trinketizationThe Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)
Sun 26 May, 2-4pm (15)
Winner of the Best Actor and Best Screenplay awards at Cannes 2005, Tommy Lee Jones’ directorial debut follows the story of Pete Perkins,
a ranch foreman in the high desert of west Texas who undertakes a dangerous and quixotic journey into Mexico.
Venue Museum of London Docklands see here.
CCS Border Film Series
With the Museum of London Docklands based at the site of a former port, where better to explore the divisive issue of the policing of national borders. With introductions and panel discussions by independent film makers, leading academics and activists.
All screenings are FREE
Border Shorts
Sun 24 Feb, 2-4pm (15)
The border film series opens with four shorts by two highly acclaimed directors. Ursula Biemann’s Performing the Border (1999) and Europlex (2003) explore the borders of Mexico, Europe and Africa, whilst Tim Travers Hawkins’ 1000 Voices (2009) features answerphone messages from people held in a detention center in the UK, and Surpriseville (2010) reveals the daily lives of a gated community in Arizona.
The Nine Muses (2010)
Sun 17 Mar, 2-4pm (PG)
Part documentary, part personal essay, this experimental film by John Akomfrah offers an existentialist rumination on the experience of migration to post-war Britain.
Ghosts (2006)
Sun 21 Apr, 2-4pm (15)
Based on the true story of the Morcambe Bay cockle-picking disaster of 2004, Nick Broomfield’s film follows Chinese undocumented immigrant Ai Qin to reveal the dangerous exploitation of migrant labour in the UK.
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)
Sun 26 May, 2-4pm (15)
Winner of the Best Actor and Best Screenplay awards at Cannes 2005, Tommy Lee Jones’ directorial debut follows the story of Pete Perkins,
a ranch foreman in the high desert of west Texas who undertakes a dangerous and quixotic journey into Mexico.
In This World (2002)
Sun 23 Jun, 2-4pm (15)
This semi-fictional docu-drama follows the attempted escape of two Afghan refugees along the ‘silk road’ through Pakistan, Iran and Turkey towards London. Directed by Michael Winterbottom.
District 9 (2009)
Sun 21 Jul, 2-4pm (15)
The Academy Award nominated sci-fi thriller set in a militarized refugee camp in Johannesburg, South Africa, drawing on real life events from the apartheid era.
Museum of London Docklands
West India Quay
Canary Wharf
London E14 4AL
The Museum entrance is two minutes walk from West India Quay.
See Museum of London Docklands on a map
By DLR: West India Quay
By Tube: Canary Wharf
By Bus: D3, D7, D8, 277, N50, D6, 15, 115, 135
By River: Thames Clippers
10-15 minute journey on a Thames Clipper riverboat from Bankside or Maritime Greenwich Pier to Canary Wharf Pier. Call 0870 781 5049 for times and prices.
A great abstract for an upcoming must see talk by Rachel (jan 2013, goldsmiths – stay tuned), posted (with permission) because it sums up some of the best that CCS does. The sort of thing that also was described here.
In February 2012 No Borders London, along with students and academics, held a week-long Convergence at Goldsmiths. The aim was to share knowledge and experiences relating to trans-national migrant and activist struggles against the border regime. Numerous discussions by activists, academics, migrants rights groups and organisations took place, direct actions occurred simultaneously at various sites away from the Convergence, films were screened, stories were told, food was cooked, childcare was provided, plans were made, friendships and alliances were formed, debates, disagreements and grievances were aired. My proposal is to present for discussion some reflections on what happened when No Borders converged within the academic space of the university. These reflections are based on my own close involvement as an organiser throughout both the planning stages and the actual week of events. I will consider the event in relation to previous border camps to highlight both the advantages and disadvantages of staging such a meeting at a university campus.
