:: 12/18/2003 ::

Media Lens... correspondance on immigration and asylum and the media. let me know if you want more... and I'll post my term paper on the subject. (bzeitlyn@hotmail.com)

Dear Editor/Mattew Randall

I am a MA student at Sussex University studying Migration studies, and
recently read your excellent article on the media and asylum and
immigration. I was shocked by the findings of your study, which surprised
even a cynic like me.

one probelm which I have, and am working on for a paper I am writing, is
what precisely are the state-corporate interests in such tight controls on
immigration? surely an influx of cheap foreign labour is good for big
business and the government? Are the rulers of the world really just
racists, surely the colour of your workers isn't important as long as they
are cheap and expliotable? The only logical explanation I can think of, is
that government and big business benefit by keeping immigrants illegal, so
they have no rights or unions and can be paid less. I would very much like
to hear your thoughts on this. Economists agree however, that legal
immigration is good for the economy, why don't their masters listen to
them?

While I am writing to you I would like to recommend SchNEWS; a bastion of
truth and media activsm which I am invoved in here in Brighton. It is
available free on line at http://www.schnews.co.uk/. This week's issue
includes an article about press treatment of the arrest and subsequent
release after a year of nine Algerians arrested on terror charges.

thanks, and keep up the good work, personally I think there is very little
more important.

yours sincerely Benji Zeitlyn

The reply... it's long and good.

Hi Benji!

Medialens passed on your email to me and I was grateful for your supportive
comments on the article. I also wanted to make some comment on the questions you
set out.

I think the issue you raise is a very interesting one and one which I also faced
in my research. The issue has definitely scope for a much wider study than I
have made. (My thesis was written on a multi-disciplinary basis, including
primarily media structures as well as migration). However what I have uncovered
has led me to the conclusion that +most+ of the players in the state/economical
elite pursue extremely tight immigration controls for a combination of the
following reasons:

1) Racism. For me this +is+ a major contributing factor. Van Djik’s work on
elite discourse and racism is particularly instructive in this regard. Overt
racism existed freely amongst political parties in the years up until the Second
World War. The political discourse used during parliamentary debates discussing
immigration laws reveals an overt use of racist terminology. Immigrants are
described as “refuse and scum� or “sewage� and are repeatedly referred to as
“diseased.� This reflected the general normality of open racist ideology that
permeated elite political circles in the pre-war period. The British High
Commissioner in South Africa could state, without fear of reprisal that:

“A political equality of white and black is impossible. The white man must rule
because he is elevated by many, many steps above the black man.�

Even at the highest levels, racism formed a respectable discourse. Winston
Churchill, during his term as the UK Prime Minister, declared that there was no
reason to be “apologetic about Anglo-Saxon superiority� for the simple
explanation that “We are superior.� The origin of such racist discourse has, of
course, a long and violent history in the UK and Europe, involving in the case
of the former, the colonial and imperialistic brutalities committed since the
fifteenth century. As Van Dijk points out:

“For centuries, the predominant feature of the political and other elites in
Europe has been the derogation, inferiorization, exploitation, subjugation and
occasional genocide of non-Europeans.�

After the Second World War, various factors, including popular horror expressed
at the explicit racism of the Holocaust, the process of decolonisation and the
civil rights movement in the USA, made overt expressions of racism more of a
political liability, as well as becoming increasingly against the law. Racist
language certainly continued in a non-official context away from the public gaze
but became increasing less prevalent in official discourse. An example of such
discourse and motivations can be seen in the comments of Lord Swinton of the
Commonwealth Relations Office, recorded in 1954:

“If we legislate on immigration, though we can draft it in non-discriminatory
terms, we cannot conceal the obvious fact that the object is to keep out
coloured people. […] [A large coloured community] is certainly no part of the
concept of England or Britain to which British stock throughout the Commonwealth
are attached.�

The discriminatory intent of the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act was borne out
by the comments of the Conservative Home Secretary who privately explained the
Act’s new requirements as follows:

“The great merit of this scheme is that it can be presented as making no
distinction on race or colour […] Although the scheme purports to relate solely
to employment and to be non-discriminatory, the aim is primarily social and its
restrictive effect is intended to, and would in fact, operate on coloured people
almost exclusively.�

The 1971 Immigration Act effectively ended primary immigration from the less
wealthy areas of the Commonwealth by abolishing the distinction between ‘Aliens’
and ‘British Subjects’, whilst just two year later, the inherently racist, as
opposed to practical, nature of this decision was exposed by the complete lack
of government opposition to EEC membership, opening Britain to a potential 200
million people.

