Deporting Black Britons w/ Luke de Noronha

In the last two decades, the UK has deported thousands of people to Jamaica, many of whom left that country as children and grew up in the UK. In this ninth episode of With Reason, Luke de Noronha talks to Alice Bloch about his moving and urgent study of four such young men. How have inequality and racism shaped their lives? What hope remains amidst hardship? And why does language matter when we talk about illegality, ‘foreign criminals’ and belonging? A conversation about borders and belonging, exclusion, citizenship and listening. For readers of Paul Gilroy, Gary Younge, Amelia Gentleman and Reni Eddo-Lodge.

Hosts: Alice Bloch and Samira Shackle

Producer: Alice Bloch

Music: Danosongs

To support what we do and access more fresh thinking, why not subscribe to New Humanist magazine? Head to newhumanist.org.uk/subscribe and enter the code WITHREASON to get a whole year's subscription for just £13.50

Transcript

AB:
Hello and welcome to With Reason with me Alice Bloch -

SS:
- and me Samira Shackle.

AB:

This is the podcast from New Humanist magazine where we catch up with writers and academics to bring you thinking from people whose work and ideas should be talked about. It's the place to explore questions of reason and unreason. belief and disbelief, criticism and debate.

SS:

So far this series we've heard from Katherine Angel, whose latest book challenges the dogma on desire and consent. We've also talked to Rosie Hancock about politics and religion, and how the relationship between those two things is often subject to unhelpful stereotypes. But today, we have an interview that you recorded Alice, with Luke De Noronha: about borders, belonging and deportation. I'll be back for a bit of a chat at the end of the interview. But for now, could you tell me a bit about Luke.

AB:

So yeah, Luke's lecturer in race, ethnicity and postcolonial studies at UCL in London, and his work intervenes in debates to do with race and migration in the UK. Like other sociologists, who we've already had on With Reason, his work really involves talking to people and getting out there and situating their stories in broader social and political processes. ones I guess, that some people would rather pretend didn't exist at all. In the case of today's subject, that's the effects of immigration control and broader racism on people's lives. His new book Deporting Black Britons: Portraits of Deportation to Jamaica tells the stories of four men who grew up in the UK, were deported to Jamaica after criminal conviction, and now struggle to survive and rebuild in the Caribbean. When I talked to Luke, I asked him what made him want to research this issue. And what drew him to Jamaica specifically?

Luke De Noronha:

I suppose the first thing to say is that this research was a part of my PhD. And I had been thinking about issues around racism in the UK, and also at the same time, working with migrants and refugees in Bristol. And I was engaging with people who were living under the threat of deportation. And then the focus really became on foreign offenders after my master's research, which was kind of on the finger of the foreign criminal, who was discovered in 2006. And became a kind of folk devil in the UK context, kind of ultimate baddie. And from the mid noughties, 2006 onwards, increasing numbers were being detained indefinitely and being deported. And so I wanted to meet people after they'd been deported in this situation. So that came first, that focus on the person who's been criminalized in the UK, who's perhaps been here since they were a child, and who doesn't have citizenship and who then finds himself facing deportation or exile. And Jamaica then became a fitting place because quite a lot of people were deported under those terms. And because there was an organization they're working with, involuntarily returned migrants, they call them, I was able to contact them and work that way, work through an organization in Jamaica, and go out there and just start trying to meet people.

AB:

I can imagine that, that when people heard that you're heading to do research in Jamaica, you might have got a few comments or a few jokes about relaxing on the beach, or that kind of thing. You're nodding your head. You know, it's somewhere that that quite a lot of people in the UK might think of as a holiday destination. And actually you talk, of course, about the darker side of things, deportation to that country. I know that there is some news coverage, not enough, of charter flights when it comes to deportation. But one of the things that you mentioned that I was really amazed to learn in your book is that some people are deported to Jamaica and elsewhere, you know, Albania, for example, on commercial flights. So if I understand correctly, you might be going on holiday, and someone on that same flight is being deported. That's an image that quite neatly represents some of the contrast that you want to capture in your book. That contrast in terms of people's abilities, who's free and unfree? Who has money and opportunity, who doesn't?

