Cardiff Metropolitan University has become the UK’s first uni to divest from the border industry – in other words, to refuse to invest in businesses that are complicit in the violence faced by migrating people.
This world premiere divestment victory hits the stage just a couple of weeks after UK home secretary Suella Braverman said her dream for Christmas was to send refugees to Rwanda, and a leaked report revealed that 43,000 people had been left to die at sea by Frontex, the EU Border and Coast Guard Agency, in the last two and a half years.
The prevalence of border violence has not only become a recurring theme in daily news, but also something Western liberal states publicly take pride in. Recent developments in the UK make for no exception. From Australian-style offshoring plans to the de facto repeal of the right to asylum under the Nationality and Borders Act, it seems this government is unhinged when it comes to border control, willing to literally walk over dead bodies.
