#uk

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.

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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.

https://corporatewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/brook-house-panorama-2-e1598723197900.jpg

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

Entre la Biélorussie et l’Ukraine, des centaines de pèlerins juifs coincés par le Covid-19 renoncent à leur pèlerinage
▻https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2020/09/18/entre-la-bielorussie-et-l-ukraine-des-centaines-de-pelerins-juifs-coinces-pa

https://img.lemde.fr/2020/09/17/1093/708/4961/2480/1440/720/60/0/58b08f2_5342768-01-06.jpg

A cause de la pandémie, la ville ukrainienne d’Ouman ne peut accueillir les dizaines de milliers de fidèles. Certains ont essayé de contourner les restrictions sanitaires et se sont retrouvés bloqués à la frontière. La plupart ont finalement rebroussé chemin

#Covid-19#migrant#migration#ukraine#bielorussie#religion#pelerinage#sante#judaisme#frontière

Jewish pilgrims retreat from Ukrainian border
▻https://apnews.com/33305011e0e51429612352e53add9537

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Thousands of Hasidic Jews, stuck at the Ukrainian border for days due to coronavirus restrictions, have turned back without reaching their destination, the grave of a revered rabbi, officials said Friday. About 2,000 ultra-Orthodox Jewish pilgrims had traveled through Belarus in hope of reaching the Ukrainian city of Uman to visit the grave of Nachman of Breslov, an important Hasidic rabbi who died in 1810.Thousands of the Hasidic pilgrims visit the city each September for Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year. It’s celebrated Sept. 18-20 this year, and some pilgrims had managed to get to Uman before Ukraine closed its borders in late August amid a surge in COVID-19 infections. Thousands of others traveled via Belarus, which hasn’t barred foreign visitors from entering

#Covid-19#migrant#migration#ukraine#bielorussie#sante#religion#pelerinage#frontiere#judaisme

’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

On s’en doutait, et on se doutait aussi que les preuves finiraient par sortir, même trop tard, alors les voici :

Le rapport trompeur sur l’antisémitisme, qui a coulé Jeremy Corbyn
Asa Winstanley – The Electronic Intifada – 24 août 2020
▻https://agencemediapalestine.fr/blog/2020/08/29/30754

Ajouter à la liste des accusations d’antisémitisme contre #Jeremy_Corbyn :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/719714

#Royaume-Uni #Grande-Bretagne #UK #Labour #Parti_Travailliste #antisémitisme #antisionisme #Palestine #censure

Du #rap politique de #UK :

Dave - Black (2019)
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDUPSNdmFew

Paroles :
▻https://genius.com/Dave-black-lyrics

Idles - Grounds (2020)
►https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRkUt9VnaR0

Paroles :
▻https://paroles2chansons.lemonde.fr/paroles-idles/paroles-grounds.html

#Musique #Musique_et_politique #Dave #Idles # #Noirs #racisme #Violence_policière #racisme_systémique

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

Is it time to forge a new narrative about race?
►https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/is-it-time-to-forge-a-new-narrative-about-race

This is a video of the premiere event of The Equiano Project where, with some distinguished guest speakers, we examined the question: Is it time to forge a new narrative about race?

Speakers...

We Can’t Just Oppose Racism: We Must Transcend Race
►https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/we-cant-just-oppose-racism-we-must-transcend-race

What does it mean for a racially designated person to no longer accept that designation?

I didn’t fully realise the significance of being coded as black until I was thirteen. I grew up in a proud...

Deux grandes victoires au Royaume Uni dans le domaine du boycott universitaire

Première victoire de BDS sur l’Université SOAS de Londres
Apartheid Off Campus, le 4 août 2020
▻https://www.aurdip.org/premiere-victoire-de-bds-sur-l.html

L’université de Manchester se désinvestit d’entreprises complices de l’occupation israélienne
Asa Winstanley, The Electronic Intifada, le 6 août 2020
▻https://www.aurdip.org/l-universite-de-manchester-se.html

#Palestine #UK #Universités #SOAS #Londres #Manchester #BDS #Boycott_universitaire

Ajouter à la liste des chansons sorties autour de #George_Floyd ici :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/856449

#Musique_et_politique #Musique #ACAB #Violence_policière #Violences_policières #brutalité_policière #Assassinats_policiers #racisme #racisme_systémique #USA #UK #Black_Lives_Matter

#Dumpstaphunk, le groupe américain de Ivan Neville ne nous surprend pas en reprenant ces deux morceaux en hommage à Black Lives Matter :

Dumpstaphunk – Justice/Stand
►https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI9292TbdYM

La chanteuse pop anglaise #Jorja_Smith nous surprend plus avec cet appel à la révolte, même si c’est déjà son deuxième titre à faire allusion à la violence policière :

Jorja Smith - By Any Means
►https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq81getV30I

Enfin, #Shirley_Jones, du groupe pop américain des années 1980, The Jones Girls, nous surprend aussi, même si son ode antiraciste est largement plus naïve :

Shirley Jones - There Are No Differences
►https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdoiJp6lQZE

