Felix Bazalgette - Home Is Always a Ship
Bazalgette, Felix. ‘Home Is Always a Ship’. Failed States, no. 3: refuge (March 2019): 14–29.
"That year [1968], fear about new arrivals from these countries prompted a landmark piece of anti-immigration legislation put forward by Labour: the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, which removed the right of entry to the U.K. for Commonwealth citizens and imposed onerous new restrictions, forms and queues. It was during the lead-up to this bill being passed that Enoch Powell made his 'Rivers of Blood' speech. Harmondsworth detention centre opened in 1970 to house the new victims of this legislation."
(page 18)
"Legislation conjured the detention centre into being, and gathered people from all around the world inside it. Over the decades, legislation also expanded it and changed its purpose - by the late eighties Thatcher's Conservative government had introduced stiff financial penalties for airlines if they allowed someone onboard without a valid visa. As a result the border was thrown outside of the U.K. into every point of departure around the world, and airlines were made into border guards. (The recent drownings in the Mediterranean are a direct result of this legal innovation, adopted by wealthier nations from the eighties onwards). The border was also drawn inwards, with an expanding immigration detention and border force bureaucracy. Police, doctors, landlords, bank clerks and university administrators joined airline staff in the effort to enforce the border."
(page 18)
"In the late fifties, Hannah Arendt described the situation of the millions who found themselves stateless across Europe after the First World War. "The stateless person, without right to residence and without the right to work, had of course constantly to transgress the law," she wrote. "He was liable to jail sentences without ever committing a crime.""
(page 18)
(page 18)
"Legislation conjured the detention centre into being, and gathered people from all around the world inside it. Over the decades, legislation also expanded it and changed its purpose - by the late eighties Thatcher's Conservative government had introduced stiff financial penalties for airlines if they allowed someone onboard without a valid visa. As a result the border was thrown outside of the U.K. into every point of departure around the world, and airlines were made into border guards. (The recent drownings in the Mediterranean are a direct result of this legal innovation, adopted by wealthier nations from the eighties onwards). The border was also drawn inwards, with an expanding immigration detention and border force bureaucracy. Police, doctors, landlords, bank clerks and university administrators joined airline staff in the effort to enforce the border."
(page 18)
"In the late fifties, Hannah Arendt described the situation of the millions who found themselves stateless across Europe after the First World War. "The stateless person, without right to residence and without the right to work, had of course constantly to transgress the law," she wrote. "He was liable to jail sentences without ever committing a crime.""
(page 18)