We stand together and celebrate together - On International Migrants Day
Mariko Hayashi celebrates International Migrants Day by sharing the challenges migrants face and why she believes its important for the ESEA community to address these issues.
Photo credit: Migrant Voice
It is the time of year where many people find it difficult to concentrate on work, thinking about Christmas, the New Year celebration or holidays visiting friends and family, although this year feels quite different. Coming close to the end of 2020 a.k.a. ‘Year COVID’, the second national lockdown has ended, Christmas lights bring festive mood and news about a vaccine might be a more positive outlook about the new year to come. Reflecting on this year, how would you describe challenges you faced during the pandemic? Isolation, fear, uncertainty, loneliness, confusion over information and new regulations, or loss of control over your life…?
18th December is the International Migrants’ Day. On this day of this very significant year, while celebrating positive contributions migrants make to society, and their resilience and ability to make changes through migration, I would like to use this space to shed light on the challenges facing migrants and to share why I think it is important for the ESEA community to address these issues.
The words I used to describe feelings and experiences of the pandemic are, in fact, very similar to words used to describe the plight of migrants since long before COVID-19 came about.
Migration can be a lonely experience, leaving you far away from home and not knowing when you will next see your family and friends, while you struggle to understand and adapt to unfamiliar and often confusing languages and regulations.
“It feels like you have little control over your life, as it has been handed over to the Home Office, to be determined by pieces of paper they issue. Filing applications can be very nerve-racking, and cost you a lot of time, energy, emotions and money, yet you don’t know when you will hear back or what the outcome will be.”
For people seeking asylum, it is often a very long and distressing process over many years. If you are lucky enough to receive your papers, they are often only valid for a few months or a couple of years, and you will have to repeat the same application process over and over again, while having to understand new and confusing rule changes. Your status is often tied to your employment, study or relationship, and if any of these circumstances change, you might lose your status and rights to residency, regardless of all the other things happening in your life. Living like this makes it difficult to make long-term life plans.
Although I am in a much more privileged position than many other people, I myself am going through the long migration process with many ups and downs. After spending a total of eight years in the UK with five different visas, having degrees from British universities and British family, my current visa still stipulates ‘No Recourse to Public Fund’” conditions and will expire in one and a half years. Despite arriving here for the first time without being able to speak much English, I was lucky enough to have support, education and experiences that have made me who I am today. So I can use these privileges to work for the promotion and better protection of migrants’ rights. I have been an advocate for migrants’ rights since 2010, through community organising, community-based research and policy advocacy in the UK, Japan, and some other ESEA countries. My commitments to this cause are deeply rooted in my own personal experience of migration, inspirations I was given by many of my fellow migrants’ rights advocates, and my upbringing in a rural mining town in Japan, which historically hosted internal and external labour migrants who have long suffered discrimination, exploitation and inequality.
At the beginning of the first lockdown, I spoke with my migrant friends and colleagues, including those from ESEA countries, who told me how the circumstances of the lockdown were not new to them. For those who have experienced living in conflict areas, being detained, or working in exploitative conditions, the restrictions imposed by the lockdown felt very familiar, or even less restrictive than those they had experienced previously in their lives.
In the wake of COVID-19, many of us experienced fear of leaving the house. For the ESEA community it was not only about the virus, but about fear of COVID-related hate crime against us. This again has been the everyday experience for many migrants, particularly those who are undocumented. Every time they step outside, they live with the fear of being stopped and questioned about their immigration status, detained or deported. I have heard from many undocumented migrant workers who said that they prefer to take on live-in work, despite the risk of exploitation and abuse, because they wouldn’t have to worry about being stopped by the police or immigration officers on their way to or from work. There have been several cases of undocumented migrants known to my colleagues who have lost their lives during the pandemic after not being able to seek medical care due to fear of immigration law enforcement.
The UK’s Hostile Environment
These challenges facing migrants in the UK are often shared by migrants in other countries including those in East and South East Asia. However, the situation in the UK is a direct result of its immigration policies, which are collectively described as the ‘hostile environment.’ It was introduced in 2012 by the then Home Secretary, Theresa May, aiming to create a ‘hostile environment’ for irregular migrants in the UK by denying their access to essential elements of life, including work, housing, healthcare and finance.
“The aim was to make the life in the UK unbearable for irregular migrants so they would leave voluntarily and to discourage new migrants to come to the UK.”