LDN:

Commercial flights were the main way in which people were deported to Jamaica over my time, over my research. The news around charter flights has been in part - it really emerged most most vocally in response to the Windrush scandal. There were a couple of protests around charter flights when they were resumed. But the UK's main approach over the last 10 years has been commercial flights to Jamaica, and globally. So Virgin Atlantic had a contract with the Home Office to deport people on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday for all of the time I was going to Jamaica, between 2015 and 2017. And long before. So that was the way in which most of the people I met were deported. So those people will be put on the flight first. And you know, there are international regulations about how you manage people being deported. And how the air companies manage them, how the escorts will take people on, sometimes with restraints, before the tourists or the family travelers get get on the plane. So I think that is a stock image, just as the charter flight is a stock image of, you know, a group of people being being detained and forcibly forced onto a plane in the middle of the night and trying to make desperate last calls to lawyers and families - just as that is a particularly stark image. I think the point you make about the people saying, you know, you can have a holiday, is interesting because I felt that people either said, the majority said, "Oh, you've done well, there, you've got your fieldwork in the Caribbean". It's not totally untrue. And then other people would say, "oh, are you going to be alright, you know, is it dangerous for you". I felt there was something missing from both, on both accounts, it was neither of those things. It was something else.

AB:

We'll talk more in a bit about the four men whose lives you depict, all of them, I think born between 1986 to 1992, which I guess puts them in a similar age bracket, probably to you and me. And you evoke, as we were just talking about their re Jamaiev, you know, the kind of nuances of their lives of these men, Jason, Domenico, Ricardo, and Chris, you talk about them all very much as individuals, but you also situate their experiences within bigger social, structural political processes. So tell me in simple terms, what these four men have in common in the eyes of the law of the British state?

LDN:

Well, in the eyes of the law, at least, except Jason, they were all deported rather than removed, which is a specific form of enforced return in immigration law, which basically means the Home Office say that your deportation, your removal is conducive to the public good, which normally means you've been defined as someone with a criminal record. It can also be used for national security cases. But in my case, it's basically deportation is for criminals. So all of the people had offenses, Jason was removed rather than deported because the Home Office can choose sometimes. So they would have all been defined as foreign criminals. Listeners may have kind of come across this around the time of the charter flights, successive home secretaries have said, you know, "everyone on the flight is a serious foreign criminal, and therefore, they're being deported under automatic deportation", which is a bit of legislation brought in by new labor in 2007. Precisely after that foreign prisoner crisis I mentioned, to try and expedite the removal of anyone, no matter how long they've been here, who's got a record, who's not a citizen, and I call the book Deporting Black Britons to sort of play on that. People who've been here for a long time, perhaps born here, or since they're very young, who faced deportation because of the Home Office's change of policies, which tried to deport anyone labeled a foreign criminal. So they have that in common. And then, of course, they have in common experiences of poverty, experiences of precarious immigration status, experiences of racist criminal justice, experiences of difficult family relationships, like is true for many people who end up in prison. But of course, they are unique individuals with very different stories. And I suppose some of the important differences are not only the individual personalities, but also you know, whether they had leave to remain, and at what time they had leave to remain, as against when they were convicted of offenses. And those two things interact in different ways in different people's lives. Some people might never have their status and therefore might commit immigration crimes or commit crimes like selling drugs, because they can't work legally, whereas others might actually have their stay, they might be able to access the same meagre welfare benefit system as British citizens, but then find themselves convicted of an offence and lose that status on the basis of the crime. Exactly. I suppose the men in my book were deported before the hostile environment really came into force, around the time that it was coming into force. I suppose to understand the hostile environment, we have to go back to Theresa May's role as home sec. When she said in 2012, "these policies are designed to create a really hostile environment for illegal immigrants". She used those terms and, and what that was, is an extension of some powers, we might call them internal borders, where everyone was expected to check and be checked and bordering functions were outsourced to doctors, to employers, to landlords, and to all of us really in many ways. So now we're used to it, you know, you rent a house or you start a job and you have to show your passport. Now, you might have to show your passport on Zoom just to an employer, but that was kind of consolidated under the 2014 Immigration Act, all of these internal border checks. And what that meant then, was that people who were gatekeepers to public services were border agents, and that people who might not have had their stay, were restricted from accessing various services, you know, pregnant women being charged £7000 for what's considered a normal birth and things like that. Landlords not renting to people with foreign sounding names, various forms of discrimination, but also just violence against people who were undocumented or undocumented. And so the Windrush scandal are a group who you might say is under-documented, they technically should have had a right of abode because they arrived before 1973 - but had no evidence. And so for the Windrush, it was proving that you really did arrive before 73. And people basically face getting letters, saying, you know, the Home Office is pursuing your removal because you try to claim benefits or because you went to the hospital and you don't have the right papers.

