Pandemic special: The Migrant Insult-Loop Revisited
As first-generation migrant, living, working and ‘creating’ – strike that – paying taxes in the UK since the 90’s, one can only wonder what ‘normality’ are migrants to return to if not grapple with post-pandemic?
The one ‘normality’ most of us have grown aware and weary of over the years is the one where the press – with politicians in tow – use own agenda and channels to throw insults at migrants on an endless loop, a loop never declared unacceptable by the British public in many years.
Though a virus proved beyond doubt and probably belief, the value migrants bring to British society in our speechless, humble yet resilient way – apparently not visible to the naked eye at the Daily Mail and to politicians like Nigel Farage & company until COVID-19 entered Britain – one wonders how soon their anachronistic verbal reflexes will pop back into the media and later into the public’s consciousness.
In the light of past insults on a loop, the Thursday’s applause for the key-workers, many migrants and poor – sounded smug and self-congratulatory, a bridge too far from the deserved recognition that would denounce and reform the xenophobia this country suffers from. More of a PR stunt of brushing over the ‘migrant key-workers issue’ and getting by until ‘normality’ can return – and we know what that could mean.
If you think these words are far-fetched you should recall a moment at the Great British Olympics of 2012, when the prime-minster thanked the Great British nation for building the infrastructure of the games and omitted any important contributions made by the migrant communities to this country. To his prime-ministerial perception, the PAID WORK foreign labourers and foremen did to build the Millenium Stadium as they did, meant they signed-off any right to be mentioned as contributors to this society.
As most of us found out at our own risk and over the years this remains a society that gloats and wants the upper hand at any level where equal-opportunities and recognition for migrants are concerned. In the landscape of a global pandemic that is subsiding but could return, the answer of the migrants to that debacle my friend, is blowing in the wind… but not really.
Included are 3 articles revisited from the past, which could be the present or the future, all you have to do is insert the event/politician of the day that Britain is going through at key points, and you will get the position of this society when it comes to suppressing migrant rights with the aim of keeping us many in the precariat, in low jobs, if not poverty.
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1. The Migrant Insult-Loop
article for the Independent
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The failure of independent press and human rights organizations to inform on the real threats faced by migrants and refugees ……………. (insert state of the nation here – e.g. post-Brexit/post COVID-19) has come closer to a landmark with articles in the press which open a partly anecdotal channel of discussion with regard to tougher proposed measures.
Once again the independent media couldn’t bother to consult any organization set up by the migrants themselves outside the British establishment which has been pursuing time and again to make singular reference to the welfare of the migrants and brush over the democratic issue at stake that refers to limitations, if not an implicit denial of civil rights to those in question.
Like always the articles in the press have done very little to alleviate the flourishing distrust both migrants and politicians such as ……………. (insert name of opinion leader here – e.g. Nigel Farage) have in the proposed measures. Short to long term campaigns of human rights NGOs are deemed imperative in order to slow down the thrust to push even further the migrants into a dispossessed class of low-waged labourers that don’t benefit from any civil rights.
However much the independent press aims to be a guarantor of freedom of information and the human rights NGOs are there to upheld democratic values and moral principles, both have voluntarily confined themselves to mirroring the language of politicians such as ……………. (insert name of opinion leader here – e.g. Nigel Farage), without supporting an alternative in touch with those affected directly.
Little thought has been put into building a true profile of the migrant, in touch with social realities outside the faceless stigma of persona non-grata imposed by the media. Ultimately this is not a chicken and egg situation – any person with limited civil rights, and at the mercy of institutions has no immediate means to abuse the system, and the most likely route at this level is either to live on handouts or go underground and try to by-pass the system!
The independent press and British liberal establishment should acknowledge not only that the threat of not being seen and heard, occurred before, but when this was never to happen again in what for many migrants is the looming Orwellian Britain for all, but more for others.
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Letters to Editors: in response to two British feminist jurnos who cannot think beyond own box.
2.1 In response to:
Citizens of the World by Linda Grant in the WeekEnd Guardian
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As reader of the Guardian and ……………. (insert country) migrant I found your editorial at least complacent in its intent to address the state of the nation in rapport with an already fragmented public.
It is not clear what audience you were trying to reach, from the anecdotal side that should render it primarily white and British, not so very in touch with a new part of society that is seemingly emerging i.e. the ……………. (insert country or local idiom) underclass which is restricted to travel or live in the UK legally.
This might explain your fascination with the bohemia if not diaspora so reflected by a colourful group of ……………. (insert country or local idiom) living in London. Your brushing-up under the carpet, with one word – opportunists – of the rest of the issue conveniently overlooks the Kafkaesque eradication of civil rights migrants are faced with, for which one can argue a bohemian lifestyle offers compensation.
In certain respect your ‘fascination’ makes for an interesting story and reflects on the way you perceive us while the real issues were overlooked as probably boringly depressing or depressingly boring for a Saturday supplement.
Eventually, the epitome of your good white middle-class pedigree prevails, one drinks with foreigners but one never gets drunk with them not to mention that apparently, we would never speak for ourselves not even in the Guardian – the freethinker’s paper.
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2.2 In response to:
After the Flood by Julie Burchill in the WeekEnd Guardian
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As ……………. (insert country or local idiom) migrant it would be fair to assume complacency makes a journalist, after years from the ……………. (insert known event or disaster such as war, revolution, famine or similar), use in an article a faceless minority for her after-dinner smug talk with nationalistic overtones about the future of the nation.
‘After the Flood’ seems to do just that by means of favouring personal opinions and an agenda which bestows the deserved label of ……………. (insert country or local idiom) migrant, and blame, on a characterless mass of people, which in her view come from a land geographically further removed than India or Africa.
Implicitly, Ms Burchill asserts the Black and Asian minority have RIGHTLY won a face, a voice and to have their character valued. For the sake of the same argument if not humanity it is not clear how I, an ……………. (insert country or local idiom) migrant, could amount to more than the label she so readily bestowed.
As a retort, I would advise Ms Burchill to take deeper into account the British history relating to Asians and Blacks in the UK, and then to do everybody a good-natured favour. Please keep us out of after-dinner half-intellectual tirades at least until we gain more character. Or, until it is a done thing to invite one of us to dinner. Could you Ms Burchill?… But of course, you can’t.
