transnational europe I
migration across southern/eastern borders
International Symposium
University of Crete, Rethymno (Island of Crete, Greece)
21. – 24. 10. 2004
Abstracts
An Architektur, Nicolas Bell, Yann Moulier Boutang, Olivier Clochard, Helmut Dietrich, Dana Diminescu, Dyktio, Dost je!, GISTI, Ahmet Icduygu, indyestrecho-malaga, Kanak Attak/Society for Legalisation, Andrej Kurnik, Labor k3000, Steki Metanaston, Sandro Mezzadra, 9th Sans-Papier' Collective, no border, Dimitris Parsanoglou, Miltos Pavlou, Physicians for Human Rights, Enrica Rigo, Tavola di Migranti, The refugees initiative group, Brandenburg, Georgios Tsiakalos, Asha Varadharajan, William Walters, Zelimir Zilnik
Georgios Tsiakalos, Department of Primary Education, Aristotle University
of Thessaloniki; Nikos Poulantzas Society, Athens
Zelimir Zilnik, TRANSIT MIGRATION, Film-maker, Novi Sad
Dimitris Parsanoglou, EHESS, Paris
The Olympic Games and new sites of the migration regime
A veteran Greek footballer exclaimed after the defeat of the Greek national football team – hence European champion – from the Albanian national team that "the nation of workers beat the nation of the bosses". This provocative declaration came just after the incidents provoked by Greek "supporters" in the occasion of the celebration of the Albanian victory by Albanian migrants in several Greek cities. Incidents which led to the murder of an Albanian migrant in the island of Zakynthos by a Greek-American. On the other hand, the Albanian Prime Minister Fatos Nano declared after the match that "Albanian migrants in Greece constructed the ‘Olympic miracle’ of Athens and the victory of the Albanian team was the contribution of the Albanian nation to the Olympic spirit".
Apart from the sports events evoked above we can rather easily outline the sociological and ideological background hidden behind these developments. On the one hand, the undoubted transnational space between Greece and Albania, created gradually after the mass Albanian emigration, takes a much more expanded dimension which affects both societies in the "internal" level: in fact, it is not a mere question of interstate relations, but rather a differentiated perception of a partly "common space" where the migrants and their social action and mobility is the common thread that links internally the two societies. On the other hand, the new Greek nationalism-racism, which found its clearest and most aggressive expression during the incidents mentioned above, lies upon the ideological construction of "powerful Greece", whereas migrant workforce is needed, but only as such. Fear – xenophobia is a very accurate definition here – has given place to the "arrogance of the exploiter".
The 2004 Olympic Games in Athens have been an occasion for Greek state to restructure and implement a new security regime as well as to experiment with new work types and relations. In this restructuring migrants have been a crucial (latent or not) factor.
In addition to the extra security measures applied for the Games, a series of surveillance systems and police force are here to stay. One of the potential targets of this "surveillance boom" are the migrants (undocumented and not only) as well as members of groups susceptible – according to the Authorities – to transgressing behaviour (drug addicted, beggars, homeless and others).
In the field of work conditions and relations, the immigrants were – once again – the first to experiment on, since nearly the 80% of workers in the public works concerning the Games were migrants who worked in a special regime including the working and security conditions.
With this paper we will try to present the first results of a qualitative research made upon migrant workers in the Olympic worksites. Questions like job-seeking processes where informal networks represent a major factor, working and security conditions which provoked a series of protest mobility, hierarchy and racialisation of work, control and regulation on the worksite have concerned our field research. Relations developed in workplace between workers of different ethnic background as much as class consciousness and action, with regard to the global labour movement, are also in the focus of our survey.
Working mobility in rather intensified working conditions can provide us with some important insights about a specific paradigm of "exogenous" workforce regulation and mobility.
Dimitris Parsanoglou is a PhD canditate in Sociology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Hies field of research is the contemporary immigration to Greece with regard to the topics of work and residential/spatial conditions of migrants in the city of Athens. He also participated in a survey conducted by EUMC on migrant experiences of discrimination in Greece and conducted a research on migrants who have worked in the olympic worksites on behalf of the Centre for the Support of Migrants and Refugees. Finally, in the framework of his Master he worked on the implications of the discourse on multiculturalism in social theory.
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Ahmet Icduygu, Department of International Relations, Koc University, Istanbul
The uncertain Migration: The Case of 'Transit'
The phenomenon of transit migration has received considerable interest in the last ten years, from about the time of globalization became a popular concept. This coincidence is often interpreted causally: global restructuring generates or amplifies some irregular migratory flows, and in turn, the irregular movement of people across borders is an indication of the globalizing world. The purpose of this paper is to contextualize transit migration within the framework of globalization and, without reducing it to a simple globalization-irregular migration it aims to provide a detailed and comprehensive analysis of transit migration in a historical and structural way.
As Castles and Kosack (1985: 27)1 argues that the push factors form a 'permissive factor' which causes migration once the 'dynamic factor' of labour demand elsewhere becomes obvious. Moreover, Lee (1969: 285)2 highlights the importance of a set of intervening obstacles between the push and pull factors, as we observed in the contemporary regimes of international migratory flows, which led to the formation of uncertain settings of migration such as the case of transit. For instance, international migratory flows directed to the 'centers' such as Western Europe, North America, or Australia, tend to include a significant proportions of migrants who first come to the 'peripheral' or 'semi-peripheral' zones such as the Mediterranean Basin, the Central America, or South-East Asia, intending to enter the targeted 'centers' from these zones. There is no doubt that this type of 'transit' migration signifies an environment of uncertainty for all main actors of the international migratory regimes (IMRs) (Icduygu, 2000)3.
Drawing on the empirical case of the transit migration in the Mediterranean Basin as it attaches to the European IMRs, this paper explores the ways in which very nature of transit migration has shaped an environment of uncertainty for both the transit migrants and the countries of transit. It does so by examining the politics of IMRs in the region. The analysis in this paper examines the formation of transit migration in the context of center-periphery modeling. Such structural analysis helps in assessing the dynamics and mechanisms of transit migration in its totality, and relates them to the wider context of IMRs under consideration.
1) Castles, S. and Kosack, G. (1985) Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe, 2nd Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2) Lee, E. (1969) 'A Theory of Migration' in J.A. Jackson (ed.) Migration, London: Cambridge University Press, pp. 282-297.
3= Icduygu, A. (2000) 'The Politics of International Migratory Regimes: Transit Migration Flows in Turkey', International Journal of Social Sciences, 165: 357-367).
Ahmet Icduygu: Ph.D. Australian National University, Australia, 1991. Associate Professor, Dept. of International Relations, College of Administrative Sciences and Economics, Koc University. Director, Migration Research Program at Koc University. Served as Associate Professor, and Associate Chairperson of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Bilkent University. Had been a Research Fellow at Stockholm University (1991-1992), Visiting Fellow at the University of Warwick (1998-2000), and Research Fellow and Visiting Professor at University of Manchester (1999-2000). Currently serves as the national correspondent of Turkey to the SOPEMI-OECD, Paris, and as a member of the International Advisory Board of Mediterranean Migratory Observatory, Athens. Teaches on the theories and practices of citizenship, civil society, nationalism and ethnicity, migration, and research methods.
