humiliating and degrading. I despised myself and felt that my life was destroyed, but it was too precious to lose it easily. I took the razor out from my mouth before I was taken out of the room, where four large-bodied people, wearing armour similar to riot police and carrying protective shields, violently took me to the large hall at the ground floor of the detention centre. I was exhausted, as I had been on hunger strike for several days. In a room next to me, one of the deportees tried to resist and was beaten so severely that blood dripping from his nose. In the big hall, they searched me carefully and took me to a car like a dangerous criminal, two people on my right and left, they drove for about two hours to the airport, there was a big passenger plane on the runway. […] That moment, I saw my dreams, my hopes, shattered in front of me when I entered the plane.”

Testimony of deported person (from Detained Voices: ▻https://detainedvoices.com/2020/08/27/brook-house-protestor-on-his-deportation-it-was-the-hardest-night-of).

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The Legal Framework: Dublin III

These deportations are taking place under the Dublin III regulation. This is EU law that determines which European country is responsible for assessing a refugee’s asylum claim. The decision involves a number of criteria, the primary ones being ‘family unity’ and the best interests of children. Another criterion, in the case of people crossing borders without papers, is which country they first entered ‘irregularly’. In the law, this is supposed to be less important than family ties – but it is the most commonly used ground by governments seeking to pass on asylum applicants to other states. All the people we know of on these flights were “Dublined” because the UK claimed they had previously been in France, Germany or Spain.

(See: House of Commons intro briefing; Right to Remain toolkit section:
▻https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/what-is-the-dublin-iii-regulation-will-it-be-affected-by-b
▻https://righttoremain.org.uk/toolkit/dublin)

By invoking the Dublin regulation, the UK evades actually assessing people’s asylum cases. These people were not deported because their asylum claims failed – their cases were simply never considered. The decision to apply Dublin III is made after the initial screening interview (now taking place in Yarl’s Wood). As we saw above, very few people are able to access any legal advice before these interviews are conducted and sometimes they are carried out by telephone or without adequate translation.

Under Dublin III the UK must make a formal request to the other government it believes is responsible for considering the asylum claim to take the person back, and present evidence as to why that government should accept responsibility. Typically, the evidence provided is the record of the person’s fingerprints registered by another country on the Europe-wide EURODAC database.

However, in the recent deportation cases the Home Office has not always provided fingerprints but instead relied on weak circumstantial evidence. Some countries have refused this evidence, but others have accepted – notably France.

There seems to be a pattern in the cases so far where France is accepting Dublin III returns even when other countries have refused. The suspicion is that the French government may have been incentivised to accept ‘take-back’ requests based on very flimsy evidence as part of the recent Franco-British Channel crossing negotiations (France reportedly requested £30m to help Britain make the route ‘unviable’).

In theory, accepting a Dublin III request means that France (or another country) has taken responsibility to process someone’s asylum claim. In practice, most of the people who arrived at Clermont-Ferrand on 26 August were not given any opportunity to claim asylum – instead they were issued with expulsion papers ordering them to leave France and Europe. They were also only given 48 hours to appeal these expulsions orders without any further legal information; a near impossibility for someone who has just endured a forceful expulsion and may require urgent medical treatment.

Due to Brexit, the United Kingdom will no longer participate in Dublin III from 31 December 2020. While there are non-EU signatories to the agreement like Switzerland and Norway, it is unclear what arrangements the UK will have after that (as with basically everything else about Brexit). If there is no overall deal, the UK will have to negotiate numerous bilateral agreements with European countries. This pattern of expedited expulsion without a proper screening process established with France could be a taste of things to come.

Conclusion: rushed – and illegal?

Charter flight deportations are one of the most obviously brutal tools used by the UK Border Regime. They involve the use of soul-crushing violence by the Home Office and its contractors (Mitie, Titan Airways, Britannia Hotels, and all) against people who have already lived through histories of trauma.

For these recent deportations of Channel crossers the process seems particularly rushed. People who have risked their lives in the Channel are scooped into a machine designed to deny their asylum rights and expel them ASAP – for the sake of a quick reaction to the latest media panic. New procedures appear to have been introduced off the cuff by Home Office officials and in under-the-table deals with French counterparts.

As a result of this rush-job, there seem to be numerous irregularities in the process. Some have been already flagged up in the successful legal challenges to the Spanish flight on 27 August. The detention and deportation of boat-crossers may well be largely illegal, and is open to being challenged further on both sides of the Channel.

Here we recap a few particular issues:

The highly politicised nature of the expulsion process for small boat crossers means they are being denied access to a fair asylum procedure by the Home Office.

The deportees include people who are victims of torture and of trafficking, as well as under-aged minors.

People are being detained, rushed through screening interviews, and “Dublined” without access to legal advice and necessary information.

In order to avoid considering asylum requests, Britain is applying Dublin III often just using flimsy circumstantial evidence – and France is accepting these requests, perhaps as a result of recent negotiations and financial arrangements.

Many deportees have family ties in the UK – but the primary Dublin III criterion of ‘family unity’ is ignored.

In accepting Dublin III requests France is taking legal responsibility for people’s asylum claims. But in fact it has denied people the chance to claim asylum, instead immediately issuing expulsion papers.

These expulsion papers (‘Order to quit France’ and ‘Ban from returning to France’ or ‘OQTF’ and ‘IRTF’) are issued with only 48 hour appeal windows. This is completely inadequate to ensure a fair procedure – even more so for traumatised people who have just endured detention and deportation, then been dumped in the middle of nowhere in a country where they have no contacts and do not speak the language.

This completely invalidates the Home Office’s argument that the people it deports will be able to access a fair asylum procedure in France.

▻https://corporatewatch.org/cast-away-the-uks-rushed-charter-flights-to-deport-channel-crossers

#asile #migrations #réfugiés #UK #Angleterre #Dublin #expulsions #renvois #Royaume_Uni #vols #charter #France #Allemagne #Espagne #Home_Office #accord #témoignage #violence #Brexit #Priti_Patel #Royal_Navy #plan_opérationnel_conjoint #Manche #Commandant_de_la_menace_clandestine_dans_la_Manche #Cherbourg #militarisation_des_frontières #frontières #Calais #Dunkerque #navires #Border_Force_Cutters #avions_de_surveillance #Royal_Air_Force #Opération_Sillath #refoulements #push-backs #Douvres #Kent_Intake_Unit #Yarl’s_Wood #Bedfordshire #Serco #Short_Term_Holding_Facility (#SHTF) #hôtel #Mears #hôtels_Britannia #Alex_Langsam #Immigration_Enforcement_squads #Heathrow #Colnbrook #Harmondsworth #Gatwick #aéroport #Brook_Hous #G4S #Removal_Directions #Carlson_Wagonlit_Travel (#CWT) #privatisation #compagnies_aériennes #Titan_Airways #Clermont-Ferrand #Düsseldorf

@karine4 —> il y a une section dédiée à l’arrivée des vols charter en France (à Clermont-Ferrand plus précisément) :
Larguées à destination : la France

ping @isskein

100 panneaux publicitaires contre l’automobile
▻http://carfree.fr/index.php/2020/09/14/100-panneaux-publicitaires-contre-lautomobile

Début septembre, une vague de #publicités parodiques pour les voitures est apparue sur les panneaux d’affichage et aux arrêts de bus au #royaume-uni, à Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter, Leeds et Lire la suite...

