ASA Globalog

Kathryn Cronin, Garden Court Chambers, 5th May 2008

This contribution to the discussion is written from the perspective of an immigration lawyer.

I have spent almost 30 years in practice either teaching or advising on immigration law or representing many hundreds of applicants in their quest to enter or remain in either Australia or the UK. I have also written a history PhD on nineteenth century Chinese immigration to Australia and my research on this earlier immigration has informed my understanding of the modern phenomenon of migration. I combine both of these perspectives in this piece.

I propose to focus on certain features of immigration which I assume will be of interest to anthropologists and also to document the role and insights which immigration lawyers and decision-makers derive from social anthropology.

Immigration Law and ‘The Immigrant Journey’

My family were Irish immigrants who migrated to Australia. I therefore grew up hearing the tales of their journey by ship and their travel overland to ‘outback’ Australia. Australia has a number of museums celebrating pioneering immigration. These recreations emphasise the privations experienced by immigrants in their journeys to Australia as evidence of the immigrants’ resilience, courage and aptitude for settlement. The message conveyed is that these early immigrants were resourceful, hard-working, had initiative and the flexibility to adapt. Their journeys to Australia are presented as proof of their endurance and tenacity, as proof that they were good, useful immigrants.

As a practising lawyer, I am continually struck by our changed reception to immigrant journey stories. We no longer view their privations as evidence of their skills, but of their duplicity – their evasion of immigration control. Their endurance is not celebrated but featured as threatening – as their unremitting determination to take from not to add to our societies. We no longer celebrate plucky entrepreneurial immigrants but we reward those who wait their turn in orderly queues for immigration vetting and punish the ‘self-selecting’ immigrants who arrive through irregular immigration routes. We no longer marvel at the risks encountered and overcome on immigrant journeys; nor do we assume (as we did in the 1950-70s) that only genuine refugees would make their risky journeys by small leaking boats, under railway carriages or hidden in the cargo of lorries. The term ‘economic migrant’ once a commendation of European migrants relocating to the colonies is now a pejorative appellation. Used in asylum appeals it is indicative of deceit and fabrication. In all we have travelled quite an intellectual journey in our images of immigration.

Immigration law both reflects and has fashioned this transformation in our perception of and reception to immigrants.

It is worth noting that our modern immigration law and practice was largely developed within the British Commonwealth; particularly in the ‘old’ Commonwealth countries of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada. These countries were the first to adopt all of the legal sanctions we still use to control immigration namely:

• the imposition of visas (the requirement that certain passengers obtain formal permission to travel to as well as to enter their countries);
• carrier sanctions (fines on shipping agents and captains (now airlines and lorries) for bringing in too many immigrants or unvisaed immigrants) and
• post-arrival sanctions in the form of discriminatory employment, taxation and strict nationality laws to prevent the social absorption of certain immigrants.

Each and all of these Commonwealth countries (and from the 1880s the United States) were focussed on excluding non-European immigrants, particularly the indentured workers from south Asia or the ‘free’ immigrants from southern China.

Within the British Empire (as it then was) legal exclusion of certain immigrants required inventive law-making as many if not most of the immigrants sought to be controlled or excluded were British subjects travelling from one British colony to another. The British Commonwealth then operated as a free movement zone, much as Europe does today. From the 1880s courts within the common-law system, including the Privy Council, began enunciating a legal principle or presumption ostensibly extracted from international law, that each nation State has the right to admit or deny entry to any and all foreign nationals. The Commonwealth subjects from Hong Kong or India migrating to Australia, Canada or South Africa were not ‘foreign’ but (as British subjects seeking to enter British colonies) had the same nationality as those in the reception country. In response, from the 1990s Canada, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia began developing new legal tests for exclusion - language/ ‘dictation’ and other tests – such that if the Asian workers failed their English language, or in one celebrated case, their test in Scottish Gaelic, they were excluded.

We now rely on nationality as the basis for immigration entry and exclusion; although we still use language and now ‘points’ (occupational and income) tests for assessment and selection. Immigration objectives have been the justification for redefining nationality. Thus we have different types of British citizenship, some which afford free access to the UK, and others which don’t carry any immigration entry rights. And as an echo of the old free movement regime in the British Commonwealth we now have numbers of free movement zones in Europe, the Americas and Africa where certain nationalities have residence and work rights and others are controlled. These supra-national arrangements may in time foster new identities.

This (rather lengthy) digression is the background against which our response to migrant journeys has changed. Immigration is less about travel than compliance with law and bureaucracy. In my study of nineteenth century Chinese immigrants, it was clear that immigrants dealt with immigration regulation by large scale evasion. The children of Chinese immigrants whom I interviewed had been told of the rigours and perils of the family journey to Australia; but they also had been schooled to maintain the false family identity and history constructed around the immigration rules and knew they must preserve these identities when questioned by government officials. To evade the visa requirement, Chinese immigrants used their given names as family or surnames and thus visas issued to an ‘Ah Chong’ could be circulated and re-used by anyone adopting this name. These immigration identities frequently were fixed and the families I interviewed (the second generation) often had no idea of their real family name or family village. They were aware that the family identity was created and maintained for immigration purposes. Their real family identity was lost.

Immigration as between many developing countries is still an informal, self-selected process. The immigration to developed countries is a mix of the formal/ bureaucratic and the informal and irregular.

I could not begin to count the number of clients I have represented who entered the UK in lorries, under railway coaches, hidden in cars or ships or who used false documents to enter by airlines. In many countries migrant agents make regular visits to source villages and sign up contenders. Nuns and priests frequently ferry children out of Africa. Trafficking networks comprise many small operatives, some who arrange the documentation; others who liaise with local officials, or who escort the immigrants through airport or border procedures. We now have extensive documentation of migrant journeys but this documentation is maintained on government files and has a clear control function. When applicants first make their application to remain in the UK on asylum, human rights or family grounds, they are ‘screened’ – that is interviewed in some depth concerning their journey to the UK. They are asked about stop-overs, the uniforms of airport or train staff; the cargo on board their lorries, the colour of their passports, their food, toilet arrangements and the names of any agents. These accounts provide immigration departments with intelligence about trafficking routes or become the evidence used for a prosecution of the applicant – who are now increasingly being charged, convicted, imprisoned and then deported for their use of false identity documents.

It is interesting to ponder whether governments in the developed world will ever eradicate these informal travel routes. They seem determined to do so. Immigration rules are becoming more and more restrictive; the identification arrangements more elaborate and intrusive and the penalties for irregular immigration more extreme.

From my experience I consider we lose a great deal if we eradicate self selecting migration. I am so often struck at the fortitude, courage and endurance of my clients. It will be a loss if these immigration networks are lost before we properly study them as a social phenomenon. I am not referring here to the sex or labour trafficking networks which are most often run by criminal gangs and very frequently expose their victims to abuse and violence enroute and after their arrival in the host country. I am concerned with the entrepreneurs who simply facilitate the travel of self-selecting migrants and refugees. There are certain features of these networks that I am aware of through my clients that deserve close attention. These would include:

• The community of agents and travellers. There appear to be an eclectic mix of people involved in the trade. One might have a Turkish agent escorting Somalis or a Russian bringing Vietnamese. Those travelling overland by lorry or by ship are often mixed nationality groups – for example a single lorry might carry Iraqi, Albanian and Chinese.
• I see only the migrants who safely reached their destination. We are all aware of the many lives lost on migrant journeys; but of my clients I am generally struck at how their personal safety was protected enroute. Young single women are not molested; fellow travellers rarely interact and certainly respect privacy; the migrants are provided with food, bags for toileting and occasional fresh air. On long overland journeys this can involve multiple agents, changes of lorry and passengers added or reaching destinations. The agents are the Thomas Cooks of this alternative travel package. They do rather more for their money than the established version.
• We have little evidence concerning or understanding of how the immigrants experience these journeys. In my representation, the journey features only as a basis for challenging a client’s credibility – their account of the journey is challenged as part of a general discrediting of their claims to be at risk in their home country. Most agents tell clients not to disclose information about the journey. In consequence we know little of how these immigrants experienced the journey, whether it left them fearful or with a sense of accomplishment.
• I am also conscious of the associated experience of immigration process, which immigrants then experience on arrival– the repeat immigration interviews, the appeal procedure, solicitor, medical and court interviews. Some are sent to immigration detention. Again we have little real analysis of the capacity and understanding of our clients to deal with these processes. I often try to remind immigration judges that many of the young women (say from Somalia) will never have lived outside a small familiar social circle, will have no experience in ordering, sequencing and narrating her life experiences, and should not be seen as untruthful, when in fact the deficits in her account spring from a lack of experience with our processes. I can see the difficulties such applicants have with immigration process; it would be good to have some studies which might assist to establish sensitive and congruent vetting procedures. For those who have experienced torture or persecution, repeat questioning (even when well-intended) involves revisiting the events. We have no idea how damaging, how distressing these processes are.

From my vantage point I can see how immigration law has distorted the natural processes of immigration. Social anthropologists may have insights and suggestions.

Immigration Decision-making and Anthropology

I want to conclude this contribution by encouraging anthropologists to be available to assist in immigration decision-making. It is necessarily a close association. We already use numbers of established anthropologists as experts in asylum cases. They provide vital evidence on a wide range of issues - clan structures and relationships in Somalia, genital cutting practices, family relationships, child custody practices, military discipline, honour killings – the list is long and covers almost every country and community. Anthropological expertise is required because of the precise social issues in contention in asylum and some immigration cases. The Home Office and Asylum and Immigration Tribunal may have to decide whether Sierra Leonean soweis (the genital cutters) are appointed on a hereditary basis, whether a young woman can resist the appointment and can safely relocate in another part of Sierra Leone if she defies the village elders concerning this appointment. Tribunals are frequently dealing with relocation issues – if a person is at risk in their home area , can they safely relocate. For many young , single women this involves as assessment of their skills, whether they can access community support outside their home area, and whether they can remain anonymous in the new location. I have had cases where the applicant’s identity is unknown and anthropologists were instructed to ‘read’ her scarification marks to give some clues on her place of origin.

Being an expert in asylum/immigration appeals can be difficult. The Home Office and Tribunal scepticism is visited not only on applicants but also their medical and country experts. Even so, such expert assessments are critical to proper understanding of cases.

As a telling example of necessary anthropological evidence, its sceptical reception by the Tribunal and validation by the Court of Appeal, there is not better case example than HK v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2006] EWCA Civ 1037 (20 July 2006) (available on www.bailii.org/ew/cases)

The case involved a young Sierra Leonean man from the Temne tribe who had been captured and partially initiated by a secret society, the Wunde. He claimed to be at risk from his own tribe and the Wunde, as his scarification marks showed his partial initiation. As the Court summarised, there was expert evidence presented in this case on these issues:

‘.. there was a report from Professor Melissa Leach of the University of Sussex, who has a doctorate “based on two years of field work research in Sierra Leone in the late 1980s”, and who made subsequent visits to that country during the following decade. She said that she remained in close touch with what was going on in that country while working in neighbouring Guinea. She considered herself “well placed to comment on [HK’s] appeal” and it is noteworthy that one of her books, published in 1994, refers to the Mende in its title.

She explained that the Wunde are one of a number of secret societies in Sierra Leone, and that they “control particular spirits which they deploy in rituals” including “initiation rituals held in special parts of the bush”. She went on to explain that “virtually all Mende boys and girls are initiated”, as well as people who aspire to posts in the Sierra Leone government and administration. She also said that the power of such societies is “deeply respected and feared”. She explained that little was known about “precise events and activities except by those who had been initiated” because “initiates are under strict orders not to reveal what they saw in the bush at pain of death”.

She went on to say that the location of the initiation described by HK and the warning sign of “three leaves on a path” were consistent with her understanding and experience. As to the person who helped HK escape, the evidence that he spoke Temne was, she thought, not unlikely, because “the Bo area… is close to the northern border where Mende country shades into Temne country, and, as I know from living there, it is common to encounter people with one parent of each or who speak both languages”. She went on to say that HK’s evidence “that he saw skulls and body parts in the bush” was consistent with the reputation of the Wunde “for performing human sacrifices and for using body parts in a variety of rituals”. She thought the three leaves HK said he saw on the path were consistent with the signs used by the Wunde.

While she could not say anything useful about HK having to place his penis in a hole, Professor Leach could “confirm that biting ants have long been a stock in trade form of torture and punishment among Mende people”. While she could not “comment authoritatively on the precise scarification”, Professor Leach thought that the suggestion that the three scars on the left side of HK’s chest resulted from a Wunde initiation ceremony was “entirely plausible”.

Professor Leach went on to “opine that scars only on one side would mark [HK] out as someone who had escaped halfway through an initiation ritual”. She described this as “a very problematic position” because “Wunde society members – and possibly other Mende men – would view him as a threat to their interests. They would probably be keen to re-capture him either to silence him or to complete the initiation process.” She was sceptical about HK being protected, because most “officials such as police officers… are afraid of the Wunde society, and in my opinion resist becoming involved.” She explained that “high ranking national politicians and other important people [in Sierra Leone] are Wunde members”. She also said that as “a single young man with no family connections”, HK’s “family circumstances thus enhance his vulnerability.”

In a subsequent report, Professor Leach described HK’s “claims as plausible”. She also said that, while she could not “say with authority… exactly what would happen should he be recaptured by [members of the Wunde], I do believe that he would be right to live in a state of fear and uncertainty… from one of the powerful and secretive cultural and political groups in the upper Guinea sub region.”

The Court of Appeal made important observations on the nature of fact finding in the immigration jurisdiction and the particular difficulties this presents for Courts and tribunals. Again these observations are worth quoting in full:

The difficulty of the fact-finding exercise is particularly acute in asylum cases…The standard of proof to be applied for the purpose of assessing the appellant’s fear of persecution is low. The choice is not normally which of two parties to believe, but whether or not to believe the appellant. Relatively unusually for an English Judge, an Immigration Judge has an almost inquisitorial function, although he has none of the evidence-gathering or other investigatory powers of an inquisitorial Judge. That is a particularly acute problem in cases where the evidence is pretty unsatisfactory in extent, quality and presentation, which is particularly true of asylum cases. That is normally through nobody’s fault: it is the nature of the beast.

Further, in many asylum cases, some, even most, of the appellant’s story may seem inherently unlikely but that does not mean that it is untrue. The ingredients of the story, and the story as a whole, have to be considered against the available country evidence and reliable expert evidence, and other familiar factors, such as consistency with what the appellant has said before, and with other factual evidence (where there is any).

Inherent probability, which may be helpful in many domestic cases, can be a dangerous, even a wholly inappropriate, factor to rely on in some asylum cases. Much of the evidence will be referable to societies with customs and circumstances which are very different from those of which the members of the fact-finding tribunal have any (even second-hand) experience. Indeed, it is likely that the country which an asylum-seeker has left will be suffering from the sort of problems and dislocations with which the overwhelming majority of residents of this country will be wholly unfamiliar. The point is well made in Hathaway on Law of Refugee Status (1991) at page 81:

“In assessing the general human rights information, decision-makers must constantly be on guard to avoid implicitly recharacterizing the nature of the risk based on their own perceptions of reasonability.”

Inherent improbability in the context of asylum cases was discussed at some length by Lord Brodie in Awala –v- Secretary of State [2005] CSOH 73. At paragraph 22, he pointed out that it was “not proper to reject an applicant’s account merely on the basis that it is not credible or not plausible. To say that an applicant’s account is not credible is to state a conclusion” (emphasis added). At paragraph 24, he said that rejection of a story on grounds of implausibility must be done “on reasonably drawn inferences and not simply on conjecture or speculation”. He went on to emphasise, as did Pill LJ in Ghaisari, the entitlement of the fact-finder to rely “on his common sense and his ability, as a practical and informed person, to identify what is or is not plausible”. However, he accepted that “there will be cases where actions which may appear implausible if judged by…Scottish standards, might be plausible when considered within the context of the applicant’s social and cultural background”.

