Open Borders: The Case Against Immigration Controls, Second Edition

✍ Scribed by Teresa Hayter

• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 226
• Edition: Second Edition
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

In this new edition of Open Borders, Teresa Hayter assesses the impact of the increasing severity of border controls since they were first introduced and makes the controversial case for their abolition. Hayter focuses on postwar immigration controls, especially the use of such controls against the peoples of former European colonies and East Europeans, and their effects on asylum seekers. She examines the recent history of European coordination of border controls and the notion of ‘Fortress Europe’. Hayter argues that the existence of controls leads to great suffering and abuse of human rights, and that immigration controls are racist and help legitimate racism. She demonstrates that immigration controls have actually had a limited impact on controlling numbers. To illustrate her arguments, she draws on empirical material, especially from Britain in the 1980s and 1990s, relating in particular to the use of detention, arbitrary decision-making and the denial of benefits. She compares British government policies with policies elsewhere in Europe and calls for the free movement of people and the abolition of border controls. The new edition brings this seminal work up to date with a lengthy preface exploring how the practices of the British government over the past few years has continued the process Hayter outlines in the main text – of abusive and irrational border controls and the criminalisation of entire communities. This second edition also updates the bibliography and list of campaigning groups, and ends with a new manifesto for a world without borders, declaring 'no one is illegal!'

✦ Table of Contents

Contents......Page 4
Introduction......Page 26
Preface to the First Edition......Page 6
Preface to the Second Edition......Page 8
World migration......Page 33
1.1 Foreign population as a percentage of total resident population in European countries, 1997......Page 35
Migration to Britain......Page 38
Racism......Page 46
Early history of British immigration controls......Page 61
Controls on Commonwealth immigration......Page 68
Fortress Europe......Page 82
The debasing of refugee rights......Page 89
Legislation and legal processes in Britain......Page 101
The criminalisation of refugees......Page 120
Destitution......Page 130
Detention......Page 137
Campsfield immigration detention centre......Page 148
Resistance in Britain......Page 159
The sans- papiers movement......Page 167
Immigration controls and human rights......Page 174
Immigration controls do not work......Page 177
Immigration and jobs, wages and conditions......Page 180
Immigration and public expenditure......Page 186
Immigration controls and racism......Page 188
Migration and the Third World......Page 191
Free Movement......Page 196
Appendix......Page 198
Bibliography......Page 209
List of organisations and campaigns......Page 214
Index......Page 218
1.2 Estimated net immigration from the new Commonwealth from 1953 to the introduction of controls in mid- 1962......Page 44
1.3 Net migration to/ from Britain, 1871-1991......Page 45
3.1 Asylum applications in Britain in the 1990s......Page 95