AB:

And deportation takes place against the backdrop of the hostile environment. And that term refers to a set of policies that came in around the middle of the last decade, designed to exclude illegal immigrants. And that's the phrase you use in quote marks, basically people without the paperwork from public services and kind of a detection through data sharing, and that kind of thing. That all came under scrutiny when the Windrush scandal began to surface in 2017. Can you recap that for us and the sentiment that it stirred? Because I know, leading on to my next question, that you want to contrast that and the outrage that was reserved for the victims of the Windrush scandal with the kind of lack of attention and sympathy for the deported men who depict in your book? And contrasting that, though, with the men in your book, you say that those people have been kind of treated with I think, with less sympathy because they are labeled as foreign criminals, again, a term that you use in quote marks.

LDN:

Always in quote marks for that one. I mean, I think the thing I was struck by was that the Windrush migrants were folded into a national story about how Britain is actually a tolerant and hospitable place to the right people. Every minister talking about migration starts with, Britain has a long history of welcoming refugees - which is just not true. Discourse on migration is always a sort of morality play, where you say that, of course, we respect the rights of the people who deserve them. But we have to be serious about having control and having the right measures. That's what everyone says -whether any party - and what happened with the Windrush scandal is, they became a group who deserved rights. And they proved then, for the Daily Mail or Jacob Rees Mogg, they proved that there was a lack of common sense and a lack of control and that the human rights judges and lefty lawyers were giving the wrong people, all these protections to the criminals, but they were making destitute and deporting honorable, old, hardworking Windrush migrants who helped build the country after the war. And it was, you know, I mean, Jacob Rees Mogg described the scandal as fundamentally un-British and the Daily Mail were outraged. We have to be very cautious when these kinds of far right figures are saying that the Windrush scandal have been harmed. And that's because it was folded into a particular national story, which is not to say great wrongs weren't done to those who were subject to those policies. But it is to say that what it was politically was to say, these people are part of the nation, they are citizens, and they are not illegal immigrants. They've been treated wrongly as illegal immigrants; the real illegal immigrants are those asylum seekers arriving by boats. And they're those offenders. They're criminals. They're terrorists. They're Muslim radical clerics. Young gangsters. They're Romanian cash machine thieves. They're what I mean. The list can go on and on.

AB:

So it basically set up this this very damaging binary that you want to undo. And it seems what you're getting at is this idea that really there's a problem with this word "scandal" - in framing one thing as a scandal, quite rightly, the Windrush scandal, you nonetheless tend to normalize other things that are actually also not okay, in your view. So deportation, for example, that part of the whole same picture, but by picking one thing as the exception, you risk normalizing or minimizing the rest.

LDN:

Exactly. I mean, actually, I hadn't thought about that til you picked up on the word scandal there. But my work starts with the foreign prisoners scandal in 2006, and I guess, to think about them as bookends to - so once, both scandals lead to the Home Secretary resigning or being fired, and what both of those, the word scandals do is say the Home Office has lost the plot, which is not the point. It is not that the Home Office has lost the plot and is policing the wrong people. The point is that the policies and the laws are cruel and inhumane.

AB:

Well, sticking on language, then for now, you already mentioned you do always use this term foreign criminals in quote marks, and you choose to speak of people who have been criminalized. And also you talk about people who have been legalized so criminalized rather than criminal and illegalized rather than illegal? Just tell me a bit why you choose to use that that "ised" suffix on those words, What are you getting at?

LDN:

I suppose it's trying to denaturalize, unsettle the taken-for-granted-ness of the noun, basically, the human type of the person who is criminal.

AB:

I mean, so they're not born a criminal.