In addition to his several articles in such journals such as International Migration, International Social Science Journal, Global Governance, Middle Eastern Studies, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Population and Environment, Human Rights Quarterly, Citizenship Studies, Journal of Scientific Studies of Religion, Mediterranean Quarterly, and Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, has a forthcoming book, Challenges to Citizenship in a Globalizing World, co-edited with Fuat Keyman (Routledge, 2004).
His most recent research is on (1) the mechanisms and dynamics of irregular migration and its labor consequences, (2) the anatomy of transit migration, and (3) the question of how individual citizens experience and perceive their own citizenship in various social settings.
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Helmut Dietrich, Research Centre for Migration and Refuge, Berlin
External EU Border: Enlargement in the East, Blocking the South?
Irregular Migration and the Geopolitics of Wealth and Poverty
During the nineties of the last century Germany's eastern border was the laboratory of a new border regime. High technology, control of a large border zone, transborder cooperation of police – these are the technological issues of the new fortress Europe. The political aspects that we came across at the German eastern border are disturbing: Most of the refugees and migrants that were arrested by the border police were not victims of the technological barrier. Rather the local population had denunciated them going by phenotypical appearances. By hunting strangers, many citizens of the former GDR wanted to confirm their place in the enlarged Germany and in the western welfare system.
For our research this was a pointer for understanding the social dimensions of the border. We learned that the transborder migration is one of the great issues of our time, because it raises questions about the geopolitical order of wealth and poverty, of stability and war. The external border that highly industrialised countries created in the Nineties is nothing else than a wall: a spatial answer to the global social question.
The history tells us that social movements are very dynamic and that they generally do not obey the lines of battle state set in advance. Social movements have to a certain degree their own way of doing. For migrant´s mapping, the external border is not the main marker of the territory. More important are addresses of relatives and friends in the highly industrialised countries.
Social research has to mistrust the arguments of border security and has to look for a broader context. What does it mean: the migrant as an enemy of the global security system?
In the Nineties, the concept of the enemy was: irregular migrants and refugees are trafficked people. It was alleged that the very phantomatic organized crime rules the irregular migration from abroad. In a historical perspective it is obvious that this thinking was a product of western Europe: the States of the EU wanted to control some phenomena of the transformation process in eastern Europe. This period is in decline. The enlargement of the EU results in a regularisation of eastern migration and in a reduction of organized-crime-hysteria. The new eastern border of the EU is also characterized by high technology and control of a large border zone. But a space schedule for all eastern Europe countries is emerging. Their is space for gradualism of any kind, between new States of the EU, future States of the EU, and other States. Wealth and poverty are managed by this graduation.
At the southern external border, in the Mediterranean region, there is no EU-enlargement. On request of the EU, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt and others signed readmission agreements as Poland and the Czech Republic did many years ago. This servile acting resulted in travelling without visa obligation for Polish or Czech citizens – the Mediterranean Partners did the same but received nothing for their citizens. It seems that for years to come their is a blockage of legal mobility in the Mediterranean basin. Young people find no other way than to cross the see border as irregular migrants and as boat people, and thousands of them perished in the last decade. The Mediterranean See is a continental barrier between wealth and poverty – and it is the biggest mass grave of Europe in the post war period.
In face of the sharp southern border, the concept of the enemy has changed. Now it is linked with antiterrorism. The G5 – Spain, France, Italy, Germany, United Kingdom – established at their conferences that boat people and islamic terrorists are backed by the same networks in the southern Mediterranean. New police units are formed, they have to combat at the same time irregular migration and islamic terrorism – with the same methods?
Linking migration with organized crime or with islamic terrorism – is it only a question of labelling or a qualitative difference? What is the impact of these concepts of the enemy on the life of migrants and refugees?
Structure:
I. The making of irregular migration
II. Migrants from the East: danger of organised crime?
III. Migrants from the South: danger of terrorism?
IV. External border in Eastern Europe – graduation of space and time
V. External border in the Mediterranean basin – a sharp contrast of wealth and poverty
Helmut Dietrich: Member of FFM (Forschungsgesellschaft Flucht und Migration – Research Center Migration and Refugees)
FFM was founded 10 years ago in Berlin, in face of the near eastern border of Germany and the new border regime of the fortress Europe. In our projects we combine research and activism. We have published books, booklets and articles about the situation of refugees and migrants. The publication encompasses following subjects: Polish-German border / Poland / Romania / Ukraine / Detention centers in Poland and the Czech Republic / Italy / Morocco / EU-Enlargement and new external borders / EU-Policy of detention and camps.
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Nicolas Bell, European Civic Forum, Limans
Miltos Pavlou, KEMO – Research Centre for Minority Groups, Athens
Institutional Racism and ‘migration regime’ in Greece
The Greek state administrative and legislative practices are examined under the formation and emerging of an institutional racism as a main tool for migration policy. In this way a number of common and legitimized bureaucratic and policy implementation quasi-legislative practices, as well as inexistent-‘virtual’ policy measures, constitute the Greek ‘migration regime’, which emerges as a composite of old and new exclusion tools, for raising or preserving social borders in the state vs migrants undeclared war/crisis.
Examples of the different aspects and expressions of such regime, of border building and institutional racism practices by the state, are given; from education to the residence permit and asylum system.
A further hypothesis is advanced about the functionality and the strategic use of the modern state’s "migration crisis/war" and its ‘collateral effects’, into the process of redefining social and power relations and transforming rights to renegotiable privileges.
Miltos Pavlou is a Sociologist, Member of Research Centre for Minority Groups – KEMO-Greece; Board Member of the Hellenic League for Human Rights – HLHR; Member of Research group on Exclusion & Dominance Structures – REDS-Greece.
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Andrej Kurnik, Department of Political Sciences, University of Ljubljana
Political Constitution and Struggle – The Case of the Erased in Slovenia
Slovene political and academic circles in majority consider the question of erased as marginal. Even those that support their struggle often denounce the erasure as the last obstacle for the righteous state to bloom. Only right wing nationalists and erased themselves understand the political centrality of it. Former by saying that the justice for erased would mean the attack on the basic constitutional charter, latter by understanding that there is no end to the crisis, just perpetual crisis management. The regularization of 18305 persons should not be a big problem for a state of two millions, but it proved to be an insurmountable obstacle.
The question of erased and the movement of erased can be an efficient analytical tool to understand some seemingly paradoxes. Such as: the power established through mechanisms of exclusion and homogenization characteristic for modern political constitution was smoothly integrated into the postmodern network power in the era of globalization; borders and border regime of the new nation state were easily reloaded in the borders and border regime of the EU.
