migration

The Euro Vision and the Gold Rush #Flashnews (part IV)

@JohnStadnicki, 2019. London.

Over a month ago, the media pointed out that the price of gold increased again. A sign that investors are using gold against weaker stocks, as a response to the uncertainty surrounding Brexit and the trade disputes around the world. But even a child knows that when gold starts shining, it is a sign of trouble ahead.

The recent Brexit developments send waves of worry throughout Europe, whilst governments across the English Channel are increasingly interested in taking back control over their money.

Only a year ago, the National Bank of Hungary took back three tons of the country’s national gold reserves stored at the Bank of England. The decision followed similar reactions from Austria, Germany, Holland and Venezuela, which considered storing the national gold reserves in London a risky decision.

For a few days now, the Romanian authorities have been debating whether to take back their sixty tonnes of gold stored in the London vaults. With the crisis of storage space the British authorities have been facing for years, I imagine that storing a country’s national gold is not cheap.

Sixty tonnes is, by any means, a lot. Imagine ten elephants put together, if one takes the average weight of one elephant at around six tonnes. To put it simply though, the average weight of 15 people together, say, in an elevator, is about one tonne. By the same logic, sixty tonnes of Romanian gold is about 900 Romanian migrants, currently living in London.

What would be the weight in gold of 300,000 Romanian migrants currently in the UK? And what about the 3.7 million European migrants, in the UK? Imagine that gold! Imagine the value!

But in this equation, and in all Brexit negotiations, who is looking at what value people have, when financial interests are at stake?

©Maria Stadnicka, 2019.

Published in International Times, 9/03/19.

On Euro Vision and the Migration Strategy #Flashnews (part III)

©John Stadnicki, 2019.

In 2012, Theresa Mary May (née Brasier) was just a mere Home Secretary. She was under pressure from David William Donald (née Cameron), who was fighting Nigel Paul (née Farage) on the electoral front, to do something about the migration data. And she had an idea which got her a few brownie points from the PM. ‘Dave, why not produce a hostile environment for undocumented migrants,’ she said, to which the PM responded ‘Well done, Theresita, that’s my girl.’ And, as simple as that, the hostile environment strategy was conceived on a sofa in 10 Downing Street, and later on ended up being implemented.

The strategy is up and running since 2016. The Guardian(ed. 16th Feb. 2019) reports that the Home Office is attempting to embed immigration officers at a rate of almost £60 an hour as part of an ‘enhanced checking service.’ The service is available to public services, including NHS trusts and local authorities, as well as private firms. Over the past two and a half years, Home Office officers have been deployed to test the policy. But the strategy is not just about ‘enhanced checking.’

Institutions and organisations are offered ‘real-time’ access to information about someone’s immigration status as well as ‘on-site immigration official.’ The on-site officer can attend interviews and can encourage undocumented migrants to leave the country voluntarily. There is no public information about the methods used to encourage people to leave but, hopefully, with the media’s pressure, the Home Office will release further details.

I will not explore any further how the public funds are used under the pretext of national security. The governmental misjudgement and funding misplacement are, by now, legendary locally and Europeanly. And the Home Office’s policies seem to fit well a system based on miscommunication and misunderstanding.

There is something more bothersome I came across not very long ago. A few weeks ago, I came to understand that a young British citizen, travelling by train from London to Paris, managed to cross the border without a passport. The UK Border Agency let the young Brit off on the basis that the teenager was travelling as part of the group and had a scanned copy of his passport saved on a laptop. Although getting out of the country was easy, coming back from Paris a few days later created a bit of a problem at the Parisian train station. But the British citizen managed to get back to Britain on his scanned document, whilst the UK Border Agency’s officer warned the eyewitnesses that he would put a complaint against the section of the UK Border Agency which had let the person travel in the first place. Well, who is going to check that such a complaint was actually put forward?