LDN:

Exactly. I mean, some people think you are born criminal, but those people are racist eugenicists and that is partly the history of criminal law, of criminology, of criminal thought that certain people are inherently criminal. And I'm not saying that everyone who says "criminal" thinks that, but they do think that, fundamentally, the individual has conducted themselves in such a way or committed a series of acts that mean that they can be called the noun, the criminal, a criminal. But when you think about the various ways in which people break the law, and the uneven ways in which some people end up being labeled criminal, or you think about the various ways in which people or institutions or social structures do harm to various people, and then those who get labeled a criminal and get put in prison, none of those things match up very well. We know this from corporate crimes or institutional crimes or gendered violence, we know that the vast majority of those responsible for such social harms don't end up being called criminal. And so it's in a way, it's to kind of unsettle the state's power to classify, to categorize, to label people, and then to act with the full force of its coercive power against those people deemed criminal.

AB:

Staying on this idea of criminalization, I think you say, to paraphrase, pretty much all of us break the law almost all the time, in some way, but really, what criminalization is about, especially when it's interacting with racism, is about who is more likely to be pulled into the spotlight, and why. And you tell the story of Ricardo, again, I don't know if that's his real name or not (I know, people in this book are anonymized), who describes experiencing extensive surveillance and police harassment, in his account, as a teenager in the West Midlands. And that was despite the fact that, at that point, he hadn't actually committed any crime at all. That story seems to illustrate quite neatly, this point you're making about criminalization.

LDN:

Ricardo's story was really troubling for me, because I first went to Jamaica knowing and being schooled in a kind of anti racist knowledge of disproportionality in the criminal justice system, but to actually hear a young person who wasn't necessarily schooled in that language, just describe the weight of policing in his life as a teenager, just being 14 and 15 and starting to realize that if you go outside and walk to the shop, or hung around in the parks, that the police are going to stop you, and often arrest you. He was arrested over 100 times, by the time we reached 18. He was arrested all the time, and always suspected of robberies. And of course, there may have been instances of crime in the parks where he was hanging out, there may have been people he was hanging around with who had criminal records, the police deemed him part of a problem family, he was black and hanging around with black and Asian friends mostly. And he justbegan to feel like whenever he left his house, he was gonna get pulled by the police, gonna get stopped. There's no other way to describe it, than as racist, punitive over-policing, of a young person who, again, yeah, of course, will have smoked weed, or might have done some graffiti on the bus stop and things like that, but actually had not committed any offenses. And I choose to believe him. And people can talk, we can talk about ethics, and all of those things. I believe him as a friend now.

AB:

So the thing that Ricardo was convicted for, eventually, if I'm right, was burglary, or being involved on the periphery of a burglary that involved a group. Can I ask what sort of things the man you spoke to did have convictions for, just briefly? I ask this, because, obviously, there is a lot of media attention on this idea of the foreign criminal, and looking at a Home Office factsheet from November last year about one charter flight, they're very keen to stress there that this flight has offenders on it, who have committed crimes like murder, rape, violent crime. Were the men you talked to in those kind of categories, crime-wise, or was it other smaller offenses, I'm assuming that these guys were involved with?

LDN:

So yeah, Ricardo had a burglary offense. Again, I would say that he was unfairly treated in the criminal justice system and disproportionately punished. There are a couple of street robbery offenses of people I met. Drugs would be definitely the main one. And data from the Jamaican side said that in 2013, half of those deported as criminals from the UK were for drug offenses, so we can then think about drugs policy and who takes drugs. And if we're thinking about disproportionality in who's policed, then of course, young black men might be selling white middle class people drugs, for example. So there's a whole question there about about drug policy and what we what we're doing and the waste of life involved.

AB:

But to clarify the four men whose stories you focus on in your book, we're not talking there about murder, rape, violent crime.

LDN:

No, no. We're talking about street robbery and drugs offense for one. We're talking about the burglary. The other one was a drug offense of someone who had no status. And the other one was actually a series of very petty crimes. That was Jason who was homeless.

AB:

You're listening to With Reason. I'm Alice Bloch, and I'm talking to you Luke De Noronha, about his book Deporting Black Britons: Portraits of Deportation to Jamaica. And if you want to catch future episodes of With Reason, just press pause right now and click "subscribe" in whatever app you're using. It costs nothing and it helps us to make more shows for you. Time now for a quick word from our editor Samira Shackle.

