 For this special edition of Spotlight on Covid for Refugee Week, I'm talking to Dr Leonie Anson's degrees, senior lecturer in international relations in the Department of War Studies, King's College London. One of Leonie's areas of expertise is on migration and refugees. In particular, the relationship between the management of migration and migrant struggles for mobility, refugee experiences of being on the move, and legal pathways to protection. Today we're going to talk about the impact of COVID-19 on forced migration and what challenges vulnerable refugee populations might face as the disease continues to spread. So, Leonie, welcome to this edition of Spotlight on Covid. Can you tell me a little bit more about your research on refugees and migration? Yeah, thanks Lizzie. I'm very happy to have this conversation with you today. So, as you already mentioned, my research focuses on what people call borderland Europe and the misnamed European Migration Crisis because it's not just European and I don't think we should see migration as a crisis. So, I'm interested in the effects of migration management on people on the move and often migration management is very violent, can be directly violent on people but also in terms of the kind of bordering policies that are being imposed whether that's visa restrictions, whether that's actual physical border walls, whether that's technological systems. So, I'm interested in how does this affect people who are on the move in various conditions. I'm also very interested in thinking about people's struggles for and experiences of movement and displacement. In terms of COVID, the world has been focusing on the global disaster that is the COVID-19 pandemic. Have we forgotten about the plight of refugees as we've turned inwards to manage the fallout in our own countries? On the one hand, yes, there's been more often inward focus, but on the other hand, I think we've seen some positive highlights as well actually of the kind of things that migrants might be facing and the kind of direct and structural violence that they are experiencing. So, there is some more positive attention as well. Having said that, I think focus has turned away again from others in more modernised situations and especially people that are not so visible, right? So, these might be refugees, these might be asylum seekers. We can think about people in informal settlements as I've already spoken about and I can say more about that later. We can think about people in migration attention as well, often very vulnerable and of course in places like detention centres, virus can spread quite easily. Now, the numbers have been reduced in migration attention in the UK, but there's still quite a few people that are detained and also people that would be very much at risk of the disease. But we can also think about others in unstable housing conditions and more generally people that we see this often with asylum seekers and refugees that might face isolation, right? And that might just not be picked up on. Yes, I was going to come on to that because I haven't heard that much about the situation for refugees at the moment. How are they managing the spread of the disease in some of these very vulnerable and precarious communities? Yes, well, it varies very much depending on where you are. We look at the UK as for detention centres and whether we look at informal settlements. So, I've mostly looked at informal settlements in France, especially in northern France, and as well as a bit elsewhere, so I can say a little bit for instance about Lebanon as well. So, I think the first thing to say, especially in more informal spaces, is that we don't really know, right? Because we don't have a clear insight of what's happening. But speaking to people that are on the ground in northern France, so it must be said, I think the first thing that has to be said, that the conditions were already appalling. So, this is what I've been together with Marta Velander called Politics of Exhaustion. So, there is a view, the policies that are designed then, policies around migration, are designed to make life as difficult as possible for people that are there irregularly. So, that means evictions, that means people are often living in intensive, they even get tense because often they get slashed by the police and so on, right? So, you see this kind of daily violence and also the violence of being in very uncertain conditions for a long time and not knowing where you can go, not knowing what your status is and so on. So, that's the kind of basic condition, which is quite appalling. Now, it must be said that during the lockdown, and of course France had a very strict lockdown, there were some measures, there was some accommodation that was offered, you know, there was some testing at some point and so on, and there was some food provision, but it was very much inadequate. And also, and this was quite extraordinary, it kept the, especially in Calais, but in Dunkirk as well, they continued doing raids of these very informal spaces. And of course that put people at risk, but also the police and police unions were against this as well. So, we see people that are very vulnerable conditions already, when there is a global pandemic, when nobody is allowed to move, if it's not strictly necessary, we still see raids on these kind of camps. So, and there has been ongoing struggles, so the two bigger camps that existed up until 2016 that were destroyed at that time, there are still people in that area. So, for four years, they've been in these very difficult conditions and that has just continued. But also during that time, there's been fights just for getting basic necessities like, you know, water, food, sanitation and so on. So, there's some stuff that's being handed out, but you know, some food has been handed out, but it's mostly sort of dried food, no hot foods anymore. There were some water points installed, but there was only for a particular period, and then in Dunkirk for instance, and they took them away again, so people don't even have access to clean drinking water and so on. So, yes, it's very difficult. So, there's been some provisions, which is good. For instance, some provisions for people that can go to hospital, though again might be difficult to get onto a bus because then it might not allow migrants on the bus and so on. And there have been some also provisions, some accommodation for people that have COVID symptoms, but are not that serious, but there have also been reports of people that do go for a little while and then leave that accommodation again because they don't feel safe. I think one of the big problems there is that because there's so much violence in the area on behalf of the authorities, that people are very afraid to trust the authorities, and if police come and say, like, they will bring you to accommodation, am I so well, you know, trust you. So that's been a real issue. Oh, that sounds like a terrible situation. And I mean, we've seen in Europe, we've seen some scapegoating of refugees. We had Matteo Salvini, the far right Italian opposition leader, suggesting that refugee boats from Africa were a risk to Italians when Italy was fast becoming the epicentre of the virus. And there were few cases in Africa. Donald Trump has been using the crisis to clamp down on migration into America. We've seen unprecedented steps taken across Europe in terms of mass scale closing of borders, which we'd never have thought would happen. And the Guardian reported this week that asylum applications, possibly as a result, in Europe have fallen to the lowest levels for over a decade. So do we, is there, what's the impact of this, all of this on migration policy and systems and kind of co-ordination on these issues in the international community? Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, this is all very worrying, but unfortunately, it's also nothing new. So I think I would say that some regression management, so the kind of practices of regulating and imposing borders and so on, and managing people's mobility. These are designed to be violent in some way, right, that are designed to facilitate the movement of some people and restricting the movement of what is keeping them out. And that has come for a long time with a quite problematic narrative around migration. And I think it has been toxic for a very long time. If we think about European context, we think about the US as well, but also there's a much longer history of this identification of migrants and refugees with disease and cleanliness and danger and so on, right? So these are things that pop up historically over and over again. But of course, it must be said that the way in which this discourse has played out recently is absolutely very concerning. But having said that, thinking about broader migration management systems and policies and so on, I think that this narrative as well as practices actually that are really problematic go hand in hand with this idea of free movement in Europe, right? So what we see from the 1980s onward is that when we get the idea within Europe of free movement, so through Schengen, through the Schengen negotiations and agreements, but as well as sort of the European Union after that, we see that this idea of free movement in a particular kind of space for particular kind of people goes hand in hand with the idea that then we need to create an external border and that we need to fortify that border to make sure that nobody else comes in, right? So free movement is inextricably linked to imposing a bordering system for so-called others. And at the same time, and this is back in the 1980s, we see that language being used already of these others as criminals and terrorists and so on, right? So thinking about the way in which the migration systems that we have today are being set up in our sort of free movement, we cannot separate that from the expansion of borders throughout Europe and beyond as well, you know, these borders are also externalised into places outside of Europe to keep people out, but also around a narrative that is really quite problematic and toxic. So I think we need to rather than thinking, oh, this is a very problematic narrative that's coming up now and that's new. There's a really long history and it's very closely related to our own ideas of free movement. So I think we need to interrogate, you know, that whole system. Yes, absolutely. Well, the theme for Refugee Week this year is imagine and we've seen unimaginable actions taken by governments all around the world in response to the pandemic, forms of socialist policies being implemented, for example Britain. And more recently, we've seen protesters demanding an end to forms of structural racism following the killing of George Floyd. Do you think this pandemic could bring about a fairer world where we better value and protect human life? I'd really like to say yes, but I'm skeptical. This is very much, I think, a moment of change and we should take this up as a moment of change as well. But these things are always complex and moving different directions at the same time. So I'm skeptical about just creating this fairer world, but I'm very keen to push for more social and racial justice and I think that's what we really need to do. So yes, this is certainly a moment of upheaval and change and hopefully we can take up that moment. I think the Black Lives Matter movement is very important at the moment. The issue of structural racism in order forms of racism is absolutely nothing new. People have been fighting for racial justice for a very long time as well. But I think what seems to be different at the moment, and I haven't seen so much before, and this includes me reflecting myself as well, is this acknowledgement that structural racism exists and has existed for a long time and that it permeates our societies and we really need to reflect on that and do something about this. The question of privilege and whiteness as well has come up in a way that I think, or the kind of acknowledgement of it and understanding of it, I think is growing and I think that is very important. Also for me thinking about my research but also thinking about who I am and so on. It's also I think a moment to really think about these relationships between the movement of people, violence and race in a way that some squalers have done for decades in a fantastic way but again I think a lot of us, including myself, haven't done enough of that and I think there's a moment to really think about that. So we cannot understand if we just think about Europe for a moment, we cannot understand our European history, our systems of thought as well as our practices without thinking about the forced migration of slavery and colonialism more generally. And also we cannot understand the movement of people today and our conceptions of race of justice as one without interrogating these kind of histories as well as the way in which it plays out today. So the idea of coloniality, the colonial present rather than just thinking of something that happened in the past. And I think that has and that should have real implications also for thinking about how we lead our daily lives, what we do, what we reflect on and so on. So I think in that regard this is a really important moment. Definitely. And lastly what can we do as individuals to help refugees at this time as we reflect on the immense challenges they face during refugee week? Yeah that's an important question as well. I think firstly if we're going back to my answer to the previous question, if you haven't already done so, try and read up on the question of migration and refugees but also these interlinkages and ask questions about migration and imperialism, race, colonialism and so on. I think that's one thing. It's a more general thing I think that we should all do. Support charities, there is still a lot of work going on and there is actually as well as there is a lot of isolation of people and so on. There is a lot of work going on by charities and people on the ground that still help out for refugees and whether it's around issues of health or around isolation or just food and so on. So I think that can be done as well. So you can support them financially, you can see if you can get involved virtually or otherwise and I think also in the UK context really thinking about the hostile environment more broadly and thinking about the hostile environment not something that the government does out there and that's problematic but something that's refused throughout society that affects refugees but also orders and really think about our own communities, our own institutions, our own organisations and how does it play out there or does it play out there and what can we do about it? Yeah that's fantastic. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you very much.