Adrienne Pine - Asylum for Sale

As long as there are borders and money to be made off the backs of migrants seeking freedom via the state, we must continue to expose the profit-makers and share our stories of resistance. Asylum for Sale does exactly this. It reminds us that our people will never be truly free under capitalismand that we must not only challenge the capitalist state but destroy it and open borders for all. It is an urgent, inspiring, and necessary volume.

Jamila Hammami, founder of the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project

A very important book. With a potent mix of theoretical rigor, empirical detail and vivid human witness, it helps to move the debate about asylum seekers beyond suffering and compassion to rights and resistance. In the process, it exposes the nature of the industry growing around asylum application systems: an industry of those demanding extortionate payments to overcome border fences, those erecting the fences, those detaining asylum seekers while they wait, the lawyers, the NGOsall with a self-interest in treating asylum seekers as voiceless victims without agency or capacity, pitted against citizens. This book conveys the possibilities of global citizenship, involving active solidarity with those who are crossing borders, whether by choice or as a refusal of oppression. It is a vital resource for the struggle for global human rightsa struggle often led by those who are denied them.

Hilary Wainwright, author of A New Politics from the Left (Polity, 2018)

As the frontiers of disaster capitalism expand, the same systems that drive migration are finding ever more harrowing ways to criminalize and exploit the displaced. This book is part of how we fight back: connecting the extraordinary stories and insights of people studying, personally navigating, and creatively resisting the global asylum industry. An unparalleled resource.

Naomi Klein, author of On Fire: The Burning Case for the Green New Deal (Simon & Schuster, 2019)

In ancient Greek philosophy, kairos signifies the right time or the moment of transition. We believe that we live in such a transitional period. The most important task of social science in time of transformation is to transform itself into a force of liberation. Kairos, an editorial imprint of the Anthropology and Social Change department housed in the California Institute of Integral Studies, publishes groundbreaking works in critical social sciences, including anthropology, sociology, geography, theory of education, political ecology, political theory, and history.

Series editor: Andrej Grubai

Recent and featured Kairos books:

Building Free Life: Dialogues with calan edited by International Initiative

The Sociology of Freedom: Manifesto of the Democratic Civilization, Volume III by Abdullah calan

In, Against, and Beyond Capitalism: The San Francisco Lectures by John Holloway

Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism edited by Jason W. Moore

We Are the Crisis of Capital: A John Holloway Reader by John Holloway

Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons by Silvia Federici

Autonomy Is in Our Hearts: Zapatista Autonomous Government through the Lens of the Tsotsil Language by Dylan Eldredge Fitzwater

The Battle for the Mountain of the Kurds: Self-Determination and Ethnic Cleansing in the Afrin Region of Rojava by Thomas Schmidinger

Beyond the Periphery of the Skin: Rethinking, Remaking, and Reclaiming the Body in Contemporary Capitalism by Silvia Federici

Facebooking the Anthropocene in Raja Ampat by Robert Ostertag

For more information visit www.pmpress.org/blog/kairos/

Asylum for Sale: Profit and Protest in the Migration Industry

2020 the respective authors

Cover and section illustrations Pablo Melchor/pablo-melchor.com

This edition 2020 PM Press

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher.

ISBN: 9781629637822 (print)

ISBN: 9781629638188 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019946107

Cover by John Yates / www.stealworks.com

Interior design by briandesign

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

PM Press

PO Box 23912

Oakland, CA 94623

www.pmpress.org

Printed in the USA.

FOREWORD
Seth M. Holmes

Introduction
Siobhn McGuirk and Adrienne Pine

On Seeking Refuge from an Undeclared War
Jos Lpez

The Business of Selling Life: Reflections from a Rescue Ship in the Mediterranean Sea
Alva, Uyi, and Madi

Trump and the USMCA: From Free Trade to Gassing Migrants
Garry Leech

Outsourcing, Responsibility, and Refugee Claim-Making in Australias Offshore Detention Regime
Sara Dehm

Kidneys without BordersAsylum without Kidneys
Nancy Scheper-Hughes

From Paris to Lampedusa: The New Business of Migrant Detention in Europe
Louise Tassin

Detained Voices on Labor
Detained Voices

The Poetics of Prison Protest
Behrouz Boochani and Omid Tofighian

Displacement, Commodification, and Profitmaking in Nigeria
Sidonia Lucia Kula and Oreva Olakpe

A Guards Story
Sam Wallman, Nick Olle, Pat Grant, Pat Armstrong, and Sam Bungey

The Military and Security Industry: Promoting Europes Refugee Regime
Mark Akkerman

Making a Refugee Market in the Republic of Nauru
Julia Morris

The Cost of Freedom
Marzena Zukowska

Making Profits in Hostile Environments: Asylum Accommodation Markets in the UK and Ireland
John Grayson

An Expert View of the Asylum Industry
Adrienne Pine

In the Best Interest of Whom? Professional Humanitarians and Selfie Samaritans in the Danish Asylum Industry
Annika Lindberg

The Marketization of Asylum Justice in the UK
Jo Wilding

Free Wireless Network Activism and the Industrial Media Infrastructures of Forced Migration
Tim Schtz and Monic Meisel

Surmounting the Hostile Environment: Reflections on Social Work Activism without Borders
Lynn King, Bridget Ngandu, and Lauren Wroe

Neoliberalism and LGBT Asylum: A Play in Five Acts
Siobhn McGuirk

Border Militarization in a Warming World: Climate Adaptation for the Rich and Powerful
Todd Miller

Beds, Masks, and Prayers: Mexican Migrants, the Immigration Regime, and Investments in Social Exclusion in Canada
Paloma E. Villegas

Contesting Profit Structures: Rejected Asylum Seekers between Modern Slavery and Autonomy
Jorinde Bijl and Sarah Nimfhr

Grounded: Power, Profit, and the Deportation Industrial Complex
Ruth Potts and Jo Ram

Kuja Meri?
Jol van Houdt

A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties.