Book "Deportation is Freedom ..." is Helpful December 2006 Click square for index Deportation is Freedom: The Orwellian World of Immigration Controls by Steve Cohen, published by Jessica Kingsley, London and Philadelphia, 2006, is an important book. An immigration lawyer offers an unusual perspective and thereby lends a voice to the affected population – refugees, asylum seekers and those accompanying them - about their experiences of immigration controls. They have a voice which should be heard in a world in which, as the author shows, there is deception, public manipulation, re-writing of history, derogatory labeling of persons, cruelty, inhumanity. He also shows a trivializing of the victims’ experiences by things such as the game show described in chapter 2, pp 32-35. A major theme throughout the book is an exploration of the language used in immigration controls in comparison with the fictional world of George Orwell’s book of some 45 years back, Nineteen Eighty-Four. The analogies are striking. The author provides many compelling similarities between the terminology used in Orwell’s fictional world and the language used in today's world of immigration controls. An example is the concept of a human person being described as “illegal.” The theme carries into several of the chapter titles. These include terminology from Orwell’s book: newspeak; doublethink; the memory hole; proles; ingsoc; and, big-brother. The book explains these Orwellian terms in chapter 1 which also gives the first brief histories of immigration controls and of borders. Revealing these Orwellian analogies is not the only stated purpose behind the book. One purpose is to answer the question ‘why?’. Another is “to enrich the objective political analysis of the racism of controls …” (p 14).   The references to the world created by Orwell  largely succeed as a means for assembling varied interesting material. The Orwellian language comparisons together with the brief explorations of aspects like racism and the history of the poor laws offer helpful information and perspectives. Nonetheless, these insights seem a bit unconnected at times and I would have enjoyed more a bit less Orwell and a bit more on explaining ‘why?’ (more than claiming it an unanswerable question of Orwell’s character) and more on support for a political analysis. True, some further development of these aims occurs in chapter 2, and again at the beginning of chapter 6 and in chapter 7. A strength of the book for me is the many concrete situations of persons affected by immigration control policies which the author presents tightly in passing to illustrate his views. These are situations that should be recorded in print so that the indignities being suffered are not forgotten. The migrants and their situations will resonate with the experiences of many working alongside uprooted people in the Western world. As such the book may offer some solidarity and some comfort to individuals and their advocates otherwise isolated in their experiences of the sometimes absurd world of immigration controls. These situations offer insights for others in the scholarly world who might be a bit more insulated from the harsh realities of some migrants. For example, there is Sikandar Ali, from Bangladesh, whose daughter Shahinda cannot join the family in the UK because, despite all the evidence, immigration officials refuse to believe she is his daughter. There is Farhat Khan, a failed asylum seeker, who is to be deported but whom, meanwhile, the Queen has invited to a reception at Buckingham Palace to thank her for her work within migrant communities in Manchester. Then there is the gruesome story of torture victim ‘D’ who was driven to killing himself and was then asked by the authorities to withdraw his asylum application. The author links the British High Commission in Dacca to “room 101” in Orwell’s novel. The Commission conducts appeals which the author says seek inconsistencies in a case account in order to deny migration. The author finds these appeals “exercises in further humiliation.”  All these situations will resonate with experiences of advocates in other Western countries about inland and overseas immigration procedures. Another strength of the book for me is its forthright un-ashamed attack on immigration controls themselves – a position which amounts to a declaration of heresy! The book argues with some passion that there can be no “fair” controls or “just” controls” or “compassionate” controls or “non-racist” controls. “There can only be an expose and destruction of controls.”  p.172 Although centred on the UK and experiences of British law, the book draws on insights from other countries such as Canada, Italy, US and Australia. Chapter 10 gives evidence of international coordination of policies of the Western world and points out that, as a consequence, immigration controls “are often globally identical or converging” (p.158). The author gives a list of the principal controls (p.159). He rightly argues in this chapter that controls must therefore be resisted internationally. Whatever one might think about this unusual book, it squarely confronts the reader with some unpleasant realities: 1) Some migrants are subjected to cruel, deceitful and inhumane treatment by our authorities in the name of immigration control. 2) Most of these situations cannot be justified by any legitimate government purpose or need. 3) The language and the metaphors used around immigration control, distort, mislead and manipulate  “liberal democracies” into tolerating cruel, deceitful and inhumane treatment. TOP   Click:

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