Common sense or racism? The treatment of asylum-seekers in Europe

In her introductory essay to this special issue on refugees and xenophobia-in which the articles focus primarily on asylum-seekers,(2) mostly in the United Kingdom, but also in France and Ireland-guest editor Liza Schuster draws on the work of the contributors and on her own research in Britain, France, Germany and Italy to address the treatment of asylum-seekers by European states. European liberal democracies share a common commitment to granting asylum to those in need of protection, a commitment made legally binding by signing the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. They also share a commitment to principles of equality and non-discrimination. However, in recent years European states have embraced practices that permit discrimination against and unequal treatment of asylum-seekers, and recent British government proposals threaten the 1951 Convention itself. Schuster interrogates some of the underlying assumptions of asylum policies in the United Kingdom in particular, but also with reference to other European states, arguing that common-sense assertions of the 'need for control', which underlie the differential treatment of asylum-seekers in particular, are expressions of a racism at the heart of European states. She further argues that, at the border, racism intersects in a complex and shifting way with class and gender, creating a hierarchy of the excluded. Following a discussion of racism and these other modalities of exclusion, Schuster examines practices through which this racism is articulated.