No abstract

Voluntary returns' for rejected asylum seekers, foreign national prisoners, illegal entrants and overstayers are increasingly being promoted by European governments without due regard for the safety and preparedness of the returnee. In addition, the voluntariness of such returns has to be questioned. Among the UK schemes examined here are the Voluntary Assisted Return and Reintegration Programme (VARRP), Assisted Voluntary Return of Irregular Migrants (AVRIM), Assisted Voluntary Return for Families and Children (AVRFC), the Facilitated Returns Scheme (FRS) and the now discontinued 'Explore and Prepare' schemes.

In recent years, European governments have introduced a series of measures aimed at clamping down on foreign nationals within criminal justice systems. Such measures have included policies of automatic deportation on completion of prison sentences of a certain length, harsher sentencing, prison segregation, and restrictions on access to citizenship and rights to permanent settlement. This article argues that such measures constitute a separate criminal justice system for foreign nationals, the creation of which has been driven by ‘penal populism and racist campaigns by extreme-Right political parties, against Muslims, asylum seekers and Roma in particular. Many of those designated as foreign criminals are guilty only of new offences specifically created to criminalise undocumented migration; many others are young refugees who have never been helped to deal with the trauma they experienced in their countries of origin. Historically, the European Court of Human Rights has set a high threshold for the deportation of a foreign national following a conviction, particularly with regard to young people. But this has been bypassed by European governments, even in cases of‘virtual nationals , those born and brought up in a European country but, owing to jus sanguinis citizenship laws in some EU countries, holding a non-EU passport. Moreover, there are attempts to curtail the freedom of movement rights of EU citizens, such as Romanian Roma, on the grounds that they are a serious threat to public order.

The indictment presented to the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal London Hearing in November 2018 on violations of the human rights of migrant and refugee peoples. It concentrates on the ways in which a ‘hostile environment’ has been created in the UK removing rights, enshrined in EU and international laws and conventions, to housing, health, livelihood, liberty, freedom of assembly, family and private life, freedom from inhuman and degrading treatment. Migrants and refugees with or without permission to be in the country are, the author argues, possessed of no rights but, at best, privileges that can be removed at any time.

In the face of the worst refugee crisis since the second world war, the leaders of Europe are slamming the doors, enacting exclusionary policies which daily become more brutal. The controversial book Refuge by Collier (ex-World Bank) and Betts (academic in refugee studies) provides, according to the reviewer, their moral justification. Collier and Betts argue that allowing refugees into Europe is wrong and counter-productive, denying states in conflict the people they will need to rebuild post-conflict, and that refugees’ need for dignity and autonomy is best met by extending special economic zones in nearby host countries to provide opportunities for work.