Comment & analysis

Xenophobia is a global phenomenon

Chengiah Rogers Ragaven

2008-07-17, Issue 389

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/49496

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Xenophobia, refugees and immigration politics in their own right have negative connotations when examined through the lens of universal values, moral truths or scriptural teachings which form the basis of our humanitarian civilization, but when translated and practiced through the lens of racism, religious chauvinism, cultural and ethnic ‘otherness,’ the consequence can be horrendous and catastrophic.

Matthew J Gibney (2004) examines the emergence of Xenophobia, Refugees and Immigration politics in liberal democracies and its response to the ‘crisis’ as framed by these states. Gibney cites the earlier work of Hannah Arendt, her sustained critique of Europe’s creation of nation states, thus depriving ‘ethnics communities’ of citizenship rights and ‘manufacturing’ them as ‘outcasts’ in their own societies. In so doing it established the fragmentation of peoples , thereby indelibly etching into modern civic politics, the concept of ‘otherness.’ Thus it also adds another hue to the many shades of ‘identity’ to the ‘rainbow of whitism’

In Africa, however, cultural, genocidal and hegemonic racism, has been and still is one of the primary social evil of our times, moreover so, systematically infecting caste, class and linguistic dissonance for over 500 years. More concretely racism has through its imperial, colonial and apartheid processes de-socialized and pathologized whole generations of ‘non-white’ peoples. The historical damage to the continent continues to be immeasurable. But all this has been the strategies of whitism – imperialism, colonialism and now globalization. The ‘white church, military, law and education’ have been the chemistry of this ‘culture of otherness’ and the hallmark of Globalism. The 5% of the world whose philosophy has been ‘manifest destiny’ own over 80% of the world’s wealth and power and are the gatekeepers of this super-state system.

What in fact one notices in the new millennium is the dialectical relationship between global racism with all its inequalities and international injustices interfaced with national forms of exclusion , xenophobia and refugees of countries like South Africa. It is this dialectic that makes Xenophobia, refugees and immigration politics international and local at the one and the same time.

In a paper prepared for the Institutes of Race Relations in London titled “The Dispersal of Xenophobia”, Liz Fekete (2000) describes the crises of Xenophobia, Refugees and public policies by European governments. A closer look and analysis of the paper makes it fairly obvious that consequences of the “chickens” of colonialism are now coming home to roost in the “mother countries” of imperialism , while further south the ‘poorer’ escaping to the ‘richer’ of the same neo-colonial continent, all victims however of the broader Globalization policy.

The restrictive immigration policies of both European and colonial countries, and in the latter case, encouraging “kith” and “kin” to the exclusion of non white people, have spawned a whole corpus of restrictive legislative enactments usually rationalized and legitimated through liberal disguise of ‘modern racialized economic policies’ of the likes of World Bank and IMF. Paradoxically however, with expanding markets by Western nations, cheap labor from “conquered” countries was always necessary, creating the two “solitudes” that are all too common in these societies.

The large influx of West Indians and Bangladeshis into England, Turks and Mediterranean Arabs to Germany and France, the Indonesians and East Timorese into Holland in the ‘50s and 60’s spawned the growth of right wing and pseudo-nationalist groups in these countries, encouraging and spreading xenophobia together with other shades of racial prejudices worldwide. African, Asian, and Latin American people forced into an inflated modernism of ‘white styles’ following the wealth trail . In other cases students are recruited through scholarship programs to be “indoctrinated” and to be later sent back ‘brainwashed’ to legitimate the imperialist structures in their home countries and in the meanwhile becoming unsuspecting victims of xenophobia and crime.

New variations of racial segregation, prejudice and rationalities have become the norm in Western countries, especially America by the settler society having decimated most of the indigenous native people to become guardians of ‘civilization.’

Note Friedman’s recent comments in the New York Times as regards Bush’s “xenophobic opposition to Dubai Ports World managing US Harbors." Prejudice of the ‘others’ become refined quite readily in the Oxbridge and Ivy League law schools where by a whole corpus of immigration restrictions are ‘manufactured’ and ‘policified’, and applied to any ‘alien’ randomly selected by a cadre of ‘profiling police’ The social science, business and theology departments for centuries structured language, ideology and rationality to legitimate this ‘ pure blood’ theory.

At the beginning of this century, as the ground swell of working class rose in Western societies, racial and xenophobic antagonism increased. The black labor force, first recruited through slavery, then later through indentured and contractual labor to work the machinery of capitalism, are now becoming the scapegoats of the white proletarian racism. Race riots, segregation legislations and restrictions on “foreigners” and whole panoply of ‘prejudices’ helped these governments to design and implement draconian immigration policies.