As Van Djik points out there are two main channels through which the political
elite in Europe continues to propagate racism in a covert way. Firstly political
debate and subsequent legislation relating to ethnic issues, in particular
immigration, has been confined almost exclusively to the exact stereotypes and
prejudices that fuel racism, and secondly the whole force of political policies
surrounding non-European, or more accurately non-white, immigration, has always
been approached from an exclusionary rather than a welcoming or supporting point
of view.

The UK political elite’s policy record explicitly reflects this observation. The
steady flow of legislation since the 1905 Aliens Act has seen a significant
majority of political debate to concern overtly negative aspects of immigration,
including disease, crime, overcrowding, security, and other such concepts that
fuel racist stereotyping. This has predictably helped to ensure that each piece
of legislation has had, at its base, the goal to reduce the chance of certain
immigrants entering Britain, in most cases explicitly stated as a policy goal.
The historical policy distinctions between minority, non-white immigrants and
other groups, indicates the inherent racism guiding the political agenda.

2) Nationalism. Apart from reflecting the overt and covert racist ideologies of
the political elite, the fuelling of stereotyping also indicates the strong
connection between immigration policies in the UK and Europe and the concept of
nationalism. This has been marked by an obsession with border controls that can
appear totally out of proportion to the financial and demographic effects of
immigration. However once placed into a wider historical context of political
power in Europe a pattern of elite agenda can be seen to emerge. Nationalism has
traditionally been a useful conceptual tool of elites to retain control over
populaces through a process of artificial standardisation, exploiting the human
desire to belong to a group and to measure that membership through defining the
‘other.’ Panayi, in his work on European minorities , views nationalism as a
consequence of changes in the elite levels of society, from kingship to the
control of the bourgeoisie. In this light nationalism was initially used to
“divide proletarians of one nation from those of another and therefore allowing
bourgeois values to become dominant.�

Following industrialisation nationalism began to play a leading role in its
provision of a “home market� and the mobilising of an artificially unified
populace who would work towards the interests of the ruling classes. Later the
concept became popular in persuading the poorer members of society to fight for
the goals and strategies of the political elites.

In term of contemporary European immigration policy, nationalism’s endurance in
the face of the opening of world trade barriers and massively increased global
communication systems can be seen to represent the continued usefulness of this
concept in mobilizing populaces to support the goals of the political elites. As
Räthzel points out:

“Constant preoccupation with refuges and so-called ‘illegal immigrants’ is one
of the few ways through which the nation state can still reproduce itself as a
social agent and prove to a less consenting population that it has things ‘under
control’ and is willing and able to protect its population – not from social
hardships but from a threatening alien force.�

3) The usefulness of Scapegoating for power retention and the continuation of
the status quo (i.e. inequality and elite dominance). This promotion of
disproportionate fears in order to retain respect and control amongst the
populace can also be described as political scapegoating, long recognized as a
common strategy of politicians. In short, it involves the deliberate use of
foreign labour as an excuse or reason for a growth in unemployment or other
social problems, thus diverting attention away from more realistic questions
being asked of governmental policy. Räthzel has explored this concept in greater
detail, linking it in particular with notions of control. She sees the success
of scapegoating as primarily due to its ability to enable the victim (of
unemployment for example) to be transformed from a passive figure to a conscious
social actor, a transformation she calls “the externalisation of internal
conflicts� . This manifests itself in western societies by removing the negative
aspects of control and exclusion that accompany restrictions on the movements of
immigrants and asylum seekers and transforming them into positive personal
aspects of control:

“[…] control of the Other enables the majority to feel in control of their own
fate: internal conflicts like unemployment, housing problems, cultural
conflicts, etc., can be externalised, that is projected on ‘outsiders’ and thus
made the object of political and economic measures and convey the idea that
things are under control.�

Dummet describes the political expolitation of this psychology in
straightforward power terms:

“The principle governing the policies of the Conservative and Labour
Governments, and indeed, with a very few honourable exceptions, of all
Conservative and Labour politicians, has been exactly the same. The objective,
in this case has been to maximise electoral support: to gain votes. This, indeed
has been the principle on which British governments have acted in respect of
would-be immigrants and refugees.�

4) The economic benefits of a large stock of illegal immigrants who are unable
to access union/legal access for employment/wage abuses. You have already
mentioned this so I won’t go into detail! A further pertinent comment is that it
also prevents this immigrant group from gaining any potential democratic rights
with regard to the host country, potentially upsetting the elite status quo.
Incidently on the issue of cheap foreign labour, this can be already directly
accessed +within+ foreign countries by large western multinationals with the
added benefits that working conditions are far from the daily observation of
western populations who might potentially react democratically to prevent such
exploitation. This could be seen to diminish the need for immigration to fulfill
this, whilst lending greater precendent to the other factors mentioned above .

I hope this provides helps in some way. Apologies if I cover ground you already
knew! Thanks once again for the message of support.

Kind regards

Matthew

:: Tony 14:09 [link] ::

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