[-empyre-] Welcome to February 2016: Across borders and networks: migrants, asylum seekers, or refugee? The Numbers Now and The Number Then

Tue Feb 9 00:27:08 AEDT 2016

Hey Ricardo, all,

Yeah, I can understand your reluctance of accepting my putting down
xenophobia to human nature. If true, that could make it indeed much
easier to allow for its existence.
That said, I do think there's ample evidence that fear of those that
are noticeably different is ingrained. Here's an old article that
talks about this:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200305/why-we-fear-the-unknown

I think it was Easterly in 'The Tyranny of Experts'
(https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18210744-the-tyranny-of-experts)
(correct me if I'm wrong) who gives a bunch of interesting examples of
people's natural tendency to classify those around them through
in-groups and out-groups. He shows that this easily results in
autocratically governed societies that are also economically more
rigid and stratified, meaning that, though it's more efficient and
better for everyone to avoid this classification, without a stronger
state that's able to channel society, it's very easy, if perhaps even
unavoidable, for this xenophobia to take root.

Everything is of course interconnected. Harsher economic times hurt
the lower classes more readily, who seek to protect themselves,
through scapegoats and otherwise, on which feeling others build to
further their own agenda. While these others might be the cause for
the harsher economic times, to begin with.
Meanwhile, technology that was supposed to 'set us free' is being used
to enforce conforming to the rules and regulations of those in power.
Which might be fine enough if you live in a liberal democracy, but is
less ideal if you're in, say, Saudi Arabia. Or if it allows
inscrutable government bodies to do their own bidding, unchecked.

Ricardo, I think your question is a good one: "What happens to us and
flowing communities as globalization becomes borderization?"
This can be nuanced, as this borderization is very relative: Many
groups of states have never seen fewer borders and fewer border
controls. Yet, the creation of in- and out-groups on a cross-national
scale, has perhaps never been greater, either.
So, perhaps, our 'islands' become larger, but it becomes less easy to
move from island to island?

Babak
--
Babak Fakhamzadeh | babak.fakhamzadeh at gmail.com | http://BabakFakhamzadeh.com

Ask me for my PGP public key to send me encrypted email.