Starting from the movement of erased it is possible to understand these paradoxes. Erased are migrants that did not comply. Sedentariness and compliance seems to be the qualities of power, migration and dignity its enemies. Even in the era of globalization. The power that can be studied in relation to erased does not annihilate. It constitutes relations of dominance. While nationalists say erasure was legitimate, the proponents of human rights socialize erased into relations of paternalism and patronage. And these are two faces of the same power. It erases and than it socializes. But there is an alternative in this perpetual crisis. The movement of erased poses the question how to be "inscribed without being inscribed". This demand pushes toward the definition of new horizon. The movement of erased define the necessity of political re-composition and present the struggle for new political constitution in which to realize rights and to retain dignity. Well beyond the constitution of nation state or EU.
Andrej Kurnik is a teaching assistant on the Departement of Political Sciences on the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana. As an activist he is involved in the network Dost je!
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William Walters, Department of Political Science, Carleton University, Ottawa
Theorizing Anti-Immigration Policy: Genealogy and Geopolitics
What can Foucault’s method of "genealogy" bring to the study of contemporary anti-immigration policy in Europe? What contribution can it make to the political task of unsettling and denaturalizing identities like the "illegal immigrant", and the regimes of power in which these figures circulate? The paper will explore the potential of genealogy by means of a particular theme: the geopolitics of migration control. This geopolitical dimension of migration control is linked to the formal end of colonialism and the globalization of the nation-state form. This has led Western governments to seek ways of involving impoverished but formally independent states in the management of global migration. A central feature of the so-called "campaign against illegal immigration" promoted by Western states and international agencies is, therefore, a set of techniques and strategies to implicate "sending" and "transit" countries in the governance of transnational im/mobility.
William Walters is Associate Professor of Political Science at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He is interested in critical theories of governance, power and regulation. His current research focus is the genealogy of illegal immigration in Western Europe. He is the co-author (with Jens Henrik Haahr) of Governing Europe: Discourse, Governmentality and European Integration (Routledge 2005) and the co-editor (with Wendy Larner) of Global Governmentality (Routledge 2004). His previous publications include the book Unemployment and Government: Genealogies of the Social (Cambridge University Press 2000).
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Olivier Clochard, Migrinter, University of Poitiers
Labor k3000, TRANSIT MIGRATION, Zurich
MigMap – A Virtual Cartography of the European Border and Migration Regime
The MigMap project focuses on the research and development of cartographic methods and mapping strategies suitable for illustrating constantly changing constellations – such as social and political processes – on a dynamic and interactive "map". The MigMap project emerged from a collaboration between Labor k3000 and the research team of TRANSIT MIGRATION, and is based on results and insights gained through research. On the basis of a dynamic data stock and with the help of IT tools, a new form of cartography is to be developed that represents the migration and border regime of the EU, one that is becoming increasingly differentiated. If we grasp the border not as a stable line surrounding national territories, but as a social and discursive space of negotiation in which not only the policies of the various state actors play a role but also the transnational movements of migrants, this necessitates the development of a new, adequate and dynamic method of description and representation. In the MigMap project, cartography is applied as an artistically motivated strategy of a specific form of knowledge production and distribution that does not (re)produce territorial borders, but instead visualises the social space of the border regime and brings the transformation of the nation-state into a textual and visual narrative. MigMap intends to produce a new "point of view" that takes into account the politics of improvisation and the new forms of an increasingly denationalised government.
Within the frame of the Crete symposium, we would like to introduce the MigMap project, contribute several general considerations on the strategies of mapping, and start a discussion with all participants on possible collaborative structures with regard to realising the map during the course of 2005.
Labor k3000 was founded in 1997 by artists, cultural and media producers from the field of experimental music, video, film and multimedia, as well as journalists and theorists. Labor k3000 is a virtual, analogue, and social platform for developing diverse cultural and media projects. Labor k3000 examines current social dynamics, produces series of events, reflects upon and questions the role of the media, and develops forms of visualisation relevant to the present, from graphics and exhibition projects to Internet sites and publications in the field of culture. Labor k3000 has been publishing the internationally received culture fanzine k-bulletin at irregular intervals since 1998.
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An Architektur, TRANSIT MIGRATION, Berlin
An Architektur - cartographic approach and practice
Cartography is a way of conceiving, analysing and structuring the human world, cartography takes part in the production of space by defining territories and influencing the perception and experience of space. Maps are the result of a process of selection, reduction, distortion, connection and schematisation, thus maps are not neutral, they have always a perspective, an aim, an ideology.
An Architektur considers mapping as a tool for detecting invisible or unconscious spatial structures, for relating social and political forces to geography and the existing built environment. "Geography of a Border: Sangatte" (An Architektur 03, 2002) was an investigation of the spatial structures of Sangatte refugee camp in Calais (France), "US Naval Base Guantanamo Bay" (An Architektur 04, 2003) and "Exterritorries and Camps" (contribution to Territories exhibition) examine the legal prepercussions of exterritorial spaces being used as a possible testing ground for the erosion of human rights in the "war on terrorism". In "Geography of the Detention Center Fürth" (An Architektur 12, 2004) An Architektur used maps as a means of depicting the german asylum and camp system, the spatial conditions of refugee centers as well as the personal routes and social relations of migrants.
The Project for trans-it! Migration is a cooperation of An Architektur and the Forschungszentrum Flucht und Migration, FFM (Research Centre for Refugees and Migration). It investigates the effects of the enlargement of the European Union on the border region East Poland / Belarus, focussing on the changing patterns of migration and border-traffic as well as the new strategy in migration policy: the outsourcing of refugee camps to the external border and beyond. Mappings are going to trace local realities of refugee centers and the effects of the new border situation. An Architektur seeks to challenge the vision of „Fortress Europe" and its visual and cartographic representations.
An Architektur: The magazine AnArchitektur - production and use of built environment is published bi-annually. It considers itself as a discursive architectural practise, analysing spatial conditions and the inherent concepts of society. In its issues An Architektur relates socio-poltical questions to architecture and planning with the examples of specific places and situations. Also subjects, that are exclusively discussed within the fields of architecture and planning are supposed to be related to its political and social implications and effects on everyday practice. The magazine issues are based on research, spatial mappings and interviews; often the subjects are being presented and discussed in exhibitions, public panels and conferences.
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Enrica Rigo, Naples
Citizenship at Europe’s borders. Some reflections on the post-colonial condition of Europe in the context of EU enlargement
This article proposes a critical approach to European citizenship through the analysis of the legal dispositives which define the external borders of Europe in the context of EU enlargement. It examines the deterritorialisation of the EU’s external and internal borders through an analysis of the immigration laws of Poland, Romania and Bulgaria which have all been recently modified in order to meet the requirements of the Schengen aquis. By comparing these legislative changes with the legal mechanisms of colonial systems, the article suggests that the material process of the constitutionalisation of EU citizenship highlights a post-colonial condition of the European polity.
Enrica Rigo is doctor in Philosophy of Law, Social and Political Theory at the Faculty of Law, Naples University Federico II.
In 2003-2004 she was Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute European Forum: Constitutionalism in Europe, where she conducted a research project entitled: The external borders of European citizenship in the context of EU enlargement. The research examines the transformation of EU borders with special regard to the issue of people trans-border mobility (case studies Poland, Romania and Bulgaria).