SS:

Here at New Humanist magazine, where I'm the editor, we're interested in ideas, science, culture and debate. Whatever your beliefs, you'll find something in our pages to stretch and change your mind. Just recently, we've published writing on clerical abuse, the importance of empathy, DNA data-mining and more. And here's another thing for you to ponder. We're offering you a year subscription to the magazine for just £13.50. That's four beautiful print editions straight to your door, which is pretty handy, lockdown or otherwise, just head to newhumanist.org.uk/subscribe and enter the offer code WITHREASON.

AB:

So far today, Luke, we've talked about the context, the policy context, the socio-political backdrop that gave rise to the deportation of the four men who you've written about. Let's talk about one of those men, whose story starts your book. Jason. He lived in London for 14 years and spent much of that time homeless. Tell me a bit about his story.

LDN:

Yeah, so Jason arrived at age 15, to be reunited with his mother who had been separated from him for about 13 years, since he was a child, when she moved to England. He'd had a good life in Jamaica, he was doing quite well in school and sports, but as soon as he arrived, he didn't get on with his stepdad and his mum and struggled, and ended up being kicked out by the age of 16, and being kicked out of school as well. And then kind of fending for himself on the streets. From that age, I mean, really difficult story, a person who only had a six month visa and didn't have any ID or passport. So was sleeping on the M25 between Ilford and central London, you know, making friends and trying to find a way in this new country. And over the next 12 or 13 years, he never really got out of that situation. At one point, he got a job in Carphone Warehouse before ID requirements were required. And he managed to get by, he used go down to the West End and just hang around and the amusement centers and try and help people, you know, help tourists as a middleman to get tickets or to get drugs, and was drinking a bit and just really struggling - having a really, really rough time. He describes the cold and the difficulty of being homeless. But importantly, the difficulty of being unable to access any welfare services and the housing benefit, because he didn't have his status. So always felt like deportation was on the horizon. And he was under the threat of deportation, and ended up being deported in 2014, on the charter flight.

AB:

You write really affectionately about him, and you describe how caring he is. In particular, I really like small details you mentioned, like that he was always worried about whether you were drinking enough water and how he bought you Nivea products because he saw in the room that you were hiring, that that's what you used. But in your last meeting with him where you catch up at the end of the book, you know, he's in a really bad way. And I think it's him who says something along the lines of "if I die, don't come to my funeral" and reading that is really saddening, you write almost as though you think that Jason might not actually survive the publication of your book. At one point, you include a few testimonies, almost sort of character references, if you like, from people who know him here in the UK. Why did you want to do that? What's the ethical writerly impulse behind that and what were you trying to do for Jason there?

LDN:

I was really worried about Jason at that point, towards the end of the book. He was in a homeless shelter for the first bit of time that we knew each other, and then was kicked out of there and was just living on the streets. And actually he knew another deported person who was killed in the area. So yeah, of course, I was really worried. And I suppose I don't think the testimoies is at the end were meant in that morbid tone, they were sort of meant, because Jason had had such a difficult life, and it was almost so unlikely that he'd ended up in a book that that some people will read. And he was really excited about the book and about the project, and always asking about how it was going and always saying, you know, "I've got more, I've got more I need tell you", and really engaged and really grateful for the kind of attention I suppose.

AB:

You say he wanted to write himself back into people's lives as well. I guess he also wanted the story of his life written and known, wants to leave a trace in some way, the right kind of trace.

LDN:

Exactly. And as I say, in the book, you know, he wanted to take me back to his old schools, but no one really recognized him there. And he wrote messages on Facebook on my laptop to people who hadn't replied and it was that kind of really sad story that made me sick. You know, I want to tell the story in all its tragedy, but also to say, you know, he's still laughing and smiling and he still made that connection with me you know, he shouldn't feel like he's totally incapable, and I just kind of came along and that was lucky. He grabbed grabbed onto me with both hands and was interesting, and exciting and exhausting to hang around with, and the people who I end with are people he knew before the street. So his gran or his auntie and they just say things that point to exactly that right, the damage but also the vitality of a person who is incredibly good at surviving.

