Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

He is now the state

Counteroppression by Alpa Shah

The ‘same’ headlines, attacks and vilifications uttered and published when I first arrived in England 20 years ago. The difference today is that white Ukrainians are welcome as it was with Polish labour. Johnson warns of the ‘healthy young men’ or ‘economic migrants’ who come here under false pretences, sometimes posing as minors, in place of the truly vulnerable.  Fables of migration

 “It’s clear that Trump’s strategy of polarisation on the basis of a far-right agenda has allowed him to strengthen and expand his popular base. Whoever scrapes into the White House, the US is going to be very hard to govern on the basis of the liberal internationalism that has served big capital so well since WWII. The crisis of the neoliberal version of this hegemony that started under George W. Bush with Iraq and the Global Financial Crisis is going to intensify.” —Alex Callinicos, 04 November 2020

 "We wanted to contribute another dimension to these important conversations by encouraging readers to think about asylum specifically in the context of neoliberal capitalism". In addition, it aims to zoom out onto the bigger picture of migration, including long histories of colonial extraction, Western support for oppressive regimes, neoliberal structural adjustment policies, wars for geopolitical and economic gain and the impacts of climate change. "These factors are all tied to profit-making - with flows of money streaming primarily into the West". Asylum for Sale: The intersection of capitalism and migration