The deportation machine: Europe, asylum and human rights

Abstract

Issues of immigration, asylum and refugee rights have become targets for politicians of all persuasions across Europe, from social democrats to the far Right. Ever-increasing pressure, spear-headed by populist media and electioneering politicians, to reduce the numbers of those seeking asylum, to raise the bar for successful claims and return those whose claims have ‘failed’ has resulted in sustained abuse of human rights. Europe’s deportation programme serves to undermine not only the Geneva Convention, but also international conventions on human rights and children’s rights. Yet, despite the shocking nature of the practices exposed here, little heed is paid to them or to the traumas suffered by their victims - a blindness that is only explicable in terms of the xeno-racism meted out to the desperate and the dispossessed.