Since 1999 she has been working in a drop-in centre in Naples that specializes in providing legal advice to migrants. She is one of the founders of this service, and she has also taken part in numerous projects and campaigns locally and nationally organized by the Italian anti-racism movement.
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Asha Varadharajan, Queen’s University, Toronto
Contentious Spaces, Civil Stratagems: The Crisis of Citizenship
This project examines disciplinary concepts and historical practices of citizenship in order to envision concrete forms of political community, alternative modes of civic engagement and responsibility, and inventive "strategies of civility" (Etienne Balibar's phrase).1 My focus is less on formulating a definition of citizenship (though one is certainly at stake) than on elaborating the historical conjunctures and structural preconditions for its current and future democratic articulation. If the ideology of the nation state (its territorial integrity, narrative of cultural stability, and temporal homogeneity) has hitherto defined the limits of citizenship and cannot be readily consigned to obsolescence, the circulation of bodies, commodities, and information in a global economy poses its own set of brutal exclusions and demands a necessarily incomplete cosmopolitics of citizenship, one that responds to the singular flux of a borderless world.2
NOTE: I intend to explore the currency, value, and affect of concepts such as "multitude," "civility," "bio-political," "bare life," "the inoperative community," to name only a few, beyond their heuristic function in the discourse of citizenship. If I am able to acquire the videos and texts in question, I hope to deploy contemporary art, cinema, and performance in the interests of posing alternatives to the reigning concepts of both conservative and radical discourse and public policy. I believe that the conflict of representations that animates these works addresses the lived realities, metaphorical connotations, and utopian possibilities of the traffic across borders, between domestic and global spaces, in bodies and sexualities, and between history, identity, and economy. Srinivas Krishna and Guillermo Gomez-Pêna (Indo-Canadian film maker and Mexican-American performance artist respectively) make the female and indigenous body the site of the excoriation of ethnography in the interests of a radical transnationalism, Sigalit Landau (German-Israeli video artist) uses abandoned, transient abodes and the vulnerable surfaces of her own body to articulate a politics of violence and civility, Sidi Larbi Cherkouai (Belgian-Moroccan choreographer) turns dance into the theatre of his imagination of a new Europe, and Nilita Vachani (Indo-American filmmaker) transforms the narrative of a Filipino domestic worker in Greece into a reflection on the paradox of international mobility and domestic confinement that (en)genders the EEC. I hope these cultural examples will complicate or challenge prevalent models of citizenship, migration, and ethnicity as well as generate ways of grappling with the ambivalences of agency and repression produced therein.
1) Etienne Balibar, "Outlines of a Topography of Cruelty: Citizenship and Civility in the Era of Global Violence," Constellations, 8.1 (2001): 15-29.
2) See Michael J. Shapiro, "National Times and Other Times: Re-Thinking Citizenship," Cultural Studies 14.1 (2000): 79-98. Jean-Luc Nancy's The Inoperative Community, trans. Peter Connor, et al. University of Minnesota Press, 1991 is Shapiro's exemplar.
Asha Varadharajan is Associate Professor of English at Queen's University,
Canada and currently Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced
Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh. She is the author of
Exotic Parodies: Subjectivity in Adorno, Said, and Spivak (University of
Minnesota Press, 1995). Her research attempts to produce an integrative
approach to the study of globalizations and of fundamentalisms rather than see
each as the "regressive opposite of the other." She hopes that such an
approach will produce alternative forms of civil society and practices of civil
disobedience.
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Yann Moulier Boutang, Université de Technologie de Compiègne et Institut d’Etudes politiques de Paris
His main subjects of interest are international migrations and public policies, slavery (Cuba and Brazil, South Africa, US), labor economics, immaterial labour, discrimination and racism transformation of entrepreneurship and firms, transformations of the salariate system, property rights and freesoftware in the knowledge-based capitalism, governance of productive territories, of cities, form of collaboration in social sciences (HyperNietzsche Project of Paolo d'Iorio), political philosophy, architecture, and federalism.
Yann Moulier Boutang is a professor of economics, and also a philsopher and a writer. He teaches economics at the University of Technology of Compiègne, UTC, France. He teaches also human ressources management at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, and economic analysis of local social policies in the university of Caen in Normandy. He runs the French Review MULTITUDES. He is also member of the editorial board of the Review Traces (published in English, japanese, corean, chinese). He is a member of the French Green.
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Sandro Mezzadra, Department of Political Sciences, University of Bologna
Autonomy of migration. Preliminary remarks to the development of a new theoretical framework
The presentation will focus in its first part on the challenges coming from the actual development of migration theory and migration studies on the international level. Such "hydraulic" theoretical models as the "push and pull theory" seem to experience a deep crisis when confronted with contemporary global migration. The role migrants play in the production of new transnational social spaces and in new political, social and even economic networks is recognized by a growing number of scholars. The aim of the presentation is to outline some of the features of a possible new theoretical framework, trying to link this role with a critical understanding of the transformations of citizenship, labor market, and "class composition" in the global age.
Sandro Mezzadra teaches at the University of Bologna. His fields of research are the history of political ideas, and political theory. In recent years he has worked especially on the relation between globalization, citizenship and migration. As an activist, he has been involved in the organization of the first day of action against the G8 meeting in Genoa (July 19th 2001), centered on the issue of migrants’ rights, and in the foundation of the "migrants’ board" of the Italian social forums.
Among his publications: Diritto di fuga. Migrazioni, cittadinanza, globalizzazione, Verona, Ombre corte, 2001; Né qui, né altrove — Migration, Detention, Desertion: A Dialogue, in «Borderlands, e-journal» Volume 2, Number 1, 2003 (with Brett Neilson). He is the Editor of Corpi Migranti. Per una lettura politica delle migrazioni contemporanee, Roma, DeriveApprodi, in print.
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Dana Diminescu, Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris
Le difficile exercice de la libre circulation
La perspective de concevoir le migrant dans un système global de mobilités s'inscrit dans une démarche sociologique encore tâtonnante. Si l'idée selon laquelle ce qui définit le monde contemporain c'est la circulation1, est largement accepté dans les sciences humaines contemporaines, les théories migrationistes semblent s'entraver dans une vision qui continue de séparer mobilités des migrants et mobilités des sédentaires, les trajectoires migratoires des parcours urbains, les circulations transnationales et les mouvements de proximité, etc. Or, il nous semble que cette manière de concevoir les déplacements des gens est inadaptée à un monde atteint par une mobilité généralisée et par une complexification sans précédent de la communication. Au-delà de l'opposition entre migrant/sédentaire, mobile/immobile, enraciné/déraciné, présent/absent, se construisent de fines graduations qui incitent à repenser les déplacements des migrants (aussi bien lointains que de proximité, transnationales qu'urbaines) dans une perspective de continuité.