Migrants, the Backbone of Ukrainian Economy, Require Support in Times of COVID-19 – IOM Report | International Organization for Migration
▻https://www.iom.int/news/migrants-backbone-ukrainian-economy-require-support-times-covid-19-iom-report

https://www.iom.int/sites/default/files/styles/highlights/public/press_release/media/ukraine_news_20200619_163415_1592573655.jpg?itok=awvPq7jS

“Migrants are the backbone of the Ukrainian economy,” affirms Anh Nguyen, Chief of Mission at IOM Ukraine. He explains: “Private remittances sent to Ukraine equal to more than 10 per cent of GDP, and a large share of this money comes from migrant workers, allowing their families to cover their basic needs including food, rent, education and health care.”
Today IOM is concerned about conditions impacting an estimated 350,000–400,000 Ukrainian migrant workers who came home following announcements of quarantine or lockdowns in their countries of destination as well as in Ukraine itself.
As IOM Ukraine forecasts in a newly published analysis, implications of COVID-19 travel restrictions will remain extremely challenging not only at the individual, but at the local and national level as well.

#Covid19#migrant#migration#oim#ukraine#travailleurmigrant#envoidefonds

*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

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

Plastic for recycling from Europe ends up in Asia’s waters
▻https://www.europeanscientist.com/en/environment/plastic-for-recycling-from-europe-ends-up-in-asian-waters

https://i2.wp.com/www.europeanscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/europe-plastic-export.jpg?fit=1200%2C650&ssl=1

The researchers from the National University of Ireland Galway and the University of Limerick in Ireland used trade data and waste management data from destination countries to determine the various fates – from successful conversion into recycled resins or ending up as landfill, incineration, or ocean debris – of all plastic recycling exported from Europe.

They discovered that a massive 46 per cent of European separated plastic waste is exported outside the country of origin. While China was previously the single biggest importer of plastics for recycling, the country closed its doors in 2017. Since then, Southeast Asian nations with poor waste management practices have shouldered the burden.

According to the authors, a large share of this waste is rejected from recycling streams and significantly contributes to ocean littering. For 2017, they estimated that up to 180,000 tonnes – that is, around 7 per cent, of all exported European polyethene – may have ended up in the oceans.

#déchets_plastiques #pollution #Asie_du_Sud-Est

The Fourth Overview of Housing Exclusion in Europe 2019

https://www.feantsa.org/public/user/ReportSnip.jpg

Since 2015, FEANTSA and the Fondation Abbé Pierre have released a yearly Overview of Housing Exclusion in Europe. These annual reports look at the latest #Eurostat data (EU-SILC) and assess EU countries’ capacity to adequately house their populations.

The 2020 deadline is approaching for the European Union’s cohesion policy, yet it’s objective – the fight against poverty and social exclusion by 2020 - remains unattainable. With this 4th report on homelessness and housing exclusion, FEANTSA and the Fondation Abbé Pierre ask: what is meant by "European cohesion” when another Europe, deprived of a home or even a shelter, is being left behind? This report explores the state of emergency housing in Europe, in order to attract the attention of all decision-making bodies in Europe on the overcrowding, precariousness and inadequacy our shelter systems are confronted with.

▻https://www.feantsa.org/en/report/2019/04/01/the-fourth-overview-of-housing-exclusion-in-europe-2019?bcParent=27

Pour télécharger le rapport en pdf :
▻https://www.feantsa.org/download/rapport_europe_2019_def_web_06659524807198672857.pdf

#rapport #SDF #sans-abri #sans-abrisme #Europe #FEANTSA #statistiques #chiffres #urgence #mal-logement #Fondation_Abbé_Pierre #2019 #hébergement_d'urgence #inconditionnalité #dortoirs

ping @karine4 @isskein

Le Royaume-Uni durcit le confinement à Leicester après une flambée de cas de Covid-19
▻https://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/le-royaume-uni-durcit-le-confinement-a-leicester-apres-une-flambee-de-coron

Les commerces « non essentiels », qui avaient rouvert mi-juin en Angleterre, devront à nouveau fermer à partir de mardi et les écoles dès jeudi, a déclaré le ministre de la Santé, Matt Hancock, à la chambre des Communes. Il a précisé que ces mesures seraient réévaluées dans deux semaines. « Nous devons contrôler ce virus. Nous devons maintenir les gens en sécurité. Ces actions sont aussi profondément dans l’intérêt national », a-t-il indiqué alors que le déconfinement doit connaître une étape majeure samedi en Angleterre avec la réouverture des pubs, restaurants, hôtels et coiffeurs. « Des actions locales comme celles-ci sont un outil important de notre arsenal pour faire face à des épidémies alors que nous remettons le pays sur pied ».

« Nous ne pouvons pas recommander un assouplissement du confinement le 4 juillet à Leicester », a-t-il insisté, appelant les quelque 340.000 habitants de la ville à rester chez eux « autant que possible ». Près de 3000 cas ont été enregistrés à Leicester depuis le début de l’épidémie en mars, dont 866 au cours des deux dernières semaines, selon les autorités locales. En annonçant la levée progressive du confinement, le gouvernement avait prévenu qu’il pourrait mettre en place des restrictions au niveau local, en fonction de la situation, pour contenir une nouvelle vague incontrôlée de contaminations.