The Court concluded:

Professor Leach was an undoubtedly relevant expert, and she produced what appears to have been a full, balanced, and informed report, which, on a fair reading supported HK’s story, albeit to a limited extent. In particular, to my mind, it supported some aspects of his evidence which might otherwise have seemed dubious (e.g. the existence of the Wunde, the initiation in the bush, the scarring on the chest, the use of biting ants, the presence of body parts and three leaves on the path, the presence of a Temne speaker). … All in all, it does not appear to me that it was appropriate to reject Professor Leach’s evidence as “not of assistance”, because her opinions on specific aspects of HK’s evidence of which she had no direct knowledge were “unanalytical assertions” or “mere speculation”, as the Tribunal did. First, there were specific aspects of HK’s story, which might otherwise have seemed far-fetched, and appropriate to reject, which were supported by Professor Leach’s evidence. Secondly, the description of her views on other aspects of HK’s evidence as “unanalytical assertions” is unreasonably pejorative, and the description as “speculation” is unhelpful. She was plainly an expert, with plenty of experience in the field, and her views, even on those aspects of HK’s evidence of which she honestly admitted she had no knowledge, were based on that expertise and experience. Of course, the Tribunal was not bound to accept her evidence or to hold that it ultimately validated HK’s story. However, to dismiss her views as “not of assistance” appears to me to be simply wrong.

Not all experts undergo dismissal and re-instatement is so clear a fashion as in HK. Even so the case is an excellent example of how important anthropological expertise can be in determining asylum and immigration cases.

Dr. Katy Gardner, Anthropology, Sussex
April 22nd

I thought I’d kick off this blog with some reflections on one of the opening speeches at a conference on ‘Children and Migration’ in Cork that I recently attended. In this, the Executive Director of Unicef Ireland, Melanie Verwoerd, concluded that (a) trafficked, exiled and asylum seeking children suffer, are excluded and discriminated against, and thus (b) migration is a bad thing and should be stopped. I am, I admit, unfairly paraphrasing: Melanie’s points were made with reference to children escaping the recent conflicts in Kenya, many of whom have had horrendous experiences. Yet by conflating stories of children escaping violent conflict with wider remarks about ‘migration’, and in her thematic slippage from war, bloodshed and children’s victim hood to human movement in general, I don’t feel that the good Ms Verwoerd was being particularly helpful. What such remarks do is reinforce a view to be found in no end of newspaper columns, blogs, policy papers and conference speeches: migration is a symptom of globalisation run amok, causes social breakdown, loss of traditions and identity, and, like holes in the ozone layer and world poverty, should be prevented and / or stopped. Not all of those espousing such views are right wing Daily Mail readers. I’ve heard similar remarks made by leftist activists working for migrant rights in South Asia.

The purpose of this blog is not to argue the opposite, viz that all migration is somehow good or to be celebrated (interesting how human movement becomes so embedded in morality): to do so would be as reductive as to suggest that all migration is bad. As anthropologists have long shown, there are a huge variety of complex reasons why people move plus a huge variety of complex outcomes (ask an anthropologist anything and the words ‘complex’ and ‘variety’ usually come up). Instead, I want to describe how the form of migration which I know best, the long standing transnational movement between Britain and Bangladesh, which I’ve been researching and writing about since the late 1980s, looks different according to where one is geographically located, plus of course whose perspective one is taking. Who is it good or bad for? The migrants? The people left behind or the people in the places where migrants have settled? None of these groups is homogeneous and neither are their experiences straightforward. So in attempting to describe and analyse this complexity and these varied perspectives, whose interests do we serve?

In what follows I’m going to share several ‘migration moments’, each of which leads to different ethical problems and political responses. I’m not sure I have any very astounding answers, just some reflections.

The first of my ‘moments’ came early in my anthropological career in 1988. Nearing the end of my fieldwork in Bangladesh (where I was studying the effects of long term migration to the U.K on a village called ‘Talukpur’ in Sylhet), I was invited to the British High Commission in Dhaka for a meeting. This would be really helpful to my research, I was told by the ex-pat who had arranged it without asking; the BHC had masses of data on kinship relations and migration histories in particular villages. This was during the period of family reunification, when many of the men who had come to the U.K in the 60s were now in the process of bringing their wives and children over. The process involved applying for settlement visas and was often long drawn out and complicated: not only were applicants subjected to long and detailed interviews in Dhaka, but the BHC had a practice of ‘village visits’, in which they would turn up unexpectedly in a village to check if people really were who they said they were. Not surprisingly, many people in ‘Talukpur’ (not the village’s real name) assumed that I was a British High Commission spy.

So, did I take up the BHC’s offer of a meeting, in which we could exchange information about the inhabitants of Talukpur? Of course not. At that stage, it seemed crystal clear: to attend such a meeting would be to do exactly what I’d spent twelve or so months promising my friends in Talukpur that I would NEVER do: inform on them. After all, some had family members whose legal status in the U.K was somewhat blurry, so say the least. Many more had husbands, brothers and sons in the Middle East who were, to use the local phraseology, ‘unlegal’ (as opposed to travelling on the more expensive ‘legal’ work permits and passports). That I might be in a position to help those who had legitimate claims which were being denied by the BHC didn’t occur to me.

Fast forward twenty years, and it’s March 08 and I’m sitting in the air conditioned offices of Dfid, Dhaka, explaining that The Home Office’s latest ruse to curtail immigration from Bangladesh (setting a language test for the Bangladeshi spouses of British citizens, many of whom are their cousins) will never work because the transnational links are so deeply embedded and enduring that would be brides and grooms at the Bangladeshi end will simply learn English to the required standard. It’ll be a pain, and they’ll have to spend money on the hundreds of language colleges which will spring up in the wake of the new legislation, but where there’s a will, there’s almost always a way, I say. The net result will be that a small minority of business minded people will profit further from the region’s dependency on the UK whilst the families of people who have a right to live in Britain with their husbands and wives will have to shell out even more for the privilege. We all agree that the next time I’m in Dhaka, it would be great to meet with the immigration people at the British High Commission to discuss this further.

To what extent should anthropologists engage with agencies who explicitly seek to curtail immigration to Britain? If I were to go back twenty years, I would still refuse that ‘information sharing’ meeting with the BHC, yet to balk at a meeting to discuss more general policy related questions in 2008 seems ridiculous. Not only is it highly unlikely that the Home Office or BHC would take much notice of what I might say, but I am, after all, pointing out that Britain and Bangladesh have historical links which go back several centuries, that arranged marriage between places is a long standing tradition and not simply a ‘migration strategy’, and that all the policy will do is add to peoples’ financial burden in paying for the language courses. Surely this is all to the good? Yet the niggling questions remain: in describing Sylhetis’ on-going determination to come the U.K, will the view be reinforced that all applications, for marriage or tourist visas or asylum, are made by people who are, at heart, ‘economic migrants’? And given that the anti immigration agenda is one that the current and future governments are only ever likely to strengthen, should pro-migration anthropologists such as myself even be entering into information sharing dialogues with those agencies whose job it is to put such policies into place?

By this point it should be obvious that ideologically I do not support this, or any other government’s attempts to keep people out, especially if they come from ex colonial territories such as Bengal, which, after all, endured the presence of the British for hundreds of years. People have always moved, and so long as different places in the world remain obscenely unequal in terms of wealth and well being, they will continue to do so. To stop people moving out and in of Sylhet would be almost as difficult as trying to stop the clouds moving across the sky. Even were the most stringent laws applied, or a wall built around the region (not as preposterous as it sounds: India is currently building a wall along its borders with Bangladesh) people would continue to seek their livelihoods elsewhere, for places such as the U.K, the Gulf, Malaysia and Singapore - in fact, anywhere where there is the opportunity to earn money - have become an integral part of the local economy. More than this, foreign places are central to local hierarchy and culture: to be a ‘Londoni’ (ie someone who has settled in the U.K) is to be successful and cosmopolitan. Only the poorest go nowhere (just like the U.K, really: odd how middle class Brits take international travel for granted, yet seek to deny people from elsewhere from similar privileges).

