Secret agents: Anarchists, Islamists and responses to politically active refugees in London
2005; Routledge; Volume: 28; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/01419870420000315852
ISSN1466-4356
Autores Tópico(s)Homelessness and Social Issues
ResumoAbstract The literature on the securitization of migration has characterized a growing trend in migration legislation to treat migration as a security issue. This legitimizes increasingly harsh responses to migrants. Recent legislation in the UK has responded to security concerns directly through the immigration system, where discrimination on the basis of national origin remains permissible, rather than the criminal justice system, where it is not. A historical comparison of two refugee communities reveals the extent to which the security response has become ingrained in British policy-making on migration issues. At the end of the nineteenth century Parliament was faced with a very similar set of issues to those faced by government a century later but a strong liberal consensus implemented very different legislation. Migration policy should not be governed by the actions of a tiny minority of real or imagined 'secret agents'. The only just solution is to deal with the situation through the criminal justice system, rather than as an immigration issue. Keywords: MigrationsecurityterrorismAlgeriaUnited Kingdomrefugees Acknowledgments Research on which this article is based was supported by an ESRC postgraduate training award and further investigation has been possible thanks to a Nuffield Foundation New Career Development Fellowship. An earlier version of this study was presented at the conference of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration in 2003 and it benefited from the comments received on that occasion. I am also extremely grateful to the anonymous referees whose detailed responses enabled me to improve the article considerably. Notes In much the same way that work on securitization focuses on the artificiality of the migration/security link the earlier literature criticizes the construction of 'mugging' as a crime that is particularly associated with young, black men, even though it has no basis in law. It is interesting that a contemporary commentator made a similar observation 'It is the sheerest hypocrisy in the world for anyone to talk of "protecting the political exile from imperial wrath, and of guarding the religious refugee from the bigotry of an ignorant Greek priesthood" when all that we do is to let these exiles and refugees crowd into the dense, dark, debased and horrible areas of our city East Ends!' (Reaney 1892: 83). An Aliens Bill was prepared but not published since it was seen as too radical a solution. A Conspiracy to Murder Bill was proposed as an alternative but was rejected at its first reading. Conrad wove the story of The Secret Agent around the events of the Greenwich Park explosion. President Carnot was assassinated in Lyons on June 24th 1894 by an Italian anarchist. Lord Salisbury referred to the assassination as 'the most odious attack on civilisation that history records.' (quoted in Gainer 1972, p. 103). The first section of the Bill was raised, and again defeated in 1898 but it was not until 1904 that a more substantial attempt to legislate in this area was made. Jeyes reports that Salisbury raised this point during the debate on second reading of the Bill but this actually counted against him, he was 'sternly rebuked by Opposition orators for making an admission which foreign Governments might use against us!' (1896, p. 209) Board of Trade figures for 1900 and 1901 indicate that total immigration to Britain was over 70,000, though the Royal Commission of 1903 complained that adequate statistical sources were not available to be certain of this figure. Rocker was interned under wartime provisions, separate from both immigration and criminal legislation. The Committee of Imperial Defence called for the internment of 'All male German and Austrians of military age' in Britain (cab 38/28/49 October 17th 1914)
Referência(s)