Que faire d’une statue ? Le cas Lénine | Portfolios | Mediapart
▻https://www.mediapart.fr/studio/portfolios/que-faire-d-une-statue-le-cas-lenine

https://static.mediapart.fr/etmagine/default/files/portfolios/28693/Lenine1.jpg

#memorie #lenin #sovietisme #Ukraine

#Harcèlement_sexuel à l’#université...

Je me suis retrouvée à faire des recherches sur seenthis sur le sujet que j’ai partagée avec quelques collègues, du coup, j’en fait ici une sorte de #métaliste...

#facs #sexisme #patriarcat

ping @_kg_

UK Deportations 2020: how BA, #Easyjet and other airlines collaborate with the border regime

The Home Office’s deportation machine has slowed during the corona crisis, with hundreds of people released from detention. But a recent charter flight to Poland shows the motor is still ticking over. Will things just go “back to normal” as the lockdown lifts, or can anti-deportation campaigners push for a more radical shift? This report gives an updated overview of the UK deportation system and focuses in on the role of scheduled flights run by major airlines including: #BA, Easyjet, #Kenya_Airways, #Qatar_Airways, #Turkish_Airlines, #Ethiopian_Airlines, #Air_France, #Royal_Jordanian, and #Virgin.

https://corporatewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/poster-stop-deportation-730x350.jpg

On 30 April, with UK airports largely deserted during the Covid-19 lockdown, a Titan Airways charter plane took off from Stansted airport deporting 35 people to Poland. This was just a few days after reports of charter flights in the other direction, as UK farmers hired planes to bring in Eastern European fruit-pickers.

The Home Office’s deportation machine has slowed during the corona crisis. Hundreds of people have been released from detention centres, with detainee numbers dropping by 900 over the first four months of 2020. But the Poland flight signals that the Home Office motor is still ticking over. As in other areas, perhaps the big question now is whether things will simply go “back to normal” as the lockdown lifts. Or can anti-deportation campaigners use this window to push for a more radical shift?
An overview of the UK’s deportation machine

Last year, the UK Home Office deported over seven thousand people. While the numbers of people “removed” have been falling for several years, deportation remains at the heart of the government’s strategy (if that is the term) for “tackling illegal immigration”. It is the ultimate threat behind workplace and dawn raids, rough-sleeper round-ups, “right to rent” checks, reporting centre queues, and other repressive architecture of the UK Border Regime.

This report gives an overview of the current state of UK deportations, focusing on scheduled flights run by major airlines. Our previous reports on UK deportations have mainly looked at charter flights: where the Home Office aims to fill up chartered planes to particular destinations, under heavy guard and typically at night from undisclosed locations. These have been a key focus for anti-deportation campaigners for a number of reasons including their obvious brutality, and their use as a weapon to stifle legal and direct resistance. However, the majority of deportations are on scheduled flights. Deportees are sitting – at the back handcuffed to private security “escorts” – amongst business or holiday travellers.

These deportations cannot take place without extensive collaboration from businesses. The security guards are provided by outsourcing company Mitie. The tickets are booked by business travel multinational Carlson Wagonlit. The airlines themselves are household names, from British Airways to Easyjet. This report explains how the Home Office and its private sector collaborators work together as a “deportation machine” held together by a range of contractual relationships.

Some acknowledgements

Many individuals and campaign groups helped with information used in this report. In particular, Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants shared their valuable research and legal advice, discussed below.

We have produced this report in collaboration with the Air Deportation Project led by William Walters at the University of Carleton in Canada, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Corporate Watch received funding from this project as a contribution for our work on this report.

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Names, numbers

First a quick snapshot of deportation numbers, types and destinations. We also need to clear up some terminology.

We will use the term “deportations” to refer to all cases where the Home Office moves someone out of the country under direct force (for scheduled flights, this usually means handcuffed to a security “escort”). In the Home Office’s own jargon, these are called “enforced returns”, and the word “deportation” is reserved for people ejected on “public policy” rather than “immigration” grounds – mostly Foreign National Offenders who have been convicted by criminal courts. The Home Office refers to deportations carried out under immigration law euphemistically, calling them “removals” or “returns”.i

As well as “enforced returns”, there are also so-called “voluntary returns”. This means that there is no direct use of force – no guard, no leg or arm restraints. But the term “voluntary” is stretched. Many of these take place under threat of force: e.g., people are pressured to sign “voluntary return” agreements to avoid being forcibly deported, or as the only chance of being released from detention. In other cases, people may agree to “voluntary return” as the only escape route from a limbo of reporting controls, lack of rights to work or rent legally, or destitution threatened by “no recourse to public funds”.

In 2019, the Home Office reported a total of 18,782 returns: 7,361 “enforced” and 11,421 “voluntary”.ii
These figures include 5,110 “Foreign National Offenders” (27%). (The Home Office says the majority of these were enforced returns, although no precise figure is provided.)
There is a notable trend of declining removals, both enforced and “voluntary”. For example, in 2015 there were 41,789 returns altogether, 13,690 enforced and 28,189 “voluntary”. Both enforced and voluntary figures have decreased every year since then.
Another notable trend concerns the nationalities of deportees. Europeans make up an increasing proportion of enforced deportations. 3,498, or 48%, of all enforced returns in 2019 were EU citizens – and this does not include other heavily targeted non-EU European nationalities such as Albanians. In 2015, there were 3,848 EU enforced returns – a higher absolute figure, but only 28% of a much higher overall total. In contrast, EU nationals still make up a very small percentage of “voluntary” returns – there were only 107 EU “voluntary returns” in 2019.
The top nationalities for enforced returns in 2019 were: Romania (18%), Albania (12%), Poland (9%), Brazil (8%) and Lithuania (6%). For voluntary returns they were: India (16%), China (9%), Pakistan (9%).