Most of these proposals became law and/or expanded in 2014 and 2016, and it has become more and more difficult, complex and expensive for people to apply for or renew their visas. It has also affected British people who want to bring over their foreign spouse and children, and many families have been separated. More and more, people face the risk of becoming undocumented because there are no longer legal paths that they qualify for, or they can no longer afford extremely high visa fees and related costs. By limiting people’s access to essential services or activities based on their nationality, citizenship or immigration status, the hostile environment has created citizen-to-citizen immigration law enforcement, where people are asked to prove their legality at places of work, education, healthcare, accommodation etc.; thus damaging trust within communities. In addition, inhumane indefinite detention and forced separation of families continue, and people with precarious status face greater risks of exploitation and modern-day slavery. The 23rd of October marked one year since 39 Vietnamese people were found dead in a lorry container. Increasing border controls without addressing the issues that force people to make such perilous journeys in the first place only leads to more people risking their lives to cross borders, as they are left with no other choice. The UK’s hostile environment has systemically taken away safety, dignity, hopes, family and even lives from a large number of migrants, including those from ESEA countries.
Challenging Immigration Policies and Addressing Racism
This year has made issues around race and ethnicity significant for many members of the ESEA community. With events such as the threefold increase in hate crime against members of our community in the first quarter of the year, and the continuous and disproportionate portrayal of ESEA people in the COVID-related media coverage, many of us came together to organise and act. It has been very inspiring and encouraging to see and engage with so many people of the ESEA diaspora, including those of besea.n and End the Virus of Racism, who stood up to be vocal about long-standing discrimination and racism against the ESEA community, which has been exacerbated and brought to the surface in the wake of COVID-19. So what does the hostile environment have to do with discrimination and racism, and vice versa?
The hostile environment norm did not start in 2012 – it is rather well aligned with the UK’s historical approach to immigration over several decades. In her book Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats, Maya Goodfellow writes how the media and successive governments have created and fuelled anti-immigration politics, inseparable from race and racism, in post-WWII UK. Before and after the 1955 election, people of colour coming to the UK were already seen as problems that need to be ‘controlled.’ William Deedes, a minister at the time when the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Acts was passed, was quoted saying ‘the restrictions were applied to coloured and white citizens in all Commonwealth countries – though everybody recognized that immigration from Canada, Australia and New Zealand formed no part of the problem.’ Visas were used for former Commonwealth citizens for the first time when increasing numbers of people seeking asylum started arriving in the UK, particularly from Sri Lanka - a former British colony - amid a civil war in the ‘80s, although white people fleeing communism had not been considered much of a problem. By the end of 1987, ship and plane owners who allowed people without valid documents to come into the UK on their vehicles were subjected to fines. The ‘90s saw an increased use of detention, leading to the construction of more detention centres, and employers were required to check the immigration status of every job applicant. The experiences of migrants today are the experiences of previous generations. They are also the experiences of parents, grandparents or older generations of the ESEA community.
“How successive British governments and society have treated migrants have direct links to the existing discrimination and racism of today. If we allow the hostile environment to continue, we will be reproducing discrimination and racism for future generations to face.”
In order to end reproduction and perpetuation of systemic racism, we must also address issues facing migrants and demand an end to the hostile environment. People will not report or act against racism if they continue to live in an environment of fear. At our organisation, Southeast and East Asian Centre (SEEAC), we are organising members of the ESEA migrant community, working together to amplify our voices and create more spaces for the most under-represented within, such as migrant workers in precarious work, people seeking asylum or without document, and women and LGBTQ+ community members. We are also an active member of Status Now Network, which calls for the regularisation of people who are undocumented and in the legal process.
Working on intersectional issues and building inclusiveness within our diverse ESEA community will make us stronger together. Our migrant community is strong, resilient, and able to make changes as we have done so with our own personal lives through migration.
Happy International Migrants Day! In Solidarity.
Mariko Hayashi is an independent researcher on migration and human rights and a Director of South East and East Asian Centre (SEEAC) based in London. She has worked as an migrants’ rights advocate for 10 years, both at the grassroots and the national/regional policy levels in the UK, Japan and some East and South East Asian countries, such as Indonesia and the Philippines. Besides leading projects at SEEAC, she works for NGOs in the UK and abroad as a project coordinator and community-based researcher on a freelance basis. Recently, Mariko led a research on COVID-19 response measures and their impacts on rights of migrant workers in East and Southeast Asia.
You can find Mariko on www.twitter.com/mariko_hys
