OFFSHORING: A DEMONSTRATION OF CONSERVATIVE CRUELTY AND XENOPHOBIA

Posted on April 18, 2022 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national, Perspectives and tagged al aqsa, asylum, borders, Boris Johnson, Bosnia, channel, conflict, featured, Home Office, homes for ukraine, immigrant, migrant, migration, Nato, nauru, offshoring, palestine, politics, Priti Patel, racism, refugee, Russia, Rwanda, Syria, uk, Ukraine, UN, UNCHR, war.

by Sarah Edgcumbe

CW: mentions of suicide, sexual assault

The war crime-laden conflict in Syria has not ended; Saudi Arabia (at the time of writing) continues to drop British-made bombs on Yemen; Israel is once again escalating its policy of state-sanctioned slaughter of Palestinians; the Taliban have taken control of Afghanistan, reducing armed violence, but increasing the risk of persecution and repression; Bosnia is teetering on the edge of a relapse into conflict; violence in the Central African Republic is ongoing; human rights abuses in Eritrea and Ethiopia continue. These are merely a few examples of the conflicts and instabilities which blight the lives of civilians who otherwise simply wish to live a life of safety, health and happiness.

Safe routes of asylum to the UK should be available to all who need them, not least because Britain is complicit in an untold number of conflicts and repressive governments around the globe. Yet of all those who require support and protection, only Ukrainian refugees are deserving of such assistance, according to the Conservative government; one clear demonstration is the introduction of the government’s ‘Homes for Ukraine’ scheme. Of course, Ukrainians should be welcomed to the UK – or any other country they’d prefer to claim asylum in – but so should refugees from any other context of conflict or persecution. Just as Russia has obliterated parts of Ukraine leaving a trail of war crimes in its wake, so too has it devastated swathes of Syria. Why then, as a nation, are we willing to be so selective as to who we will welcome as refugees?

THE OTHER SIDE OF HOPE – REVIEW

Posted on February 26, 2022 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged Amer Raawan, borders, featured, fiction, immigrant, Kimia Etemadi, literature, Madalena Daleziou, magazine, Middle Eastern Women's Friendship Group, migration, non-fiction, poetry, Qin Sun Stubis, Radhika Maira Tabrez, refugee, review, short story, the other side of hope.

By Sarah Edgcumbe

To refer to The Other Side of Hope simply as ‘a literary magazine’ feels like an injustice. It is a beautiful, complex and painful collection of short stories, non-fiction and poems written and edited by refugees and immigrants. Having recently finished reading my copy, I find myself contemplating the journeys portrayed between the covers of the magazine days later. My mind wanders back to the melancholic ending of the fictional story ‘the Proposal’ by Qin Sun Stubis, or the heart-wrenching experiences of perpetual displacement, racism and otherness experienced by the protagonist of the poem ‘Engelestân’ by Kimia Etemadi. The Other Side of Hope is more than a magazine – it constitutes a tool for building empathy, for generating understanding, and an avenue through which to become immersed in the lives of refugees and immigrants for a brief, yet emotive period of time.

ITALY STILL COMPLICIT IN THE ABUSE OF MIGRANTS IN LIBYA

Posted on May 5, 2021 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged abuse, border control, borders, detention centres, EU, featured, human rights, human trafficking, irregular migration, Italy, Libya, Matteo Salvini, migrant rights, migrants, migration, refugees, UN.

by Alessandra Arpaia

CW: abuse, sexual assault, drowning, death.

Last month Italian Prime Minister and former European Central Bank president, Mario Draghi, took his first trip abroad since he assumed office. He chose to visit Libya, and met with Libyan president Abdel Hamid Mohamed Dbeibeh to discuss the countries’ economic ties and cooperation on tackling irregular immigration. During his visit, Draghi congratulated the Libyan government on their work over recent years in stemming the movement of migrants who leave Libya’s coast in hope of finding refuge in Europe.

The truth is, and as many investigations have shown, Libya’s ‘rescue missions’ out at sea often result in the transportation of people to Libyan detention camps notorious for their human rights violations.

ANOTHER HIGHER EDUCATION IS ALREADY HERE – BEYOND TUITION FEES #8

Posted on May 12, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged 1963 Robbins Report, 1997 Dearing Report, 2010 Browne Review, academics, administrators, adult education, AntiUniversity NOW, authority, Beyond Tuition Fees, borders, capitalism, competition, corbyn, course closures, employability, featured, Free Education, grading, grassroots, higher education, Labour, Leicester Vaughan College, mental illness, metrics, Mondragon Unibertsitatea, nationalism, neoliberalism, privatisation, privilege, radical imagination, social inequality, Solidarity Acadamies, state funding, student debt, student loans, students, teaching, tuition fees, UCU strike, uk, Universidad de la Tierra, universities, university management, workers rights, workplace abuse.

