Calais, Refugees, Migrants, and a Media Storm.
There has been a media sh!tstorm in recent weeks over the refugee/migrant camp in the French port of Calais, and concerning Gary Lineker, the famous BBC football (soccer) pundit. For my American and foreign readers, I will walk you through this and give you my thoughts. Let me lay out some basic facts:
- The EU has free movement of people in the Schengen area such that when you get into Europe from the outer countries, you are free to move about to any other similar country. As the UK is not part of the Schengen agreement, we have border controls, though must accept European migrants, as E countries have free movement of EU nationals. -
- Calais is a French port that is one of the main connections to the UK: there is a ferry that travels the short distance from Calais to Dover, and with it being the shortest distance, the Channel Tunnel operates from Calais. As a result, the port is a frontier to the Schengen countries to the UK. Because of this, and the historic build up of migrants there trying to get to the UK, Calais has had camps of migrants (It has existed in one form or another since 1999). This, in turn, has caused the UK, agreed in a bilateral deal with France, to have a its own border control in Calais. In other words, a small part of Calais is UK territory, and we have our border control set up there to help deal with the years-long situation. -
- There are a large number of unaccompanied minors - somewhere between 800 and 1,200. These have caused the largest humanitarian concerns. These children are living in squalid conditions. -
- Asylum regulation in the EU states that people have to register asylum in the first country they come to in the EU. This is rarely France. -
- The UK have agreed to take in some minors as the French declared they were again bulldozing the site (due imminently). Some 6,500 or so migrants will be relocated to centres across France. We have recently taken about 200 minors and will be taking more. This is part of the Lord Dubs (himself a child migrant in WW2) amendment to immigration rules. -
- The Sun newspaper, a tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, playing catch-up with the Daily Mail and Express, has become regressively more right-wing during Brexit, playing into fears about immigration with its readership. It, along with other newspapers, has written about how some child migrants are really older people pretending to be children in order to gain preferential access to the UK. Whilst this is true of some people, it is no doubt a tiny minority and does not invalidate the thousands of actual children. The reporting in some newspapers is painting a picture that all child migrants are untrustworthy liars intent on taking advantage of soft-touch UK and its welfare state. -
- This reporting has caused a backlash from UK citizens concerned about taking in these children and claiming that the UK is, indeed, a soft touch; that we should refuse these child migrants. -
- Gary Lineker is an ex-England footballer who is a national treasure. He has been prevalent in the UK media for years, has some lucrative advertising contracts, and is the presenter on the flagship BBC football show, Match of the Day. He has been generally loved and appreciated for a number of years across the UK public, without any real reservation. -
- The adverse reaction to the refugee / migrant crisis from certain national newspapers annoyed Lineker, on a personal level. There were calls from Tory MPs that each child migrant should have dentists give them a dental analysis to see if they really are the age they claim. Lineker tweeted:The treatment by some towards these young refugees is hideously racist and utterly heartless. What's happening to our country?— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) October 18, 2016
- The nation has now been split, in true Trump-Clinton fashion, or Trump's "Mexicans are rapists" vs a more thoughtful humanity. Many have come out to defend Lineker, and many remain staunchly bigoted.
The Twittersphere went wild and Lineker got taken to town by the very people he was aiming at. The British public, to some larger-than-would-be-expected degree, went for him. And so did the press. The Sun called for him to be sacked, and many on Twitter harangued him for not having BBC neutrality on his own, personal Twitter account. True to form, the Sun also personally attacked him for the size of his ears. I think "pedd;es migrant lies" is a pretty distasteful phrase.
The camp in Calais is no small deal, and has previously been pulled down. But with no strategic plan to deal with the migrants, it quickly rebuilds. It is presently called the "Jungle", details of which can be found here.
There have been various "jungle" camps around Calais since 1999, where migrants set up camp on unoccupied land, moving to new locations when camps are closed down by the French authorities. At the same time other migrants squat in abandoned buildings. In April 2015, The Guardian reported that the "official" and principal "jungle" in Calais was located at a former landfill site, five kilometers (three miles) from the centre of town, and occupied by 1,000 of the 6,000 migrants in Calais. According to the paper, it was one of nine camps then existing in Calais. This jungle for the first time had showers, electricity and toilets, plus one hot meal served per day, but without proper accommodation.[3] Conditions in the other camps are poor, typically without proper sanitary or washing facilities and accommodation consisting of tents and improvised shelters. Food is supplied by charity kitchens. The French authorities have faced a dilemma of addressing humanitarian needs without attracting additional migrants.[4]
Desperate migrants dangerously try to jump onto moving lorries and get into various vehicles. this can be upsetting and dangerous for both parties. Migrants were originally largely of Iraqi Kurd and other nearby provenance, but have increasingly been of African origin, and other places.