So does this make British-Bangladeshi transnational migration ‘good’ or ‘bad’? The answer, not surprisingly, is that it depends on where one is located and who one is. From the vantage point of debates surrounding immigration to Britain I remain pro-migration. Here in Brighton I can only see gains in a diverse and open society. When I’m in Sylhet, however, my response is more ambiguous. This is not only because I’m doubtful that in terms of economic development the region has really benefited from the link to the U.K, but also because having visited Talukpur regularly for the past twenty years, I don’t think that the poorest people in the village have benefited at all. It’s true that there has been a huge injection of wealth into ‘Londoni’ villages. Large houses have been built by successful migrants, shopping malls have sprung up in booming regional towns, there’s plenty of work for labourers from other, poorer regions, in the building trade or on the fields. As I and others have described elsewhere the largess and charity of Londonis provide a vital safety net for their poorer relatives in times of crisis, just as the employment opportunities provide an alternative livelihood for people from poorer areas of Bangladesh. Clearly, there are gains. All of these gains are, however, dependent on the maintenance of links to the U.K and the on-going willingness of subsequent generations of British Bengalis to support their relatives back in Sylhet. As Roger Ballard argued in the early 1980s with reference to Mirpur in Pakistan, migration to the U.K has led to a new form of dependency rather than ‘development’ in terms of investment in infra structure, social services, industry or agriculture. So long as the links with wealthy countries remain, and people want (and are allowed) to travel between places, perhaps this dependency is no better or worse than the dependency that any exporter has on its foreign markets. The only difference is that what is being exported is people rather than cheap clothes for Primark or shrimps.

But there are problems too. Given the stringent restrictions on immigration into richer countries, the market for Sylheti labour is highly unstable and, for those unable to access the security of a U.K settlement visa, often involves high risk strategies. In terms of the U.K connection, the situation is further complicated by the changing nature of the British based Bengali community, whose long term interest in their village houses, their land and the large numbers of close and distant kin who make claims on their charity will inevitably change over time. Language tests or not, some of those with links to British families will continue to refresh the links through marriage. Others, with less social and financial capital, will continue to risk their assets in attempts to access labour markets in the Middle East and South East Asia. For many this entails selling land or taking on large loans in order to pay for the necessary papers and travel costs; the unlucky ones lose everything when they are cheated by unscrupulous agents or caught by the police in Malaysia or Saudi, or wherever. Meanwhile, the poorest families I know in Talukur, who beside the odd goat or vegetable patch have no real assets and have never been able to afford a foreign passport or visa, remain as poverty-stricken as ever. I’m talking here about people who aren’t always able to eat three meals a day. It’s true that if they’re lucky a Londoni relative will give them some charity to tide them over during a particularly bad patch but over the years none have fundamentally changed their economic position or become less dependent upon their patrons. Crucially, what people aspire to, what they dream of, plan for and invest in, is foreign countries, not Bangladesh.

These perspectives lead me to my final ‘migration moment’. I’m in Talukpur, talking with the widowed matriarch of a middling income household. She has four sons, three of whom are now in the U.K (one went as a child, the other two married their cousins, for brevity and anonymity I shall call them X,Y and Z). Her property is now managed by her remaining son, Q. Q is making a name for himself locally as a ‘contractor’ of labour to a industrial site owned and managed by the U.S (another story …). None of the U.K based sons are able to send regular remittances these days. After all, they have their own young families to support and working as waiters in ‘Indian’ restaurants is neither particularly pleasant nor profitable. The youngest son, who has only been in the U.K for a short while, is currently doing two shifts in 24 hours, I’m told, and having a horrible time. And yet, to my surprise, Q’s mother tells me that they are currently trying to arrange a U.K marriage for Q. “But you said that X, Y and Z didn’t send you any money … and Z is working 16 hours a day!” I exclaim. “If Q goes too, who will remain at home to look after you and your daughter and the land?”

She looks at me pityingly. I’ve always asked her stupid questions and today’s no exception. “It’s better for the family for them to be in London,” she says patiently. “London is good.”

My honest, knee jerk response to this? It’s that ‘London’ isn’t necessarily ‘good’, that like his brothers Q will have a harder time there than at home and it would be better for him to stay in the village, to continue to build his local business interests and manage the household assets. Also that in the long term, his ageing mother and divorced sister will need him to be physically around. And finally, that I don’t want to sponsor him (or his uncle, or his various cousins, all of whom have made similar requests) to come on a tourist visa to the U.K, because the application process itself will cost thousands of taka that they can ill afford and I’m certain he’ll be refused.

So does that make me pro or anti (im)migration? It’s clearly a stupid question, because, as I’ve tried to show, not only is ‘migration’ no single thing and the answers depend on context. For Q and his mother the question is largely irrelevant. Whatever I say, foreign places, where money can be earned, and secure livelihoods built, remain vital. In the U.K the debates in blogs and newspapers will continue to rumble on, the Home Office will continue to devise new strategies to keep people out, and in Sylhet people will do whatever they can to maintain the links with the U.K.

Where does that leave anthropology? I suppose the obvious answer is that rather than coming up with simplistic ‘solutions’ it’s our job to show complexity in the face of simplistic assumptions, to unsettle conventional myths, and to argue against policy makers and immigration officials whose job it is to close doors in peoples’ faces. If the latter means tailoring our arguments according to context, so be it. What I write in an academic article, a policy briefing, or an asylum report is inevitably going to be different. Since migration is filled with such ambiguity and contradiction: ethically, making pronouncements on it, as if ‘it’ were ever any one ‘thing’, is a minefield. Yet despite the perils involved, these are debates in which anthropological voices badly need to be heard above the cacophony of those who understand very little, yet shout very loudly.

- Nayanika Mookherjee, Ethics Officer, ASA

The ASA blog initiative is one of several efforts we’re making in ASA to inject anthropology more vigorously into the public sphere on controversial issues and the earlier discussion theme and posts on the role of social scientists in government counterinsurgency programmes have attracted attention and triggered discussion. So moving on to immigration and drawing scholars from beyond anthropology in law, cultural studies, sociology, history, legal and activist organisations, seemed like a good next step to continue the discussions on the blog.

The Immigration points system has has begun in the UK. Immigration is a political hot topic in UK and all over Europe and is often invoked to generate various emotions particularly in years of elections. Many people believe Britain cannot cope with the number of immigrants and asylum seekers coming into the country, and call for tighter regulation. Some also feel immigration is causing Britain to lose its cultural identity. But some believe asylum seekers have a right of refuge, and that immigrants are important economically and provide diverse communities. Campaigners also call for better treatment of asylum seekers and a faster processing system. Is there more of a case to be made for political migrants? Or economic migrants? Or even trafficked migrants? What is the difference between them? Or is there a difference between them? What is the role of anthropology and other social sciences like sociology, political science, cultural studies, law, history, refugee studies etc in these debates? What are the ethical issues when addressing immigration, migration, issues relating to asylum and refugees?

These and other related issues will be discussed by a group of bloggers (Dr. Katy Gardner Anthropology, Sussex University; Barrister Kathryn Cronin, Garden Court Chambers; Prof. Nina Glick Schiller Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures (RICC), Manchester University; Dr. Imogen Tyler Sociology, Lancaster University; Mr. Ruben Andersson, BA (Anthropology) SOAS, worked with Mexican activist organisation - Sin Fronteras and Reuters AlertNet, humanitarian news website, contributor to Race and Class on Migration) from mid April till end of June 2008.

Please keep visiting the blog, participate, comment and take part in the discussions.

I want to begin my contribution to this blog on anthropology and counter-insurgency by reproducing a short review of Charlie Wilson’s War, a film closely based on George Crile’s book about the CIA and American government decisions which led to the US arming the Afghan resistance against Soviet imperialism and the Soviet occupation. The review was written by Jonathan Neale. Like me, Jonathan did anthropological fieldwork with nomads in Afghanistan in the 1970s. Jonathan and I have talked a great deal in our effort to understand the last thirty years of war in Afghanistan. His account is a clear illustration of how important it is to locate an understanding of resistance in a particular history. It also points to a deep political confusion on the left about imperial resistance, and hence also about ‘counter-insurgency’ – it is a confusion which I think lurks behind some of the discussions here.