The 2012 No Borders Convergence offered a valuable opportunity to examine the challenges of bringing scholars and militant activists together within the institutional space of the university. As an event, the Convergence attempted and – to some extent – succeeded in creating a productive clash of activist struggles with critical academic scholarly research. In my presentation I will argue that a one-off event is not enough to bridge divides across research and activist practice and that the challenge now is to discuss how, when and where to stage the next Convergence-style event. How might it be possible to bring scholars, activists, migrants, humanitarian and charity workers together into productive connection again? Should such events be a priority in other institutions where researchers are working on the issue of migration and migrant activism? Is there really such a divide between the militant activist and the academic, or are many in No Borders in fact more closely connected to academic research than it might first appear? What does it mean to assume the ‘activist identity’ and how can this role be usefully problematised?
Rachel Rye
PhD student, Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths
was sent this by the folk at V.I.S.A. (Victorious International Student Army):
Stop the Snitching: What We Mean By Non-compliance
The pastoral idyll is dead. It was bulldozed long ago only to be overlain with a grid of barbed wire. If it ever had any real existence, it is now best described as a border fence, an internment camp, an interrogation room at the dock or airport. What we mean by this, is that the argument that attendance records – from lectures, classes, tutorials – need to be kept for pastoral reasons is now untenable. It needs to be jettisoned, however much nostalgia or regret we may feel in doing so. It is no longer safe or strategic to record attendance, for whatever reason, now that the border crosses us in our places of work and learning.
If the border is a social relation and not a thing, then we must pay attention to the ways in which we are reproducing, enabling and enforcing that border in our day-to-day lives. The most obvious way we might do this is, of course, the demand that teaching staff act as border agents by forwarding attendance records to the UKBA. Three missing strikes and you’re a terrorist. Goldsmiths UCU were quick to adopt a position of non-compliance, and has re-affirmed this stance in a recent statement. We need to be clear, however, about exactly what we mean by non-compliance, and alert to those who might be in a weaker position, from which non-compliance becomes more difficult to uphold.
Regarding the latter, two groups immediately spring to mind: administrative staff, and international students themselves. Admin staff are easier for management to single out, scapegoat, and threaten with punitive measures. Even a well-meaning attendance record kept for pastoral purposes can become a border snitch if intercepted once in administrative hands. Alternatively, lying on attendance registers makes teaching staff liable. To co-opt a reasonably repugnant, and thankfully now redundant, phrase from the US military, the best policy with regard to non-compliance is: don’t ask, don’t tell. If the data is never recorded, it can’t be passed on. Simple.
Management will, however, undoubtedly try to fulfill the UKBA’s demands whilst at the same time seeking to sidestep hostilities from staff and students. ‘Light touch’ is management-speak for this covert-cavity-search-on-campus approach. If they are unable to get the information they need from teaching or admin staff, rest assured they will exploit the vulnerabilities inherent in the precarious status of international students directly. We need to make it clear – strikes, occupations, public refusal – that any requirement or request that demands international students act as their own border agent, or assumes them to be criminal or terrorist until proven otherwise, is in blatant contradiction of our position of non-compliance. We need to make sure our non-compliance doesn’t leak. Stop the snitching – solidarity across the board and the border.
Love and rage,
Goldsmiths Migration Solidarity
Students, lecturers, admin workers and anybody else interested in education are invited to join a new group aiming to research and take action around the current conditions in the education sector. In the wake of the UK Border Agency’s revocation of London Met’s Highly Trusted Sponsor Status and consequent plans to deport potentially thousands of international students along with further plans for privatisation across the sector, we propose to investigate and take action around the changing nature of the education in the UK since the abolition of the EMA and mass increase of university tuition fees in 2010. We aim to draw together student, parent, and education workers’ experiences as well as available data in order to produce and disseminate as accurate a picture as possible of the current state and trends in higher education in the UK. We do so in support of and solidarity with current and future struggles in education. Our next meeting is on Wednesday 26th September at 6.30pm at London Met Holloway Road campus (the tower building next to Holloway Road tube station). Here is a link:http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/about/buildings/tower-building.cfm
Anybody interested in participating should contact: contact.edu.comm[at]gmail.com. This project has been initiated by Plan C London, it is however open to individuals and groups to get involved.