Les migrations ne sont plus un mouvement entre deux communautés distinctes, appartenant à des lieux éloignés et marquées par des relations sociales indépendantes l'une de l'autre. Il est au contraire de plus en plus fréquent que les migrants parviennent à maintenir à distance et à activer quotidiennement des relations qui s'apparentent à des rapports de proximité. Le lien "virtuel" - par téléphone ou par mail - permet aujourd'hui plus et mieux qu'avant d'être présent à la famille, aux autres, à ce qui est en train de leur arriver, au pays ou ailleurs. Le déraciné, en tant que figure paradigmatique du monde migrant, fait place à une autre figure, celle d'un migrant qui se déplace et fait appel à des alliances à l'extérieur de son groupe d'appartenance, sans pour autant se détacher de son réseau social d'origine.
Tous les courants de réflexion sur le phénomène migratoire contemporain s'accordent sur le fait que les migrants d'aujourd'hui sont les acteurs d'une culture de mobilité (ceux qui s'installent aujourd'hui dans la circulation internationale ont souvent une expérience migratoire à l'intérieur de leur pays, et sont d'une façon ou d'une autre marqués par une expérience antérieure de mobilité), d'une culture de lien (devenue très visible et très dynamique une fois que les migrants ont commencé à utiliser massivement les technologies de l'information et de la communication) et d'une culture de contrôle ( qui se généralise à l'échelle globale une fois que des nouvelles menaces, notamment après le 11 septembre, sont apparues de « l'intérieur »).
Cette culture de contrôle, directement inspirée par les immigrés, commence s'étendre au-delà du monde des migrants, à tous ceux qui se déplacent, quel que soit le type de leur mobilité.
La « traçabilité » migratoire
Aucune exploration des effets induits par les développements des TIC dans le monde de migrants ne serait complète sans mentionner les services que rendent ces technologies aux institutions chargées du contrôle des étrangers.
Pendant les années 90, l'Europe a mis en place une nouvelle gestion informatique des dossiers des ressortissants étrangers. Ce système d'enregistrement des étrangers s'est généralisé tant dans les sociétés démocratiques que dans les sociétés totalitaires.
La construction d'une identité numérique
La France a mis en place entre 1991 et 1993 une nouvelle gestion informatique des dossiers des ressortissants étrangers en France, (AGDREF). Les services des préfectures ont ainsi complété le fichier des ressortissants étrangers en France à mesure que ceux-ci se présentaient à leurs guichets, pour changer leur état-civil, leur adresse, s'informer sur un refus de séjour, etc. Ce fichier administratif n'est pas le seul à gérer la présence des étrangers : l'EURODAC, fichier communautaire de demandeurs d'asile politique de l'Union européenne, vient d'être créé. Ces systèmes, comme toute technique étatique, sont créateurs d'identités nouvelles. On y trouvera toutes les informations qui (re)constituent l'historicité de la trajectoire migratoire des personnes indexées. Ces éléments (date de naissance, date d'entrée, parcours itinérant, profession, adresse...) peuvent être modifiés par l'administration, sans recours possible de la part de l'individu. Bien qu'en termes d'accès et de droit, le migrant AGDREF et le réfugié EURODAC ne s'identifient pas, ils partagent tous les deux le même destin, celui de la genèse d'une identité numérique.
Frontières géographiques et frontières informatiques.
Inscrites longtemps dans des paysages, les frontières quittent aujourd'hui les cartes d'une géographie physique. Omniprésentes sous la forme de fichiers, elles apparaissent soudainement dans les différents consulats, dans les préfectures, sur l'ordinateur portable d'un agent de contrôle à côté d'un banal péage d'autoroute. En suivant Robert Sack2, qui soutient que le territoire fait sens sur le plan politique en tant que mode de contrôle sur les personnes, les processus ou les relations sociales, on peut avancer que ces nouvelles frontières informatiques qui déploient une logique de réseau extraterritorial, élargissent les territoires nationaux ou communautaires au-delà de leurs frontières d'Etats.
Pour les « migrants de la liste noire » (les pays à risque migratoire), la fréquentation de ces frontières informatiques est aujourd'hui inévitableCelle-ci a ouvert la voie à quelques mutations significatives : dans un premier temps, une autre gestion à distance et en réseau des pesanteurs territoriales. Depuis 1986, le visa est l'instrument essentiel de dissuasion de la circulation migratoire. Le contrôle des frontières s'exerce donc à distance, les autorités consulaires devant interroger, pour chaque personne qui se présente, les fichiers de délivrance des visas.
Un autre changement apparaît dans la configuration des passages de frontières, légaux ou clandestins. Désormais c'est par "l'écran" qu'on devra passer et, tout comme dans la nouvelle "Devant la loi " de Franz Kafka, chacun par sa propre porte. Ainsi, nom, date de naissance, nationalité sont devenus des codes précieux d'installation dans la mobilité. Le marché de la fabrication d'une "identité de voyage" (documents, relations, passeports ou mot de passe) prospère. Les prêtes-noms fleurissent, empruntés à l'épouse, à une épouse virtuelle, à une ancienne épouse. Ces noms de passe parviennent à trouer la forteresse informatique - les divorces devenant paradoxalement un moyen parmi d'autres pour installer la libre circulation. Il faut également jouer savamment sur l'âge, pour échapper aux grilles informatiques. Passages physiques et géographiques des frontières, ou nettoyage sémantique des listings de l'ordinateur, les migrants doivent jouer sur tous les fronts.
Les frontières informatiques ont aussi contribué à la modification des stratégies de départ et de composition du capital de mobilité. Dans les pays d'accueil, s'installe ainsi un style d'échanges sociaux, un style d'inventions techniques, une solidarité (en crise), une éthique de la ténacité (mille manières de manipuler l'espace imposé, de refuser l'ordre établi ou la fatalité). Tel est en France le mouvement de parrainage des Sans Papiers. Artistes et activistes, hackers et clandestins, mènent la lutte avec les mêmes moyens que les services de contrôle en réseau3.Emprisonnés dans le SIS, les sans papiers sont invités à circuler librement dans le net et à franchir cette fois les frontières virtuelles.
Du contrôle de la migration au contrôle de toutes mobilités ?
Les méthodes « scientifiques » d'identification et d'authentification des personnes à partir de données biométriques telles qu'une empreinte digitale ou autres4, sont de plus en plus recommandées tant dans le domaine de la sécurité que dans celui de la vie quotidienne. De nombreux Etats envisagent de remplacer leurs documents d'identité par des cartes à puces basées sur des caractéristiques du corps humain. Au sein de l'Union européenne, mais aussi au niveau national, ont été constitués différents groupes de travail relatifs à l'introduction de données biométriques dans les documents et titre de voyage et de séjours. Des conventions internationales organisant le transfert de telles données sont en préparation. Si, pour les immigrés, la constitution de systèmes de stockage des données personnelles rencontre une faible résistance sociétale (les fichiers des étrangers sont déjà biométrisés), le contrôle de la mobilité des autochtones semble s'opérer dans l'invisibilité et en douceur. La biométrie multimodale5, doublée par une promesse de non-stockage, est mise en avant comme un facteur de protection de la vie privée..
Trajectoire migratoire et traçabilité informatique
Si l'histoire des migrations accompagne toute l'histoire de l'humanité, elle est souvent réduite à l'histoire des papiers, à l'histoire des techniques étatiques qui partagent les « eux » des « nous » et à ce titre, à l'histoire de l'Etat national.