We won’t present any analysis of these figures and trends here. The latest figures show continuing evidence of patterns we looked at in our book The UK Border Regime.iii One key point we made there was that, as the resources and physical force of the detention and deportation system are further diminished, the Border Regime is more than ever just a “spectacle” of immigration enforcement – a pose for media and key voter audiences, rather than a realistic attempt to control migration flows. We also looked at how the scapegoat groups targeted by this spectacle have shifted over recent decades – including, most recently, a new focus on European migration accompanying, or in fact anticipating, the Brexit debate.

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Deportation destinations

Home Office Immigration Statistics also provide more detailed dataiv on the destinations people are “returned” to, which will be important when we come to look at routes and airline involvement. Note that, while there is a big overlap between destinations and nationalities, they are of course not the same thing. For example, many of those deported to France and other western European countries are “third country” removals of refugees under the Dublin agreement – in which governments can deport an asylum seeker where they have already been identified in another EU country.

Here are the top 20 destinations for deportations in 2019 – by which, to repeat, we mean all enforced returns:

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

It is worth comparing these figures with a similar table of top 20 deportation destinations in the last 10 years – between 2010 and 2019. This comparison shows very strongly the recent shift to targeting Europeans.

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The Home Office: who is targeted and how

As we will see, the actual physical business of deporting people is outsourced to private companies. The state’s role remains giving the orders about who is targeted for arrest and detention, who is then released, and who is forced onto a plane. Here we’ll just take a very quick look at the decision-making structures at work on the government side. This is based on the much more detailed account in The UK Border Regime.

The main state body responsible for immigration control in the UK is the Home Office, the equivalent of other countries’ Interior Ministries. In its current set-up, the Home Office has three divisions: Homeland Security, which runs security and intelligence services; Public Safety, which oversees the police and some other institutions; and Borders, Immigration and Citizenship. The last of these is further divided into three “directorates”: UK Visas and Immigration, which determines visa and asylum applications; Border Force, responsible for control at the frontiers; Immigration Enforcement, responsible for control within the national territory – including detention and deportations. Immigration Enforcement itself has an array of further departments and units. Regular restructuring and reshuffling of all these structures is known to bewilder immigration officers themselves, contributing to the Home Office’s notoriously low morale.v

At the top of the tree is the Home Secretary (interior minister), supported by a more junior Immigration Minister. Along with the most senior civil servants and advisors, these ministers will be directly involved in setting top-level policies on deportations.

For example, an enquiry led by then prisons and probation ombudsman Stephen Shaw into the Yarl’s Wood detention centre revolt in 2002 has given us some valuable insight into the development of modern Home Office deportation policy under the last Labour government. Then Home Secretary Jack Straw, working with civil servants including the Home Office permanent secretary Sir David Omand, introduced the first deportation targets we are aware of, in 2000. They agreed a plan to deport 12,000 people in 2000-1, rising to 30,000 people the next year, and eventually reaching 57,000 in 2003-4.vi

Nearly two decades later, Home Secretary Amber Rudd was pushed to resign after a leak confirmed that the Home Office continued to operate a deportation targets policy, something of which she had denied knowledge.vii The 2017-18 target, revealed in a leaked letter to Rudd from Immigration Enforcement’s director general Hugh Ind, was for 12,800 enforced returns.viii

As the figures discussed above show, recent austerity era Conservative governments are more modest than the last Labour government in their overall deportation targets, and have moved to target different groups. Jack Straw’s deportation programme was almost entirely focused on asylum seekers whose claims had been refused. This policy derived from what the Blair government saw as an urgent need to respond to media campaigns demonising asylum seekers. Twenty years on, asylum seekers now make up a minority of deportees, and have been overtaken by new media bogeymen including European migrants.

In addition, recent Home Office policy has put more effort into promoting “voluntary” returns – largely for cost reasons, as security guards and detention are expensive. This was the official rationale behind Theresa May’s infamous “racist van” initiative, where advertising vans drove round migrant neighbourhoods parading “Go Home” slogans and a voluntary return hotline number.

How do Home Office political targets translate into operations on the ground? We don’t know all the links, but can trace some main mechanisms. Enforced returns begin with arrests. One of the easiest ways to find potential deportees is to grab people as they walk in to sign at an Immigration Reporting Centre. 80,000 migrants in the UK are “subject to reporting requirements”, and all Reporting Centres include short-term holding cells.ix Other deportees are picked up during immigration raids – such as daytime and evening raids on workplaces, or dawn raids to catch “immigration offenders” in their beds.x

Both reporting centre caseworkers and Immigration Compliance and Enforcement (ICE) raid squads are issued with targets and incentives to gather deportees. An Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI) report from 2017 explains how reporting centre staff work specifically to deportation targets. The inspector also tells us how:

Staff at the London Reporting Centres worked on the basis that to meet their removal targets they needed to detain twice the number of individuals, as around half of those detained would later raise a barrier to removal and be released from detention.