Jonathan writes:

I went to see the movie Charlie Wilson’s War to review it for Socialist Worker. I really liked it – but many readers of this paper and Stop the War activists will hate the film. So I’m not going to recommend this very good film. Don’t go see it. You won’t like it. (Unless you’re Afghan, in which case you’ll probably think it’s funny and accurate – apart from the bits set in the refugee camp.)
Instead of a review, I’m going to write about some political confusions about Afghanistan. I’ve talked on Afghanistan recently at Stop the War meetings. I’ve been surprised by how many people in the audience say they find it quite hard to make the argument for withdrawing the troops from Afghanistan. That’s surprising, because the opinion polls steadily report that over 60 percent of the public are in favour of getting out of Afghanistan. By that, I’m sure they mean get the troops out and let the Afghans sort it out. And if the Taliban or the “warlords” win, so be it.
But I think the left activists find the argument hard because they are often not talking to that majority, but to other leftists and peace activists. And one big reason many of those people are unsure is because of what happened in the 1980s.
In 1978 the Afghan Communists took power in a coup led by army officers. The Communists were progressives, and moved quickly to support land reform and women’s rights. But they didn’t have majority support. Uprisings, led by mullahs and Islamist students, spread across the rural areas. In December 1979 the Russian army invaded Afghanistan to prop up the government. At that point the majority of city people also turned against the Communists. As an invading force without the support of the majority, the Russians had no alternative but to try to break the population. Afghanistan had a population of about 20 million. The Russian forces tortured tens of thousands, killed roughly one million, maimed another million, and drove six million into exile as refugees. This terror united most Afghan people behind the resistance.
Before the invasion the two main political groups in Afghanistan had been the Communists and some pretty hardcore Islamists. So it was no surprise the Islamists led the resistance, though on the ground it was a popular resistance, with each village fighting for its own land. But the Cold War framed the wider picture. The CIA and General Zia-ul-Haq’s military dictatorship in Pakistan put together an alliance of Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, the US and Saudi Arabia to fund and arm the Afghan resistance. And 40 percent of US aid went to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Islamist resistance leader who is now one of the key leaders of the resistance to the US.
Right through the 1980s a debate raged in the US over whether to give the Afghan resistance surface-to-air missiles to shoot down helicopters. If they did, the Russians would lose. On the other hand, the Afghan leaders were a lot more hardcore than the US’s Islamist enemies in Iran next door. Charlie Wilson, a Texas congressman, campaigned for giving the Afghans the missiles. By 1986 he had won the argument, and by 1988 the Afghan resistance had shot down 300 helicopters and planes and defeated the Russians. Most of this history is laid out accurately in the film – from Charlie Wilson’s point of view. (The book, by George Crile, is much better.)
Many on the left now look back to Communist-run Afghanistan with nostalgia. This is partly because they hate US domination of the world, and at least, they say, Russia was a countervailing force. But this nostalgia ignores the Russian invasion and the torture and mass murder that followed.
There is now another popular uprising in Afghanistan, but it was not automatic. When the US invaded in 2001, Afghans were not willing to fight for either the invaders or the Taliban. They had had enough of 23 years of war. But three years on, the experience of occupation drove many to pick up the gun again. That new resistance now looks to the Taliban and Hekmatyar – not because of fanaticism, but because they have been the only serious political forces in Afghanistan completely opposed to the occupation from the beginning.
That has a lesson for today. If the left allies with the invader, the eventual resistance will hate the left. Feminism is now very weak in Afghanistan because in the 1980s Afghan feminist women supported the Russians and their violent occupation.
Many leftists in rich countries think of themselves as offering solidarity to “progressive” resistance movements in the poor countries. But for me the politics of the resistance is not the key. I lived with Afghans once, and ate their bread. My solidarity is not with their politics, it’s with them – the people who work, farm and herd their sheep. As a socialist, my solidarity was with their resistance to invasion in the 1980s, for all the same reasons it is with their resistance to occupation now. In the long term, the only way to create a progressive movement in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or anywhere else, is to oppose invasion, occupation and the helicopters.  (Jonathan Neale, Socialist Worker, 10/1/08, p.12)

For me, Jonathan’s review raises three key issues that deserve our attention if we are to be wise about the involvement of anthropologists in covert government sponsored counter-insurgency: the relation between politics and anthropology, the nature of imperialism, and effective resistance to imperial power.

While I strongly agree with the comments of David, John, and others about the relation between anthropology as a professional disciplinary practice and real politics in the world, my agreement stems from my personal politics, not from anthropology per se. Indeed, I am uncomfortable when broader discussions of global politics are framed and funnelled through the lens of anthropology. Anthropological thought and practice cannot, in themselves, provide the scope for such debate. Nor are there uncontested disciplinary imperatives which prefigure the relationship between anthropology, anthropologists and politics. So, for example, it is important to remember that the ‘handmaiden of imperialism’ arguments need to be balanced by the fiercely and explicitly anti-imperialist stands taken by both Malinowski and Boas. Indeed, it is likely that today a majority of anthropologists are left-leaning, but this is not inevitable.

Anthropologists come in all political stripes. And yet, because most anthropology professionals are well-meaning and dedicated, they have a tendency to project their personal politics onto the discipline and treat their anthropology as a moral compass in a frightening world. Some even make a leap of faith from their anthropology to political belief. This may be a way of dealing with cognitive dissonance at a personal level or even calculatingly self-serving, but it skates round deeper moral questions about war and peace, inequality and resistance. It also means that anthropologists, as anthropologists, don’t necessarily have cogent or compelling explanations of the global economic and political system that are more accurate, or more moral, than other, competing explanations.

So while I completely support the admirable pledge of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, I am unsettled when discussions of global politics are looped back, and anchored into our knowledge and experience of anthropology. The anthropological lens can, I think, truncate and blur our vision and limit the clarity of our politics.

I am a socialist and an anthropologist. I am glad there are many anthropologists who are exercised about any and all anthropological input into covert government sponsored counter-insurgency. But to understand the wider issues, we anthropologists on the left will always need to locate our concerns more broadly. And as people of the left, we need to decide very clearly whose side we’re on. And that is not always easy.

I think we need to go well beyond the ‘liberal imperial’ rhetoric and include an analysis of imperialism which forefronts the process of centralization fundamental to capitalism, and the increasing militarization of competition between rival centres of capital accumulation. This puts the oil politics of the American empire is at the centre of the analysis: as a project to monopolize control of the world economic system – including natural resources, human labour, and markets. And such an imperial project inevitably creates and sustains resistance.

Resistance to American, and rival, imperialisms takes many forms – from anthropologists who sign the pledge against counter-insurgency, to the activists fighting Coke and the Narmada Dam in India, the thousands of Chinese who are fighting forced homelessness in the run up to the Olympics, Chechen fighters and the Taliban and Iraqis who have resisted occupation so strongly that the US is losing in both these wars.

Counter-insurgency is about resistance. It is counter to insurgency. We cannot understand the one without understanding the other.

Along with ordinary people, and activists around the world, our concern as left-leaning anthropologists should be to understand which kinds of resistance work, and which don’t, according the changing balance of power in any struggle. And only then, does it become possible to consider how we can intervene with efficacy– as leftists, and perhaps even as professional anthropologists, if our credentials can be used to make a difference. But conflating our liberal anthropology with socialist politics can lead to a deep confusion which we must do our best to avoid if we want to help the world a better place to live.

Nancy Lindisfarne

An American soldier, interviewed in the early days of the war on route to Baghdad, is asked what she most looked forward to. A Big Mac, large fries and a jumbo Diet Coke, she replied. A few days later, after Baghdad had been captured, I read in the British press an interview with another marine. What struck him most about Iraq? There were no malls, not one, on the road to Baghdad. As the resistance to American occupation gathered coherence and momentum, another was surprised that there were no throngs welcoming them, grateful to be rescued from tyranny; instead, they were dodging sniper bullets while patrolling the sullen, burning city.

