Notes on: Fekete, L. (2001). The emergence of xeno-racism — Institute of Race Relations. https://irr.org.uk/article/the-emergence-of-xeno-racism/ According to Sivanandan, racism is not directed just at people with darker skins but at '"new categories of the displaced, the dispossessed and the uprooted who are beating at Western Europe's door"'. It is not colour-coded because it is directed at poor whites as well. Nor is it simple xenophobia because it '"bears all the marks of the old racism" The old ideological enemy used to be communism, but today it is the 125 million displaced people, driven by poverty rather than ideology. There is a general mobilisation against migratory movements from overpopulated and insecure countries and the emergence of a 'whole new anti-refugee discourse… In popular culture'. Asylum seekers are seen as bogus, illegal, mere economic migrants, scroungers, and to be excluded in order to preserve our own economic prosperity and national identity. That is a new racism. The EU has encouraged harmonisation of asylum policy and the control of migration, and has recently coalesced into an overall policy of migration management. There is a recognition that immigration is necessary and that refugees provide an important source of skilled labour, so the EC argued that the EU should open up legal routes, and national governments followed this lead, often adopting skills-based recruitment programs, or managed migration, a policy of admitting guest workers. This has been accompanied by an abolition of the right to claim asylum, however, a strategic response by the first world to the breakup of the communist zone and the impact of globalism. The displacement of people can't be left to market forces alone if global accumulation is to be managed especially within '"a new legal and economic superstructure"'. As a result, 'Fortress Europe' refined its earlier '"zero immigration"'  approach which it had at the end of the 20th century. There has been considerable international cooperation, even though targets and policies might differ. There is a common interest which informs regional policy, and cooperation through bodies such as the 'International Centre for Migration Policy and Development, founded in 1993', which developed out of consultations between Europe and North America and Australia. Other mechanisms include 'the Secretariat of the Budapest Process' involving ministers and 34 states and various intergovernment organisations. There are 'at least 30 other networks and or other activities' set up by European states and IGos, and many contain representatives from security agencies and governments. They are focused on predicting flows, and more recently 'combating smuggling and trafficking'. These have become dominant concerns, instead of assistance and hospitality, changing the emphasis of international law. Of course, smugglers are exploitative, but the governments have played a part in creating them by blocking legal routes and fortifying borders. However, the 'Smuggling Protocol of the 2000 UN Convention on Transnational Organised Crime' specifically says that migrants are not blameless victims but are complicit and it is now an international offence to help anyone in any legal border crossing even if they are refugees. Governments admit 'when it suits them' that refugees are victims, but there is also a stress on the threats to national sovereignty by smuggling on a large scale, and this involves 'linking trafficked and traffickers in a criminal conspiracy', in a 'War Against Trafficking'. Breaking domestic immigration laws is redefined as a criminal act despite the operative UN Convention on the status of refugees. The EU shifted the debate to treat asylum seekers as an 'homogeneous and undifferentiated mass', which can be treated with impersonal statistics and 'offensive language' which includes terms like 'mass', 'horde', 'influx', 'swarm', with clear residences with Nazis and colonialism. The EU also thinks it is justified in imposing immigration policies on states that tolerate illegal migratory movements. For example at a European Council summit in 1999, Third World governments were turned into 'immigration police', in line with the 'so-called "buffer states" of central and eastern Europe'. Before then the EU had substantially increased 'airline liaison officers'at airports and other ports to stop suspected illegal immigrants. They had no training in refugee protection and also acted as immigration staff. A particular EU Working Group had already planned to stop refugee movement from Afghanistan, Albania (and Kosovo), Morocco, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Iraq' and plan to use trade and development as 'levers' to achieve their aim of refugee reduction. The new policies at the summit meant that EU policy would be achieved at the point of departure 'via pre-embarkation checks', and responsibility for the prevention of refugee movements would be passed to the country of origin or countries through which asylum seekers passed on their way to Europe [2nd and Third World countries]. Again 'trade and humanitarian aid' were tied to these policies and to the return of rejected asylum seekers. In one case, that amounted to ties of £8.5 billion between the EU, Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific in Asian trade agreements and rules 'guaranteeing the repatriations and expulsion of people deemed to be "illegal" within the EU'. All this helps camouflage the approach to immigration controls and takes away the basic state function of migration strategy from nations that have no sway on supranational policies. That includes countries in Central and Eastern Europe that want to join the EU club and have to forfeit border controls. It is just like Third World countries having to accept World Bank and IMF austerity measures. Those imply 'poor authorisation and the erosion of education, social and welfare provision' and immigration controls 'lessen the life chances of globalism's victims'. Pooled sovereignty within Europe means losing sovereignty in the poorer nations of the world. There are exceptions for the 'chosen few' like the highly skilled, doctors and nurses or computer wizards. This also 'saps the Third World and the former Soviet bloc of this economic lifeblood'. So-called 'genuine refugees' attract integratory measures, but 'bogus claimants' or 'economic migrants' are excluded, sometimes forced to remain in their original regions in refugee camps 'from which Europe will "select" a quota to be brought to Europe. for resettlement'. The criteria for such selection involves screening, selection, sorting into categories of skilled and unskilled, a kind of 'economic natural selection… A new Darwinism'. That will allow the rich first world to maintain economic dominance… 'The skills pool, not the genes pool, is key'