ICE raid teams are set monthly priorities by national and regional commanders, which may include targeting specific nationalities for deportation. For example, the Home Office has repeatedly denied that it sets nationality targets in order to fill up charter flights to particular destinations – but this practice was explicitly confirmed by an internal document from 2014 (an audit report from the director of Harmondsworth detention centre) obtained by Corporate Watch following a Freedom of Information legal battle.xi

Day-to-day deportation and detention decisions are overseen by a central unit called the National Removals Command (NRC). For example, after ICE raid officers make arrests they must call NRC to authorise individuals’ detention. This decision is made on the basis of any specific current targets, and otherwise on general “removability”.

“Removability” means the chance of successfully getting their “subject” onto a plane without being blocked by lack of travel documents, legal challenges and appeals, or other obstacles. For example, nationals of countries with whom the UK has a formal deportation agreement are, all other things being equal, highly removable. This includes the countries with which the UK has set up regular charter flight routes – including Albania, Pakistan, Nigeria and Ghana, and more recently Jamaica and a number of EU countries. On the other extreme, some nationalities such as Iranians present a problem as their governments refuse to accept deportees.

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The Home Office: “arranging removal” procedure

A Home Office document called “Arranging Removal” sets out the steps Immigration Enforcement caseworkers need to take to steer their “subject” from arrest to flight.xii

On the one hand, they are under pressure from penny-pinching bosses keen to get the job done as quick and cheap as possible. On the other, they have to be careful not to make any mistakes deportees’ lawyers could use to get flights cancelled. Immigration Officers have the legal power to order deportations without the need for any court decision – however, many deportations are blocked on appeal to courts.

Here are some of the main steps involved:

Removability assessment. The caseworker needs to assess that: there are no “casework barriers” – e.g., an ongoing asylum claim or appeal that would lead to the deportation being stopped by a court; the detainee is medically “fit to fly”; any family separation is authorised correctly; the detainee has a valid travel document.
Travel Document. If there is no valid travel document, the caseworker can try to obtain an “emergency travel document” through various routes.
Executive approval. If all these criteria are met, the caseworker gets authorisation from a senior office to issue Removal Directions (RD) paperwork.
Risk Assessment. Once the deportation is agreed, the caseworker needs to assess risks that might present themselves on the day of the flight – such as medical conditions, the likelihood of detainee resistance and of public protest. At this point escorts and/or medics are requested. A version of this risk assessment is sent to the airline – but without case details or medical history.xiii
Flight booking. The caseworker must first contact the Airline Ticketing Team who grant access to an online portal called the Electronic Removal Form (ERF). This portal is run by the Home Office’s flight booking contractor Carlson Wagonlit (see below). Tickets are booked for escorts and any medics as well as the deportee. There are different options including “lowest cost” non-refundable fares, or “fully refundable” – the caseworker here should assess how likely the deportation is to be cancelled. One of the options allows the caseworker to choose a specific airline.
Notice of removal. Finally, the deportee must be served with a Removal Directions (RD) document that includes notification of the deportation destination and date. This usually also includes the flight number. The deportee must be given sufficient notice: for people already in detention this is standardly 72 hours, including two working days, although longer periods apply in some situations.

In 2015 the Home Office brought in a new policy of issuing only “removal window” notification in many cases – this didn’t specify the date but only a wide timeframe. The window policy was successfully challenged in the courts in March 2019 and is currently suspended.

#Carlson_Wagonlit

The electronic booking system is run by a private company, #Carlson_Wagonlit_Travel (#CWT). CWT is also in charge of contracting charter flights.

Carlson Wagonlit has been the Home Office’s deportation travel agent since 2004, with the contract renewed twice since then. Its current seven year contract, worth £5.7 million, began in November 2017 and will last until October 2024 (assuming the two year extension period is taken up after an initial five years). The Home Office estimated in the contract announcement that it will spend £200 million on deportation tickets and charters over that seven year period.xiv

Carlson is a global #business travel services company, i.e., a large scale travel agent and booker for companies and government agencies. Its official head office is in France, but it is 100% owned by US conglomerate #Carlson_Companies Inc. It claims to be active in more than 150 countries.

A report on “outsourced contracts” by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration gives us some information on CWT’s previous (2010-17) contract.xv This is unlikely to be substantially changed in the new version, although deportation numbers have reduced since then. The contract involved:

management of charter flights and ticketing provision for scheduled flights for migrants subject to enforced removal and escorts, where required, and the management of relationships with carriers to maintain and expand available routes. […] Annually, CWT processed approximately 21,000 booking requests from Home Office caseworkers for tickets for enforced removals. Some booking requests were for multiple travellers and/or more than one flight and might involve several transactions. CWT also managed flight rescheduling, cancellations and refunds. The volume of transactions processed varied from 5,000 to 8,000 per month.

The inspection report notes the value of CWT’s service to the Home Office through using its worldwide contacts to facilitate deportations:

Both Home Office and CWT managers noted that CWT’s position as a major travel operator had enabled it to negotiate favourable deals with airlines and, over the life of the contract to increase the range of routes available for enforced removals. (Para 5.10).