By Sarah Amsler

It is a time of extraordinary potential for change in UK Higher Education. Labour’s promise to end tuition fees has defied the critics and united many behind Corbyn’s political project. But what will the implications for universities be if this comes to pass? And what can we do to leverage this progress? In this series, the Norwich Radical and Bright Green are bringing together perspectives from across the sector to explore these questions.

‘The university’ is a fertile space within which to practice radical imagining and world-making today. I do not mean that actually-existing universities, in the UK or elsewhere, necessarily provide space for such work. On the contrary, there is ample evidence that the spaces for critique and creative thinking in higher education have shrunk as forces of commodity fetishism, privatisation, competition and authoritarian modes of control have permeated university governance. Continue Reading

FREEING EDUCATION FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS – BEYOND TUITION FEES #5

Posted on April 25, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged academic staff, activism, apathy, Beyond Tuition Fees, borders, Community, consumerism, culture, diversity, economy, elitism, Free Education, government, higher education, individualism, international students, internationalism, jeremy corbyn, Labour, learning, lecturers, maintenance loans, marketisation, migration, politics, privatisation, solidarity, stress, student debt, tef, theresa may, Tories, tuition fees, UCU, UEA, USS strikes.

By Lotty Clare

We face many challenges as students in 2018. Painfully high tuition fees along with eye-watering maintenance loans means that lower income students will leave university with over £50,000 of debt. Bafflingly, Prime Minister Theresa May only recently came to the realisation that poorer students are getting deterred from going into higher education. By contrast, the Labour Party’s promises to scrap tuition fees and bring back maintenance grants are of course a welcome relief for many prospective students – UK national students that is. Labour have seemingly barely considered the possibility of doing the same for international students. At the University of East Anglia, non-EU international students pay about £14,800 annually, on top of having to prove that they have access to thousands of pounds for living costs. If education is a right, why are we privileging wealthier international students in this way? What would Britain look like if we abolished or at least dramatically reduced fees for international students?

REVIEW: ILLEGAL – BY UEA ALUMNUS, JOHN DENNEHY

Posted on August 5, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged borders, creative non fiction, Creative Nonfiction, Ecuador, illegal, Illegal Book, immigrant, immigration, John Dennehy, Latacunga, migration, UEA, UEA Alumnus.

by Hannah Rose

“All kinds of people are captured by nations and borders, and every one of them has a story to tell.”

The topic of immigration has been a defining feature of European politics in recent times. Between January 2015 and October 2016 around 7000 people were camped in ‘The Jungle’, Calais – in woodland, ditches and fields, waiting for an opportunity to leave mainland Europe and enter the UK. Of this 7000, 62% were young men under 40 of non-European origin, and, according to the Help Refugees census, 761 were children. The images of these young people living in appalling conditions, seeking any means possible to cross the Channel were broadcast on news streams around the world. The British tabloid press called them the “swarm”; an “influx”. When thousands of refugees fleeing conflicts in the Middle East broke through the Horgos border between Hungary and Croatia in September 2015, the Hungarian police used teargas and water cannons to keep them back. These examples tell us that when humans move en masse, they cease to be human in the eyes of the authorities and the sensationalist press. Our values — the border between kindness and cruelty — has been interrogated like never before in our generation.

THOUGHTS FROM THE FENCES – YARL’S WOOD & THE IMPORTANCE OF IMMIGRANT RIGHTS

Posted on May 18, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national, Student and tagged #GE2017, abuse, asylum seekers, austerity, borders, Brexit, Britain, British values, crime, cuts, deportation, depression, detention, detention centres, dignity, education, empowerment, government, harassment, hate crime, healthcare, Home Office, homophobia, Hostile Environment Policy, human rights, hunger strike, immigration, immigration law, immigration raids, international students, intimidation, kidnapping, law, legal aid, LGBT+, migrants, migration, money, Movement for Justice, norwich, POC, prison, privatisation, protest, queer, racism, rape, scapegoating, self harm, Serco, solicitors, solidarity, Stansted airport, student activism, students, suicide, survivors, theresa may, tolerance, trauma, tuition fees, UEA, violence, welfare, women, women's rights, work, Yarl's Wood.

by Lotty Clare

Content warning: mentions violence against women, abuse, rape, self-harm, suicide, racism, harassment, homophobia.