La généralisation des systèmes automatisés -qui, sur la base d'une donnée anatomique, permettent, partout, de reconnaître et suivre la trace d'un individu quasiment en temps réel, conduira-t-elle à l'affaiblissement des Etats-nations ou à son contraire? À l'évidence, les systèmes électroniques biométriques intéressent tant les pays d'accueil que les pays d'émigration. Si leur intérêt est convergent quand il s'agit de la sécurité publique, de lutter efficacement contre la fraude documentaire et informatique, la constitution de bases de données peut avoir aussi des raisons différentes. Les pays de destination étudient ces techniques dans l'espoir de lutter contre la mondialisation des flux migratoires ; les pays d'origine, conscients du profit économique et politique qu'ils peuvent tirer de leurs communautés transnationales, tentent d'accroître leur influence géopolitique et d'accumuler le capital social et financier provenant de ses populations disséminées dans le monde6.
Se mouvant dans un monde où les frontières perdent de leur consistance, vivant pleinement la mondialisation, à la fois loin et proche de ses bases, à la fois anonyme et plus tracé que jamais, , le migrant semble incarner l'idéal-type de la gestion d'un monde en mouvement.
1 Voir l'article de John Urry
2 Sack R, 1986, Human Territoriality, Cambrige, Cambrige University Press, p.19
3 Voir le fameux site "kein mensch ist illegal" (« aucun homme n'est illégal »), http://www.contrast.org/borders/kein/
4 Les empreintes génétiques, le contour de la main, le contour du visage, l'iris, la rétine, une liste qui n'est pas close, puisque des nouvelles parties de notre corps sont à l'étude comme : le contour de l'oreille, la forme du pied , les réseaux veineux ou l'odeur.
5 Celle-ci consiste à combiner ce que l'on connaît (par exemple, un code personnel), ce que l'on est (biométrie) et ce que l'on possède (par exemple, une carte à puce). Les données personnelles demeurent sur la personne concernée sans qu'un stockage centralisé s'avère nécessaire.
6 En Malaisie, l'Etat réfléchit à la mise en œuvre d'une carte d'identité biométriques pour permettre à ses ressortissants émigrés de réaliser des opérations bancaires via Internet de n'importe quel coin du monde. Ainsi il facilite le retour des devises et garde un contrôle de l'existence transnationale de ses ressortissants.
Dana Diminescu, Chargée de Recherche à l’ENST Paris ( CDD) , Dirige le Groupe d’Etudes sur l’Usage des TIC dans les migrations à la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (Paris)
Etudes et Recherches: Etudes sur les circulations migratoires , particulièrement sur la place du migrant dans un système global des mobilités; Les circulations migratoires de l’Europe de l’Est et particulièrement de la Roumanie; Usages du téléphone mobile par les populations migrantes : Organisation des conversations, du lien et des activités à distance par le téléphone portable; L’archivage de la production au sujet migratoire dans le web ; La gestion informatique des étrangers
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Steki Metanaston, Migrants’ Centre, Rethymno
Materiell handelt es sich beim Migrantenladen um ein von Migranten, Studierenden (Rethymno ist Unistadt) und Einheimischen - in monatelanger Arbeit - renoviertes Haus, das von einem gegründeten Verein angemietet wurde.1 Alle Arbeiten (organisatorischer und handwerklicher Art) wurden von den Beteiligten mit ihrer differenten Bereitschaft und ihren verschiedenen Fähigkeiten verrichtet. Die Materialkosten wurden im Wesentlichen durch erbettelte Sach- und Geldspenden bei lokalen Unternehmern aufgebracht.
Sozial handelt es sich beim Migrantenladen um einen - auf freiwilliger Basis - selbstorganisierten und selbsverwalteten öffentlichen Raum, der in dieser relativ kleinen touristischen Stadt am Meer (ca. 30.000 Einwohner) verschiedenste Aktivitäten organisiert und durchführt. Er ist offen für jegliche Initiativen, die zur Verbesserung der Lebensbedingungen der Migranten in Rethymno beitragen können.
Methodisch möchte ich den Migrantenladen als ein „Real-Experiment" bezeichnen. Ein Real-Experiment zur „solidar-kulturellen Vergesellschaftung" (wie das W. Fritz Haug 1991 nennt) und ein „Real-Experiment" zu "learning democracy" aller Beteiligten. Im Migrantenladen gibt es keine aussenstehenden Forscher, die andere beobachten. Alle sind zuersteinmal mehr oder weniger aktiv Beteiligte. Forscher und Beforschte sind strukturell auf der „selben Seite", sind strukturell ein und dasselbe, denn die Praxis im Migrantenladen - d.h. der Fortgang dieses „Real-Experiments" - ist das Primäre/Eigentliche, und dessen Ausgang hat Einfluss auf alle Beteiligten. Wenn auch selbstverständlich in verschiedener Qualität und Quantität. Selbstverständlich sind die Interessen und Beiträge der verschiedenen Beteiligten höchst verschieden. Was jede(r) in das Experiment einbringt und was er/sie daraus für sich „herausholt" hängt selbstverständlich mit von den Möglichkeiten und Behinderungen in seiner/ihrer gesellschaftlichen Lage und den darin entwickelten subjektiven Bedürfnissen ab.
Damit man einen schnellen Einblick bekommt was dort geschieht, seien verschiedene bisherige Aktivitäten im Migrantenladen zumindest kursorisch aufgeführt:
* Renovierung des Hauses in kollektiver Eigentätigkeit
* Regelmäßiger Cafe-Betrieb im Laden als offene Begegnungsstätte für Menschen mit verschiedenem geographischen, sozialen, biographischen und politischen Hintergrund: Migranten aus verschiedenen Ländern, Studierende und Einheimische aus verschiedenen Gegenden Griechenlands, Ältere und Jüngere, Männer und Frauen.
* unregelmäßige aber häufige "bloß soziale" Veranstaltungen (wie gemeinsam kochen, essen und feiern)
* öffentliche Veranstaltungen, z.B. mit eingeladenen Anwälten, bisher vor allem zur Information der Migranten (aber auch zu "unserer" Information) über den Dickicht der gesetzlichen Regelungen, die mit zu den größten und oft unüberwindlichen Hindernissen eines geregelten und planbaren Aufenthaltes gehören.