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The airlines: regular deportation collaborators

We saw above that Home Office caseworkers book flight tickets through an online portal set up and managed by Carlson Wagonlit Travel. We also saw how CWT is praised by Home Office managers for its strong relationships with airlines, and ability to negotiate favourable deals.

For charter flight deportations, we know that CWT has developed a particular relationship with one charter company called Titan Airways. We have looked at Titan in our previous reports on charter flight deportations.

Does the Home Office also have specific preferred airline partners for scheduled flights? Unfortunately, this isn’t an easy question to answer. Under government procurement rules, the Home Office is required to provide information on contracts it signs – thus, for example, we have at least a redacted version of the contract with CWT. But as all its airline bookings go through the intermediary of CWT, there are no such contracts available. Claiming “commercial confidentiality”, the Home Office has repeatedly information requests on its airline deals. (We will look in a bit more depth at this issue in the annex.)

As a result, we have no centrally-gathered aggregate data on airline involvement. Our information comes from individual witnesses: deportees themselves; their lawyers and supporters; fellow passengers, and plane crew. Lawyers and support groups involved in deportation casework are a particularly helpful reference, as they may know about multiple deportation cases.

For this report, we spoke to more than a dozen immigration lawyers and caseworkers to ask which airlines their clients had been booked on. We also spoke to anti-deportation campaign groups including Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants, who have run recent campaigns calling on airlines to refuse to fly deportees; and to the trade union Unite, who represent flight crew workers. We also looked at media reports of deportation flights that identify airlines.

These sources name a large number of airlines, and some names come up repeatedly. British Airways is top of the list. We list a few more prominent collaborators below: Easyjet, Kenya Airways, Ethiopian Airlines, Qatar Airways, Turkish Airlines, Royal Jordanian. Virgin Airlines is the only company to have publicly announced it has stopped carrying deportees from the UK – although there have been some questions over whether it is keeping this promise.

However, the information we have does not allow us to determine the exact nature of the relationship with these airlines. How many airlines appear in the CWT booking system – what determines which ones are included? Does CWT have a preferential arrangement with BA or other frequent deportation airlines? Does the Home Office itself have any direct interaction with these airlines’ management? How many airlines are not included in the CWT booking system because they have refused to carry deportees?

For now, we have to leave these as open questions.

British Airways

We have numerous reports of British Airways flying deportees to destinations worldwide – including African and Caribbean destinations, amongst others. Cabin crew representatives in Unite the Union identify British Airways as the main airline they say is involved in deportation flights.

The airline has long been a key Home Office collaborator. Back in 2003, at the height of the Labour government’s push to escalate deportations, the “escort” security contractor was a company called Loss Prevention International. In evidence to a report by the House of Commons home affairs committee, its chief executive Tom Davies complained that many airlines at this point were refusing to fly deportees. But he singled out BA as the notable exception, saying: “if it were not for […] the support we get from British Airways, the number of scheduled flight removals that we would achieve out of this country would be virtually nil”.xvi

In 2010, British Airways’ role was highlighted when Jimmy Mubenga was killed by G4S “escorts” on BA flight 77 from Heathrow to Angola.

Since 2018, there has been an active calling on BA to stop its collaboration. The profile of this issue was raised after BA sponsored Brighton Pride in May 2018 – whilst being involved in deportations of lesbian and gay migrants to African countries where their lives were in danger. After winning a promise from Virgin Airways to cease involvement in deportations (see below), the group Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants (LGSM) have made BA the main target for their anti-deportation campaigning.

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The campaign has also now been supported by BA cabin crew organised in the union Unite. In December 2019 Unite cabin crew branches passed a motion against airline scheduled flight deportations.xvii

Kenya Airways

We have numerous reports from caseworkers and campaigners of Kenya Airways flying deportees to destinations in Africa.

The typical route is a flight from Heathrow to Nairobi, followed by a second onward flight. People deported using this route have included refugees from Sudan and Somalia.

Easyjet

We have numerous reports of Easyjet flying deportees to European destinations. Easyjet appears to be a favoured airline for deportations to Eastern European countries, and also for “third country” returns to countries including Italy and Germany. While most UK scheduled deportations are carried out from Heathrow and Gatwick, we have also seen accounts of Easyjet deportations from Luton.

Qatar Airways

We have numerous reports of Qatar Airways carrying deportees to destinations in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Qatar Airways has carried deportees to Iraq, according to the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees (IFIR), and also to Sudan. (In March 2019 the airline suspended its Sudan route, but this appears to have been restarted – the company website currently advertises flights to Khartoum in April 2020.xviii) Other destinations include Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, Thailand, the Philippines, and Uganda. The typical route is from Heathrow via Doha.

Turkish Airlines

We have numerous reports of Turkish Airlines carrying deportees. The typical route is Heathrow or Gatwick to Istanbul, then an onward flight to further destinations including Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees (IFIR), Turkish Airlines has been one of the main companies involved in deportations to Iraq. A media report from June 2019 also mentions Turkish Airlines carrying someone being deported to Somalia via Istanbul.xix In August 2017, a Turkish Airlines pilot notably refused to fly an Afghani refugee from Heathrow to Istanbul, en route to Kabul, after being approached by campaigners – but this does not reflect general company policy.xx

Ethiopian Airlines

We have reports of this airline deporting people to Ethiopia and other African countries, including Sudan. Flights are from Heathrow to Addis Ababa. In April 2018, high-profile Yarl’s Wood hunger striker Opelo Kgari was booked on an Ethiopian flight to Addis Ababa en route to Botswana.