Well well, profiled as welfare scrounger drug addict illegal Indian layabouts. The sensitive and thoughtful UKBA (DisUnited kingdom border agency) again doing its utmost to reveal the seamier side of enforced poverty in the so-called welfare state. ‘We are all in this together’ – so detain and deport. Its pogrom-bait. I don’t recall, say, Alex from Blur, getting done for drug-use (‘cheese’ is just a metaphor) and of course am so enamored by the even-handed approach to other students, like the Internationals at the MET. Clearly this item is a teaser to set another theme for the PROTEST AGAINST THE UKBA on friday.
Rest of the story from the BBC with video here.
PROTEST AGAINST THE UKBA on friday.
From London Met UCU:
London Met – Defend Our Students – London Demonstration Friday 28/9
Dear all,
London Met UCU, London Met Unison, and London Met SU have called a London-wide mobilisation and march from ULU (Malet Street) to the Home Office (Marsham Street, Victoria) for Friday 28th Sept. Assembling at Malet Street for 1pm. Under the banner: ‘Amnesty Now – Save London Met – No to Privatisation’. This initiative is supported by London Region UCU, and University of London Union (ULU).
This Friday (21/9) the High Court will consider granting an immediate injunction (an effective ‘stay’) in favour of London Met Uni and against the UK Border Agency (UKBA). Such an injunction should allow for a full Judicial Review of the UKBA’s decision to revoke London Met’s Highly Trusted Sponsor (HTS) Tier-4 licence – an action that has condemned over 2,500 of our students to either forced university transfer or deportation.
However, even if an injunction is granted it will only be a temporary reprieve until the outcome of the Judicial Review itself – which is expected to take at least several months to be heard. Meanwhile, our license to recruit international students is still suspended, our current international students are still in limbo – particularly if they have more than this academic year to complete, and our courses/jobs still threatened.
If an injunction is not granted then we will be in the fight of our lives – not only for all our international students against an immediate and very real deportation threat but for the very survival of London Met as a public university.
We are refusing to sit on the sidelines and by mere observers of our destiny as others shape it. We are therefore fighting as hard as we can for our students, our university, and for real justice. We will have much more chance of winning that fight with your support and solidarity – as wonderfully expressed during last Friday’s UK-wide solidarity events.
Last week’s TUC Congress in Brighton unanimously supported the call for an immediate amnesty for our students
We now need your support once more – particularly, if you are based in London. We want as many trade union banners as possible on next week’s march/demonstration – along with as many colleagues as you can bring. This is not just a fight for London Met – this is a fight for public education as a whole.
Please send messages of support to mark.campbell_home [at] btopenworld.com
In solidarity
Mark Campbell
London Metropolitan University UCU (Chair)
UCU National Executive Committee (London and the East HE)
SERTUC Public Services Committee (Vice-Chair)
Trinketization must-have item of the week! 
this new electronic gadget from Opticon: website http://www.opticon.co.uk is a barcode scanner about to be rolled out at Queen Mary, to be used by seminar leaders to register attendance at seminars by scanning students’ ID cards.
[i am reliably informed from deep inside the administrative apparatus]
forget the new iphone five, this is the trinket you need for the proper management of scholarship in the knowledge economy
its sleek design makes it an oh so slick silver status object, with curved corners™
first an arm and a leg in fees, then electronic tagging as the staff are made agents of UKBA. FFS.
A reminder of the Centre for Cultural Studies position against being agents of the Border regime here.
Update:
—– Forwarded Message —–
MESSAGE FROM CCLS Director and Head of Dept, Laws
Dear all,
As a result of the tightening of immigration rules, from this academic year
onwards all universities must monitor students’ lecture attendance on an
ongoing basis. This encompasses students from all postgraduate taught
programmes. The attendance monitoring exercise will require the assistance
of academic staff members and guest speakers teaching postgraduate modules.