AB:

Also in talking about that. I mean, it's clear how much relationships and connections matter in all of this, across borders. And you talk about interactions with the people who know and love the deported men who you got to know - so families, football teams, friends, and these people taught you, you say, that deportation is not suffered by individuals alone, even as it individualizes. I really, I really liked that point. Can you just explain that a little bit?

LDN:

I suppose like criminal law, immigration law, kind of individualizes, it atomizes a person and says, have you violated the law and in what ways and therefore, what should we do with you? And of course, there's provisions to consider family life - and I critique them. But the point is that the individual stands up in court as an individual, responsible for themselves. And that's kind of central to the way liberal thought and the liberal state works, right. But people don't live their lives like that; they're deeply connected and constituted by their relationships with others. And so I suppose, by focusing on friends and families who live in the UK, not only do you say you might disappear an individual, but here's the wake. Here's all the people who are still remembering and connecting with me and connecting with one another, and WhatsApping, who live here. And you might wrench an individual from that context, but you can't - their absence is still quite loud. And I suppose that, then, is a way of thinking about how deportation, even as it individualizes doesn't only affect the people deported. Of course, how could it? It affects the many people who have been also subject to enforced separation, and many of them are British children, for example. There are many ways we should argue against the power of deportation, but one of them is to get over this idea that it's just about bad individuals and think about the very many others who were invested in perhaps, you know, dad, or friend, or football mate, be able to stay and not being disappeared.

AB:

And that also seems to be an ethical impulse in your work, to show what happens after deportations, so that deportation isn't just a some kind of negative space and kind of Nowhere Land. It reminds me of the work of Reuben Anderson, who I think is somewhere in your bibliography. He has written about no go zones, and the idea of blank spaces, on maps, which of course, are never really blank at all. It seems you really want to stress that it's a tricky one, you kind of want to stress that life goes on. But at the same time, I guess maybe you're wary of doing that, because you don't want people to read your book and think, hey, actually, you know what, deportation's not so bad? You know, some of these guys picked themselves up and started businesses. And look, this is fine, why not continue with this practice? Lots of questions within that. But what what would you say for that?

LDN:

It's a good one. I mean, it's difficult. It was really difficult to write because the kind of instrumental or activist line would be: it's terrible, people might die, which is true, and people belong here. So therefore, the law has been breached, the wrong thing has been done and people should be returned. And I still feel that way. But it's a book, it's not a comment piece. And if people stick with it, and they've read all of the stories, then they should also have a sophisticated enough take to be able to hold both of those things. And, of course, it is sort of hopeful that people find ways to rebuild and to survive. And in many ways, that's the story of people who've been oppressed in various ways anyway, and that we always need to keep telling. People are not just the product of all of the violence that is done to them. They also resist and build and have fun and exercise some agency. And I suppose I wanted to keep that in there and to say, you know, some of the guys are doing okay, some of them would say, "I'd love to be able to visit the UK. But I'd rather live here". Some of them would say that. How else does one deal with what has been done to them? Should we want people to just stay in kind of limbo and displaced forever? Of course, people don't stay like that forever. Some people do. And really, some people don't survive. Far too many people don't make it. But probably more common is an incredibly brutal few years, and then some kind of a life, in a place. That's very difficult. But I wanted to hold on to that and to say that time keeps moving. And you know, Jason's life has changed since then, as have the rest. And that's important to say, rather than to just - there's something objectifying about reducing someone to the moment of their of their lowest point, that I didn't want.

AB:

Or reducing someone to kind of a mere policy outcome, I suppose without acknowledging the other dimensions of their life - it seems to me that that's what you're attempting to do, is to uphold the individual and the wholeness of the individual. And their resilience, which is an extremely tricky and dangerous word. But nonetheless, I think it's there. At the same time as critiquing the the policy, and to hold those two things, two things in tension. So one of the things we've been talking about today, I suppose it's about listening to people and failing to listen to them, or say failing to acknowledge them. So I thought this could be the moment where we turned to the New Humanist archive, to take a look at a piece that I think has some resonance with what we've been talking about today. So we've dug quite deep for this one, it's from 1972. And it's described as a research report entitled Teaching Racial Tolerance, that talks about various attempts to influence attitudes of young people towards what it calls "improved racial understanding", and reflects on their successes and failure. So Luke, as someone quite alert to language, what's your reaction to that term tolerance? It grates, I think, but it's still used really quite a lot today, isn't it?

LDN:

Yeah, definitely. I mean, it definitely grates. Tolerance - there's then the position of who is tolerating who, and I think a bit like integration, it feels a bit like, the underlying question is what we should do with them? And it doesn't unsettle.

AB:

Yeah. Who's at the centre? And who's waiting to be let in?

LDN:

Yeah. who's who's outside and provisionally welcomed and who's settled as the national insiders. And I don't think those questions are, I think those questions are more complicated than they're made out to be. So I'm very cautious about the idea of tolerance. But I suppose I do think that having a conversation about how among young people, for example, we develop different kinds of common sense, which I think already exists, I think there are really generational dynamics and regional dynamics and very localized dynamics about how people understand racial difference. And I write a bit about that, in the book, about also white Britons who came to know some of the people in this book, and how they figure. And that's important to say, actually, it's important to say that this story, and that wider network of people, is people who you might consider "tolerant". That would be to do them a disservice. But people for whom they share their lives with those who might be legalized, criminalized, and ultimately deported foreign criminals. And that might include white middle class people, in some instances, and definitely white working class people. So it's important to say that there are seeds of other ways that this country could be, and they're often held at local levels. And I think the real challenge for anti racists and for people who consider themselves progressive is to nurture that and to build constituencies of people who won't stand for it.

AB:

The piece says that the endeavor to change adult attitudes about anything is usually an uphill struggle. In the area of race relations, the task is normally seen as formidable. That was from the 1970s. But would you agree with that quote, today? I mean, I'm thinking, you know, you shared your PhD and your book, with the people who featured in those. And your acknowledgments is obviously full of people who I guess, think along the same lines as you do. But beyond that, what audience can you reach with a book like this? And how can you make it a positive part of that uphill formidable struggle?

LDN:

I think it's slightly limited as with any book. I mean, I wear my politics on my sleeve, to some extent, so it's probably not going to reach all audiences. But I think there are shorter ways to do that. I have the podcast, Deportation Discs, which hopefully is a way that can be shared more easily with various people. And I will say that some of the family members of the people and friends listen to that podcast,

AB:

It's a play on Desert Island Discs with deported people. Well, on that. Thank you very much for joining this podcast, Luke De Noronha, thank you very much.

LDN:

That's exactly it. So that I mean, that's a way of getting, you know, because a book is an 80,000 word thing. And there's some theoretical interventions in there. So I think we have to be realistic about that. But it's been shared widely among the legal sector. And I've been speaking to various solicitors and barristers, chambers and stuff. And that's interesting, because of course, barristers tend to be liberal, where I might be a slightly more insurgent in various ways. And so that's a really fruitful conversation. I'm up for that. I think we have to be honest about the limitations of, sit me down with an EDL or Britain First and somehow convert them via the story of deported black Britons. It's not the best strategy, but I think there are ways to try and get the book out there. I'd recommend anyone who's doing this kinds of work to do shorter things to try and get them out there, and to do podcasts and to get out into the world. Thanks so much.

AB:

The sociologists Luke De Noronha, joining us from London. And if you subscribe to New Humanist magazine, which Luke has actually written for a couple of times before, you can access articles like that one we were discussing from decades back in the archive as part of your subscription, it's well worth your £13.50 if you use that discount code of WITHREASON, at Newhumanist.org.uk/subscribe. And with me now is Samira Shackle, editor of New Humanist magazine, who's been having a listen along to that interview. Samira, I found that really fascinating in particular, the way that Luke talked a lot about this idea of looking beyond the individual, and about the importance of situating life stories in social structures. And that's something that can be really hard to balance. And he also talked about how once we do that, we really see the importance of complicating these labels, of criminal or illegal, they get put on to individuals. These are labels that lead really to ideas of good or bad immigrants, aren't they?

SS:

Yeah, I was really struck by that idea of good and bad immigrants and the idea that some people are worthy of our sympathy and empathy because they're blameless and being caught up unfairly in something, and others who are less so and aren't worthy of those same sympathy as being extended to them, or even of the same rights really, as the sort of extension of that. So I thought it was really valuable, that that's what he's chosen to focus on.