Three questions emerge from these random responses:
What allows conquering people to have no knowledge about vanquished, subjugated populations?
What allows conquerors to believe that subjugated populations are like them?
What allows conquerors to entertain the fantasy that they will be welcomed as liberators?

When anthropology first emerged, its relations with imperial projects were intimate. Travel narratives and official documents, which one can say were proto-anthropological, were accounts of vanquished territories and subjugated populations. They became, over time, the training manuals for officials of the East India Company, and then of the civil services. Indeed, the trader and the administrator was partly also a gatherer of information, and the compiler of knowledge about the territory and population at the expanding frontiers of empire. Imperial power both made anthropological knowledge possible, and was partly constituted by that knowledge.

Even when that knowledge was sympathetic to its subjects, it insisted on difference between the researcher and the researched. True, many went native, identifying totally with the populations they studied. But even this - a rejection of their ‘own’ cultures and becoming one with those of ‘others’ – only re-enforced the very basis of imperial anthropology: the difference between the two.

There was a dynamic tension at the very heart of imperial anthropology: the very act of ethnography changed the ‘pure’ conditions of the other. Primitive-ness was both the marker of the essential difference of the other, and the very condition that imperial projects brought to an inevitable end. There was little question that the imperial project was for the benefit of the subjugated, who were themselves too primitive to recognise this.

Over time, of course, anthropology began to exceed its imperial beginnings to become perhaps the most self-aware discipline in the academy. Its engagement with geopolitical projects underwent radical transformation. On the one hand, it emerged as a site of critique of imperialism, and also of claims of European universality. It shed its evolutionary assumptions for co-evalness. On the other, the ambit of its interests well exceeded its traditional concerns to encompass everything. This has had a dual effect. It has allowed the more shrill voices on the rightwing fringes of politics to accuse it of complicity with ‘those who hate us’. At the same time, its retreat from complicity with imperial power and its use of continental theory has meant that even though it now makes more practices of more people legible, it no longer is a constitutive element of imperial projects in the way it was before. And such projects have themselves changed: new forms of knowledge are more key to it than anthropology.

Anthropology, consequently, has had little to do with the current imperial iteration. Deep knowledge has been replaced by ‘adequate’ knowledge. Rational choice theory dominated the American social sciences, and through it had travelled to the Israeli academy and the Israeli defence forces, who had used it to develop strategies of counter-insurgency in occupied Palestine with ‘success’. Stylized models of game theory, based on the assumption of a universal rationality of maximizing power and wealth, obviated the need to know subjugated populations in their complexity. Of course, the previous Gulf war and the embargo and the secretive nature of the Saddam regime had also made deep knowledge difficult to construct. Likewise, geo-positioning satellites and allegedly ‘smart’ bombs made intimate knowledge of terrain unnecessary. Through the entire occupation of Iraq, the lack of ‘human intelligence’ and even of Arabic speakers has been worried about by coalition forces.

Liberal imperialism is based on the assumptions of universalism. People everywhere are assumed to desire liberal democracy and free markets: a straight line can be drawn from Fukuyama to Rumsfeld, and indeed both were also signatories to the Project for the New American Century. But some of the old assumptions crept in: some places, like Pakistan, were not ready for democracy, so it was ok to have an enlightened dictator. Other places – Zimbabwe and Burma for example – had strong movements for democracy but lay outside the zone of interest of liberal interventionists. This created a tension at the centre of the liberal imperialist project: the universalism of the values on whose behalf it was waged always were a little less than universal, some places and some people were exempt from it. Oil and the security of some homelands at the expense of others compromised the universality of liberal democracy, and free markets do not need democracy to bring them about: Pinochet comes to mind. Security, energy, and free markets always are more important than democracy, though liberal imperialism fictitiously claims that they are all equally universal.

Finally, what of the liberal imperialist fantasy that the wars of conquest are wars of liberation? Liberal feminists of NOW and human rights crusaders such as Michael Ignatieff all argued that being occupied by coalition forces was progressive, and that, far from liberation being liberation from military occupation, such occupation was the precondition for liberation from political and social tyranny. Condoleezza Rice and George Bush argued that the war on Iraq was a continuation of the American civil rights movements and of a piece with movements in Eastern Europe against communist rule. On more than one occasion, Bush equated Osama with Lenin.

So the ignorance of the populations and territories being attacked and occupied ran from the top to the bottom of the American war machine. The analogies used to justify occupation failed the tests both of logic and of credulity. In fact, much as knowledge was a constituent element of the previous iterations of empire, ignorance is a constituent element of this current imperial project. Indeed, the internal critique offered by the British fell back on old imperialism, effectively stating that since Britain ‘knew Iraq better’, it should be heard more seriously about what to do. The fact that the Iraqis defeated British forces time and again in the 1920s, of course, was not brought up.

This puts anthropology in a state of profound crisis. On the one hand, it is an ethical position to disavow any truck with projects of imperialism. On the other it has ceded the field to merely adequate knowledge and ignorance, which have had a deep bearing on how this war is being fought, and the assumptions of soldiers, generals and ‘the American people’ alike. Now that anthropology has become post-imperial, has empire itself not become post-anthropological? If so, what are the implications?

Subir Sinha
SOAS, University of London

I post some more thoughts on the wider issue of ’security’.  The following quote comes from Dibyesh Anand 2005  ’The violence of security: Hindu nationalism and the politics of representing ‘the Muslim’ as a danger’,  The Round Table 94, 379: 203-215.

 

“Security is a central concept in the theory and praxis not only of international relations but of local, inter-local and trans-local relations. In positivist literature on security it is assumed to possess an ontological and epistemological certainty where the sources of insecurity as well as the referent of security are givens. [….]. I conceptualize security as a productive discourse that produces insecurities to be operated upon, as well as defines the identity of the object to be secured. This challenges the dominant conceptual grammar of security that treats insecurities as unavoidable facts, while focusing attention on the acquisition of security by given entities. It foregrounds the processes through which something or someone (the Other) is discursively produced as a source of insecurity against which the Self needs to be secured. Thus, discourses of insecurity are about ‘representations of danger’ […..].  Insecurities, in this view, are social constructions rather than givens—threats do not just exist out there, but have to be created. All insecurities are culturally produced in the sense that they are produced in and out of ‘‘the context within which people give meanings to their actions and experiences and make sense of their lives’’ […….]. Insecurities and the objects that suffer from insecurities are mutually constituted. That is, in contrast to the received view, which treats objects of security and insecurity themselves as pre-given and natural and as separate things, we treat them as mutually constituted cultural and social constructions and thus products of processes of identity construction of Self –Other. The argument that security is about representations of danger and social construction of the Self and the Other does not imply that there are no ‘real’ effects. What it means is that there is nothing inherent in any act or being or object that makes it a source of insecurity and danger” (2005: 206).

Cheers

Filippo 

 

 

I have enjoyed blogging here and have benefited from reading the concerns and dialogue developing here on the broad range of issues pertaining to current uses of anthropology by military and intelligence agencies. In completing my role as an ASA blogger I am posting a new international version of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists pledge of non-participation in counterinsurgency work.

This past summer a core group of likeminded anthropologists working in the United States, Canada and the UK and wrote a simple statement declaring our non-participation in counterinsurgency efforts linked to the United States war in Iraq and so called “war on terror.” Hugh Gusterson recommended that as a model we consult a pledge circulated by physicists in the 1980s who pledged to not work on projects contributing to the Strategic Defense Initiative (more commonly known as “Star Wars” here in the states). The end result of these efforts was the formation of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, and the circulation of an online and printed pledge against working on counterinsurgency projects. The pledge has generated a great deal of support here in the U.S. and we are now hoping to bring in more international support.

In the last several months we have heard from anthropologists from nations around the world asking if we could also circulate a pledge of non-participation in counterinsurgency that was aimed at a more international audience. In response to these requests the Network of Concerned Anthropologists steering committee has produced the below international version of the pledge. This pledge essentially addresses the same concerns of our first pledge, but removes the specific focus on U.S. military and intelligence operations and universalizes the concerns of applying anthropology for reasons of counterinsurgency.