We have purchased scanners that read students ID cards. There is one scanner
per module. Each module convener must ensure that the person responsible
for the weekly lecture brings the scanner into the class, gives it to
students to record their attendance and brings it back to CCLS/Mile End
reception as appropriate.It is VITAL that this is done every week as continuity is required when
checking for absence.Scanner control
Modules taught at LIF OR CH SQ can collect and return scanners to LIF
reception.
Modules taught at Mile End OR at IALS by department staff can collect and
return scaners to Mile End Law ReceptionWe will start the monitoring exercise from week one, although for the first
two weeks it is trial run as class lists are not yet known. Your help in
implementing this is very important. As you know, foreign students are vital
for us and we must do what is required by the authorities to ensure our
right to sponsor student visas is not affected.If you have any queries please contact Aqib (Ext. 8091 A.Khan@qmul.ac.uk or
Wendy Ext 8104 ccls-helpdesk@qmul.ac.uk).There are some basic guidance notes attached -
Many thanks in advance for your collaboration with this task.
Kind regards,
Spyros and Valsamis
A friend is applying for residency in Australia – the glorious points based immigration system.
She writes:
“I included a picture of this because I could not stop laughing when I saw this, the government requires a “character assessment” to insure that you are “of good character”. They have you get police reports for the last 10 years, and all sorts of nonsense. Among the biggest pieces of nonsense is the form itself. Question number 6, after name, gender,DOB, and the like is “Are you of Arabic descent?”. RIght after asking you if you are a Chinese businessman. Whether or not you are of Arabic descent is apparently crucial for the Australian government to determine if you are of good character”
Here is the relevant page of the form:
Refugees and asylum seekers in several German detention camps have gone on
strike in order to draw attention to and protest the inhumane predicament
they have found themselves in. 8 September 2012 marks the
beginning of their march from the detention center in Wuerzburg to Berlin.
With Jon Sack and Ewa Jasiewicz, authors of the graphic chapter in our Beyond Borders book – out now: pavementbooks.com/beyondborders… 
http://fb.me/Z9Ck13zL
We wrote Beyond Borders against this:
Job Details
UKBA Compliance Officer
Location: New Cross, London
Contract type: Permanent
Salary: £34,607 to £38,597 pa incl
Date posted: 02 August 2012
Recruiter: GOLDSMITHS UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
UKBA Compliance Officer
£34,607 to £38,597 pa incl New Cross, London Working within the Quality, Planning and Academic Governance Department, you will be responsible for ensuring that Goldsmiths maintains its status as a Highly Trusted Sponsor under Tiers 2, 4 and 5 of the United Kingdom Border Agency’s Points Based System. Key tasks will include advising academic, professional and administrative staff across the institution on Tier 2 and Tier 4 PBS sponsorship duties, reporting and auditing requirements, and working with senior managers to ensure that appropriate systems and processes are developed and that the day-to-day operational activities at Goldsmiths comply with all relevant aspects of UK Government legislation in relation to international student and staff recruitment.You will have a detailed knowledge of UKBA sponsor guidance requirements, excellent written, oral communication and influencing skills, an analytical approach to evaluating processes and policies, and will possess the initiative to work without close supervision.
Interested in this job?
Go to the GOLDSMITHS UNIVERSITY OF LONDON website to view more details about this job.
UKBA Compliance Officer jobs, New Cross, London
Apply for UKBA Compliance Officer in New Cross, London on Guardian Jobs.
Full Time position working for GOLDSMITHS UNIVERSITY OF LONDON.
and discount pre-order here.
book blurb and contents list here:
This Op Ed appeared in The Statesman newspaper in Kolkata, and skewers the madness of Tory immigration/xenophobia/economic jingoism on this boggy Isle. The writer is a staffer on that paper – jolly good to see that the rest of the world notices your crap Cameron. ‘Independent ethics advisor’ my arse – he is called Sir, which means he’s hardly independent, nor ethical. And anyway, as an advisor, his job is to tell Cameron what he can and can’t get away with. Not a brake, more an alibi.