Air France

Air France are well-known for carrying deportees from France, and have been a major target for campaigning by anti-deportation activists there. We also have several reports of them carrying deportees from the UK, on flights from Heathrow via Paris.

Royal Jordanian

According to IFIR, Royal Jordanian has been involved in deportations to Iraq.

Virgin Airlines

In June 2018, Virgin announced that it had ceased taking bookings for deportation flights. Virgin had previously been a regular carrier for deportations to Jamaica and to Nigeria. (NB: Nigeria is often used as a deportation transit hub from where people are subsequently removed to other African countries.) The announcement came after the Windrush scandal led to the Home Office apparently suspending deportations to the Caribbean, and following campaigning by Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants (LGSM) – although Virgin claimed it had made the decision before being contacted by the campaign. A Virgin statement said:

we made the decision to end all involuntary deportations on our network, and have already informed the Home Office. We believe this decision is in the best interest of our customers and people, and is in keeping with our values as a company.xxi

But there are doubts over just how much Virgin’s promise is worth. According to a report by The Independent:

The airline had agreed to deport a man to Nigeria […] a day after announcing the decision. The only reason he wasn’t removed was because the Home Office agreed to consider new representations following legal intervention.xxii

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Do airlines have a choice?

In response to its critics, British Airways has consistently given the same reply: it has no choice but to cooperate with the Home Office. According to an August 2018 article in The Guardian, BA says that it has “a legal duty under the Immigration Act 1971 to remove individuals when asked to do so by the Home Office.” A company spokesperson is quoted saying:

Not fulfilling this obligation amounts to breaking the law. We are not given any personal information about the individual being deported, including their sexuality or why they are being deported. The process we follow is a full risk assessment with the Home Office, which considers the safety of the individual, our customers and crew on the flight.xxiii

The last parts of this answer fit the process we looked at above. When booking the flight, the Home Office caseworker sends the airline a form called an Airline Risk Report (ARA) which alerts it to risk issues, and specifies why escorts or medics are needed – including an assessment of the likelihood of resistance. But no information should be shared on the deportee’s medical issues or immigration case and reasons for deportation.

But is it true that an airline would be breaking the law if it refused a booking? Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants have shared with us a legal opinion they received from law firm Duncan Lewis on this issue. We summarise the main points here.

The law in question is the Immigration Act 1971, Section 27(1)(b)(iii). This states that, when issued the correct legal order by the Home Office, the “owner or agent of a ship or aircraft” must “make arrangements for or in connection with the removal of a person from the United Kingdom when required to do so [by appropriate Removal Directions]”. It is an offence to fail to do so “without reasonable excuse”.

The offence is punishable by a fine, and potentially a prison sentence of up to six months. As a minor “summary only” offence, any case would be heard by a magistrates’ court rather than a jury.

In fact many airline captains have refused to carry deportees – as we will see in the next section. But there are no recorded cases of anyone ever being prosecuted for refusing. As with many areas of UK immigration law, there is simply no “case law” on this question.

If a case ever does come to court, it might turn on that clause about a “reasonable excuse”. The legal opinion explains that the airline might argue they refused to carry a deportee because doing so would present a risk to the aircraft or passengers, for example if there is resistance or protest. A court might well conclude this was “reasonable”.

On the other hand, the “reasonable excuse” defence could be harder to apply for an airline that took a principled stand to refuse all deportations as a general rule, whether or not there is disruption.

Again, though, all this is hypothetical as the Home Office has never actually prosecuted anyone. Virgin Airlines, the first company to have publicly stated that it will not fly deportees from the UK, so far has not faced any legal comeback. As reported in the press, a Virgin spokesperson explained the company’s position like this:

We’ve made the decision to end all involuntary deportations on our network, and have informed the Home Office. We always comply with the law and would continue to comply with legislation; however, we have ended our contractual agreement to carry involuntary deportees.xxiv

Due to our lack of information on Home Office agreements with airlines, it’s hard to assess exactly what this means. Possibly, Virgin previously had an outstanding deal with the Home Office and Carlson Wagonlit where their tickets came up on the CWT booking portal and were available for caseworkers, and this has now ended. If the Home Office insisted on contacting them and booking a ticket regardless, they might then be pushed to “comply with the law”.

Above we saw that, according to evidence referred to in a report of the House of Commons home affairs select committee, in 2003 the majority of airlines actually refused to carry deportees, leaving the Home Office to depend almost exclusively on British Airways. Even in this context there were no prosecutions of airlines.

This is not an uncommon situation across UK immigration law: much of it has never come to court. For example, as we have discussed in reports on immigration raids, there have been no legal cases testing many of the powers of ICE raid squads. To give another example, on numerous occasions campaigners have obstructed buses taking detainees to charter flights without any prosecution – the Stansted 15 trial of protestors blocking a plane inside the airport was the first high-profile legal case following an anti-deportation action.