For more information, you can find more background information on our website, which includes links to background articles and media coverage concerning recent uses of anthropology by military and intelligence organizations, as well as Frequently Asked Questions.

Below is the international version of our pledge of non-participation counterinsurgency. I encourage all of you who share these views to show your solidarity by circulating, signing and submitting the below pledge:

 

Network of Concerned Anthropologists Pledge of Non-participation in

Counterinsurgency (International Version)

We, the undersigned, believe that anthropologists should not engage in research and other activities that contribute to counter-insurgency operations in Iraq or in related theaters in the “war on terror.” Furthermore, we believe that anthropologists should refrain from directly assisting military in combat, be it through torture, interrogation, or tactical advice.

Military and intelligence agencies and military contractors have identified “cultural knowledge,” “ethnographic intelligence,” and “human terrain mapping” as essential to military intervention in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East. Consequently, these agencies have mounted a drive to recruit professional anthropologists as employees and consultants. While often presented by its proponents as work that builds a more secure world, protects soldiers on the battlefield, or promotes cross-cultural understanding, at base it contributes instead to brutal wars of occupation which entail massive casualties. By so doing, such work breaches relations of openness and trust with the people anthropologists work with around the world and, directly or indirectly, enables the occupation of one country by another. In addition, much of this work is covert. Anthropological support for such an enterprise is at odds with the humane ideals of our discipline as well as professional standards.

We are not all necessarily opposed to other forms of anthropological consulting for the state, or for the military, especially when such cooperation contributes to generally accepted humanitarian objectives. A variety of views exists among us, and the ethical issues are complex. Some feel that anthropologists can effectively brief diplomats or work with peacekeeping forces without compromising professional values. However, work that is covert, work that breaches relations of openness and trust with studied populations, and work that enables the occupation of one country by another violates professional standards.

Consequently, we pledge not to undertake research or other activities in support of counter-insurgency work in Iraq or in related theatres in the “war on terror,” and we appeal to colleagues everywhere to make the same commitment.

SIGNATURE NAME TITLE INSTITUTION

—————————————————————

The Network of Concerned Anthropologists invites all who are interested in signing this pledge to do so by either collecting signatures (listing names, signature, titles, and institutional affiliations) and mailing them to: Network of Concerned Anthropologists,c/o Dept. of Anthropology, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, MS 3G5, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA.

Or by electronically sending this information to: concerned.anthropologists@gmail.com

Regards, David Price

“I am worried about this word, this notion - security. I see this word,
hear this word, feel this word everywhere. Security check. Security watch.
Security clearance. Why has all this focus on security made me feel so much
more insecure? What does anyone mean when they speak of security? Why are
we suddenly a nation and a people who strive for security above all else?”

“Is it possible to live surrendering to the reality of insecurity,
embracing it, allowing it to open us and transform us and be our teacher?
What would we need in order to stop panicking, clinging, consuming, and
start opening, giving — becoing more ourselves the less secure we realize
we actually are? How has the so-called war on terrorism given rise to this
mad national obsession for homeland security, which has actually made us
much more insecure at home and in the world?”

Posted by Filippo Osella

Following the debacle of the first avatar of the ‘radicalization programme’ the ESRC, in a cross-Council initiative, is re-framing its approach in terms of ‘global uncertainties’. This move does not simply try to deflect criticisms by subsuming ‘war on terror’-oriented research within a broader framework, but effectively reduces issues such as poverty, political dissent and even environmental degradation to simple matters of security. Many Universities - including mine - are enthusiastically preparing themselves to participate in these programmes. I attached below extracts of a mail I sent to my colleagues in order to generate debate on (and opposition to) this.

“The theme of ‘International Security’ has been proposed as one of new themes for the expansion of teaching and the theme ‘Security’ as one of the new interdisciplinary research themes for the university as a whole….I believe that there should be a broad discussion - before further moves are made – to see whether the academic body of the University feels comfortable with such a possible turn of events. A discussion is even more urgent in light of the proliferation of security-oriented research programmes funded under various guises by bodies such as the ESRC to bolster the so-called ‘war on terror’.

To kick start a discussion, I will argue that the introduction of an ‘International Security’ theme in our University might be ill advised on the grounds that: ·

The proposal for a teaching and research programme on International Security has a degree of affinity with current research agenda of UK funding bodies such as the ESRC. The political nature of the latter – which has been the object of substantial critique, leading, for example, to the withdrawal of the first ESRC/FCO radicalization programme – is revealed by the way it frames research priorities. Research taking place within the second avatar of the ESRC ‘Radicalisation Programme’ - interesting and open ended as it might be - still focuses only on Muslims/Islam, assuming that existing forms of radicalism are simply endogenous to Islam as a religion and implying that all Muslims are potential terrorists. Radicalisation is thus seen as a Muslim social problem, precluding analysis of radical state policies (including radical ‘Western’ state policies). At the same time, radicalisation is wrongly equated with violence, and radicalism is generally thought of as bad (where would we be today if there’d been no radical suffragette movement???). Although questions might be asked on how Muslims perceive Western foreign policies, the latter are taken for granted and, apart from rare exceptions, removed from critical scrutiny. What one notices of these programmes is that they generally entail a refusal to acknowledge the role of Western governments’ aggressive foreign policy in producing the very thing these governments most fear. This is part of a wider reluctance to address an issue which is animating debates among Muslims across the world: the role of western ‘neo-colonialism’ or ‘neo-imperialism’ (in the terms commonly used by Muslims worldwide) in what appears to be a deliberate – and overtly Islamophobic – attempt to undermine Muslim religion, society and culture. From the perspective of African, Latin American or Asian populations, it is countries such as the USA, UK, Russia or France which represent a more direct and tangible threat to security. ·

The extension of the International Security Agenda to include issues of poverty, environmental degradation, political mobilization, migration, development etc – as in the forthcoming Cross-Council programme on security – trivializes and politicizes complex processes by reducing them to a narrow problem of security. In other words, discussing these issues in relation to security either (if a state-centric or Western interests definition of security is used) implies that they are important primarily in as much as they impact on state or Western interests; or (if a human security definition is used) adds little of analytical or explanatory value. Calling ‘malnutrition’ ‘food insecurity’ doesn’t in itself help us understand this problem any better (see eg Beall, Goodfellow & Putzel 2006 for a critique of the incipient ‘securitization’ of development). ·

Ongoing research on conflict, violence, human rights, religious movements/religiosity, inequality, governance, critical theory – to mention but a few of the areas where Sussex academics are leading the field – cannot be reduced to issues of ’security’. Utilitarian or instrumental forms of research might have their own place, but academics offering more nuanced (and critical) perspectives on the practices and predicaments of everyday life should be encouraged to develop separate agendas and to maintain & forward their research interests with the support of the University…. · If the University wants to strengthen its international reputation, it needs to set – rather then follow – research agendas and to differentiate itself from existing players. ….. A programme focusing on issues concerning rights, justice, reconciliation and conflict resolution might provide an alternative agenda which challenges the premises of mainstream IS studies and which can make Sussex a leading player in the field. ·

In the rush to generate much needed income for somewhat empty University coffers, we appear to have moved – rather cynically and uncritically – to privilege policy oriented research (as on International Security) over independent/’blue sky’ enquiry. ESRC international benchmarking of disciplines such as Anthropology or International Relations – conducted recently by international panels of academics – has commented negatively on such a turn, stressing the importance of fostering open-ended, non-applied research to maintaining cutting edge international standards. It is open ended research which brings innovation and shifts research to new grounds. ·

Finally, setting ‘International Security’ as a privileged area for research and teaching in the University would align Sussex to a specific understanding of political and social relations, thus foreclosing possibility of research in Muslim societies. Anyone who has conducted field research in Islamic contexts would know that Muslims see themselves as subject – for very good reasons – of an indiscriminate and virulent ‘Western’ Islamophobia. Open to the accusation of working on behalf of governments or security agencies [our ‘informants’ do surf the web], future researchers would find their safety in the field greatly undermined. At the same time, host governments would think twice before granting research visas to academics who might be thought of as spying on behalf of their countries’ security agencies [the govt. of India, for example, is reviewing its policies concerning the issue of research visas to social scientists]. The international reputation of the ESRC has been greatly tarnished by the infamous ‘radicalisation programme’: surely we don’t want to be tarred by the same brush”.