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’We don’t know what to do’: asylum seekers flown to Spain by Home Office

The 11 Syrians said they were sitting outside #Madrid airport with no food, water or support

Eleven Syrian asylum seekers have been abandoned outside the airport in Madrid where a Home Office charter flight deposited them, the Guardian has learned.

The men, ranging in age from 18-45, said they had been sitting in temperatures of 32 degrees since their flight landed in the Spanish capital at around 10am on Thursday morning.

The asylum seekers said many of them were removed from the UK without their identity documents.

One man told the Guardian he has three brothers in the UK, while another said he had two. Family ties in the UK are part of the claim to remain that the Home Office considers under rules known as the Dublin regulation, whereby one European country can return asylum seekers to the first European country they are known to have passed through.

The men said they had used the same solicitor to try to halt their removal from the UK to Spain, and had paid him thousands of pounds between them, but their enforced removal was not halted.

They said they all came from the same area in the south of Syria.

One man said he had worked as a farmer before the conflict in Syria began, and that he had left his wife and four children, hoping to bring them to join him if he was granted refugee status in a safe country.

Syrian refugee claims are generally accepted in many European countries but the Home Office sent the 11 men back to Spain because all had been fingerprinted by the police there.

“I spent two years after fleeing Syria trying to reach safety,” said one 45-year-old. “I spent about four months in Calais trying to cross by small boat and finally succeeded in April.”

He said he had taught himself to speak English on YouTube.

“I was so happy when I reached the UK but the way I have been treated by the UK has destroyed me. I was held in an underground jail for a year and a half in Syria and when the Home Office arrested me and put me in Brook House detention centre near Gatwick airport it brought back all the memories of that time.”

He said everyone was told to go quietly to the plane and that if they did not behave, the escorts would use force against them. “Many of the men were crying on the plane,” he said.

None of them know what they can do now.

“We don’t know what to do. We are sitting a few hundred yards away from the airport. We have no food, no water, we don’t know where we can go. We are homeless and hopeless,” he said.

Three brothers from Yemen who were due to be put on Thursday’s flight were granted a last-minute reprieve. A Guardian reader who read about their case and who lives in Spain offered to help them. She is now trying to identify support for the 11 asylum seekers left outside the airport.

A spokesperson for the Spanish ministry of the interior said they were aware of the case, and that anyone could request international protection in Spain at any time.

But the Syrian asylum seekers said there were no English or Arabic interpreters at the airport and that they had to leave the building.

Home Office sources said that the UK is under no obligation to monitor the treatment of asylum seekers who have returned to the EU member state responsible for their claim.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “Under the Dublin III process, the time and place of the arrival of today’s flight had been carefully worked through between the UK and Spain by mutual agreement – formal requests were made of Spain in advance and they accepted responsibility for the claimants in accordance with the Regulations. Any suggestion that the Home Office has not complied with our obligations is incorrect.

“A travel or identity document is not required for that country to process an individual as the details of those being returned are shared and agreed in advance.”

▻https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/sep/03/we-dont-know-what-to-do-asylum-seekers-flown-to-spain-by-home-office

#asile #migrations #réfugiés #UK #Angleterre #Dublin #renvois_Dublin #Espagne #réfugiés_syriens #aéroport #migrerrance #SDF #sans-abris

ping @isskein @karine4

How the UK turned away from immigration detention

The summer of 2013 was a very different world. President Obama was on course to sweep to a second term. ‘Brexit’ was a neologism likely to be forgotten. Mayor of London Boris Johnson was directing his attention to bendy buses and the garden bridge. The Mediterranean was a summer holiday destination, rather than a mass grave for migrants, and pandemics were just one more distant anxiety.

It was also the time that the UK’s use of immigration detention peaked, with over 4,000 migrants bedding down every night in the 12 detention centres, and countless prisons, around the country. The Home Office had opened five new detention centres since 2001, and was developing further plans to expand to 5,000 detention places.

The last seven years have been a time of catastrophic setbacks for progressive politics and human rights. Yet in the same period, under a series of Conservative governments consumed by reducing migration and propagating anti-migrant rhetoric, the UK has turned decisively away from its obsession with immigration detention.

A political problem

Even before the pandemic, the numbers of people in detention had dropped by around 60%, to 1,637 at the end of December 2019. Asylum-seekers are no longer routinely detained throughout the process on the notorious Detained Fast Track, suspended since June 2015 and dead in the water. While the UK has not followed Spain in emptying its detention centres during the pandemic, numbers have dropped further, to 313 in May 2020. The Government has announced that Morton Hall detention centre in Lincolnshire will cease operating next year and return to being a prison, the fifth detention centre to close since 2015. Since August 2020, the notorious Yarl’s Wood is no longer used as a detention centre; given its low rate of occupancy over the last two years, it is doubtful whether it will return to its former use.

Detention is now generally seen as a political problem. Ministers have stressed that the reduction in detention places ‘is a key aspect of the series of reforms the government is making across the detention system’, and emphasised that the Government is ‘committed to going further and faster in reforming immigration detention’. Instead of boasting of toughness in locking up ‘foreign criminals’, Ministers speak of piloting community-based alternatives to detention with civil society. Senior Conservative backbenchers, including Andrew Mitchell and David Davis, are leading calls for a 28-day time limit.

The battle is not won. 300 is still far too many people for the Home Office to seek to detain throughout the pandemic, while returns to most countries of origin are impossible. The Home Affairs Committee in July 2020 found it ‘troubling’ that 40% of people still in detention had indicators of significant vulnerability and risk from Covid-19. Despite sustained cross-party political pressure, the Government still refuses to introduce a time limit: the UK remains isolated in Europe in practising indefinite detention.