Even if the government has a legal case for prosecuting airlines, this could be a highly controversial move politically. The Home Office generally prefers not to expose the violence of its immigration enforcement activities to the challenge of a public legal hearing.

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Resistance

We want to conclude this report on an upbeat note. Deportations, and scheduled airline flights in particular, are a major site of struggle. Resistance is not just possible but widespread and often victorious. Thousands of people have managed to successfully stop their “removals” through various means, including the following:

Legal challenges: a large number of flights are stopped because of court appeals and injunctions.
Public campaigning: there is a strong tradition of anti-deportation campaigning in the UK, usually supporting individuals with media-focused and political activity. Common tactics include: media articles highlighting the individual’s case; enlisting MPs and appealing to ministers; petitions, letters of support; mass phone calls, emails, etc., to airlines; demos or leafletting at the airport targeting air crew and passengers.
Solidarity action by passengers: in some high-profile cases, passengers have refused to take their seats until deportees are removed. This creates a safety situation for the airline which may often lead to the pilot ordering escorts to remove their prisoner.
Direct action by detainees: many detainees have been able to get off flights by putting up a struggle. This may involve, for example: physically resisting escorts; taking off clothes; shouting and appealing to passengers and air crew for help. Unless the deportee is extremely strong physically, the balance of force is with the escorts – and sometimes this can be lethal, as in the case of Jimmy Mubenga. However, pilots may often order deportees off their plane in the case of disruption.

There are many reports of successful resistance using one or more of these tactics. And we can also get some glimpses of their overall power from a few pieces of aggregate information.

In a 2016 report, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration revealed one telling figure. Looking at the figures for six months over 2014-15, he found that “on average 2.5 tickets were issued for each individual successfully removed.”xxv Some of this can be put down to the notorious inefficiency of Home Office systems: the Inspection report looks at several kinds of coordination failures between Home Office caseworkers, the escort contractor (at that point a subsidiary of Capita), and Carlson Wagonlit.

But this is not the biggest factor. In fact, the same report breaks down the reasons for cancellation for a sample of 136 tickets. 51% of the sampled cancellations were the result of legal challenges. 18% were because of “disruptive or non-compliant behaviour”. 2% (i.e., three cases) were ascribed to “airline refusal to carry”.

Where there is resistance, there is also reaction. As we have discussed in previous reports, one of the main reasons prompting the development of charter flights was to counter resistance by isolating deportees from passengers and supporters. This was very clearly put in 2009 by David Wood, then strategic director of the UK Border Agency (Home Office), who explained that the charter flight programme is:

“a response to the fact that some of those being deported realised that if they made a big enough fuss at the airport – if they took off their clothes, for instance, or started biting and spitting – they could delay the process. We found that pilots would then refuse to take the person on the grounds that other passengers would object.”xxvi

For both deportees and supporters, charter flights are much harder to resist. But they are also very expensive; require specific diplomatic agreements with destination countries; and in some cases (Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka) have been blocked by legal and political means.xxvii The Home Office cannot avoid the use of scheduled flights for the majority of deportations, and it will continue to face resistance.

–—
Annex: issues with accessing airline information

We will expand a bit here on the issues around obtaining information on the Home Office’s relationships with airlines.

Under UK and EU public sector procurement rules, central government departments are obliged to publish announcements of all contracts valued over £10,000, including on the contractsfinder website. However, there is no publicly available information on any contracts between the Home Office and specific airlines. This is legally justifiable if the Home Office has no direct contractual agreements with airlines. It has a signed contract with Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT), which is published in a redacted form; and CWT then makes arrangements with airlines on a per-ticket basis.

The Home Office certainly has knowledge of all the tickets booked on its behalf by CWT – indeed, they are booked by its own employees through the CWT maintained portal. And so it certainly knows all the airlines working for it. But it has refused all requests for this information, using the excuse of “commercial confidentiality”.

There have been numerous attempts to request information on deportation airlines using the Freedom of Information Act.xxviii All have been refused on similar grounds. To give one standard example, in December 2018 A. Liberadzki requested statistics for numbers of removals carried out by British Airways and other scheduled airlines. The response confirmed “that the Home Office holds the information that you have requested.” However, it argued that:

“we have decided that the information is exempt from disclosure under sections 31(1)e and 43(2) of the FOIA. These provide that information can be withheld if its disclosure would have a detrimental effect on the Home Office and its ability to operate effective immigration controls by carrying out removals or would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of any persons (including the public authority holding it).”

In April 2019 Kate Osamor MP put similar questions to the Home Secretary in parliament.xxix She received the same reply to all her questions:

“The Home Office does not disclose the details or values of its commercial contracts. Doing so could discourage companies from dealing with the Home Office.”

Of course this answer is blatantly false – as we just saw, the Home Office is legally obliged to disclose values of commercial contracts over £10,000.

▻https://corporatewatch.org/uk-deportations-2020-how-ba-easyjet-and-other-airlines-collaborate-w

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The Syrian refugee on the UK’s coronavirus front lines - Aljazeera
Hassan Akkad, a BAFTA-winning filmmaker who was tortured in Syria, now cleans COVID-19 wards in a busy London hospital.

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