* Sprachkurse - nicht nur Griechisch für Migranten, sondern bisher auch Englisch, Arabisch für alle "Benutzer" des Migrantenzentrums. Aber auch Tanz-, Mal- und Schachkurse
* Aktivitäten für und mit Kindern
* Versuche eine periodische Präsenz des Migrantenladens und seiner Aktivitäten in der Lokalpresse zu realisieren
* Organisierung eines Anti-rassistischen Festivals in der Stadt im zentral gelegenen Stadtgarten mit sehr großem Erfolg
* Kooperation und Vernetzung mit anderen Kollektivitäten in und außerhalb der Stadt mit ähnlicher Zielsetzung
1 Zum Haus gehören auch ein Hof/Garten hinten mit Blick aufs Meer, der hauptsächlich als Sommerkino genutzt wird.
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Dyktio, Greece
The Network of Social Support to Immigrants and Refugees (Network) is a left antiracist group that was created on March 1995. It aimed at undertaking coordinated action against racism and xenophobia and for the factual support and solidarity to immigrants and refugees. Having the belief that "immigrants are not a problem, they have problems", the Network addresses the greek society, confronts in an organised manner with all sorts of racist arguments and supports actions of factual solidarity to immigrants and refugees, while on the other hand it presses the greek government towards immigrant's legalisation. Our main interest is to walk together with the immigrants in all our aims, to hear what they have to say first and last but not least to support every attempt of self-organisation.
From the very beginning of its operation, the Network set among its first priorities the issues of cultural exchange between the different populations, believing that equally important to the legal and institutional consolidation of the immigrants, was people's familiarisation with the different cultures in order to overcome the stereotypes that lead to xenophobic and racist behaviour. The experience gained by Network's members during its collaboration with other antiracist organisations and immigrant communities led to the formation of the Coordinating Committee of Antiracist Organisations and Immigrant Communities (Coordinating Committee) in 1996. The same experience gave birth to the idea of an Antiracist Festival, as an event that would bring wider parts of the athenian society in closer contact to the immigrants. On July 1996 the 1st Antiracist Festival took place on Kolonos Hill and its great success put it on the map as the central annual event of the Coordinating Committee. In the following years, the festival grew spectacularly in participations, in activities and content, in thematology and effect. In the recent years, antiracist festivals are also organised in Thessaloniki, Ioannina and Rethymno by local antiracist organisations and immigrant communities.
This very same need for communication and cultural exchange, inspired the idea of a stable meeting place for greeks and immigrants, a place which would serve simple social relationships, would help cultivate human ties and promote multiculturalism in practice. In this concept, the Network created on January 1997 the Immigrants' Steki (Steki) and, despite the obvious intrinsic difficulties of this effort, the progress of Steki in all these years, was both useful and successful. Steki operates daily from 7 pm as an open space of communication and social activity, in which Greeks and immigrants get together to talk, exchange ideas or have fun. In parallel to its steady operation Steki organises various events, either alone or in collaboration with other organisations and groups, like movie projections, music events, theatre plays, new-year's eve parties etc. Steki is also hosting meetings of the immigrant communities as well as celebrations and events organised by them.
Apart form cultural events however, the Network and Steki tried from the very beginning to set up activities of factual solidarity to immigrants and refugees. One of these activities, which is directly linked to cultural aspects of the immigration issue, is the greek language courses that are given in Steki by the team of volunteer teachers named the "Back Desks". Professional educators formed the team in the winter of 1999 and it operates within the Network. It aims at providing a basic knowledge of greek language to adult immigrants and refugees as well as informing and helping their families on issues relative to their children's attendance in the greek school. This is already the sixth year of this activity, and more than 1000 immigrants from about 30 different countries have attended the courses so far.Finally, the Network publishes every year the "Antiracist Diary", a pocket diary with motives and themes from the life and problems of immigrants and refugees.
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Dost je!, Ljubljana
Dost je!, Ljubljana, Slovenia is a communicative and activist project. It is organized as a informal network of different associations (Aguascalientes - works on the questions of global solidarity; Political laboratory - develops political theory; Gmajna - acts in the field of multimedia). Dost je! was established 2002. The initial orientation was work in communities and stimulation of self-organizational potentials. Until now in Slovenia Dost je! was involved in the struggle of refugees from Bosnia to obtain permanent residence (the project was named I Kapak!), in the struggle of erased to regain their rights from the status of permanent residence, a status they were deprived of in 1992, in the campaign against enlargement of NATO on Slovenia and against the aggression on Iraq. Currently Dost je! Is campaiging to close all detention centers for migrants in Slovenia and to define European citizenship for erased.
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Tavola di Migranti Dei Social Forum Italiani , Italy
Since Genoa G8 (the huge migrants' demonstration of July 19, 2001) until today, Tavolo Migranti dei Social Forum Italiani has connected a wide and differentiated network of subjects fighting against the Italian immigration Law, the Bossi-Fini Law, and the conditions of living into which migrants are forced in a frame characterized by a progressive dismantling of work and social guarantees.
We are not an unitary structure, for we comprehend a large spectrum of organizations and associations coming from different parts of Italy, but during the last three years we promoted some political initiatives moving from a common political assumption: a radical rejection of the Bossi-Fini Law.
The Bossi-Fini Law, connecting visa to job-contract (through the legal institution of "contratto di soggiorno per lavoro") renders migrants every day more exposed to their masters' blackmail: they are forced into the acceptance of every kind of work condition to avoid clandestinity and detention. For these reasons, Tavolo Migranti's political initiatives have been always concentrated around the musts of a radical NO to "Contratto di soggiorno per lavoro"; NO to detention centres (CPT, Centri di Permanenza Temporanea). The first issue has been the core of one of the most important mobilisation organized in the frame of Tavolo, the Vicenza Migrant Work Strike, on May 2002, during which more than 30.000 migrants were in strike and 10.000 were on the streets against the Bossi-Fini law (at that time, the law was still a project). The struggle against detention centres knew its most important moment during the "invasion", by the people of the Frassanito no-border camp promoted by Tavolo, of the Bari Palese detention centre, inside which hundreds of asylum seekers were forced. During the action, some migrants escaped, and after two days, the centre has been closed by the military authority that managed it. Two months ago, several subjects with Tavolo "invaded" the centre that Italian authorities are building near the city of Gradisca, on the Italian eastern border. The action determined the adoption of a position favourable to the closure by the local government, and the centre is still not open.
After January 31st European demonstration against detention centres, we connected in Italy a wide migrants' movement of protest against the visas-renews policies of territorial Police. The local demonstrations contributed to determine the revision of the Bossi-Fini law by the Italian central Government, but the struggle is still open to obtain the abrogation of the law.
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no border, Germany
hagen kopp, no one is illegal, hanau - europeanwide networking against borderregimes
no one is illegal was founded 1997 in germany. besides direct suppport of sans papiers and antideportation-campaigns europe's borderregimes soon became a main focus of work. in 1998 the first nobordercamp was initiated at the german-polish border, where we discussed three most characteristic aspects for the development and transformation of the borderregime:
- the rearmament of borderpolice in staff and equipment;
- the involvement of local population through denounciation campaigns;
- and finally, the shifting of bordercontrols to the east, along borders of future member states in the so-called eu enlargement process.
Concerning the last, more and more crucial point we suceeded to establish first contacts to polish activists soon, who as a result organised a first nobordercamp at the border to the ukraine in 2000. inside the europeanwide noborder network, founded in 1999, the series of noborder-protest-camps, from south of spain to strasbourg and romania, served as a catalyst for common activities against the borderregime over the course of years, both on a theoretical and a practical level.
