In an interview with the Guardian, the home secretary Theresa May defines an ‘illegal’ immigrant as someone that has ‘no right to be in the UK’. Denying someone the ‘right to be in the UK’ may mean two things. It is, first of all, a denial of the right of entry (to be in the UK) to people variously defined as ‘outsiders’, despite any affinity or relationship that may be drawing them to these shores. On a more disturbing level, however, it also means – for someone that actually finds him or herself on these islands – the denial of the right to be. This is where the word ‘hostile environment’ comes to mind, the name given to the original committee endowed with the noble task of finding ways to make life as hard as possible for ‘illegal’ immigrants (and beyond). To create an environment that is hostile to the continuing existence of a person on British soil. Thou shalt not be housed. Thou shalt not work. If you fall ill, thou shalt not be cared for.
These are quite radical acts to wish for, let alone to carry out on, another human being. It’s an iron fist stamped on those that inhabit the contradictory space of being ‘in’ the UK – physically or effectively – while, at the same time, supposed to be ‘out’. The boldness of similar measures stands out all the more when juxtaposed against the lack of re-presentation of the group of ‘outsiders’, to the detriment of whom these policies have been enacted. So it is that certain decision-making procedures carried out within a community provide legitimacy for some people to tell others (who are not considered to be part of that community) whether they have the right to be, or not. How, I wonder, is this different from any other instance where a community has shown the hubris to deny ‘outsiders’ the right to exist inside what it regards as ‘its own’ space and sphere of control? And does it really make any difference what the reason given for such a radical act is? Whether it be ‘God’, ‘Democracy’, ‘Austerity’ or ‘Immigration Control’?
Perhaps, there really isn’t any difference. The community that is being protected from the supposed ‘outsiders’ always huddles around some kind of symbol or story that it reiterates over and over to oblivion, to the point that anything else appears worth sacrificing for the sake of upholding that story or that symbol. This same fanaticism that sacrifices lives in the name of (an empty picture of) ‘democracy’, that encroaches on individual privacy in the name of ‘security’, that cuts much-needed lifelines in the name of ‘austerity’ is also at work when it comes to the sanction of unequal lives for people who do not possess what is ultimately just a piece of paper. Of course, people don’t just wake up one day in the grip of a totalising story. That story, or that symbol, is slowly established as being important enough to justify the violation of other things that are held sacred. This is the politics of profanation that asserts the priority of borders over life, love and community, and it is happening today, as we speak.
When police storm into a wedding ceremony and walk out without an apology, on the grounds of some unspecified suspicion of fraud. When a minister in a radio Q&A dismisses the separation from one’s loved ones, because of the new rules on non-EU spouses of British citizens, as‘collateral damage’, rather than the shattering monstrosity that it really is. When vans are paraded, with slogans relaying a history of hatred based on race. When hundreds of thousands of pounds are spent on the deportation of a blind asylum seeker on hunger strike. The examples could go on. When acts like these can be carried out, the gesture matters more than the effectiveness of the action. In fact, it doesn’t matter that the marriage was not a sham, so that the wedding could continue, or that the vans did not work, or that the number of marriages between Britons and foreign spouses in all likelihood hardly justifies the amount of attention and dedication devoted to them by the immigration authorities. What matters is that all of these acts are attempts to assert the priority of one sacred form over other qualities or relationships that we could regard as equally sacred. Indeed, it is precisely because none of this serves any real practical purpose that the significance is eminently symbolic. It is a broadcasting of the message that certain things, such as the ‘sanctity’ of borders, come before others, like love, family, respect for life or harmony amongst communities. This is also why, beyond the in-group of those that resonate with whatever these ‘immigration’ policies are trying to assert, these acts are widely perceived as cruel and evil. Perhaps, it’s because they are. By denying people’s experience of attachment, to each other, to their community, to the ground on which they stand, these acts of profanation are immoral and evil.
Given the absolute character of profanation, it is not enough to rescue the lives of immigrants on the grounds that they pass this or the cost-benefit criterion. This always leaves the possibility open that, should circumstances change and the criterion no longer stand, so would the right of that group of people to be. It also binds the act of migration together with an economic motivation that is not always a given, just as most things we do in life – I like to think – are always done for more than economic reasons. To get out of home for a while and explore the world. To fall in love. To light the spark of unexpected friendships. To discover oneself elsewhere.