A note on terminology: the governments of the UK and Rwanda both elide the distinction between migrant and refugee in order to devalue all migrating parties. There is an argument to be made that all refugees and asylum seekers are migrants and that the distinction minimises the considerable overlap between these complex categories. However, when this happens in the context of this deal it is often to the detriment of the most vulnerable. When the Rwandan Minister for Foreign Affairs talks about “migrants” in the context of this deal, he is deliberately obfuscating the fact that everyone deported under this deal is an asylum seeker.
Additionally, public discussion of these issues often uses “trafficking” and “smuggling” interchangeably—ignoring important distinctions between these two things. Smuggling refers to the facilitation of a person’s entry into a country at their behest (UNHCR). While trafficking is the recruitment and transportation of people through force, fraud or deception, with the intention of exploiting them for profit (UNHCR).
Lastly, the governments of the UK and Rwanda use the term “illegal immigration” and “illegal immigrant” to refer to those who have travelled by irregular routes. We at Frame45 believe that no person is illegal and instead use the term “irregular migrant”. When the term “illegal” is used, it is in direct reference to statements made by the relevant governments.
The simplest explanation is the right one
When trying to find the logic behind deterrence policies such as the UK-Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Plan, we often end up tying ourselves in knots. Too often, the framing is unhelpful or downright deceptive.
These days, there are few governments that will openly profess an intolerance toward migrants. Any perceived intolerance must always be couched in caveats; it is “illegal” immigration and the people abusing the asylum system that must be stopped. The UK and Rwanda welcome with open arms those who have legitimate cause to flee their homes and who enter through safe and legal routes. And yet, time and again, we see these same governments implement policies that make it harder to enter regularly, bolster the smuggling industry, and discriminate based on point of origin. How can this be?
Well, sometimes the simplest explanation is the right one.
Perhaps the UK government has no interest in making it easy for people fleeing conflict or coming here for a better life. Maybe they’re materially invested in isolationism and exclusion as a political philosophy, but cannot openly say so.
Maybe what Rwanda needs is a continued source of foreign investment, as well as the appearance of political liberalism and beneficence—particularly where the Global North is concerned.
The UK-Rwanda MEDP does all of this and more.
Stated goals
We were promised control of our borders only to witness the on-going, jaw-dropping chaos in the Channel […] Conservative Party candidates will find that one of the big questions on the doorstep will be, why has the problem of high and illegal immigration got worse and not better?
Alp Mehmet for anti-migrant think tank, Migration Watch UK
The stated goals of the UK-Rwanda MEDP according to the then-Home Secretary Priti Patel are (all quotes taken from the UK Government’s press statement on the policy):
- “To address the unacceptable, £4.7 million per-day cost to the taxpayer from housing migrants in hotels.”
- Any sort of breakdown of these costs is very difficult to find and the figures seem to move around a bit.
- According to the government website, this figure has since jumped to £6 million a day in 2022. The stated overall cost of the asylum system is given as £3 billion, in which case housing asylum seekers in hotels constitutes 73% of the total cost.
- “Deter illegal entry.”
- Invest in Rwanda’s economic development. This is implied to be a general good, as well as a specific strategy to benefit the lives of would-be refugees living in Rwanda.
- “…a robust protection system as well as a comprehensive human capital investment program can create, for migrants and for development of the host country.”
- To “…break the people smugglers’ business model…”
- Alleviate the overburdened British asylum system, which they claim receives a disproportionate number of people every year. The statement cites the 80 million figure (people displaced annually) to reinforce the suggestion of overburdening.
- “…make it easier to remove those with no right to be in the UK.”
- To be clear, the government reported 74,751 asylum applications in 2022.
- “Improve support for those directly fleeing oppression, persecution and tyranny through safe and legal routes[…] while ensuring protection for the genuinely vulnerable. ”
Outcomes
Looking at the evidence so far, as well as other examples of similar policies, it’s clear this policy achieves none of its stated goals.
To begin with, the deal cost the UK £120 million in development funding and has been followed by over a year of legal battles, administrative backlog, and zero deportations. Rather than hiring more people, streamlining asylum processing, and giving asylees the right to work, Braverman and her team are busy litigating the deal over and over again. Thus, the deal itself has cost the taxpayer while failing to reduce any of the existing costs the government complains so much about.
With respect to the policy’s goals of deterrence, evidence from UK and elsewhere has repeatedly demonstrated the ineffectiveness of externalisation as a method of reducing irregular migration. In fact, deterrence as a paradigm is failing worldwide. It is becoming increasingly clear that deterrence makes migration less safe, while doing nothing to reduce numbers. This is partly because it invites smuggling rings to become more sophisticated and develop new and expensive strategies for avoiding border policing. Way back in 1995, Skerry and Rockwell pointed out this apparent Catch-22, though they failed to consider the possibility of decriminalising the border as a solution.
Naturally, the policy neither introduces new resettlement or visa schemes nor streamlines any existing ones. Not only that, but the policy lowers the threshold for inadmissibility to include applicants who have passed through a “safe third country” before making an onward journey to the UK, which given our geography is pretty much everyone. The argument that the policy helps “genuine” applicants is plainly preposterous.
The degree to which the investment in Rwanda will pay off or prove worthwhile is difficult to prove in general and impossible right now. It is true that in the past few decades Rwanda has seen incredible economic and social development thanks in many instances to foreign investment. There is no reason to believe this will not hold true in the future. Whether, however, this investment will go toward the refugees hypothetically deported there from the UK seems less and less likely. Primarily because no one has yet been deported under this scheme.