The questions this incident brings forward are numerous. The issue of ‘legality’ in such a case would be the first, followed by the problem with the Home Office’s wasted funds on ‘monitorisation.’ And there are rhetorical points here. What is the point in having passports, if one could just travel without? Would a migrant have been allowed to travel from the UK to Europe and vice-versa without a passport? If I turn up at Heathrow or St. Pancras with just a scanned copy of my passport, will I manage to cross the border without problems? (to be continued)

©Maria Stadnicka, 2019

Published in International Times on 2/3/2019.

On Polar Bears and Euro Vision #Newsflash (part I)

©John Stadnicki, 2019

There is an invasion of polar bears in Russia. And the British press finally found out about it. When it happened, a week ago, the media wasn’t that interested to begin with. To be more specific, last week, the Russian authorities in the Novaya Zemlya islands declared state of emergency after dozens of polar bears entered residential and public buildings searching for food. This has been without precedent in the region and raises the climate change reality to a new level. And not just the climate change, in general, but the reality of heavy urbanism, socio-economics, pollution and many other sins of the neo-liberalist economies.

The British press wasn’t that keen on bears for reasons which can be, in part, understood. It applies the law of proximity. News is news only if it’s close enough to us. Last week, the media had a different concern. With the news about the British singer selected to perform at Eurovision, it had to re-think the strategy around coverage from Tel Aviv. And, lastly, the same media became consumed by an acute need to compete in predicting how bad things will be for all of us, once we are out of the EU. It is worth a mention that there are voices still in disbelief about Brexit. But there are increasingly more voices who question the whole legitimacy of the vote and the basis on which the Brexit process is based on.

In 2016, the Brexit referendum was primarily an electoral manoeuvre proposed by David Cameron who had become increasingly concerned with the threat posed by UKIP. The opportunism which motivated the referendum did not have the people’s best interest at heart. The government failed to articulate what Brexit really involved because Brexit was not actually supposed to happen. It was merely an exercise to get David Cameron elected and the Conservative Party united. When the politicians woke up to the shock results, the slogan ‘Brexit means Brexit’ took ground and quickly became a governmental mantra. The ministers themselves were unclear what Brexit meant and what plans needed to be in place to make the transition possible.

Two years later, after ‘heavy’ negotiations and ‘nerve holding,’ the political class is still praying for a miracle from Brussels, stocking paper and ink for the legislative system in need of restructure. In the meantime, millions of people who voted ‘pro’ or ‘against’ in 2016 are getting used to the shortage of beds in hospitals, the crowded doctors’ surgeries, the pharmacies experiencing delays in orders, the train cancelations, the ‘out of order’ buses, the increased criminality and suicide rate, the unaffordable houses. Many know, as they’ve been told in 2016, that the main problem this country has is the migration and not the polar bears nor the politics. And although people also know this is all a lie, they are too busy queuing, and put up with it. The French put up with far less.

(to be continued)

©Maria Stadnicka, 2019

Published in International Times, 16 Feb. 2019

Who We Are

Nobody belongs, de facto, to just one place, one culture. Our existence is defined by the involuntary interactions with the world in a continuous change, but we like to believe that we do belong. To a place, a space which can be defined and referred to. And when one belongs ‘somewhere’, everything seems easier to quantify, categorise. And, then, it becomes familiar. The common familiarity which emerges through similitude in language, taste, points of view, landscape brings people closer and it helps to build that sense of togetherness.

Most tragedies have been born out of rejection, out of a deep sense of ‘non-belonging’ and people felt mostly bereaved when they realised their uprooting. The recent developments in Europe, with Brexit, in North America, with Trump’s Wall, and across the world in Myanmar, Sudan, Congo, Somalia, Ukraine, Syria, Peru show that we are ‘on the move’ at a global scale. Politics and economics drive the migration at unprecedented levels and can cement a deep sense of social instability.

Millions of people move from one place to another and remain trapped in the complex process of social migration. In 2017, nearly a quarter of a million people came to Britain. And each person brought in a new narrative with elements of uniqueness and subjectivity. We could say that, in 2017, hundreds of thousands of stories came to Britain too. Untold life experiences, unheard voices; hundreds of years of education, culture, music and skills.

