French connection: Anne M Jones takes her sewing kit back to Calais
‘Why does no one join the dots that link wars, climate change and colonialism?’
I began writing this piece a couple of months ago, and since then the environment for refugees and asylum seekers has become even more hostile. New legislation in the Nationality and Borders Act contains very concrete plans to deport some asylum seekers to Rwanda. The absence of clear planning around the cost-effectiveness of this – in addition to serious misconceptions of what asylum seeking is truly about – is almost impossible to believe. (Dim memories come to my mind of Gulliver’s Travels, in which Gulliver witnesses some very odd places, where absurd schemes are taken seriously.) What we seem to be missing most of all is some joined-up thinking around migration. Migration happens, and has happened for millennia. Today it is perhaps even more common, because of global warming and wars. Attempting to stop people coming here is to ignore these realities.
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