Following the prime minister and Yvette Cooper’s ‘summit’ on ‘smuggling gangs’ on 6 September, the government has announced (16 September) the appointment of the new border security commander, Martin Hewitt.
The announcement came as Starmer was engaged in talks with Georgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister on border security and inter-country cooperation on illegal immigration. Press reports suggest Starmer is interested in Meloni’s approach to migrant and refugee returns with Tunisia and plans to offshore asylum applications to Albania. Hewitt joined Starmer on the trip, which is an indication of the importance Starmer places on the role of security in ‘smashing the gangs’. Will it work?
The UK cannot act unilaterally
The UK is subject to refugee, international and maritime law. It is not illegal for anyone to set sail from a country and French and Belgium authorities have no legal rights to prevent departure. There are no international waters between France/Belgium and England along the 120 miles of crossing points into which the government might (legally, if not morally) push boats back, as Australia and the EU have done. And UK Border Force cannot enter French waters or return boats to France without permission.
Once in UK waters, all ships and boats have a legal obligation to rescue and bring to the nearest UK port those at risk of drowning. The previous (naval) border command recognised these obligations and brought boats ashore to the UK once they reached territorial waters. This avoided unnecessary deaths, and ensured that no one on the boats could ‘disappear’ on the Kent coast as the dinghies landed.
EU policy and impact on UK refugee flows
All those crossing the Channel have come via an EU country. The first lines of the UK’s ‘fortress defences’ are the borders that the EU has erected across its land frontiers and the policing of the Mediterranean Sea by Frontex (the EU border force). Hostility towards refugees and migrants has grown over the past few years. Individual countries, and the EU countries, as a block, are reconsidering how they adapt to this changing environment. Hungary has already closed its borders and undermined an EU response.
Italy’s agreement with Tunisia to prevent the departure of migrants from Africa and to return migrants that do reach Italy to Tunisia, has led to a 60% reduction in the flow this year. Unilateral measures like these may curtail the flow of refugees to one country (and provide a breathing space within which a more strategic and sustainable response can be achieved), but have little impact on the overall numbers arriving in Europe.
As one route becomes more difficult, refugees and immigrants try another. The preferred route was from Tunisia to Italy or Malta until Meloni’s actions, but departures have since reverted to Libya, and prior to that it was Türkiye. There has also been an increase in boats setting off from the west coast of Africa heading for the Canaries.
Life for those in Tunisia, unable to cross the Mediterranean, is grim. Many have been rounded up and transported to the Sahara Desert where they are abandoned without food or water. Many have died. Not only has Italy externalised its borders but it has sub-contracted its humanity.
Unilateral measures also threaten a more coherent EU and international response (for good or ill). Either an EU approach prevails, or individual countries will increase border controls, as the Netherlands and Germany are considering. If they do, and other countries follow, we can expect that more asylum seekers will try to reach the UK, or there will be a major political and security crisis across Europe (from which the UK will not be immune).
While the EU will work closely with the UK on some matters of shared interest, the UK can expect little sympathy. The sixth wealthiest nation in the world takes just 0.4% of the world’s 110 million displaced people and 1.8% of Europe’s. Germany takes three times as many and France twice as many refugees as the UK.
Safe routes are not a panacea
At present the government has not indicated that it will open any safe routes; its focus is on suppression and reducing the number of people for whom the UK provides refuge. Safe routes might reduce deaths and would enable some of those most in need of protection to come to the UK. However, unless the UK commits to accepting substantially more refugees than it does at present, the flow of those attempting to get to the UK is likely to remain broadly the same and any safe routes would run in parallel to, rather than replace, small boat crossings.
Unless the international community addresses environmental collapse, fairer distribution and protection of the world’s scarce resources, reducing civil and international conflict, and supporting people and refugees better and closer to home, people will be forced to migrate.
Criminal gangs or saviours?
Trafficking is the movement of a human ‘commodity’, while smuggling meet the needs of immigrant or refugee ‘customers’. Trafficking is predicated on exploitation, smuggling on providing a much-needed service for which individual migrants pay. However, vulnerable refugees and migrants may become exploited and trafficked, and trafficked people may escape and become migrants (protected in law or not). The operating models share some similarities and routes but also some significant differences.
It is not possible to get from high refugee generating countries – Afghanistan, Syria and Sudan, for instance, without the help of guides (or smugglers). Few refugees will survive the journey without them, and they are valued service providers. The more dangerous and difficult the route, the greater the need for smugglers.
The driver for trafficking and illegal immigration is cheap labour that can be exploited for profit. While the UK economy is reliant on cheap immigrant labour but restricts entry into the UK, exploitation will thrive. Racism and hostility; blaming the victims rather than the perpetrators, sustains it. Textile manufacturing, take away and restaurant meals, fresh and processed food production, care work and construction all employ high numbers of illegal immigrants.
Punitive measures may harass but will never deter
Punishing refugees or exploited labour makes no difference to the numbers attempting to come or being brought to the UK. In Australia, push backs at sea, returning refugees to Indonesia and denying asylum to refugees did not work (despite the claims) and it will not work here. The Italian approach has merely shifted migration routes.
In the UK, the threat of Rwanda did not deter (but swelled the numbers of refugees exploited by criminal ‘gangs’). Slashing the boats in France has led only to overcrowded boats and more deaths. The brutality meted out to those returned to Türkiye, Libya and Tunisia, or Albania in the case of trafficked labour, means people try again and again (or are trafficked again and again) to reach Europe.
Events at home trigger the journey and experiences on the journey drive further decision making. Refugees and migrants know little about the UK, or any other country. Information is fragmented and often erroneous. Threats about future treatment or denial of settlement are irrelevant in decision making. Welfare benefits and housing have no bearing on decisions and few migrants know of the resources (state and voluntary) available to them.
Because migrants are also unaware of those organisations that might assist them, prosecuting NGOs who support migrants in the camps, or who rescue them at sea, has no impact on the flow. Nicholas Winterton forged hundreds of papers to smuggle Jewish children out of Nazi Germany into the UK. Today he might be imprisoned for life.
There are no simple solutions
‘Smashing the gangs’ is as vacuous as ‘stopping the boats’ or ‘taking back control of our borders’. Politicians who maintain that they will be able to achieve what no other (modern, democratic and civilised) government has yet achieved are either naïve or duplicitous.
Control and punitive deterrence are illusions. Only if implemented with a sufficient level of cruelty, at least equalling that of the countries from which refugees are fleeing, will punitive measures remove the UK from migrant’s mental map of safe countries. Pursuing punitive deterrence is a race to the lowest depths of inhumanity – and ineffective, as Italy has demonstrated.
For all the UK’s faults, and sometimes poor treatment of refugees, it remains one of the safest countries in the world for those fleeing violence, and communities through out the UK have welcomed and supported refugees.
Information and sources
- Fact sheet on refugees
- Labour’s asylum and immigration policy – muddling through?
- Northern France and Belgium: Mixed Migration Trends and Dynamics
- The rise in small boat crossings is not because of losing Dublin III arrangements after Brexit
- Illegal migration bill: unworkable, incompetent cruelty