And this is the main focus of ‘Who We Are’ a project initiated by the artist Jen Whiskerd from University of Gloucestershire (UoG) supported by many art students, University of Winchester, illustrators, bookmakers, printers, writers, researchers, photographers. Using eight stories about migration (told by Adelaide Morris, Shelley Campbell, Fumio Obata, Anita Roy, Dolores Phelps, Maria Stadnicka, Ro Saul, John Stadnicki), the UoG art students (undergraduate and postgraduate courses) have produced a brilliant book which will be launched this weekend at Museum in the Park, Stroud, Gloucestershire.

Photograph: ©Emma Evans, 2018

The book, printed by Emma Evans UoG, Pittville Press, is a collection of poetry, photography, drawings, journal notes, animation.

The event is free and will take place at the Walled Garden Room, Museum in the Park, Stroud, Gloucestershire /

Saturday 20th Jan. 2018, at 2pm.

Come along to share your story and enjoy the launch or just to listen and to be inspired!

It has been my privilege to be part of this.

Maria Stadnicka, 2018

A home, a home. I give my kingdom for a home.

‘Migration – Stories / A Cultural Exchange / Workshop’, Stroud, Gloucestershire, Museum in the Park

Drawing: Maria Stadnicka, November, MMXVII

Measurements

 

Photograph: ©John Stadnicki, Calais, August 2017

In Calais. Two years have passed since my visit to the ‘Jungle’ camp. Now demolished. Without migrants. And I get to measure time in a different way. Not as a linear construct or development or progress. In such matters, ‘time’ is not an objective concept. Time is measured in memories, stories which have been told and then forgotten, wasted. In Western political terminology, time is the dissociation from tragedy combined with the hopeless expectation of a historic healing. It is anonymous, evanescent. And so are thousands, millions across Europe and beyond.

Photograph: ©John Stadnicki, Calais, August 2017

New text…@International Times

Exile

 

Witness to a repeated history
in exile I learn a new language
facing the border control
at Heathrow Airport I wear my mother’s coat
ready for a winter of politics
when I need to
I keep my mouth shut I change my name to
look just like her
white and uncomfortable
the blinding sun has been washed and
smells of violets
people are happy
in such a beautiful land
nobody minds me
amongst
wrapped-well-packed boxes
brushing the dust off velvet cutlery
the only remains
of life before baptism.

©Maria Stadnicka

Photograph: ©Nick Victor

http://internationaltimes.it/exile-2/

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Exile

leave-2

 

 

 

Witness to a repeated history

in exile I learn a new language

facing the border control

at Heathrow Airport I wear my mother’s coat

ready for a winter of politics

when I need to

I keep my mouth shut I change my name

to look just like her

white and uncomfortable

the blinding sun has been washed and

smells of violets

people are happy

in such a beautiful land

nobody minds me

amongst

wrapped-well-packed boxes

brushing the dust off velvet cutlery

the only remains

of life before baptism.

centrale-fs-1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

photographs: copyright@John Stadnicki, 2016

In Other Words, Freedom

The fatal morning Europe woke up and thought it had something to say,

there was nobody else left in the world able to listen.

Oh, earth, the bones had gathered to queue for bread,

by the front door at Saint Joseph seminary.

 

An ordinary day for ordinary death.

The bakery opened and closed.

The workers arrived on time for a last shift then went home.

The ovens had no traces of grain.

 

The ink stained hope filled up rusty water pipes.

The crowds’ whisper went on, up the hill, out of the city.

 

After that, freedom meant nothing.

It all came down to

who could hold the front running place the longest.

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Silent Country

On the wall opposite my bungalow

a blue advert drips on a stationary boat.

 

The sea is far away, overcrowded.

 

The acid rain dissolved the bold letters

which used to show my direction.

 

I have no choice but to stay vigil

behind this lighthouse

waiting for another explosion.

 

Do you see what I see?

We arrived, at last, at a dead end

a few souls making plans at a bus stop.

All that talking led us cattle to slaughter.

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