Migration deal: 'Really a scheme around political diplomacy between UK & France in post-Brexit era'

Erin Ogunkeye is pleased to welcome Parvati Nair, Professor of Hispanic, Cultural and Migration Studies at Queen Mary University of London. She sees the UK-France migration agreement as a small but revealing element of a much wider post-Brexit relationship, in which questions of migration are intertwined with diplomacy, security, intelligence and surveillance. She warns that the scheme risks turning a complex human reality trivialises it into numbers and deterrence, while obscuring the plight of people who might be political or economic refugees. Many of those making these journeys have fled conflict, displacement and traumatic experiences, yet public debate too often reduces them to the category of “migrants” and treats migration itself as a problem and a threat. And so, the central question is linked to the kind of political and ethical framework we are creating around human mobility. She believes that governments need to address the conflicts, climate disasters and historical inequalities that drive displacement, while creating safe and legal pathways for people to move. That also requires greater accountability and transparency, a reconsideration of the militarisation of borders and the criminalisation of mobility, and a more fundamental shift in how migration is represented in public and media discourse. Humans have always moved, and migration can profoundly enrich the societies in which it takes place. The challenge is to build systems that recognise both national sovereignty and human dignity.