IRR proposals
01 January 1993
At a PDS Congress in Berlin in November, the director of the Institute of Race Relations, A Sivanandan, described the developments in European asylum and immigration policy as "borrowing the lowest common denominators of each country's racism to devise a pan-European policy". An exclusive, blood-based citizenship, rather than an inclusive citizenship based on birth or residence in the country, encouraged racism, he said, and prevented black people from taking on the struggle against that racism. He put forward proposals for a pan-European policy based on the best practice of European countries: the adoption by all countries of Germany's constitutional right to asylum, rather than Germany's abolition of it, for example.
Race & Class (January 1993), 2-6 Leeke Street, London WC1X 9HS.