FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT Why we need open borders FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT Why we need open borders December 2020 Written by Sohail Jannesari, edited by Ed Lewis, with additional input from Nick Dearden, Aisha Dodwell, Zoe Gardner, Dorothy Guerrero, Alex Scrivener and Jonathan Stevenson. About Global Justice Now Global Justice Now campaigns for a world where resources are controlled by the many, not the few. We champion social movements and propose democratic alternatives to corporate power. Our activists and groups in towns and cities around the UK work in solidarity with those at the sharp end of poverty and injustice. Like what we do? We’re a membership organisation, so why not join Global Justice Now? You can call 020 7820 4900 or go to: www.globaljustice.org.uk/join Or you can donate to help produce future publications like these: www.globaljustice.org.uk/donate Global Justice Now 66 Offley Road, London SW9 0LS +44 20 7820 4900 | [email protected] @globaljusticeuk | www.globaljustice.org.uk Registered Charity No 1064066 Design & layout: revangeldesigns.co.uk CONTENTS Introduction 4 1. Why we need open borders 7 2. Achieving free movement 16 3. Addressing challenges 24 Conclusion 32 References 33 FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT | 3 INTRODUCTION Even in the middle of a global with hope and energy about the sort pandemic, few days go by of world we want to see. After all, when migration is not in the really big changes have always come news. Migrants have become the about when those campaigning and perpetual scapegoat, to distract organising have been ‘unrealistic’ from the damaging anti-social in what they’re calling for; when we policies of the elite and to boost have demanded the impossible. the votes of demagogues – in the How else would the slave trade have UK and around the world. been defeated? How else would Under constant assault, even those women and working men have won who normally support human rights the vote? How else would the NHS, can be forced onto the back foot. social housing or comprehensive Rather than big visions – of a world schooling have come into being? in which all enjoy equal rights to move freely around the globe with It cannot be right that the equal protection – we are forced place you are born dictates into defensive campaigns. Migrants whether you will live a life of battle to meet their most basic needs in the face of threats of poverty or plenty, of freedom destitution, arrest and deportation. or imprisonment. It cannot In this, we face an uphill struggle, be right that while the richest as even the limited system set up move around with ease, the to protect the rights of refugees poorest are imprisoned in is being unwound at an alarming geographical poverty. rate, by authoritarians and populists who pretend that the victims of That’s why Global Justice Now is our global economic system are proudly calling for for the right to free actually the cause of our problems. movement of all people in the world. So we need to do something more: We know this will not come about to change this narrative we must get overnight – and indeed, Covid-19 back on the front foot. We must speak has brought about necessary 4 | FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT temporary restrictions on freedom people in the world. And then they of movement even within countries. prevented people from leaving those But freedom of movement is a long nations to come and share in the term struggle. It will require many wealth which was stolen from them. years and decades of persistent Here, then, we need to be clear work. Huge movements will need to what we mean by free movement. be built, with those most deprived of We reject entirely the free market the right to move at the forefront. notion that ‘free movement’ is The scale of the challenge should about people being forced to move not prevent us from starting, here and so that they can produce a greater now. After all, the ethical case for profit for someone somewhere else. free movement is strong: it cannot Our starting point is that movement be right that the place you are born is not ‘free’ until people have the dictates whether you will live a life choice not to move as well. of poverty or plenty, of freedom or There is a myth that the last few imprisonment. It cannot be right that decades – the era of neoliberalism – while the richest can move around have seen unprecedented openness, with freedom, the poorest – those tearing down the barriers of old. This who have most to benefit from isn’t true. Neoliberalism has been such movement – are imprisoned in about the dismantling of barriers to geographical poverty. This is a form capital, so that big business and big of apartheid on a global scale. finance can accumulate ever more The injustice is particularly acute money. But this same period, with a when we remember that the very few notable exemptions, has also reason so many people need to seen the borders faced by most move is the result of economic people in the world multiply. The and political decisions made in barriers to movement have become the richest part of the world. For harder and more brutal, from an hundreds of years, Europeans have environment so ‘hostile’ that migrants run empires, conducted one-sided are persuaded to ‘deport themselves’ trade, allowed their big businesses here in the UK, to incarceration to pillage the planet. Our countries in concentration camps in Texas, have created environmental and torture in North Africa, and mass social disaster. They drew the lines on death in the Mediterranean. Even maps which created the ‘nations’ the border industry that implements that still dictate the fates of most this system generates big profits for FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT | 5 a few – a quasi-military economic about keeping resources and sector worth £15 billion in Europe power in the hands of the few, and alone – and misery for the many. controlling and dividing the many. If we want to create a more equal This pamphlet is our small world, we must reverse this logic. contribution to making the vision We must create barriers so that big of free movement a reality. We look business and big finance cannot at the major reasons why borders exploit at will, so that people are are unjust, at some previous and not forced to move in search of existing examples of free movement a decent life. But at the same around the world, and at some steps governments could take to time, we must lower the barriers bring this vision a step closer. And which prevent the great majority we show how this vision is not nearly of humanity from being able to as impossible as we might believe. achieve their rights and live the lives of dignity that we all deserve. On its own, this pamphlet will hardly change the world. But we hope it The truth is that people have always might begin to change minds, to moved, and those in control of inspire, to mobilise. And we present society have often tried to stop them it in the certain knowledge that, like in order to control them. Throughout all systems of apartheid, this one history, borders are fundamentally must eventually fall. Photo: © Jess Hurd/Global Justice Now March 2016: Global Justice Now, with the help of guerrilla projectionists Feral X, project “Refugees welcome” across the white cliffs of Dover, just before an alliance of far-right groups were due to hold anti-migration protests in the town. 6 | FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT 1. WHY WE NEED OPEN BORDERS Borders are violent Those attempting dangerous journeys are typically moving because of The first argument for opening borders poverty, conflict or persecution. The is simple: by doing so, we would end UN refugee agency estimates that the violence of border controls. over 70 million people were forced In November 2019 the British public to flee their homes in 2018 alone – were shocked by the discovery of the highest numbers on record. the bodies of 39 Vietnamese migrants But in response to rising numbers of in a refrigerated lorry, who had paid people attempting to move, around traffickers to be smuggled into the the world states have been clamping UK. While this tragedy rightfully led to down on irregular migration. There public shock and dismay, it is among are now over 50 border walls across thousands of cases of migrants dying the world, a phenomenon almost while attempting dangerous journeys. unheard of in the middle of the Between 2014 and 2019 almost 20,000 20th century, and the sums being people died in the Mediterranean spent on border enforcement have 2 while attempting to cross the EU’s surged in recent years. external border with Turkey and Mainstream reaction to the deaths North Africa. These deaths primarily of migrants on precarious journeys occurred because border controls often points the finger at the forced people to take dangerous callousness of smugglers.3 But this routes, often via sea on ill-suited narrative is deeply flawed. It fails vessels. The situation deteriorated in to acknowledge that if movement 2016 following the EU-Turkey deal, in was unrestricted by border controls, which Turkey agreed, in exchange people would not be forced to for €6 billion, to seal its border with resort to such desperate measures. Greece to prevent migrants travelling And when states impose greater into the EU. This led to an increase in barriers to movement, the resulting the number of migrants who were suffering is often made worse.