Nevertheless, a major reversal has taken place in the direction of travel of UK detention policy, which is antithetical both to regional trends in the EU, and to the Home Office’s overall approach to migration. It is important to understand how the tide of expanding detention was reversed, particularly at a time when the pandemic is posing unprecedented opportunities for a radically reduced detention system.

Civil society mobilisation

It is no coincidence that the period of this shift coincided with sustained civil society mobilisation and collaboration to delegitimise the use of detention. My analysis of the detention reform movement over last ten years, based on interviews with key stakeholders and published here, finds reason to believe that the collapse in government confidence in detention is to a large extent the result of civil society campaigners, including migrants themselves, simply winning the argument.

External factors helped this change, but are not enough to explain it. Home Office budget cuts were certainly a factor – detention is hugely expensive. But governments can always find money for political priorities, as the Covid-19 response is again demonstrating. The Panorama revelations of abuse by detention centre guards, along with the shock of the Windrush scandal, had a toxic effect on the legitimacy of detention – but only because that legitimacy was already under intense scrutiny. Previous scandals in the noughties had had little political impact.

What changed was sustained and effective pressure from civil society. Campaigners, charities, faith groups, lawyers, individuals, institutions and (crucially) migrants with experience of detention collaborated strategically over many years to transform the political debate. They succeeded in both making detention a political problem, and in setting the narrative for other actors to follow.

Effective tactics

Campaigners told a consistent and compelling story about the injustice of indefinite detention and the need for a time limit. It was a story that could reach new and influential audiences beyond the migrants’ rights movement, without alienating core supporters by watering down messaging in pursuit of the political middle ground. The story was told in different ways by migrants protesting in Yarl’s Wood, by faith leaders making public statements, and by HM Inspectorate of Prisons in their monitoring of detention centres, but the central narrative and demands were the same. This narrative of individual liberty from arbitrary state power has traction across the political spectrum, even where there is hostility to migration and human rights. Yet it could still mobilise the passionate supporters of migrants’ rights, including migrants themselves, without whom the issue would have remained marginal.

At the core of this process was the Detention Forum, a diverse network set up in 2009 to challenge the legitimacy of detention. The Forum was by no means responsible for all the crucial interventions, and tactfully never sought to be a high-profile public actor in its own right. But its wide membership across the country to a large extent came to base their tactics on the shared strategy and theory of change of the Forum, and doubtless few actors working on detention reform were not in close contact with at least one Forum member.

There was no single campaign for detention reform, and no-one owned indefinite detention as an issue. NGOs ran different campaigns around particular groups in detention; protests highlighted particular issues; messaging was not centrally policed, and varied considerably. But hashtags were shared, open source materials developed, and many Forum members spent considerable time on the telephone or on trains to engage and support groups around the country to get involved. New groups were free to pick up the issue and campaign in their own way; some joined the Forum, others didn’t. In practice, most people most of the time were telling versions of the same, compelling, story.

All this was, to an extent, foreseen by the Forum. A protracted, painful and distinctly sobering strategy exercisethroughout 2012 identified that Forum members had none of the necessary contacts to convince Ministers or the Home Office to change. Detention NGOs and campaigners emphatically did not have the ear of government, and neither did their friends. So a strategy was developed to build a broad civil society coalition, involving allies with more authority – politicians, faith leaders, institutions.

Having a wide range of allies meant that a wide range of tactics could be used in different spaces and times. The Detained Fast Track was resistant to both campaigning and government advocacy (it was seen to ‘work’ in getting asylum-seekers removed, so there was no interest in finding out whether it was doing so fairly), but it proved vulnerable to a wide-ranging legal challenge by Detention Action. City of Sanctuary could bring to the issue communities around the country who cared about asylum, while These Walls Must Fall mobilised grassroots groups for radical activism at the local level. Visitors groups and legal and medical organisations gathered and analysed the evidence of the harm of the detention that was the basis of everything else.

Crucially, the movement was initiated and increasingly led by people with experience of detention. Indefinite detention had become normalised because it was applied to non-people: the ‘foreign criminal’, the ‘bogus asylum-seeker’. It became problematic because people stepped out from behind these dehumanising tags and told their stories, not as victims but as experts-by-experience able to offer policy solutions. The initial push for a campaign against indefinite detention came from migrants in detention. Early reports and campaigning foregrounded their powerful testimony about their experiences. By the time of the parliamentary inquiry in 2015, which brought unprecedented cross-party political pressure and media interest to the issue, experts-by-experience were the dominant voices, both at the evidence sessions of the inquiry and in the subsequent media coverage.

As pressure grew for change, it became possible to talk constructively to the Home Office about how they could move away from over-reliance on detention. The organisation I was leading at the time, Detention Action, was piloting a community-based alternative to detention for young men with previous convictions, demonstrating that they could be effectively supported in the community. UNHCR facilitated high-level conversations with the Swedish and Canadian governments about their own community-based approaches. The Home Office began to informally collaborate with our pilot, and gradually moved towards committing to develop alternatives.

As political pressure over indefinite detention grew, the Home Office repeatedly refused to introduce a time limit, or even to acknowledge that it practiced indefinite detention. But in 2015 it began closing detention centres, and it has continued closing them. In 2018, the Home Secretary promised in Parliament to work with civil society to develop alternatives, the beginning of a small but growing programme of pilots.

Long-term transformation

This points to the key challenge facing detention reform. Progress so far has been based on winning the argument on detention as a relatively niche sub-issue, while the toxic politics of xenophobic migration control continued elsewhere. But a sustainable long-term shift away from detention needs to be part of a wider shift in migration governance away from enforcement, towards engagement with migrants and communities. If detention is simply replaced by a hostile environment that excludes and abuses migrants in the community, it will be a pyrrhic victory.

However, the hostile environment has not been a success, from the Home Office’s own point of view: numbers of returns, including voluntary returns, have been dropping for several years. Alternatives to detention point the way to a potential long-term transformation of migration governance, towards a system based on the consent of communities and treating migrants with fairness and dignity. Such a system would have to look very different from the current one. The Government will not sign up to such a shift immediately. But the pandemic has made clear that society is as vulnerable as its most excluded members. Civil society will need to lead if we are to build back better; the detention reform movement provides some clues as to how.

▻http://detentionforum.org.uk/2020/09/02/how-the-uk-turned-away-from-immigration-detention
#détention_administrative #rétention #asile #migrations #réfugiés #UK #Angleterre #réforme #changement
ping @karine4 @isskein

Yemeni asylum seeker found dead in #Manchester hotel room

#Abdullah_Ahmed_Abdullah_Alhabib arrived in UK in June after crossing Channel in boat.

https://i.imgur.com/dWSFtEM.png

A man who fled war-torn Yemen, made a difficult journey to Europe and two months ago survived a Channel crossing in a flimsy boat has been found dead in a Manchester hotel room.

Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah Alhabib 41, was found dead on 6 August in a room where he had been placed by the Home Office after arriving in Dover on 11 June seeking asylum.

The cause of his death has not yet been confirmed and is under investigation.

Alhabib travelled on the small boat with 15 other people from Yemen, Syria and Iran. After they were picked up by the Border Force, Home Office officials detained a group of them at Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre in Bedfordshire for three days before moving them to the hotel in Manchester.

One of the asylum seekers from Yemen who was in the boat with Alhabib and was then placed in a neighbouring hotel room told the Guardian: “I did not know Abdullah before we found ourselves in the dinghy together. We did not recognise the language of the smugglers. They charged us €2,000 or €3,000. The journey was terrifying. Every minute of it we felt we were hovering between life and death and could drown at any time.

“All of us on these journeys, we have lost our country, lost our family, lost our future. When we got into the boat in Calais we felt the sea was the only place left for us to go.”

While the group in the boat were relieved to have survived the journey, one of them said it was very difficult for them to be locked up in “prison-like” conditions in Yarl’s Wood because of the trauma they had experienced previously.

One said that although the hotel in Manchester was good, all of them were frightened of being sent back to Yemen via European countries they had passed through.

The Home Office has chartered two flights next week for asylum seekers who passed through other European countries before reaching the UK.

“Abdullah was frightened all the time about this,” one of the asylum seekers said. “His wife and four young daughters, the oldest who is just 10, are still in Yemen. His dream was to bring them out of Yemen to safety. Now that will not be possible.

“Abdullah was so anxious and stressed all the time, waiting for a knock on the door to arrest him and send him back to his country. We did not know of any physical illness he had. He took exercise and ate healthily. He was a very gentle man. When we went out from the hotel, if he saw rubbish in the street he always picked it up and put it in the bin.”

Another asylum seeker said hotel staff raised the alarm when Alhabib was found unresponsive in his room.

“Now that Abdullah is dead, we are worried that the same thing will happen to us,” he said. “We all asked the doctor to check our hearts and our blood pressure. The Home Office has already taken six Yemeni asylum seekers from this hotel and put them in detention in Brook House immigration removal centre near Gatwick ahead of the charter flight next week. We cannot sleep. We are waiting for a knock on the door and for the Home Office to come and take the rest of us. We feel we are on death row.”

A spokesperson for Greater Manchester police said: “At around 11.10am on Thursday 6 August, police were called to a report of concern for the welfare of a man in a property on Palatine Road, Manchester. Emergency services attended and a man in his 40s was sadly pronounced dead at the scene.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “An individual tragically died in the … hotel earlier this month and all our thoughts are with their loved ones at this time.”

▻https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/23/yemeni-asylum-seeker-found-dead-in-manchester-hotel-room

#asile #migrations #réfugiés #hôtel #décès #mort #mourir_dans_un_hôtel #Angleterre #UK #peur

–---

Rappel, en mai 2020, un réfugié syrien est décédé dans un hôtel en Ecosse :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/852434

Asylum for Sale: Profit and Protest in the Migration Industry

https://www.pmpress.org/images/products/large_1097_Asylum_for_sale.jpg

This explosive new volume brings together a lively cast of academics, activists, journalists, artists, and people directly impacted by asylum regimes to explain how current practices of asylum align with the neoliberal moment and to present their transformative visions for alternative systems and processes.

Through essays, artworks, photographs, infographics, and illustrations, Asylum for Sale: Profit and Protest in the Migration Industry regards the global asylum regime as an industry characterized by profit-making activity: brokers who demand extortionate fees to facilitate border crossings; contractors and firms that erect walls, fences, and watchtowers while lobbying governments for bigger “security” budgets; corporations running private detention centers and “managing” deportations; private lawyers charging exorbitant fees; “expert” witnesses building their reputations in courthouses; and NGO staff establishing careers while placing asylum seekers into new regimes of monitored vulnerability.

Asylum for Sale challenges readers to move beyond questions of legal, moral, and humanitarian obligations that dominate popular debates regarding asylum seekers. Digging deeper, the authors focus on processes and actors often overlooked in mainstream analyses and on the trends increasingly rendering asylum available only to people with financial and cultural capital. Probing every aspect of the asylum process from crossings to aftermaths, the book provides an in-depth exploration of complex, international networks, policies, and norms that impact people seeking asylum around the world. In highlighting protest as well as profit, Asylum for Sale presents both critical analyses and proposed solutions for resisting and reshaping current and emerging immigration norms.

▻https://www.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1097

#livre #migrations #profit #business #migrations #asile #réfugiés #frontières #complexe_militaro-industriel #Australie #détention_administrative #rétention #Nauru #UK #Angleterre #Irlande #humanitarisme #militarisation_des_frontières #Canada #autonomie #esclavage_moderne

ping @rhoumour @isskein @reka @karine4

#Priti_Patel derided over #Royal_Navy threat towards France as Home Office’s approach to migrants is questioned

Priti Patel’s threat to send the Royal Navy into the English Channel has been derided and her department’s border policy questioned on Twitter.

The home secretary’s threats come after suggestions a record number of migrants crossed the Channel on Thursday.

The BBC reports up to 235 migrants made the perilous journey across Britain’s maritime border with France, bringing the total of arrivals since January at nearly 3,900 people.

▻https://twitter.com/Otto_English/status/1291633665475334145?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E12

According to a Home Office source in the Daily Mail, Patel has accused France’s border force of deliberately allowing migrants to make the crossing and has now threatened to deploy the Royal Navy to tow any new arrivals back to France.

The move could be illegal under international maritime law and risks alienating the French government, who has partnered with the Home Office to stem the flow of crossings.

Patel has said the Navy may be used to deploy floating “booms” to block the way for migrant dinghies or stop boats by clogging their propellers with nets.

A government source acknowledged these were “all [the] options that are being considered”. The source added: “She [Patel] has instructed her officials to speak to the Ministry of Defence about how we can proceed. She has also requested a discussion with the French interior minister, Gerald Darmanin.”

People vented their frustration with the approach on Twitter, while others questioned the effectiveness.

Otto English wrote: “When Priti Patel says she ‘wants to send in the Navy’ to stop Channel migrant crossings - what’s her intention? Are warships going to fire shells at kids in rubber dinghies? Is a destroyer going to run them over? What are they going to do that the Border Force isn’t?”

