The Covid-19 pandemic has further revealed the callous, racist brutality of immigration controls in Britain and Europe. DESPINE DOHMAN reports.
Roma in Europe
As Europe’s largest minority (numbering around ten million in Europe), the Roma people have a long history of racist oppression at the hands of various European states. A report released earlier this year by the European Environmental Bureau showed that Roma communities suffer heavily from environmental racism, often lacking access to basic necessities like piped drinking water and refuse collection, as well as living on polluted land such as landfills and industrial sites. Ciprian Nodis, a Roma rights activist, claimed that the situation in a Roma settlement in Romania is ‘similar to what you can see in the favelas in Rio de Janeiro’. Even before the pandemic, the racist neglect of settled Roma communities was rampant in Europe.
During the coronavirus crisis, the violence of this state racism has been heightened. When frequent cleaning and sanitation measures are imperative for stopping the spread of this virus, any refusal to provide adequate access to clean running water is, in effect, a death sentence. In Bulgaria and Slovakia, many Roma areas were placed under quarantine with police checkpoints to ensure they could not leave without a reason acceptable to the authorities. In one Bulgarian town, disinfectant was sprayed over a Roma settlement by planes. Mladen Marinov, the Bulgarian interior minister, claimed that this ‘coercion is needed…to protect the population’. Protecting the Roma population would mean ensuring access to sanitation facilities and devising public health measures which meet their needs – not encouraging increased police surveillance of and violence towards minorities.
Like many migrant and refugee communities, large numbers of Roma people work in the informal or ‘grey market’ sector. This position, forced on them by racist employment and immigration laws, meant that many Roma people who were laid off as the pandemic started and European economies shrank rapidly had no recourse to state assistance schemes. This results in Roma people needing to work, whether legally or illegally, and potentially contributing to the spread of Covid-19, or being forced to starve as what little cash they have runs out.
Turkey and Fortress Europe
The violent racism of Europe’s border controls is on most clear display in the Mediterranean Sea and at the border between Greece and Turkey.
On 27 June, a boat crossing Lake Van in eastern Turkey from Iran sank. The bodies of ten migrants had been found by 7 July but given that local residents estimated that there were possibly more than 100 migrants on board, the official death toll is likely to rise. That these passengers were forced to make such a risky journey is a necessary consequence of the violence of Europe’s border controls, the enforcement of much of which is given to Turkey. The Lake Van crossing is a popular route for those attempting to enter Europe from the Middle East and South Asia as it allows them to bypass police checkpoints.
That enforcement falls to Turkey is a product of a racist agreement made between the EU, Greece and Turkey which made Greece the European imprisoner of refugees and gave Turkey the job of ensuring that as few migrants and refugees as possible make it into Greece. In both Greece and Turkey, migrants and refugees are kept in overcrowded camps with little access to clean water or medical facilities. During the best of times these are perfect conditions for diseases to run rampant; there are few better places for a highly infectious virus like Covid-19 to thrive.
Large numbers of these refugees come from nations like Libya and Syria, which Britain and other EU states bombed to further their imperialist interests in the region. British and EU imperialism forced these people to flee their homes and now refuse them the right to strive for a better life. Instead, these migrants are locked up in unsanitary conditions, without access to sufficient food, until such a time as they can be deported back to their home countries.
British state, racist state
Most migrants into Britain from outside the European Economic Area have a condition attached to their entry called No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF), which means they cannot access most state benefits like Universal Credit, child benefit or housing benefit. In addition, in order to maintain their claim to reside in Britain and achieve settled status on the five-year track, they must show pre-tax income of at least £18,600 per year. Those who fail to do so risk being pushed onto the ten-year track, which comes with additional costs, or being deported.
As the British economy came to a crashing halt earlier this year, many migrants found themselves furloughed or fired from their jobs. In the three months to 31 May 2020, Citizens Advice reported a 110% increase in enquiries regarding NRPF and non-EU migrants’ access to benefits as compared to the same period in 2019. Also, in the 12 months to 1 May 2020, 82% of Citizens Advice clients with these queries were people of colour. With little or no pay coming in and no access to benefits, migrants are faced with a choice: find work, legal or not, and contribute to the spread of Covid-19, or not work and starve. The disproportionality of Britain’s Covid-19 death rate among black and minority ethnic groups is in part down to the barbarity with which British imperialism treats migrants.
Under imperialism, migrants form an especially exploited section of the working class. Subject to immigration controls, state fuelled racism, fewer working protections and shipped in and out according to the needs of capital, they often find themselves in the most dangerous jobs, at the least sociable hours, for the lowest amount of pay. Those who run afoul of the capitalist’s immigration system are forced to make their way through a process which aims to demonise and deport them at every turn. The pandemic has served to sharpen the contours of the barbarity that is British and European imperialism.