So there you have it. What do I have to add to this pretty horrible state of affairs? Well, I like some of Lineker's replies:
Wonder what makes some people feel, by sheer good fortune of place of birth, superior to others. I need a lie down. — Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) October 19, 2016
and
Getting a bit of a spanking today, but things could be worse: Imagine, just for a second, being a refugee having to flee from your home.— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) October 21, 2016
I find it refreshing when "celebrities" get involved in political discourse, because the conversation gets broadened to a more nationwide audience. I mean, how many people really watch BBC Question Time or The Big Questions or The Andrew Marr Show or This Week? These tiny audiences of people interested in the big ideas and questions facing the country are well and truly trumped by the audiences watching reality TV, or some such other mindless twaddle. Let's have these conversations. But let's keep them dignified. Does it really warrant publicly vilifying someone because they show humanity towards those less fortunate than ourselves? Is this who we have become? Has Brexit awakened a monster?
Migrants vs Refugees
There is one point, though, that requires some clarification. Many of my fellow liberals have blanket named these migrants as refugees. But are they? The EU requirement for refugees is that they seek asylum in the first EU country they come to. This, in these cases, is rarely France anyway. They have successfully fled their countries, often war zones, to arrive in a country of refuge, of safety. That is what France is. That they desire to move again, of their own will, to a place that they deem more attractive, for whatever reason, should surely mean that these refugees are now economic migrants. They should have been registered in France, or a country prior to Frane, but they have decided not to do so, and to live in such a camp, in order to get to the UK.
Whether it be that the UK has more attractive social welfare, or because of colonial imperialism remaining in the collective consciousness of the many migrants, or simply because of the international language factor, is neither here nor there. They have decided to bypass France as a destination for asylum, in order to get to the UK.
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However, does this matter? So, we can define them as economic migrants, rather than political refugees. Okay. But they still present as a humanitarian problem for both the UK and France. And together, we need to solve that problem as moral members of this planet, and species.
The way that charities like Save the Children look at the situation is that the last time the camp was destroyed, hundreds of children went missing, and no one knows what happened to them. This can be dangerous because it is thought that these children present the perfect victim demographic for grooming for terrorism, as well as crime. So something needs to be done for a number of reasons. Just leaving these people in a camp ad infinitum can't be the way forward, and destroying the cam every so often doesn't greatly help unless the French (together with the British) really are intent on properly integrating or dealing with the people, both then and in the future.
Older than children issue
Yes, some people claiming to be child migrants are older than children, trying to game the system. Some people in Britain are rapists or terrorists. But we are not all such. It does not mean no British people should be allowed access to other countries on account of this. This is a hasty generalisation of the highest order and is obviously fallacious. By concntrating on this minority, the newspapers involved are deflecting the conversation away from the real issue, and poisoning the well for those many unaccompanied children, living in horible conditions.
What to do?
And here's the rub. There ain't no easy solution to mass migration. We have an international aid budget that people like UKIP want us to scrap and spend on "our own". However, whilst they rail against immigration, they do not realise that to solve immigration, you need to spend money abroad in attempts to equalise inequality. Literally billions of people, given the chance, would want to live in the UK. Because (and you are lucky on account of the chance of your birth, geographically speaking) we have a mature, stable, advanced economy and political system providing a good safety net. If the countries of origin had these things too, then the people living there would not see the grass as being greener elsewhere. The job of the political institutions worldwide is to work hard to make sure that every country has its desirable attributes for residence. Unless, of course, you want perpetual immigration issues.
The job of the political institutions worldwide is to work hard to make sure that every country has its desirable attributes for residence. Unless, of course, you want perpetual immigration issues. Yes, to some degree, capitalism thrives on some amount of inequality, but the most successful economies and societies in the world, for example the Nordic countries, also have the smallest income inequalities and the best safety nets. However difficult it is, there needs to be some replication of this throughout the world.
This is blue sky thinking on a massive scale. How it is achieved is anyone's guess, especially when countries like USA seem hellbent on wanting to elect people who would serve to destroy these goals.
Really, though, attacking Lineker in the way he has been by the press and public only goes to show the extent in the shift towards populism and the right that this nation has undergone in the last few years. I have personally experienced this with many people I know, who feel empowered to say things they wouldn't have some years back. The rise of UKIP has meant a rise in acceptable intolerance. We must remember that 1) migrants are humans; 2) they were unlucky to be born where they were; 3) we were lucky to be born where we were; 4) we need to find some long term solution to mass migration events.
There is something else I would like to say: news media organisations are no longer sources of news, or news generators. Their sole purpose appears to be entertaining their readers, and feeding them what they think they want. This is a dangerous new world, where accuracy and responsible reporting are bygone values. More on that another time.