Rwanda’s claims to humanitarianism and sense of global responsibility also bears some scrutiny. Although it has been party to several such “world-first” deals, it has an uncharitable history with respect to those fleeing its neighbours. When asked about the issue of refugees fleeing the Democratic Republic of Congo, President Kagame stated, “This is not Rwanda’s problem”. The President argues that Rwanda will do its duty insofar as it is not “overburdened” by shouldering the responsibilities of other nations, but when entering into a deal with a country disputably in the top 10 or top 30 richest in the world this argument is very flimsy indeed.
Accepting the simplest explanation
These facts put together suggest that either these respective governments are full of stupid, ill-informed, under-researched people or their goals aren’t what they say they are. Given the degree of political acumen and intelligence typically required to become the leader of a country, the first involves a series of assumptions I’m not willing to make.
Our leaders are duplicitous. This is not a revolutionary statement, I know. And yet, a lot of media coverage and public engagement with this policy (and others like it) argue against its mechanisms as if its stated goals were genuine or tiptoe around the apparent duplicity.
The UK Bond network responded to the plan by rightly saying it would result in “more, not fewer, dangerous journeys—leaving more people at risk of being trafficked”.
A Times editorial stated, “the danger for Mr Johnson is that he has raised expectations with a policy that has significant support among a substantial portion of the electorate. But if the policy turns out to fail in the courts and anyway be modest in ambition, it will rebound on the credibility and competence of the government” (emphasis added).
Lewis Mudge, central Africa director at Human Rights Watch, was quoted as saying: “They seem to change the facts in order to justify a pre-ordained conclusion” (emphasis added).
These assessments aren’t wrong, but they’re all responding to the policy as if it was drawn up more or less in good faith. Among the minority, Garden Court’s Colin Yeo did point out that “this does not look like good-faith governance or a genuinely effective way of managing an asylum system”. I would go so far as to say it not only doesn’t look like one, it isn’t.
Dealing with bad faith actors is, however, a complicated issue. We cannot, as is often the strategy, simply ignore them. When said actors are world leaders more comprehensive communication strategies need to be employed.
Reframing the debate
It’s important that we take our leaders seriously, if not at face value. When they introduce policies that seem chaotic and fundamentally non-strategic, we must ask ourselves what’s really going on. As anti-migration think tank Migration Watch UK pointed out: “why has the problem of high and illegal immigration got worse and not better?” But the question isn’t by what mechanism; the question is, by what politics?
In his 1948 book The Anti-Semite and the Jew, Satre described the self-awareness of bigots. He wrote, “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge.” But by denying the rules of engagement, within which liberals and progressives feel compelled to operate, they strip argumentation and debate of all meaning or power. They’re not interested in being persuaded, only in discrediting their interlocutors and wasting time. So while progressives defend their position with facts and reasoning, bigots lie, obfuscate, and emote. Then in a media environment that takes these lies and obfuscation in good faith, they quickly start to sound like the truth or, at least, reasonable opinion.
This book is not without its flaws. His characterisation of both Jewish people and anti-Semites has been criticised since the time of publishing (Traverso and Liebman, 1999; Rybalka, 1999). However, his analysis of the weaponisation of discourse remains useful to this day.
The Conservative government in the UK as well as Kagame’s government in Rwanda say what they need to say, when they need to say it—unafraid to contradict themselves now or in the future. Time and energy spent pointing out these inconsistencies to them is more often than not a waste. They know. They are committed to achieving their political goals by whatever means necessary. That is not to say there isn’t value in pointing out the inconsistencies in general; I have done just that. But when progressives hold ourselves to standards of good faith and expect them to do the same, we allow conservative politicians—as Satre points out—to make a game of discourse.
There are a few ways to stop playing by their rules:
- Comedy and storytelling: the people best qualified to counter a fundamentally dishonest politics are comedians and creatives because they’re not bound by good faith.
- Carving out our own spaces: curating online environments, publishing articles, and de-platforming bad faith actors who are committed to stoking the moral panic around migration.
- Focus on solutions: for every pro-deterrence article, think piece, or policy we need five articles on new visa schemes, asylum support and accommodation, the right to work, labour shortages, austerity, Home Office incompetence, etc. to combat the stranglehold conservative talking points have on the media.
- Stick to the facts: when confronted with proponents of these policies, there is nothing to do but to remind them of the facts. The outcomes of the policy directly contradict its stated aims so, are they mistakes or are they lies?
As with all things, these strategies are best used in combination. There is no fix-all. In order to tackle the systemic inequalities and injustices perpetuated by conservative and regressive governments everywhere we need to use multiple approaches at once.
Don’t overthink it
Our best advice for understanding and dealing with duplicitous politics is simple: don’t overthink it and don’t get distracted.
Paul Kagame is a smart, ambitious man. Under his leadership, Rwanda has achieved great things and will, in all likelihood, continue to achieve further greatness. There is however an undercurrent of prejudice to his outlook and policies that colours everything he does and from which he distracts outside observers by entering into these deals with the likes of Denmark, Israel and newly, the UK. Look to his neighbours and their reflections on his leadership as a counterweight to the image he presents.
Meanwhile, in the UK, the Conservative government marches steadily from one personal controversy to the next all while failing to meet even the most basic of their election promises. Culture war issues such as the so-called “small boats crisis” are handy red herrings to redirect attention and lay blame where it does not belong. Not only that, it fits right into their regressive politics of isolationism while keeping up the steady supply of precarious, irregular labour.
A genuine and robust opposition doesn’t accept the conservative framing: that we (as nations) don’t want foreigners; that some points of origin are legitimate, while others are not; that some journeys are legitimate, while others are not; that foreign labour is a threat to domestic labour; or that the struggle for basic human necessities is reducible to a zero sum game.
We need a new framing.