The moral netherland
2 June 2012
UK’s increasing non-EU visa restrictions and requirements are symptomatic of a country that has not yet found the means or the will to articulate its ever-decreasing position in the world pecking order, writes lara choksey
Of all the things that the Leveson Inquiry into the ethics of British Press has exposed, perhaps one of the most remarkable is that British Prime Minister David Cameron has an ethics advisor. Responding to the possibility of being called up in front of the Inquiry, Mr Cameron said that should any evidence against him suggest the breaking of ministerial codes, he will call in Sir Alex Allan ~ his independent ethics advisor ~ for consultation.
On one level it seems sensible to have someone in or around Downing Street who can determine the ethical dimensions of political quandaries. On another, it is disturbing that the leader of a country that has not ceased promoting itself as a moral leader in the world needs someone else to distinguish between right and wrong.
In terms of the international Press, there are two stories dominating discussions of the UK. The first is the Leveson Inquiry, which started off as a simple matter of investigating the hacking of celebrity phones by itinerant news agencies, and which has now begun to expose the sordid nature of Downing Street’s relationship with the Murdochs under the Cameron, Brown and Blair leaderships.
This in itself is nothing new; anyone who has watched an episode of Yes, Minister! would expect nothing more. But when placed parallel to the second story circulating across the globe ~ that of implemented and threatened restrictions on UK visas for those who do not meet specific economic requirements ~ the hypocrisy and shortsightedness at Westminster’s rotten core becomes ever clearer.
There are two issues at stake here. The first concerns Downing Street’s idea of Britain as a moral leader in global politics. The second concerns Downing Street’s idea of what constitutes Britain’s nationhood. The discursive frame through which Mr Cameron and his ministers frame Britain domestically and internationally reveals a central administration willfully ignoring the economic and cultural heterogeneity of the population under its control, as well as the hypocrisy of its justifying its actions to the rest of the world on the grounds of moral superiority.
Above any other nation ~ in terms of pure numbers ~ India is the country likely to be most affected by the UK’s increasing non-EU visa restrictions and requirements. According to the International Passenger Survey, Indian nationals made up the largest percentage (11.9 per cent) of immigrants granted entry to the UK in 2010-11. Of these Indian nationals, a large number entered the UK on student visas. Those entering in 2010 would have been granted a two-year post-study work visa.
Fast forward a year, and there has been more than a 30 per cent drop in the number of Indian nationals applying for student visas, with many choosing the United States, Australia and Canada as alternatives. This is partly because the post-study work visa was scrapped this April, and partly ~ according to some British university professors ~ due to the increasing hostility and suspicion shown by the UK border agency towards non-EU students, particularly those from South Asia. This observation is compounded by the fact that the total number of student visas granted by the UK to non-EU residents dropped by 62 per cent in the first quarter of 2012.
We could easily leap to charges of xenophobia, and speculate about a small island closing its borders as a four-year recession refuses to budge. The residual prejudices of post-9/11 homeland security become an increasingly convenient justification for reinforcing national borders. Yet, this logic ignores the pre-Olympic pro-investment road show that various British foreign diplomats have been charged with promoting in their respective countries over the last 12 months, encouraging non-EU businesses to invest in the UK.
In February, the UK immigration minister Mr Damien Green announced that from 2016, people not from the EU and not earning at least £35,000 will not be able to apply to be a permanent resident in the UK. The message is clear: the UK welcomes big business and high salaries, regardless of ideology or investment ethics. Diversity is embraced, as long as it comes with a thick cheque book. In return, multinational companies benefit from tax evasion and low borrowing costs on international financial markets. It is undeniably ~ at least for the moment ~ a mutually beneficial arrangement. Prosaic questions of ethics are put out of the window ~ Britain is in a recession, and dog will eat dog.
Why does this matter to India? Apart from the fact that Britain is still considered to be a desirable place to visit, study and live (although this view is undoubtedly changing), this matters because Britain is behind the times. Specifically in the context of India’s increasing importance on the world stage ~ both economically and diplomatically ~ Britain’s restrictions on non-EU immigration seem ridiculous. Such restrictions are symptomatic of a country that has not yet found the means or the will to articulate its ever-decreasing position in the world pecking order.
