Session 2
Immigration and Asylum
Dr. Nadim Shehadi
Thank you. When Dr. Al-Shahi asked me to comment on the two speakers, he said don't worry you don't have to prepare anything, you just listen and you just comment, but I cheated a bit and yesterday I looked up some UNHCR reports, because I'm very ignorant on asylum. And I was surprised to see that the total figure in Europe for asylum seekers in 2001 was about half of what it was ten years before. Whereas the issue is much more controversial and is treated with more alarm disproportionate to its size. And this was just before September 11 and the title of this conference is "Islam in Europe post September 11th". This conference was probably designed without anticipating that by now we would also be post-Iraq war and I think there is a link that has to be established between Asylum, immigrant communities, September 11 and Iraq war and present agenda of post-war Iraq, that's what I would like to examine.
But before that I want to make a couple of comments inspired by the speakers. First is that immigration and population movement and asylum is not a new phenomenon. What is new is that we are now living in a world of closed borders and laws regulating the movement of population and the free movement of Labour. When you have laws that regulate them, these laws restrict rather than encourage. If you take a wider view of history, there is population movement throughout and this country is the best example, I mean the Huguenots and all that. Population movement and asylum seekers have become an issue when we start regulating them. In the past it was a very natural phenomena and liberal ideas which we're trying to promote in post-war Iraq, again, assume no borders, assume freedom of movement of population.
When Europe started panicking about immigration in the early nineties it produced the Barcelona process, the Euro- Mediterranean partnership, which was mainly about curbing immigration. The process assumed that there are diseases in the south which if you cure, and the cure is by liberalism, these diseases would curtail any immigration. The Barcelona process promotes free market, democracy, human rights etc. all of them very nice liberal principles, but it's not promoting the other component of Liberal thought and that is freedom of movement of population and Labour. So the liberal agenda is missing that point.
Post 9-11 attention was drawn again to the presence of Islamic fundamentalist groups in Europe and in the United States and which were perceived as a security risk. These groups were mainly exiles that were persecuted in their countries and sought refuge in the west. The events of September 11 also changed the way the US sees the world and was behind the Bush doctrine which also brought about the war on Iraq to change the regime of Saddam Hussein and also bring about change in the whole area of the Middle East. It was argued that the state of the Arab World has been one of the major causes behind the terror attack. Again, but this time through war, the west is trying to impose a liberal agenda to resolve this.
But this does not take into account that the world has changed, in a way the world is in continuous change, but what has changed is that in the old days you used to emigrate to get away and if you are in political disagreement with your rulers, you leave and you settled somewhere else and are cut off from your country of origin. Whereas before if you stayed you could become a political activist; these days, you emigrate in order to become a political activist. If you stay in your country you cannot, in most Arab countries, in most Muslim countries, you cannot be a political activist. In an era of globalisation, with the internet, communications and all that, immigrants are more politically active in their western country of refuge where they have the freedom to act, than if they had stayed in their country of origin. From this perspective, preventing asylum seekers from coming to the west, also prevents them being active and promoting change in their countries. Whereas change in these countries, towards more liberal orders, is seen as necessary for curbing future emigration.
There is thus an inconsistency in trying to prevent asylum seekers from taking refuge in the west and sending them back to countries where they would face repression. The security measures that have been promoted post 9/11 are at the expense of human rights and the liberal agenda that is seen as the main instrument in solving the problem.
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