The sailors and Royal Marines of HMS Bulwark help migrants ashore. Carl Osmond/Flickr. Some rights reserved.And so it has happened. Talk of ‘incursions of migrants’, ‘monitoring signs of migrant activity’ and ‘sending in the troops’ is marking the latest transformation of migrants desperately seeking a safe and better life. The present situation – largely described under the rubric ‘the Calais crisis’ – is being reported in language usually reserved for actual conflicts themselves, or surveilling the enemy and awaiting the next infiltration.
But then, the plight of migrants, making rational decisions to risk their lives, has become a key global conflict of the twenty-first century. It appears as a new conflict with no obvious single enemy, but an enemy who appears to be everywhere, a conflict that has resulted from other conflicts, but which are not acknowledged as driving people to desperate measures. It is a conflict that has been moving progressively closer and closer to Europe, from the millions of displaced people on the African continent, to the tragedy of Mediterranean crossings, to the bloody scaling of high razor fences at Calais.
'Swarms' of migrants
When it's time to go... Jey OH/Flickr. Some rights reserved.The anti-migrant language of the most recent reporting about the present situation of migrant crossings has accelerated at an alarming pace, although perhaps with no great surprise. They have been described as "swarms" by Nigel Farage and David Cameron, only to be condemned by Labour leader hopefuls Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham, and promptly followed up by social media links to Labour's own managed migration policy, which is hardly any more humane. The language of managed migration is at the heart of the problem, as if it is something that can be turned off like a tap. As if it refers to a homogenous thing, rather than encompassing mixed flows of people seeking family reunifications, economic migrants, unaccompanied minors, and victims of trafficking.
