Summary of Three PDFs on British Detention Centres.

This first article deals with the treatment of asylum seekers in the UK. It is apparent from the very beginning of this article that the two authors do not approve of the way things are handled. They focus on the ideas that media representations (or indeed misrepresentations) of the asylum seekers attempting to enter the country are what are actually at the heart of our laws and rules surrounding immigration issues, and that detention centres have outgrown their original mandate by being used to hold those seeking asylum in this country, rather than those who are waiting to be deported to their own countries.

Media manipulation of the ‘unknowableness’ of an asylum seeker, according to the writers of this article, is what causes asylum seekers to be seen as a threat to ‘normal’ society, as a burden on “‘our health and welfare systems” (Malloch and Stanley 54) which effectively screens people from considering the potential benefits that we would gain from having these people as functioning members of our society.

The sections on detention centres, as mentioned above, covers the blurring of lines between the official use of detentions centres, as a place to hold people who are being deported, and the unofficial and yet more prevalent use of them as places to hold asylum seekers in general, while officials decide whether or not they will be allowed in the country or not. The main problem, as the article highlights, is that detention centres (against the advice of the UN (Malloch and Stanley 63)) are quite often made up of a mixed-gender population, which can have the effect of increased sexual violence against women, and lack of proper care for infants and children.

The second PdF, a study of the integration of asylum seekers into German society, focuses on the use of the GSOEP to examine language as a criterion to assess whether or not integration into the host society has been successful. According to this article (Doeschler and Jackson 47), “language and cultural education programs are now required for non-Western immigrants to Europe in order to assure their employment and respect for the political and cultural traditions of the host nation.” While the article is focused on the German government’s response to the 21st issues of terrorism and immigrant unemployment, it is noted that this is something that all Western nations have to face. The German approach is to give immigrants specifics amounts of language and cultural instruction, so that the people moving their have, as mentioned above, at least a working knowledge of their host countries traditions.

This ‘screening programme’ ensures that the immigrants who do come to Germany are able to find work, and also protects Germany and German culture from the changes that would almost inevitably come about from the influx of people from a non-white and non-Christian background. The article goes on to note, however, that there is no programme that extends the other way (Doeschler and Jackson 170-171), meaning that there is apparently no effort to understand the history and culture of the immigrants and their families, which would be another good way of helping integration into German culture.

This train of thought is continued by the suggestion in the article that integration could be helped by the government looking for social capital in place other than the usual places of education, language skills and at least some degree of affluence, by encouraging the mixing of different ethnic groups, and thus potentially providing more opportunities for ethnic minorities in different professions by creating one organisation for all citizens to use, rather than separate organisations for the separate social groups.

The third PdF deals with the issue of crime and race under the aegis of criminal justice in France, specifically looking at “members of the racialized Muslim ethnic groups (of Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian and Turkish backgrounds) [people of all three races are represented in both the citizen and non-citizen populations in France] that are disproportionately represented at all levels of the French criminal justice system” (Jackson 51), and potentially seeing why this is.

According to Jackson (66-67), one part of the problem is that these minorities (whether they are citizens or not) are seen as being foreign to French society, an attitude which could be a direct result of the tight regulations governing immigration into France, which includes an incredibly high rate of denial of asylum by the French government.

Other factors which could be adding to the climate of xenophobia are the high unemployment rate among the minorities of French society, and also the difficulties of integration into French society, problems which could potentially be related. In this context, the growing secularization of France and Europe is a problem, since the practicing of the Islamic religion among immigrants can, in people’s minds, turn into a threat against the natural order of a secular society.

The problems of secularization are expanded on by the mention of a kind of ‘meta-phobia’ situation where young Islamic men are picking up anti-Semitic causes such as Palestine, among other things, as a balm against their own social and economic difficulties within French society (Jackson 63). It is possible that France is creating its own problem here – by creating policies which may or may not be adding to the xenophobia present in French society regarding immigrants, France is creating a situation where those who are suffering from xenophobia become xenophobic themselves when it comes to other ethnic minorities and groups.

Works Cited

Doeschler, Peter and Jackson, Pamela. “Host Nation Language Ability and Immigrant

Integration in Germany: Use of GSOEP to Examine Language as an Integration Criterion.” Democracy and Security, vol. 6, n.d., pp. 147-182.

Jackson, Pamela, Race, Crime and Criminal Justice in France, 2010.

Malloch, Margaret and Stanley, Elizabeth. “The Detention of Asylum Seekers in the UK:

Representing Risk, Managing the Dangerous.” Punishment and Society, vol. 7, pp. 53-66.