Rae Richardson called it a load of “meaningless posturing”. “It’s just a load of meaningless posturing to make the government seem effective. (Good luck with that!),” he wrote.

“The Royal Navy have no authority in French waters so they can’t escort any boats out of UK waters, i.e. they can only do what Border Force are already doing.”

Michael Moran said: “Sending a gunboat is a tried and trusted method of making things worse.”

In October, Patel made a pledge to eliminate crossings by spring and negotiated a deal with French authorities.

The news comes as footage of migrants arriving on the Kent coastline on Thursday surfaced on social media.

The boat carrying the asylum seekers had ten young children and a heavily pregnant woman, among others, on board.

In the footage, the woman is seen holding her head in her hands and appears weary while one of the children lays exhausted on the pebbled beach with his arms spread out.

The Daily Mail suggested the total number of asylum seekers reaching Britain this year is double that from 2019. It failed to provide an explanation for the spike.

▻https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/priti-patel-mocked-on-twitter-over-daily-mail-royal-navy-threat-1-

#UK #Angleterre #France #frontières #Manche #asile #migrations #réfugiés #militarisation_des_frontières #Calais #armée
ping @isskein

*La Marine teste l’utilisation de NETS pour piéger les migrants dans la Manche alors que des nombres record traversent illégalement*

https://i0.wp.com/www.fr24news.com/fr/a1/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/30815816-8527973-image-a-124_1594854788595.jpg?w=634&ssl=1#.jpg

- Des navires militaires ont travaillé avec la UK Border Force pour essayer des tactiques en mai et juin
- Priti Patel a révélé le stratagème en accusant Paris de la crise actuelle
– Plus de 2 750 personnes auraient atteint le Royaume-Uni outre-Manche cette année

La #Royal_Navy a testé l’utilisation de filets pour arrêter les migrants dans la Manche, a révélé hier #Priti_Patel.

Des navires militaires ont travaillé avec la #UK_Border_Force en mai et juin, essayant des #tactiques pour se déployer contre de petits bateaux traversant la France.

La ministre de l’Intérieur a fait la divulgation alors qu’elle reprochait à Paris de ne pas avoir maîtrisé la crise des migrants.

Plus de 2 750 clandestins auraient atteint le Royaume-Uni de l’autre côté de la Manche cette année, dont 90 non encore confirmés qui ont atterri à Douvres hier.

Ce chiffre se compare à seulement 1 850 au cours de l’année dernière. Dimanche, il y a eu un record de 180, entassés à bord de 15 dériveurs.

Plus de 2 750 clandestins auraient atteint le Royaume-Uni de l’autre côté de la Manche cette année, dont 90 non encore confirmés qui ont atterri à #Douvres hier

Les #chiffres montent en flèche malgré la promesse de Miss Patel, faite en octobre, qu’elle aurait pratiquement éliminé les passages de la Manche maintenant.

Hier, elle a déclaré qu’elle s’efforçait de persuader les Français de « montrer leur volonté » et de permettre le retour des arrivées.

Mlle Patel a affirmé que les #lois_maritimes_internationales autorisaient le Royaume-Uni à empêcher les bateaux de migrants d’atteindre le sol britannique, mais que Paris interprétait les règles différemment.

« Je pense qu’il pourrait y avoir des mesures d’application plus strictes du côté français », a déclaré hier Mme Patel aux députés.

« Je cherche à apporter des changements. Nous avons un problème majeur, majeur avec ces petits bateaux. Nous cherchons fondamentalement à changer les modes de travail en France.

« J’ai eu des discussions très, très – je pense qu’il est juste de dire – difficiles avec mon homologue français, même en ce qui concerne les #interceptions en mer, car actuellement les autorités françaises n’interceptent pas les bateaux.

« Et j’entends par là même des bateaux qui ne sont qu’à 250 mètres environ des côtes françaises.

« Une grande partie de cela est régie par le #droit_maritime et les interprétations des autorités françaises de ce qu’elles peuvent et ne peuvent pas faire. »

Elle a confirmé que les #navires_de_patrouille français n’interviendront pour arrêter les bateaux de migrants que s’ils sont en train de couler – et non pour empêcher les traversées illégales.

Au sujet de la participation de la Marine, Mlle Patel a déclaré à la commission des affaires intérieures de la Chambre des communes : « Nous avons mené une série d’#exercices_dans_l’eau en mer impliquant une gamme d’#actifs_maritimes, y compris militaires.

La ministre de l’Intérieur, photographiée hier, a fait la divulgation alors qu’elle reprochait à Paris de ne pas avoir maîtrisé la crise des migrants

« Nous pouvons renforcer #Border_Force et montrer comment nous pouvons prendre des bateaux en toute sécurité et les renvoyer en France.

« C’est effectivement le dialogue que nous entamons actuellement avec les Français pour savoir comment ils peuvent travailler avec nous et montrer leur volonté. Parce que cela ne sert à rien de leur pays.

Tim Loughton, un député conservateur du comité, a demandé au ministre de l’Intérieur : « Pouvez-vous confirmer que vous pensez que les Français ont le pouvoir – qu’ils prétendent ne pas avoir – d’intercepter des bateaux en mer ? »

Elle a répondu : ‘Absolument raison. Et c’est ce que nous nous efforçons de réaliser jusqu’au partage des #conseils_juridiques en matière de droit maritime. À travers la pandémie où le temps a été favorable, nous avons vu une augmentation des chiffres et nous devons mettre un terme à cette route.

« Nous voulons rompre cette route, nous voulons rendre cela #non_viable. La seule façon d’y parvenir est d’intercepter et de renvoyer les bateaux en France. »

Le ministre français de l’Intérieur, Gerald Darmanin, qui a été nommé il y a seulement dix jours, se rendra à Douvres le mois prochain pour voir l’impact des bateaux de migrants sur la communauté locale.

« Le ministre de l’Intérieur est de plus en plus frustré par la partie française, mais nous avons de nouveaux espoirs que le nouveau ministre de l’Intérieur voudra régler ce problème », a déclaré une source de Whitehall.

Hier, neuf passagers clandestins érythréens ont été découverts à l’arrière d’un camion lors d’un service Welcome Break sur la M40. La police a été appelée après que des témoins ont vu des mouvements à l’arrière du camion stationné dans l’Oxfordshire.

