#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #POLAND #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) #Poland, ozzip, Workers' Initiative: The humanitarian crisis at the border from the workers' perspective [machine translation]

 A humanitarian crisis has been going on in Poland for over two months. With

regard to people staying at the border, the authorities resorted to a whole range
of drastic and illegal measures: the Border Guard does not accept asylum
applications, uses deportations and violence against refugees, and does not allow
them to receive medical aid or provide them with water and food. Barbed wire
fences have been erected along the border, and the introduction of a state of
emergency prevents any social control over the activities of the services. At the
same time, it facilitates the use of harassment against local residents who try
to provide this help. At the time of writing, nine deaths are known. Given the
conditions, this number certainly does not reflect the true scale of the tragedy.

During the so-called "Refugee crisis" in 2015, as the Workers 'Initiative, we
prepared a brochure Migrations, capitalism, workers' movement[1]. In it, we
appealed to "start building an alternative to the divisions that serve the
political and economic elite . " This call is particularly relevant today.
Unfortunately, our country's policy is no exception, but it is part of a broader
trend. For years, the EU agency Frontex, established to protect the EU's external
borders, has been accused of violence, deportations and denial of access to the
asylum procedure. As employees and workers, we cannot remain indifferent to the
humanitarian crisis and state violence, and we cannot expect help to come from
outside. We need international solidarity and cooperation between "local" workers
and immigrants.

We must not succumb to threats that "people who migrate for work or flee from war
are a threat to us that they will take away our precarious and low-paid
jobs"[2]or claims that economic migration reduces wages[3]. This policy of fear
obscures the real mechanisms that shape the labor market. It antagonizes
representatives of the global working class from all over the world and makes it
difficult to fight to improve living and working conditions for all.

Control to exploit

It is not migrations that are the problem, but how capitalism takes advantage of
these migrations. Its goal is to gain as much control over people as they move.
The line of conflict lies between people who are looking for an opportunity to
change the conditions of their lives on their own, and the institutions that try
to channel this mobility so that it serves the needs of capital. The policy of
openness, the integration of people coming from outside Europe, granting them
rights similar to those of the inhabitants of the region, are of little use to
those who benefit from their uncertain and unregulated status. In its present
form, this control over mobility serves primarily to create new forms of labor
exploitation.

These measures are conducive to - as Katarzyna Czaronota wrote during the 2015
crisis -"the most developed countries use the work of migrants almost for free,
often on the black market, avoiding any obligations towards them, e.g. minimum
wage, health insurance or pension contributions"[5].

Invisible temporary work

The anti-refugee campaign not only facilitates the exploitation of migrant women
and migrants, but also distracts attention from other mechanisms by which
European countries gain permanent access to "cheap labor". Where there is a
shortage of workers, countries develop their own labor mobility strategies based
on, inter alia, bilateral agreements with non-EU countries, often taking
advantage of their difficult economic or political situation. Temporary work
permits allow you to meet periodic needs in various industries, and then "get
rid" of excess labor and relocate it outside the Union. In this respect, the
policy of the Polish authorities is an example of exceptional hypocrisy. Since
2015, the government and pro-government media have been conducting regular
anti-immigrant campaigns. At the same time, the number of people coming to work
in Poland is constantly growing. Their countries of origin include not only
Ukraine, but also Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, India, Bangladesh and Nepal. Poland
has become a leader among OECD countries in terms of the number of temporary work
permits issued[6].

Thus, the Polish state grants over a million temporary work permits annually,
while at the same time giving public attention to a small group of refugees held
at the border. We should not be surprised, however, that the authorities do not
boast about the development of temporary work, because it is another area in
which workers' rights are violated. The differentiation of migration policies and
the status of people in terms of the country of origin, legal situation or the
duration of contracts isolates various groups of workers and makes it difficult
for them to undertake joint actions.

Enforced and restricted mobility

This dual strategy - simultaneously limiting and forcing mobility - is nothing
new in the capitalist system. The process of fencing common goods (fields and
pastures) in England from the late Middle Ages to the beginning of the 19th
century, an important element of the primary accumulation of capital, deprived a
large part of the rural population of livelihoods, forcing them to gain
livelihood through wage labor. It was closely related to forced mobility. This
process was accompanied by a wave of repression and terror against people
suspected of vagrancy. The idea was to limit the free movement of people as much
as possible and discourage them from trying to escape forced labor. "Freedom of
movement" - wrote Frederick Engels later -"Is the first condition for the
existence of our big-city workers" , giving them "a force to resist the reduction
of wages by factory workers . " Currently, people who try to take advantage of
this freedom on their own are still treated as a threat by the capitalist system.