I sent this mail today: I’ll keep you posted on the responses I receive!

Cheers

Filippo Osella

Today I begin a stint as a guest blogger; rather than put up an opinion piece, I want to go through some of the incidents that I’ve been involved in. I hope to be able to give anyone reading this who is wondering, ‘What is all the fuss about?’ an idea of the range of stuff that’s happening and the scale of the head-banging-against-brick-wall feeling that inspired the blog.

Today let me tell you about my adventures in Exeter in July 2006…

Working as Filippo and I do with Keralites who work and do business in the Gulf, I was pleased to get to an academic conference at Exeter Gulf Studies Centre, which would bring together those of us working on both sides of the Arabian sea.

So, flashback….

First night of the conf:  I was there with Neha Vohra, Attiya Ahmad and Karen Leonard and a few others; we were all sitting in the bar and I was in a tight little clique of Indianists, talking shop - you know what we Indianists are like for gossip and cliques

I was a bit surprised when three unknown young people (clearly) from the USA came and quite frankly forced themselves into our shop-talk circle, obliging us to open up the chairs and make space.

They split their own threesome and slipped in individually in between us, and began to engage us all; one guy talked for a bit to three of us about the ‘Freakanomics’ book, raving on about it etc and making himself seem like a naive but very likeable grad student.

The woman who’d come in with him really hit on me, asking me about my perfume (it was an Arab one bought in the Gulf) and then asking about my trips to Gulf so on.

It all suddenly seemed a bit too smooth and very weird, so I asked them, ‘So, what are you guys working on?’  At that point, two of them told us that they worked for Washington in defence…. and the third one told us he would rather not say what he did…..

Bloody hell!!!

I was furious, some others in our group of anthros became v cold, and those 3 guys left early.  Those of us left behind discussed what had happened and I ended the evening in tears (I also felt the need to get rather drunk!) both because my pre-circulated very draft paper (and those of other academics, of course) had gotten into the hands of these people, which I really really did not want.  I had presented a very rough draft of me and Filippo’s piece about Indian Muslim business men who trade in Dubai and are involved in Islamic reformism back home (see this pdf for final published version).  At that point, had Filippo & I known that people like this were going to get hold of the pre-circulated papers, we surely would have been more careful in vetting what we had put in it and made damn sure to change the names / details  etc more carefully.

But I was also reduced to getting drunk and going tearful because I found that I was the only bloody person at that conference who seriously objected to their presence. My academic colleagues, whom I had imagined would be as horrified as I was to discover that Washington was there, tried to reason with me that: -

these people are close to condoleeza rice and are trying to help her make better decisions,

or

washington does what it likes anyway and any information they get from us makes no difference to policy, so we should not worry.

or

this is an unprecedented moment, and we have to understand the global situation…

… and some pointed out to me that in I.R. circles it’s ‘quite normal’ for the front row to be taken up by men in suits.

but this is NOT I.R., it is anthropology, dammit…. do I have to accept it as normal?

Do we have to tolerate this?

A week before Exeter, I had attended a conference on south Asian studies in Leiden and also found some of these security types there, listening in on the panels on south Asian Muslims – and even presenting papers themselves!

The up-close-and-personal socialising after the conference did not happen to me there, but the Exeter experience in the bar was for sure not a one-off.  Bad enough to have to check oneself and what one says in conferences…but to have to be on your guard in the bar afterwards in case you say something of interest about the Gulf-connected Muslim Indians you work among is surely one step too James Bond for an anthropologist?

When I got back form the conference, I emailed a load of people to express my shock and ask if I was really so bizarre and over-emotional in my reaction to all this; that’s when I got in touch with those who are now running this blog and found that, thank goodness, I am not.  An Indian academic colleague who had been at the conference and witnessed my semi-drunk tearful protests that night emailed me back to say,

Hi Caroline,

Thanks for keeping me in the loop…must admit that I now realize that there
is very little difference between u being sober and drunk (except the tears,
perhaps)!!!! Thought u were overreacting that night, but realize u were
speaking ur mind all along…salute ur commitment…fight on

My colleague (anonymity requested)  said he had not realised that western academics might actually not take the realpolitik or ‘stand by your government’ or ‘Muslims really are different, and not to be trusted’ or ‘ whatever it takes to save my own skin’ or ‘more better foreign policy now!’ or ‘protest won’t do my career any good’ or whatever-it-is line.

He has known that academics in India have protested about all this (see Yoginder Sikand’s excellent piece on ‘how not to engage with the Muslim world’), but he had not, he told me, expected any of us Americans or Brits to have our politics straight.

What a lousy public image we British anthropologists have built for ourselves through our apathy and silence and polite heads-in-the-sand or ‘let’s not make a fuss!’ attitudes!  Shame on us.  We teach our undergrads about our shameful past with regard to colonialism.  Are we going to find the next generation of anthropologists teaching about us and our pathetic accommodations to state power and our polite refusals to speak out?

So it’s important that those of us who do find ourselves disturbed and angered by the status-quo do huddle together for strength and raise the issues…over…and over…. and over…in the face of indifference, sophistry and wilful naivety.

My good friend Professor Karen Leonard from California, (someone with a background of 1960s/70s radicalism, anti-Vietnam etc.), was one of those who surprised me with her reaction, and provoked me to get drunk, cry and despair that Exeter evening. She emailed me later and agreed to let our emails go public.

James, Caroline, Neha,

I am sorry, Caroline, to differ with you on this issue. If an open
conference like this one attracted US government employees I don’t see
a problem….it is only too obvious that US government employees and
the American public too need to learn about the Gulf, the Middle East, the
world…and why deny them the opportunity? Incidentally, Christine Fair,
whose presence you criticized at the Leiden conference we both attended
prior to the Exeter one, is a genuine scholar doing excellent field work
in Pakistan (Chicago PhD under Barney Cohn) and she was attacking the US
policies in the region, both in her paper and in a public speech at the
conference. Having her speak and contribute to conferences, and
letting younger people like Shannon and Tony below attend them,
can be viewed quite positively. I am genuinely puzzled by your anger.
We have colleagues within universities with whom we differ and they too
may interact with governments. How should one deny others access to
expertise that is sorely needed, to the knowledge we are in the business
of producing?

Sorry, Karen Leonard

Well, sorry, Karen; I can’t agree with you and your attitude on this one came to me as a surprise and filled me with gloom.  It’s because people like you, whom I respect, are giving this line, that the situation is so dire.

I still maintain that this is a worrying trend and that effectively, academic freedom and decent research is jeopardised if all our conferences are gatecrashed.

Conferences are places where we try out ideas and present first
drafts of our work; we may later decide to alter some things before going to
publication in order to protect the people we work with.

By letting security personnel or academics form the military into conferences then effectively our work is going into the public realm before we are ready for it to do so.

Washington and whoever else is welcome to read the published versions of my and Filippo’s work, like any other members of the interested public.  But they can download it and read it in their offices.  They can please keep away from academic conferences, where I want the freedom to try out my ideas, decide which details I might want to keep confidential for ethics’ sake, and feel free to engage in discussions which are not monitored or where the information I may pass on is not feeding into any policy agenda.  And I want to be able to go and drink and talk shop in the bar in the evening without wondering who is listening.

In July we will be having the ECMSAS (euro conf on Mod Asian Studies) at Manchester, and Filippo and I will be running a panel on everyday Muslim lives.  We were deluged with proposals for panel presentations on issues relating not at all to ‘everyday Muslim lives’ but to the ‘security implications’ of various sectarian disputes, educational establishments etc.

Are our academic conferences going to become extensions of government
policy think-sessions?

Basta!

Later on this week I will write about my session with a very wilfully disingenuous ESRC person.

Filippo will also be posting about the view from Uni of Sussex.

Till then, thanks for the links, the solidarity, the raising of these issues with colleagues and students.

Caroline Osella