On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 10:33 AM, Ricardo Dominguez <rrdominguez at ucsd.edu> wrote:
> Hola Babak y Tod at s,
>
> Yes, I agree with you, the sense of class-structure (middle-class social
> mirroring) does allow for
> integration is a less conscious manner the "standard" E.U. citizen.
>
> I am not sure about the anchoring this standard mirroring response to
> class-difference
> as a product of "human nature" though. This creates a type of border that
> cannot be crossed.
> This allows the "racist" or xenophobic cultures of fear and the politics of
> fear to be understood
> as "natural" responses to manufactured "crisis" over the last few decades or
> even more
> specifically since World War II. Often as not produced by European polices
> and actions over the
> long haul of the 20th century.
>
> Yet, as you point out, the crisis becomes even more layered in its in
> ability to control
> calls of E.U. austerity policies and immigration response systems-the Greek
> question.
>
> What happens to us and flowing communities as globalization becomes
> borderization?
>
> Borders are internalized and externalized, detention camp cultures continue
> to be the standard (Ana note points out),
> and profits are maximized.
>
> And as always for us in the 21st century virtual fences become a fetish
> strategy.
>
> Here in the U.S. we have similar border extension policies under the Obama
> Administration:
>
> "Plan Frontera Sur, as the Mexican government’s campaign is called, serves
> as a first line of defense for the United States. Deportations have soared
> in the last year, while the arrests of Central American migrants in this
> country have more than doubled to more than 170,000 last year from about
> 78,000 in 2013."
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/08/world/americas/mexico-migrants-central-america.html
>
> These extension of U.S. borders then forces migrants, asylum seekers, and
> refugee into a very long and deadly Devil's Highway.
>
> Very best,
> Ricardo
>
>
>
> On 2/7/16 6:21 PM, Babak Fakhamzadeh wrote:
>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Hey Ricardo, all,
>
> It's true that the numbers related to the current refugee crisis
> surrounding Syria are not as excessive as during the second world war.
> In relative terms, with Europe at about 550 million inhabitants around
> 1940 compared to 730 million now, the scope was even bigger, then.
>
> Yet, there are also significant differences such that just looking at
> the numbers is not fair to either event. During the second world war,
> Europe itself was in turmoil, whereas surrounding the Syrian refugee
> crisis, the turmoil is wholly happening outside of Europe's borders.
> Second, the differences between Syrian refugees and, say, the average
> Dutchman (which of course doesn't really exist), now, is probably
> bigger, and occurring on a wider scope, than the differences between,
> say, the Czech and, say, Polish middle class during or close to the
> second world war. It's simply easier to reconcile oneself with others
> who are more similar than with those who are more different. That's
> not a matter of being racist, it's human nature. To go beyond that, to
> step over that prejudice, if you will, takes effort and has to be done
> consciously.
>
> As you suggest, Ricardo, there might be a greater neo-liberalist plan
> to profit from all this, but that also doesn't automatically mean that
> the crisis is fabricated in order to make a profit. It seems to me
> there's a lot of opportunism and incompetence at work. As well as
> convenient negligence by the media, but all these are other stories.
>
> But, none of this says anything about what the not-so-distant future
> might bring. Will western Europe's xenophobic flames be fanned by the
> relatively large influx of non-Europeans?
>
> Babak
>
> --
> Babak Fakhamzadeh | babak.fakhamzadeh at gmail.com |
> http://BabakFakhamzadeh.com
>
> Ask me for my PGP public key to send me encrypted email.
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 7, 2016 at 1:22 PM, Ricardo Dominguez <rrdominguez at ucsd.edu>
> wrote:
>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Hola Tod at s and Babak,
>
> I look forward to our dialogue about how the history of "kinopolitics" (the
> politics of movement)
> will re-produce segmentation and segregation or integration and citizenship
> (Echoes of Rome)?
> Or perhaps some other unexpected social formations will happen beyond these
> histories
> (my anti-anti-utopain tendencies speaking here).
>
> Of course the processes of integration vs. segregation does seem to depend
> on where the
> movement and flows starts and to lesser degree where it ends.
>
> If you look at numbers of recent flows of communities into the E.U. starting
> from World War II to the
> present moment the numbers flowing are worth considering.
>
> The movement of migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees was over 15 million
> between
> 1939 to 1945, while right now Syrians leaving the wars zones number around
> 4.1 million
> since 2010. One can add a few million more flowing away from other conflict
> zones north
> to the E.U. and these current numbers are not even close to reaching the
> numbers of migrants,
> asylum seekers, or refugee that occurred during WWII:
>
> https://newint.org/features/2016/01/01/global-refugee-crisis-the-facts/
>
> (The link to an infographic that might be useful to consider.)
>
> So the "crisis" is not about the "numbers"-but about the social imaginary
> anchored on to
> the bodies that moving that are activating violent atavistic response
> (racist politics) that
> neo-liberalism(ism) can profits from via private detention centers and
> prisons and
> corporate controlled border gates.
>
> So it is not about the numbers or the facts of crossing-but the where they
> coming
> from that is the "crisis."
>
> Ricardo
>
>
> On 2/7/16 2:29 AM, Babak Fakhamzadeh wrote:
>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Hi all,
>
> We've got quite a big topic on our hands, making it harder to single
> out a particular angle or narrative. Perhaps not an unreasonable
> starting point is the current refugee crisis in Europe. As Renate in
> the opening email hints at, Rome was at its peak when it actively
> incorporated the peoples, barbarians perhaps, on their frontiers,
> Caesar himself extending Roman citizenship to the Gauls and others.
>
> Europe has been a continent of immigrants, virtually all 'native'
> Europeans originally descending from immigrants coming in from the
> Eurasian plains(, with perhaps only the Basques being the exception).
> So, in many ways, the recent new arrivals coming in from the direction
> of the Middle East are just the latest in a long line of immigrants.
> Yet, the negative European backlash is strong. Perhaps driven by the
> recent and, also strong, undercurrent of xenophobia in many European
> countries, the 'otherness' of the Syrian arrivals is emphasised and
> their presence actively resisted.
>
> Now, I wonder, my question to us on the list, what are the
> consequences of the arrival of this sizeable group of immigrants going
> to be, for Europe, over the next 5 to, say, 10 years? Will the whole
> issue simply fizzle out and the immigrants simply be integrated? Will
> the EU fall apart? Will some countries secede from the Union? Will
> some countries turn into virtual police states?
> And, why?
>
> And, related, how are those countries that do take in larger number of
> immigrants going to deal with making sure their integration is not
> going to be botched in the same way that Germany, Holland and France
> botched the integration of specifically Turkish and Moroccan
> immigrants in the 1960s and onwards?
>
> Looking forward to the responses :)
>
> Babak
>
> --
> Babak Fakhamzadeh | babak.fakhamzadeh at gmail.com |
> http://BabakFakhamzadeh.com
>
> Ask me for my PGP public key to send me encrypted email.
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