New Migration and Racism in Cyprus Bozena Sojka-Koirala PhD Candidate in Human Geography Centre for Migration Policy Reaserch (CMPR) Swansea University.

New Migration and Racism in Cyprus

Bozena Sojka-KoiralaPhD Candidate in Human Geography

Centre for Migration Policy Reaserch (CMPR)

Swansea University

[email protected]

Research Background

New Migration

New Racism

Why new migration leads to new racism?

Immigration to the islands

Scenarios of the immigration to the islands

New migration and new racism in Cyprus

State Response (?)

This presentation is based on the ongoing PhD project:

‘Living with Racism: Experiences of Immigrants in Cyprus’

‘the age of mass migration’ (Hatton, 1998)

‘the age of migration’ (Castles and Miller, 2009) ‘capacity to live with the “difference” is going to

be the biggest challenge of twenty-first century in which preventing racism and xenophobia will be one of the most important’ (Hall, 1993:361)

OTHERNESS ‘people in any way significantly different from the majority

– ‘them’ rather than ‘us’ – are frequently exposed to the binary form of representation.’ Hall (1997:325)

‘the otherness of what is foreign is emphasised, savoured, as it were, and elaborately depicted against an implied background of one’s own ordinary and familiar world.’ (Bakhtin and Holquist 2004:101)

in order to understand the surrounding world, people and societies do need to classify things in order to differentiate (Levi-Strauss, 1969)

‘Language system is based on certain numbers of differences or oppositions which it recognised and it is not essentially concerned with the absolute value of each of the terms that are in opposition, which may show marked variation’ (Ferdinand de Saussure, 2006:19).

‘cultural otherness – the marking of ‘difference’ is the basis of that symbolic order which we call culture.’ (Hall, 2001:330)

‘“Other” which is outside – i.e. different from – itself’ (Hall 1997:331)

‘The outside is only the outside of the inside’ (Doel, 1999:153)

What is racism?

‘in the case of new racism race is coded as culture.’(Solomos and Back, 1996:18)

It is racism in substance but xeno in form, a racism that is meted out to impoverished strangers even if they are white. It is xeno-racism. (Sivanandan 2001:3)

‘unity of contemporary racism in Europe’ (Wieviorka 2010:345)

differentiated access to rights (Wrench and Solomos, 1993; Anthias and Lazaridis, 1999; Miles and Brown, 2003)

multidimensional exclusion as a struggle for recognition (Honneth 1995:31)

‘the systematic subordination, exclusion or domination of one group by another’ (Calavita 2005:152)

New racism = European racism Sivanandan (1988)

New racism is ‘mutated into new’ Fredricson (2003)

new racism is ‘coded in culture’ Solomos and Back (1996:18)

new racism as ethnic conflict stimulated by individuals and groups protecting their identity (Richardson and Lampert 1986)

New racism is ‘directed by the fear or reality of exclusion and downward social mobility, and on the other by tensions around identity and vague fears of which the most decisive concern the question of belonging to the nation’ (Wieviorka 2010:347).

Changing role of islands in the era of escalated mobility

Island as potential laboratory for scientists (Suggs 1961, Sahlins 1963, Connell and King 1999)

Islands as laboratories being unwarranted assumption (Kirch 1986, Baldacchino, 2004)

Insularity shapes specific context, but the changes happening in the islands are similar to those in

other places.

island-based identity fortify national identity which ‘finds expression in xenophobia’ (Baldacchino, 2004: 273)

Periphery of the place

culture of sameness leading to racism (Baldacchino et al. 2009)

‘strategic locations in the geopolitics of irregular migration’ (mainly forced migration)

‘island way of living’ (voluntary migration)

‘Questions of racism in Cyprus are inevitably bound up with questions of migration. Although there are now a number of

naturalised citizens, they are still perceived by the general populace as foreigners

rather than as fully Cypriot.’ (Mackay, J. et al, 2009)

Inner ethnic conflict Country of emigration rather than immigration Immigration is a relatively new phenomenon New reality which is shaped by immigration Lack of understanding of changes in the Cyprus demography ‘numbers game’ Approach to immigration policy based on inner conflict Ideology of ‘control’ Fortress Europe (Frontex) Socially accepted racism towards migrant women

(Panayiotopoulos 2005) Lack of legal anti-discrimination tradition Unprepared school curriculum Limited access to goods and to services No integration policy

Lack of coherent immigration policy

Lack of response of the state to the new situation

the challenge lies in guaranteeing policy implementation and creating institutional ways for claiming them