▻https://www.fr24news.com/fr/a/2020/07/la-marine-teste-lutilisation-de-nets-pour-pieger-les-migrants-dans-la-manc
#frontières #militarisation_des_frontières #asile #migrations #réfugiés #armée #NETS #Manche #La_Manche #France #UK #Angleterre #pull-back #pull-backs

#via @FilippoFurri

L’élection des présidents dans les métropoles : la démocratie confisquée par les élus
▻https://www.mediacites.fr/tribune/national/2020/07/13/lelection-des-presidents-dans-les-metropoles-la-democratie-confisquee-par-les-elus/?mc_cid=e250c5812d&mc_eid=6eb9734654

Les désignations à huis-clos des présidents des intercommunalités ont consacré les mécanismes de confiscation de la démocratie locale par les élus à un point jamais atteint, estime Fabien Desage, maître de conférence en sciences politiques à l’Université de Lille.

l y a près de 10 ans, avec David Guéranger, nous publiions un ouvrage consacré à l’histoire et au fonctionnement des intercommunalités en France, avec un titre volontairement interpellant : « La politique confisquée ». Loin d’être polémique, ce dernier soulignait, sur la base de recherches rigoureuses menées durant de nombreuses années selon les canons scientifiques en vigueur, combien les pouvoirs métropolitains en France s’étaient développés à l’abri des regards des citoyens, donnant lieu à des compromis entre élus locaux, à bonne distance des procédures démocratiques ▻https://www.mediacites.fr/decryptage/lille/2018/06/29/les-intercommunalites-sont-des-prisons-dorees-pour-les-elus . Nous montrions que loin d’être provisoires, ces « consensus métropolitains » faisaient désormais partie de l’ADN de ces structures, partout en France, et qu’ils étaient souhaités si ce n’est désirés par des élus locaux s’accommodant fort bien de cette distance avec le peuple.

https://www.mediacites.fr/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/dessin-presse-lanceurs-dalerte-Copie.jpeg

Ces « consensus communautaires » ne sont pas le résultat d’accords sur les objectifs de l’action publique ou de la volonté de dépasser les « logiques politiciennes », mais en sont au contraire l’expression la plus pure. Ils traduisent l’autonomisation croissante des logiques d’action des représentations par rapport à l’élection. Au sein des intercommunalités, les élus municipaux à peine élu.es scellent ainsi des « pactes de non-agression » avec leurs adversaires d’hier, qui n’ont pour seule fin que de préserver leur pré-carré communaux et de leur permettre de négocier la répartition des ressources intercommunales à l’abri des regards.

Une logique de consensus paralysante
Ces ressources intercommunales sont pourtant colossales. Aujourd’hui, disons le sans ambages, les établissements intercommunaux concentrent l’essentiel des moyens d’investissement au niveau local, indispensables pour faire face aux défis de l’avenir, sur les plans social, sanitaire, économique et climatique. Mais les consensus entre élus, loin d’augmenter la capacité d’agir de ces instances, ont pour effet de les paralyser, de les empêcher de faire des choix qui soient autre chose que des plus petits dénominateurs communs. Des « non choix » en somme, à un moment où les arbitrages sont essentiels.

Tout cela est fort bien démontré par tous les chercheurs qui s’intéressent à ces structures. Ainsi, aucune métropole, en dépit des nombreuses réformes de la loi NOTRe en passant par la loi MAPTAM , n’est parvenue à freiner la consommation des terres agricoles, à lutter contre la hausse de la pollution atmosphérique ou contre les logiques ségrégatives croissante au sein des espaces urbains. Autant de maux, qui menacent nos villes de grands périls. 

Les désignations à huis-clos des présidents des métropoles cette dernière semaine ont consacré les mécanismes de confiscation de la démocratie locale par les élus, à un point jamais atteint. Jusqu’à l’indécent, dans un contexte où chacun se sentait obligé de proclamer qu’il ou elle avait tiré les leçons des échecs du « monde d’avant »…

Farce tragique
Ainsi de Martine Vassal ou de Patrick Ollier, réélus président.es de leurs métropoles respectives d’Aix-Marseille-Provence et du Grand-Paris, en dépit des évolutions électorales et, surtout, de leur délégitimation électorale évidente. Défaite à Marseille, Martine Vassal, la mal nommée, continue d’être « primus inter pares ». Pour être réélu.es, ces sortants ont noué des accords partisans incompréhensibles pour le quidam, qui contribueront, outre les accusations de collusion, à favoriser l’immobilisme de ces structures et leur incapacité à faire face aux défis essentiels de gouvernement des villes.

Au sein de la métropole européenne de Lille, La 4ème du pays en importance, qui compte 1,2 million d’habitant.es, l’élection du président a tourné à la farce ▻https://www.mediacites.fr/reportage/lille/2020/07/10/election-a-la-metropole-de-lille-on-prend-les-memes-et-on-recommence . Une farce tragique pour cette agglomération, la plus inégalitaire de France après… les agglomérations parisienne et marseillaise ! (d’après les travaux du collectif Degeyter ▻https://www.mediacites.fr/interview/lille/2017/05/25/lille-une-agglomeration-toujours-plus-inegalitaire ). En dépit de sa mise en examen pour « trafic d’influence passif » et « complicité de favoritisme » dans l’affaire du grand stade, d’enquêtes en cours relatives à des abus de biens sociaux, le président sortant, maire de droite d’une petite commune de la MEL – a en effet été largement et facilement réélu à la tête de l’institution, avec le soutien du groupe des socialistes et apparentés (avec Martine Aubry à la manoeuvre ▻https://www.mediacites.fr/enquete/lille/2020/07/06/presidence-de-la-mel-aubry-choisit-castelain-malgre-tout ), de plusieurs élus LR (dont le maire de Marcq-en-Baroeul ▻https://www.mediacites.fr/enquete/lille/2020/06/30/apres-les-municipales-damien-castelain-en-pole-position-pour-la-metropole ) et le cortège des maires « sans étiquette » des communes périurbaines.

Plus encore sans doute, c’est l’absence totale de débat ▻https://www.mediacites.fr/tribune/national/2020/07/13/lelection-des-presidents-dans-les-metropoles-la-democratie-confisquee-par-les-elus/?mc_cid=e250c5812d&mc_eid=6eb9734654#annexe-1 lors de la campagne autour de la position pourtant préparée de longue date de Martine Aubry et des élus de son groupe qui interpelle et éclaire la vraie nature des compromis faustiens métropolitains. Certains observateurs se rassurent – à tort – en voyant dans le soutien des maires de Tourcoing et de Roubaix à un autre candidat le signe de la « fin du consensus ». C’est bien mal connaître le fonctionnement de ces instances que de le croire. 

Faut-il rappeler que ces maires de droite de Tourcoing et de Roubaix ont été des soutiens directs du président Castelain et de la MEL durant le précédent mandat ? Qu’ils ont voté le choix de la location de longue durée du nouveau siège – le “Biotope” – récemment étrillé par la Chambre régionale des comptes, comme la quasi-unanimité des conseillers communautaires, avant de se rétracter pour une partie d’entre eux quand il était trop tard.

Défaut de politique redistributive
Comme toujours, dans cet espace en permanence « confiné » que constitue le conseil métropolitain, les opposants d’aujourd’hui seront les soutiens discrets de demain. Si d’aventure le président Castelain devait quitter ses fonctions forcé à le faire par la justice ▻https://www.mediacites.fr/complement-denquete/lille/2017/08/01/damien-castelain-nechappera-pas-au-tribunal-pour-trafic-dinfluence-passif ce qui n’est pas improbable, on peut parier que les « contestataires » rentreront dans le rang et soutiendront la formation d’un exécutif consensuel élargi, qui leur permettrait de réassurer leur position, au détriment des intérêts des habitants de leurs communes.

Parce qu’il faut le rappeler avec force : si les maires des grandes villes trouvent opportun de rallier la majorité de la MEL pour défendre le soutien de cette dernière à leurs « grands projets » contestés (à l’image de Saint-Sauveur pour Martine Aubry à Lille), c’est au détriment des intérêts d’une grande partie de leur population. Majoritairement peuplées par les classes populaires, Lille, Roubaix et Tourcoing sont les territoires dont les habitants perdent le plus à des compromis avec les élus des communes périurbaines et/ou privilégiées, qui empêchent toute politique réellement redistributive à l’échelle intercommunale qui tiendrait compte de ces inégalités et tenterait de les résorber.

De la sorte, ces maires de grandes villes déjà si mal élus (moins de 15% des inscrits) nourrissent l’indifférence voire la défiance des citoyens à leur égard, à l’égard des institutions politiques, et creusent un peu plus la tombe de la démocratie locale, en même temps que la leur et que la nôtre…

#Démocratie #Démocratie_locale #Farce #Communes #Métropoles #intercommunalités #consensus #ségrégation #terres_agricoles #pollution_atmosphérique #martine_aubry #Lille #Roubaix #Tourcoing #grands_projets #Saint-Sauveur #Loi_NOTRe #Loi_MAPTAM #Fabien_Desage

Loies NOTRe et MAPTAM
Les lois NOTRe (Nouvelle organisation territoriale de la République, août 2015) et MAPTAM (Modernisation de l’action publique territoriale et d’affirmation des métropoles, janvier 2014) ont pour but de redéfinir et clarifier les compétences entre les différentes collectivités territoriales. Elles renforcent notamment le pouvoir des régions et des métropoles. 

Le coronavirus ravive les tensions entre l’Angleterre et l’Ecosse
▻https://www.lemonde.fr/m-le-mag/article/2020/07/13/le-coronavirus-ravive-les-tensions-entre-l-angleterre-et-l-ecosse_6046056_45

https://img.lemde.fr/2020/07/07/124/0/1500/750/1440/720/60/0/b116f33_40668_3179758.jpg

Les scènes de liesse qui ont suivi la réouverture des pubs dimanche 5 juillet à Londres – souvent sans masque ni distanciation ­physique – n’ont pas du tout rassuré les Écossais, inquiets d’une résurgence des cas dans le pays. Fin juin, une pétition signée par plusieurs milliers de personnes appelait déjà Édimbourg à fermer la frontière par ­précaution. Si la première ministre, Nicola Sturgeon, membre du parti indépendantiste SNP (Scottish National Party), avait indiqué qu’il n’y avait « pas de plan » concernant une telle mesure, celle-ci estimait tout de même « devoir considérer toutes les options ­possibles ». Habitué des déclarations ­trumpiennes, Boris Johnson avait alors ­rétorqué qu’« il n’y avait pas de frontière entre l’Écosse et l’Angleterre ». La décision de rouvrir des lignes aériennes sans quarantaine avec plusieurs pays étrangers ne s’applique pour le moment qu’en Angleterre. La chef d’État écossaise avait regretté à ce sujet, lors d’une intervention le 3 juillet, un manque d’informations, de concertation et un processus de décision jugé « chaotique ». « Nous prendrons le temps de bien considérer cela, de manière rationnelle avant – je l’espère très bientôt – d’annoncer notre propre décision. » Nicola Sturgeon devrait tout de même déclarer dans les jours à venir la mise en place de corridors aériens pour l’Écosse et donc la fin de la quarantaine pour certains pays, notamment pour ceux ayant un taux de contamination relativement faible. En attendant, les voyageurs s’adaptent. Si les Français interrogés affirment respecter la quarantaine – sous peine d’une amende d’environ 500 euros –, dans les faits, les ­vérifications à l’aéroport et au domicile sont inexistantes. la ministre de la santé elle-même, Jeane Freeman a admis qu’aucun passager n’avait été contrôlé depuis le 8 juin. Si l’Écosse dépend de l’Angleterre pour les décisions relatives à la gestion des frontières, c’est bien à elle de s’occuper du domaine de la santé et donc d’un bon nombre de mesures relatives à l’épidémie

#Covid-19#migrant#migration#ecosse#angleterre#frontière#sante#politiquedesante#gestionfrontiere

Organizing amidst Covid-19

https://i.imgur.com/6WhVpAn.jpg

Miguel Martinez
Mutating mobilisations during the pandemic crisis in Spain (movement report, pp. 15 – 21)

Laurence Cox
Forms of social movement in the crisis: a view from Ireland (movement report, pp. 22 – 33)

Lesley Wood
We’re not all in this together (movement report, pp. 34 – 38)

Angela Chukunzira
Organising under curfew: perspectives from Kenya (movement report, pp. 39 – 42)

Federico Venturini
Social movements’ powerlessness at the time of covid-19: a personal account (movement report, pp. 43 – 46)

Sobhi Mohanty
From communal violence to lockdown hunger: emergency responses by civil society networks in Delhi, India (movement report, pp. 47 – 52)
Feminist and LGBTQ+ activism

Hongwei Bao
“Anti-domestic violence little vaccine”: a Wuhan-based feminist activist campaign during COVID-19 (movement report, pp. 53 – 63)

Ayaz Ahmed Siddiqui
Aurat march, a threat to mainstream tribalism in Pakistan (movement report, pp. 64 – 71)

Lynn Ng Yu Ling
What does the COVID-19 pandemic mean for PinkDot Singapore? (movement report, pp. 72 – 81)

María José Ventura Alfaro
Feminist solidarity networks have multiplied since the COVID-19 outbreak in Mexico (movement report, pp. 82 – 87)