Last Saturday, a group of UEA students and Norwich residents travelled to a protest at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in Bedfordshire. This protest was the fifth Movement for Justice by Any Means Necessary (MFJ) has organised to shut down detention centres. As I approached the building, hidden inside an industrial estate, surrounded by fields, in the middle of nowhere, it was just as intimidating and depressing as 6 months ago when I went to Yarl’s Wood for the first time. It looks like a prison, except that it is ‘worse than prison, because you have no rights’, as former detainee Aisha Shua put it. Some women are in Yarl’s Wood because their visa expired, others because their asylum claim was unsuccessful. They have committed no crime. And yet they can be detained there indefinitely.

YARL’S WOOD

Posted on May 18, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Arts, Perspectives and tagged borders, Britain, creative writing, deportation, detention, detention centres, Europe, gov.uk, government, hatred, Home Office, human rights, immigration, love, migrants, migration, Movement for Justice, read women, survivors, theresa may, violence, women, women's rights, Yarl's Wood.

by Alison Graham

Content warning: mentions violence against women, rape.

Britain has the greatest area of land dedicated to the indefinite detention of human beings in Europe. This is legal.

See:

A former inmate looks at the place in which her back was physically, literally, broken and says don’t give up. Women thread flowers through this border within a border within a border. The border is admitted only by the letters IRC. Green paint flecks cling to the toes of your boots. On a hill do not question whether the people with the kite-fluttering hands can see you.

Instead:

Is it rare to recall dreams. Where can I find this on gov.uk. If the guards are rapists what does that make the walls. How do you resist the lines you were born the right side of. How do you resist. Can love and hatred happen at the same time, and transform you equally. Are there two kinds of hatred. How about three. How about in the same place, at the same time. And built into the container itself – the beige, the smallness of the windows, the low shade of the roof, the two fields away from the road where no one is living. How are you. Do you need water. Can you read the sign from that window. Is this your first time. When will we deport Theresa. Is there a postcode for here. Have they repainted the fence. Is it really violent to kick it so that it thunders. Who is bringing the smoke flares next time, and in what colour. Do you need water. How do you resist. Is it violence when your window looks over an unreachable place, when that unreachable place is so blooming. Is it when everything is glass and unbreakable. What is the consensus on winding yourself at a border with a child’s party toy to say in a way I make noise therefore you are. Are there two kinds of hatred. How about four. How about one for each piece of sand on a beach in southeast Europe. Do you need water. Is this your first time. Is it violent. When this is all over, will people laugh at the theory of lying flowers on a has-been border, as if it were a wrist.

Featured Image credit: Jan McLachan

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BRITAIN’S FUTURE PROSPERITY REQUIRES REVOLUTION. A RENEWABLES REVOLUTION.

Posted on December 14, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged borders, Britain, british politics, climate, climate change, climate crisis, coal, community energy, ecotricity, electricity, emissions, energy, environment, environmental, environmental sustainability, environmentalism, gas, immigration, international, inter|national, migration, nuclear, oil, ovo, renewable, renewable energy, solar, Sports Direct, wind, work, workers.

By Natasha Senior

It’s high time we talked about our future. Forget about border control or the free market, they offer no insight. If we want this tumultuous, divisive year to mean something, we need to think bigger, bolder and shape our decisions around our vision. Let’s talk about an end to the draconian sweatshop conditions, imposed by the likes of Sports Direct, who have exploited free movement of labour to keep profits high and wages low. Immigration control is a quick fix and a distraction. They will always find a way to exploit and profit. What if instead we did away with these common low-skilled low-wage jobs, altogether. What if we put our faith in British industry again, but instead of labourers going down into the stuffy pits, lining their lungs with coal dust, they were breathing the cool, crisp air on the surface on a wind farm. I am talking about creating a thriving, prosperous renewable energy industry.Continue Reading

borders

OFFSHORING: A DEMONSTRATION OF CONSERVATIVE CRUELTY AND XENOPHOBIA

by Sarah Edgcumbe

THE OTHER SIDE OF HOPE – REVIEW

By Sarah Edgcumbe

ITALY STILL COMPLICIT IN THE ABUSE OF MIGRANTS IN LIBYA

FREEING EDUCATION FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS – BEYOND TUITION FEES #5

REVIEW: ILLEGAL – BY UEA ALUMNUS, JOHN DENNEHY

THOUGHTS FROM THE FENCES – YARL’S WOOD & THE IMPORTANCE OF IMMIGRANT RIGHTS

YARL’S WOOD

BRITAIN’S FUTURE PROSPERITY REQUIRES REVOLUTION. A RENEWABLES REVOLUTION.

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