The treatment of migrant workers in the near future could affect us all. It is
not migrants who will "take" our jobs, but rather governments, together with
multinationals, will jointly bring about a situation in which temporary and
forced mobility will be shared by a growing number of workers. This is already
being experienced by many workers from poorer EU countries, who work under
similar precarious conditions as workers from outside the EU. For example,
seasonal workers from Romania on a farm in Bornheim, Germany, who started a
strike in the spring of 2020, have found this out.[7]

Great climatic wall

One of the reasons for the increase in the number of people leaving their homes
is the climate and ecological crisis. It is estimated that in 2017, 22.5 million
to 24 million people were forced to leave their homes as a result of sudden
natural disasters - floods, fires, violent storms - attributed to climate change.
These numbers will grow. By 2050, it may already be 143 million people a year[8].

There are more and more people in the world experiencing an immediate threat to
their life or health, whose places of life are irreversibly damaged. Meanwhile,
the richest countries, largely responsible for this state of affairs, are not
only reluctant to support them, but are even tightening their policy towards
migrants. In recent days, the Transnational Institute (TNI) has published a
report that sheds more light on this paradox. It shows that the biggest emitters
of greenhouse gases spend twice as much on the protection of their borders and
anti-immigration policies than on fighting the climate crisis. While the biggest
polluters fortify their borders, the consequences of the crisis are hardest hit
by the countries with the lowest emissions. "Somalia is responsible for 0.00027%
of global emissions since 1850,

As citizens of the European Union, we are also hostages of this disgraceful
policy, under which a large part of public funds is spent not on improving living
conditions and fighting the climate crisis, but on growing contingents of
increasingly better equipped border services, paramilitary organizations,
advanced technologies for border control ( Frontex alone increased by 2,763%
between 2006 and 2021!).

That is why it is so urgent to call for transnational solidarity between women
and workers. Our common goal should be a world in which no one is forced to leave
their home against their will. But also one in which nobody is deprived of the
freedom to move.

Weronika Parafianowicz / Department Committee at the University of Warsaw

Footnotes:

[1]Warsaw Environmental Commission OZZ IP, Migrations, capitalism, workers'
movement "brochure available on the IP website, URL:
https://ozzip.pl/publikacje/ksiazki-i-broszury/item/2004-migracji-kapitalizm-ruch
-worker

[2]Maria Debinska, Ignacy Józwiak, Weronika Parafianowicz, Solidarity with people
taken to the forest, URL:
https://ozzip.pl/publicystyka/spoleczenstwo/item/2819-solidarnosc-z-ludzmi-wywoznymi-do-lasu

[3]Jakub Grzegorczyk, The Political Economy of Migration, URL:
https://www.ozzip.pl/publicystyka/gospodarka/item/2812-ekonomia-polityczna-migracji

[4]Transnational Social Strike Platform, The Clash on Mobility in Transnational
Europe # 1: The Pact against Migrants, URL:
https://www.transnational-strike.info/2021/05/28/the-clash-on-mobility
-in-transnational-europe-1-the-pact-against-migrants /

[5]Katarzyna Czarnota, The Refugee Crisis and Global Labor Relations, URL:
https://czaskultury.pl/wp-content/uploads/woocommerce_uploads/2021/03/KCzarnota_InCirculation_CzasKultury_3_2016-kvq8if.pdf

[6]Transnational Social Strike Platform, The Clash on Mobility in Transnational
Europe # 2: Regular Migration, Logistical Fantasies and Collective Contestation,
URL: https://www.transnational-strike.info/2021/07/15/the-conflict
-over-mobility-in-a-transnational-europe-2-regular-migration-logistical-fantasies-and-collective-contestation
/

[7]Germany: strike of seasonal workers, URL:
https://www.ozzip.pl/informacje/zagranica/item/2665-niemcy-strajk-pracownikow-sezonowych

[8]John Podesta, The climate crisis, migration and refugees, URL:
https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-climate-crisis-migration-and-refugees/

[9]Global Climate Walll, TNI report, URL:
https://www.tni.org/en/publication/global-climate-wall

https://ozzip.pl/publicystyka/spoleczenstwo/item/2842-kryzys-humanitarny-na-granicy-z-perspektywy-pracowniczej
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