AB:

Going back, I mean, you mentioned sympathy and I think reading the book, I realized that it's frustrating and must be frustrating for people like Luke who I think are clearly writing from a sort of activist position as well as an academic one, that in order to stir action and engagement, you might feel the need to move people. I certainly felt very moved in reading that book. And reading these, these really powerful details, like I mentioned about Jason being concerned that Luke wasn't drinking enough water and that kind of thing. I was really stirred by these things. But then I was also maybe frustrated at myself that feeling moved seems to be a prerequisite for wanting to act. And I wonder what you think about that maybe also from the perspective of being a writer?

SS:

I think that's a really interesting point - separately to my New Humanist editing job, I'm also a freelance journalist and reporter. And I guess that the work I do is journalism that's very much focused around human stories. And so I think there's a value in that approach, because it's quite human really to be stirred by details that you can find relatable. And often, with those kind of language issues that I think Luke talked about so articulately, a sort of knock on effect is that people are really dehumanized. And it becomes very, it becomes very easy to dismiss the struggles that people have. And it's a very human instinct to relate differently when you realize that there's a whole life and a whole human behind those words. I think there's a real value in that.

AB:

And I guess I NGOs do it too. They also use the human interest story to attract sympathy and engagement in audiences, I guess it's entirely necessary.

SS:

Yeah. And I think you - there's a difference, I think between a sort of depoliticized pulling at heartstrings and decontextualizing of story from its social structures and playing only to sympathy. I think there's a difference between doing that and using the the power of narrative and the power of the personal to engage people and draw people in, I suppose.

AB:

I also think that Luke does tread the line really well, between presenting individual stories and showing how individual lives are negatively shaped by policy, by racism, by immigration controls, but also highlighting those individual lives and multi-dimensional, that lives go on that there is hope within those individual stories. I think he talks about, you know, the damage, and the vitality. And as he and I discussed, there's a risk in showing the vitality, that some readers might misinterpret those stories, and kind of say, "Well, hey, look, deportation can't be that bad. These guys are kind of okay, life goes on". I guess that's the risk for anyone researching this subject and wanting to draw attention to the kind of positive aspects of these otherwise quite difficult life stories.

SS:

I feel like it comes back to the idea of people not being essentialised and people being more than a single experience. People can go through terrible injustice or atrocity even and still find ways to continue a normal life and amongst the cracks of that, where they can I think that's such a universal trait. And we probably do people a disservice - in the same way perhaps, that classifying someone solely as inverted commas, "foreign criminal", you know, really reduces that person from the full extent of what they are. Sounds like a big part of what Luke's trying to do here. And I think what lots of people doing similar work want to do is to complicate the simplified narratives.

AB:

I guess, actually, that is what quite a few guests that we've had on With Reason are doing - so we had Rosie Hancock the other week, complicating the idea of the person of faith and activist or political orientations. We had Jason Arday or complicating reductive narratives about the Britpop era and race and things back in back in Series One. Hopefully, that's something we'll continue to do. That's all for today. We'll be back next week with science writer Jo Marchant. She's the author of Cure and more recently, The Human Cosmos. She'll be talking to Niki about science, the stars and our health. Remember, you can find reading lists and transcripts for all episodes with reason at New humanist.org.uk or find us on Twitter @Newhumanist

SS:

This podcast was presented by series producer Alice Bloch and me Samira Shackle. Our sound engineer was David Crackles. We'll see you back here soon. Goodbye.

Further reading:

• ‘Deporting Black Britons: Portraits of Deportation to Jamaica (2020) Luke de Noronha
• ‘The Windrush Betrayal’ (2019) Amelia Gentleman
• ‘Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race’ (2017) Reni Eddo-Lodge
• ‘Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands’ (2017) Stuart Hall, with Bill Schwarz
• ‘Rethinking Racial Capitalism’ (2018) Gargi Bhattacharyya
• ‘Us and Them? The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Control’ (2013) Bridget Anderson
• ‘There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack’ (1987), Paul Gilroy
• ‘Teaching Racial Tolerance’ (1972) Research Report, New Humanist Magazine