Remember and Resist: Borders, Solidarity and the Essex 39 The Essex 39 Campaign Group

The struggle for migrant justice will only win if we commit to a world without borders, and the exploitative economic system––capitalism––that created them in the first place. The same system has been used to justify and legitimize colonialism, imperialism, slavery, and ongoing forms of all three phenomena, up to the present day. The ultimate effect is to marginalize and oppress people of colour; to maintain itself, the state must continually think of ways to enact racialized violence against communities it has decided are deviant and criminal by their very existence. It is no mistake, for example, that immigration detention centers are often described as being ‘prison-like’. The solution, though, is not to make such centers less like prisons, but to abolish the institutions and systems that make criminalizing and ‘disappearing’ people the solution to endemic social problems. Chaired by Rudy Schulkind (Bail for Immigration Detainees), author Maya Goodfellow, researcher Angelica Udueni, and Minnie Rahman (Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants) on the importance of abolitionist solidarity.

Episode two of Remember and Resist: Borders, Solidarity and the Essex 39 is a conversation with Amina du Jean (Sex Worker Advocacy and Resistance Movement, SWARM), Maritza Castillo (Independent Workers of Great Britain, IWGB) and Marigold Belquen (Voice of Domestic Workers). The discussion explores how migrant workers organise against exploitative working conditions, and the intersections of racism, sexism, and state violence. We will never know the full stories of the 39 people at the back of the lorry; but we do know, based on migration histories such as those shared by our previous panel, that they were likely coming to the UK to work and improve their conditions. Had they survived, they would have likely become undocumented workers. They would have faced the compounded effects of an exploitative economic system and a border regime that strips them of social and economic rights solely on the basis of their nationality and lack of citizenship. Migrants in such precarious conditions are constantly agitating and mobilising to improve their condition. In this panel, we want to explore the actual issues migrant workers are facing and strategies for resistance, situating those in the context of hostile law/law enforcement and immigration policy.

This episode explores histories of organising around the Dover 58 and Morecambe Bay incidents where many Chinese migrants lost their lives; issues faced by Chinese, East and Southeast Asian survivors of domestic violence; and trafficking narratives surrounding Vietnamese undocumented migrants. We hope that this can be the beginning of more critical conversations about the histories of Southeast and East Asian communities in the UK.

Our speakers were Jabez Lam, Tina Ma and Tamsin Barber and the discussion was chaired by Jun Pang.

Many thanks to Chad and Rosa from Rainbow Collective who recorded these panels and to The Outside Project for hosting us!

If you’d like more information on the work we’re doing or to get involved, you can email us at remembertheessex39@protonmail.com or contact daikon* (@daikonzine) on social media.

The full transcript for this podcast can be found at https://daikon.co.uk/blog/remember-and-resist-podcast

Produced by Tessa Qiu.