For the sake of argument, let us just speculate that Britain once had a right to claim moral superiority over other nations (we need not go very far back in history to look at the violence of such a claim). But as the Cameron government decimates the welfare structures that might have once allowed Britain to claim a certain moral superiority with regard to providing the infrastructure (if not always the materialisation) of holistic care for its population, the claim becomes increasingly fragile. A national heath service, financial support for people at the bottom of the food chain, and ~ perhaps most pertinently in the context of the visa discussion ~ open borders for economic migrants and political refugees: these are some of the structures that might convincingly constitute the discourse of moral superiority.
Yet, in the last twenty years, these structures have become dirty words in Downing Street, replaced by privatisation, austerity and border security, seemingly in direct spite of the increasing scale of global poverty and warfare: so many people have never been so poor, and genocide has never been simpler. India should take heed: there is a fast-appearing vacancy in the global moral high-ground market that needs prompt filling. In an interview published in The Daily Telegraph on 25 May, 2012, British home secretary Ms Theresa May responded to a question on curbing immigration by saying: “The aim is to create here in Britain a really hostile environment for illegal migration.” We might ask, what constitutes an illegal migrant? The term suggests an international law preventing movement between countries. However, while the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights decrees that a country should grant entry to its own citizens, there is no international law that prevents a person from entering a country in the first place.
Immigration laws are national laws, coded by national interests and national understandings of who should be allowed entry. Thus, we learn much about the way in which a country understands itself by the way in which it categorises those who arrive on its shores. In the UK, the terms of ‘illegal migration’ are clear: it has everything to do with economic status. Those who are not considered fit to make a significant economic contribution to the UK, quite simply, become illegal ~ outside legitimacy ~ and vulnerable to any form of physical or mental subjugation. The right to claim access to Britain is based on purely economic terms: this is the new model of national belonging.
Downing Street has thrown off the mantle of social responsibility, both domestically and internationally. Internationally speaking, its participation in Libya on the grounds of humanitarian intervention is laughable when we consider that there is a British Ambassador ~ Nicholas Ray ~ permanently stationed in Khartoum, Sudan. His purpose is to perform diplomacy with the al Bashir government, an administration currently carrying out ethnic cleansing operations on its borders. Domestically, the British government’s claim to provide for its population (as opposed to its citizens) is being made forfeit by the systematic destruction of structures built on the ideas of a common right to life, and the responsibility of government to provide for its population. The Cameron government’s policies are regressive to a Dickensian degree, and increasing internal unrest ~ characterised by last year’s riots ~ will only be kept at bay by Jubilee morale boosting for so long. With the removal of welfare structures, Downing Street would model Britain as nothing more than a vast, transnational bank, complete with hordes of the hungry standing outside. From an international perspective, this is the only form of diversity Cameron’s government is currently interested in promoting.
The writer is on the staff of The Statesman
[10.6.2012 Lara adds: Clarification: I take it for granted that ‘morals’ are socially-inscribed codes, whereas ethics - broadly speaking - are a means of defending concepts of right and wrong actions. My use of the phrase ‘moral superiority’ is therefore performative - the description or impression of a national discourse, as opposed to ‘ethical behaviour’. A longer piece might make this distinction clearer, but I did not feel it was necessary to point out the ethical importance of, for example, the NHS etc.
To clarify my argument and take it forward: firstly, that Britain’s claim to moral superiority is being made forfeit not because it ever had a right to make this claim in the first place, but because the infrastructure supporting this claim (class/gender/race equality and equal opportunities and so on) is being dismantled: the discourse, or performance, can no longer support itself.
Or so it would seem from one perspective. However, taking this forward, I would suggest that if Britain maintains its performance of ‘moral superiority’ on an international stage, then the discourse (and infrastructure) of ‘moral superiority’ is now based on codes of economic viability. To be ‘moral’, in the context of Downing Street’s national aspirations, one must be financially solvent. Foreign investors are invited to buy a stake in moral superiority.]