Ben Trott
Queer Berlin and the Covid-19 crisis: a politics of contact and ethics of care (movement report, pp. 88 – 108)
Reproductive struggles

Non Una Di Meno Roma
Life beyond the pandemic (movement report, pp. 109 – 114)
Labour organising

Ben Duke
The effects of the COVID-19 crisis on the gig economy and zero hour contracts (movement report, pp. 115 – 120)

Louisa Acciari
Domestic workers’ struggles in times of pandemic crisis (movement report, pp. 121 – 127)

Arianna Tassinari, Riccardo Emilia Chesta and Lorenzo Cini
Labour conflicts over health and safety in the Italian Covid19 crisis (movement report, pp. 128 – 138)

T Sharkawi and N Ali
Acts of whistleblowing: the case of collective claim making by healthcare workers in Egypt (movement report, pp. 139 – 163)

Mallige Sirimane and Nisha Thapliyal
Migrant labourers, Covid19 and working-class struggle in the time of pandemic: a report from Karnataka, India (movement report, pp. 164 – 181)
Migrant and refugee struggles

Johanna May Black, Sutapa Chattopadhyay and Riley Chisholm
Solidarity in times of social distancing: migrants, mutual aid, and COVID-19 (movement report, pp. 182 – 193)

Anitta Kynsilehto
Doing migrant solidarity at the time of Covid-19 (movement report, pp. 194 – 198)

Susan Thieme and Eda Elif Tibet
New political upheavals and women alliances in solidarity beyond “lock down” in Switzerland at times of a global pandemic (movement report, pp. 199 – 207)

Chiara Milan
Refugee solidarity along the Western Balkans route: new challenges and a change of strategy in times of COVID-19 (movement report, pp. 208 – 212)

Marco Perolini
Abolish all camps in times of corona: the struggle against shared accommodation for refugees* in Berlin (movement report, pp. 213 – 224)
Ecological activism

Clara Thompson
#FightEveryCrisis: Re-framing the climate movement in times of a pandemic (movement report, pp. 225 – 231)

Susan Paulson
Degrowth and feminisms ally to forge care-full paths beyond pandemic (movement report, pp. 232 – 246)

Peterson Derolus [FR]
Coronavirus, mouvements sociaux populaires anti-exploitation minier en Haïti (movement report, pp. 247 – 249)

Silpa Satheesh
The pandemic does not stop the pollution in River Periyar (movement report, pp. 250 – 257)

Ashish Kothari
Corona can’t save the planet, but we can, if we listen to ordinary people (movement report, pp. 258 – 265)
Food sovereignty organising

Dagmar Diesner
Self-governance food system before and during the Covid-crisis on the example of CampiAperti, Bologna (movement report, pp. 266 – 273)

URGENCI
Community Supported Agriculture is a safe and resilient alternative to industrial agriculture in the time of Covid-19 (movement report, pp. 274 – 279)

Jenny Gkougki
Corona-crisis affects small Greek farmers who counterstrike with a nationwide social media campaign to unite producers and consumers on local level! (movement report, pp. 280 – 283)

John Foran
Eco Vista in the quintuple crisis (movement report, pp. 284 – 291)
Solidarity and mutual aid

Michael Zeller
Karlsruhe’s “giving fences”: mobilisation for the needy in times of COVID-19 (movement report, pp. 292 – 303)

Sergio Ruiz Cayuela
Organising a solidarity kitchen: reflections from Cooperation Birmingham (movement report, pp. 304 – 309)

Clinton Nichols
On lockdown and locked out of the prison classroom: the prospects of post-secondary education for incarcerated persons during pandemic (movement report, pp. 310 – 316)

Micha Fiedlschuster and Leon Rosa Reichle
Solidarity forever? Performing mutual aid in Leipzig, Germany (movement report, pp. 317 – 325)
Artistic and digital resistance

Kerman Calvo and Ester Bejarano
Music, solidarities and balconies in Spain (movement report, pp. 326 – 332)

Neto Holanda and Valesca Lima [PT]
Movimentos e ações político-culturais do Brasil em tempos de pandemia do Covid-19 (movement report, pp. 333 – 338)

Margherita Massarenti
How Covid-19 led to a #Rentstrike and what it can teach us about online organizing (movement report, pp. 339 – 346)

Dounya
Knowledge is power: virtual forms of everyday resistance and grassroots broadcasting in Iran (movement report, pp. 347 – 354)
Imagining a new world

Donatella della Porta
How progressive social movements can save democracy in pandemic times (movement report, pp. 355 – 358)

Jackie Smith
Responding to coronavirus pandemic: human rights movement-building to transform global capitalism (movement report, pp. 359 – 366)

Yariv Mohar
Human rights amid Covid-19: from struggle to orchestration of tradeoffs (movement report, pp. 367 – 370)

Julien Landry, Ann Marie Smith, Patience Agwenjang, Patricia Blankson Akakpo, Jagat Basnet, Bhumiraj Chapagain, Aklilu Gebremichael, Barbara Maigari and Namadi Saka,
Social justice snapshots: governance adaptations, innovations and practitioner learning in a time of COVID-19 (movement report, pp. 371 – 382)

Roger Spear, Gulcin Erdi, Marla A. Parker and Maria Anastasia
Innovations in citizen response to crises: volunteerism and social mobilization during COVID-19 (movement report, pp. 383 – 391)

Breno Bringel
Covid-19 and the new global chaos (movement report, pp. 392 – 399)

▻https://www.interfacejournal.net/interface-volume-12-issue-1

#mouvements_sociaux #résistance #covid-19 #confinement #revue #aide_mutuelle #Espagne #résistance #Irlande #Kenya #impuissance #sentiment_d'impuissance #faim #violence #Delhi #Inde #féminisme #Wuhan #Pakistan #PinkDot #LGBT #Singapour #solidarité_féministe #solidarité #Mexique #care #Berlin #Allemagne #queer #gig_economy #travail #travail_domestique #travailleurs_domestiques #Italie #Egypte #travailleurs_étrangers #Karnataka #distanciation_sociale #migrations #Suisse #route_des_Balkans #Balkans #réfugiés #camps_de_réfugiés #FightEveryCrisis #climat #changement_climatique #décroissance #Haïti #extractivisme #pollution #River_Periyar #Periyar #souveraineté_alimentaire #nourriture #alimentation #CampiAperti #Bologne #agriculture #Grèce #Karlsruhe #Cooperation_Birmingham #UK #Angleterre #Leipzig #musique #Brésil #Rentstrike #Iran #droits_humains #justice_sociale #innovation #innovation_sociale

ping @isskein @karine4