Politicians in western countries were quick to seize the opportunity of using the “numbers game” accusing each other for allowing immigrants to flood the country. Xenophobia was being given respectability and legitimated. Right wing newspapers and the media sensationalized the issues with negative stereotypes with semi-literate DJ’s and talk show hosts “playing/speaking to the audience”. Enoch Powell, for instance, the notorious Conservative British politician at the height of the “foreigners” Immigration debate called for the “repatriation of the immigrants”. From the ‘mother country’ this notorious policy was adopted by the ‘chickens country’ of South Africa where repatriation, became the solution for certain Nationalist Party leaders, to what was perceived then as the ‘Indian problem’ in the country in the 1950’s.

Fekete (2000) discusses the seriousness of the xenophobia syndrome unleashed in England, through Powell’s opposition to the number of ‘black immigrants’ coming to the country. The lasting damage to human, cultural and race relations since then has become national and foreign policy in most ‘white societies’. For instance his concentration on immigration birth rates and the threat they posed to the British way of life dominated media debate and led to outbursts of racial violence and racially motivated murder of immigrants from Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. For some time open xenophobia became subliminal only to surface frontally once again. The recent dispersal of asylum-seekers in Europe from the major cities to the rural areas as state policy has rekindled the overt form of racism and fascism. White communities across Europe incensed by the “foreigners” being “dumped” by government agencies have mobilized and rekindled the xenophobia culture. Media journalists especially of the tabloid kind are contributing to this unsavory phenomenon by using language such as “floods of refugees”, ‘illegal immigrants’, ‘aliens’ and the likes. So selective is the current xenophobia that one time race prejudice now includes ‘whites’ that are not so white such as the Kosovan refugees. The xenophobia rationality in the technological age has sanitized the white form with such refinement with the underlying logic such as “ a more socially accepted view that people from different races and cultures don’t mix”.

The tragedy of such a position has been, the hitherto cultural minorities, due to the prevailing culture of racial hegemony as separation and segregation in the host countries, tend to congregate in communities, often intermarrying and rationalizing exclusion, some claiming as such -to having special relations with God or and are chosen people. This of course enables the host country to maintain its racial control and implement its divide and rule policy, regulate employment and easily exploit the labor minorities of color This is all too prevalent in country like Israel

Given the kaleidoscopic nature of xenophobia, refugees and immigration grounded within the culture of historic racism, South Africa has over the centuries contributed significantly to the phenomenon. Race division, separation and cultural devaluation have been the hallmark of South African histiography since the arrival of settlers into the country.

The Nationalist Party In South Africa, since its inception and certainly since its ascendancy to power in 1949 perfected the policy of divide and rule which it inherited mainly from the British. Suspicion, stereotyping, and separation and segregation created its own culture of internal colonial xenophobia. Ethno-racism and further stratification with each cultural group added to the conflicts. The ‘innocent’ homelands policy along linguistic lines and the creation of elite black leadership were all ingredients of sowing suspicion, class race and cultural suspicions which were easily transferred to other Africans in the transforming South Africa post 1994.

In spite of the prejudices, scapegoat and labeling the “others” of the apartheid system, the majority of the indigenous South Africans were rural dwellers with a benevolent attitude towards strangers or foreigners. Wit the introduction of the free market economy and rampart urbanization of the population and with the arrival of new African expatriates, the global experience of the “other” is now being transferred on to the new arrivals to the country.

South Africa’s racial policies and their effect on African migration together with its isolation within the international world have had its impact on grassroots thinking of the people. Migrants and especially African migrants, travel around the world in search of employment transferring their marketable skills, like the earlier settler societies. They have no intention of remaining in foreign lands but rather serve functionally in the economic sector. They cross the border frequently as they have done for time immemorial and now ‘the culture of the other’ has reached South Africa.

The latter category has often been used against Nigerians, or indeed any other African whom the locals are unable to identify. Immigration policies in South Africa closely follow the labeling and category culture developed out from the street culture which the media seeking sensation soon write the by-lines. Political and economic refugees are seldom recognized let alone given the hospitality that were given to the South African refugees for several decades in Africa. It seems strange, but not altogether surprising that western “manufactured” rationality for Xenophobia, such as “foreigners” or ‘blacks taking our jobs, or using our ‘welfare system’ are prone to ‘criminality are responsible for our unemployment’ have all become an integral part of the “new South Africa” vision of its neighbors. Racism has become its full circle with South Africans now practicing ethno-racism or neo-racism on its own African people.

* Chengiah Rogers Ragaven is a faculty professor in the International Studies program at Central Connecticut State University. Ragaven was one of the foremost student leaders in South Africa in the 1960s. While under House Arrest and Banning Orders, he went into exile for over 25 years. He is currently organizing the Pan African International - a movement of African peoples worldwide - and the Pan African University - a university system for Africa.

*Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org

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