Based on these contacts and experiences in summer 2004 we went on a three-week nobordertour-east researching border sites, mainly in poland (an eu-member state by now), in romania (a future member state in 2007) and in the ukraine (with no member state for now).
My intervention will refer to these experiences and includes reports with a few images of last summer's nobordertour-east.
no one is illegal in hanau offers councelling for asylum seekers, sans papiers and migrants for more than ten years. we are part of a regional alliance of groups against deportations, mainly concerned with the airport frankfurt. we have been a founding group for no one is illegal in germany as well as for the europeanwide noborder network.
migration management, the borderregime, migrant labour and transnational organizing have been my main fields of political work in recent years.
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9th Sans-Papier' Collective, France
200 migrants from several nationalities (from China, Africa, North-Africa), advocating regularisation, freedom of circulation, migrants rights, and fighting against French and European migration policies. Among their actions : occupation of political permanences (left and right parties), Paris representation of the European Commission, symbolic places (Victor Hugo museum), participation to the blockade of the building site of the detention center in Massy (Paris suburb), etc.; support to the intermittents when they occupied MEDEF last July
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Kanak Attak/Society for Legalisation, Germany
Kanak Attak is a national anti-racist collective launched in 1997 with chapters through-out Germany. In addition to organizing landmark congresses on immigration and anti-racism (Volksbuhne Berlin 2001, Volksbuhne Berlin 2002 and Schauspielhaus Frankfurt 2002, Prater Berlin 2004), Kanak Attak communicates through actions, video production (Kanak TV: "The fairy-tale on integration" D 2000, 15min., "White ghetto", D 2001, 8min., "Philharmonic Orchestra Koln - 40 years of immigration", D 2001, 9min.) talks, publications, media art, performances, etc. Since the advent of Sans Papiers Movements throughout Europe, Kanak Attak has been a leading voice in advocating an Initiative for the Right of Legalization and is a founding member of the "Society for Legalisation".
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Gisti (Groupe d'information et de soutien des immigrés), Paris
NGO providing information and support to Immigrants, which through its knowledge of immigration law - French, European, and in some respects international - and its experience of immigration practices, defends foreigners, offers training and publications and participates in the debate on migration policies (freedom of circulation).
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Physicians for Human Rights, Israel
Trafficked women and political asylum seekers - entitlement to health
In the overall picture of the migratory movement into Israel, political asylum seekers and trafficked women (sex workers) form but a small part of the overall non-Israeli migrant population (several thousands as compared to hundreds of thousands). In many respects, these two groups have nothing in common. East European women are trafficked in the sex trade and asylum seekers flee mainly from African countries. Indeed, they might meet each other on the way, infiltrating through the Sinai desert.
Still, these two groups share one characteristic: they are both living outside of the Israeli commonwealth and welfare system, and they are both looked at – especially by their advocates - as victims, far more victimized than the "regular" migrant worker. International and local legal standards seem to support this assumption and give a stronger claim for providing these groups some protection in certain cases. In Israel, the basic standard for protection used to be solely avoidance from deportation, but other demands are constantly presented. These demands include rights for social services (entitlements) and entail a broader meaning of the term 'protection'.
Today, the government views protection mainly as a passive one: letting one stay without arresting or harassing him/her. Recently, working permits were issued. But the question of active protection (eg. health entitlement) is still open. We concentrate on encouraging this discussion on these issues and aim at defining the term 'protection' so it will include the very sick, sometimes traumatized asylum seekers and trafficked sex workers.
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-Israel) is a non-profit, non-partisan organization founded in 1988 by a group of Israeli and Palestinian physicians, with a view to protecting health and human rights in the Occupied Territories, in the wake of the first Palestinian Uprising. Our work in the OCCUPIED TERRITORIES involves direct intervention on behalf of individuals seeking treatment not found in the OT and working to secure freedom of movement for patients and medical professionals (both within the OT and into East Jerusalem and Israel). PHR-Israel operates in cooperation with many other Israeli, Palestinian and international NGOs, and is a member of the International Federation of Health and Human Rights Organizations (IFFHRO).
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indyestrecho-malaga, Spain
Indymedia Straits of Gibraltar: disobeying frontiers in order to construct
an alternative territory
Indymedia Straits of Gibraltar has begun the process of defining a new territory, with undefined borders, to provide the basis for bottom-up cooperation between movements challenging the existing order. The territory is experimental, alternative, multicultural, and politically diverse, while at the same time immensely common. The idea is to create a transnational, transcontinental space, ready to meet the demands of resistance to global capitalism in our age.
The Indymedia of the Straits project has arisen from the need to create a space for communication, assembly, and contagion, so that movements that hardly know each other can begin to work together. We plan to provide a space to hack into the virtual, cultural, and political frontiers that keep us apart, separates emerging processes and new forms of conflict, and to produce a new sphere, encompassing both in the Andalusia / Southern Border of Europe and the Maghreb. We think of the project as a political-communicational space crossing the frontier, over which to build bridges of cooperation and grassroots democracy across the two shores. It is a project of political anthropology, of mutual diplomacy from the bottom up, creating synergies among rebellious currents on both sides of the Straits.
The geo-strategic realignment that neoliberal globalisation involves makes the Straits a critical enclave in the imperialist project. The southern frontier prevents, controls and distributes access to a ‘Fortress Europe’ that feeds off the multinational immigrant workforce and submits immigrants to a dynamic of subjugation by daily controls, the blackmail of residence permits, exploits their total defencelessness in labour issues, and denies fundamental rights.
The Straits is a contrived frontier that makes use of the most sophisticated European information, control and security systems (such as the SIS - Schengen Information System), from which migrants daily exercise their rights to escape in search of dignity.
In summary, a frontier worthy of disobeying.
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The Refugee Initiative of Brandenburg, Germany
"Due to blood on the streets from continuous racist attacks and iron fist racism in the institutions and the law, we the asylum seekers, decided to address this situation to the National and International Institutions by writing the first Memorandum on the 2. 2. 2000. Believing in the power of argument and not the argument of power and believing in the silent scribble of the pen being stronger than the gun, we decided to write. (…) No freedom of movement, no freedom of education, we cannot work, we are incriminated by the Police Officers when we are arrested, our asylum homes are mostly found in the forest and we are entitled to 80 DM as pocket money and the reste of our legal tender in Vouchers. (…) We realised that all the asylum seekers are complaining bitterly in silence in their small spaces in their small rooms but nobody had the courage to blow this situation to the open. (…) Since April 2000, we have been visiting the different asylum homes in the State of Brandenburg in order to unite the dispersed asylum seekers. We made them to understand that we are divided into different forests so that we can be easily contained. The "Divide and Rule Principle" applied by the colonial masters. We instill the spirit of awarness, and courage and making asylum seekers to know that "FREEDOM IS NOT GIVEN ON A PLATER OF GOLD" (…) We have set up a structure known as THE REFUGEES INITIATIVE GROUP IN BRANDENBURG. This group is composed of representatives of refugees in the different asylum homes in the whole of Brandenburg. We have since then been carrying a series of demonstrations in order to make our voices to be heard."
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