24 November 2020
Liz Fekete of the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) argues that campaigns for migrant and refugee rights have often taken an implicitly 'abolitionist' approach - but that now is the time to make abolitionist demands more prominently, in order to dismantle the 'law and order' approach to immigration that has caused, and continues to cause, so much harm to individuals and society more broadly.
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See: Divesting from immigration policing – the abolitionist challenge (IRR, link) by Liz Fekete:
"Abolitionist perspectives, though perhaps understated, have always been central to refugee and migrant struggles against racist immigration controls in the UK and Europe. And with nativist governments hardening themselves against any immigration reform, as the backtracking over the Vulnerable Children’s Resettlement Scheme, demonstrates, they are now more needed than ever before. Since 2018, abolitionist solutions have been put forward by grassroots migrants and refugee groups from across Europe at various sessions organised by the Permanent People’s Tribunal on Asylum and Migrant Rights. And, at a recent ‘Solidarity knows no borders’ rally organised by Migrants Organise, which has initiated the Fair Immigration Reform Charter, speaker after speaker also spoke to an abolitionist agenda. In what follows, I draw on the lived experience and powerful testimony of migrants and refugees, to consider how to further build abolitionist perspectives within our movements."
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