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Subject: 10 * 10
From: grenze <grenze@ibu.de>
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 1997 00:02:25 METDST

* * * * *

1. free flow: what could it mean but an enormeous movement which leaves nothing of the reigning conditions but uncontrolled linking, doubling, feedbacking and crossing of streams and currents?

2. the worldwide migration movements result from the international exploitation make-up and put it into question at the same time. migration streams develop along the utilization lines of capital and negate them by taking literally the talk about globalization. the demand for open borders is no idle wish, no unrealistic request, no utopia. the permeability of borders is a reality; there is an "autonomy of migration". migration happens regardless of state control. only in retrospect can state and government politics take notice of this fact.

3. the systematic destruction of fordist regulated migration scenarios in the last few years causes a clandestinization of migration whose consequences can hardly be foreseen. alongside the informal sector which is becoming more and more significant in economic terms, a "secret society" is coming into existence. among scrap yards and large scale building sites, pizza services and prostitution, an army of illegal workers with no security, no rights and little protection, is recruited. but even the illegal and ethnically segmented labour market is in need of regulation. for years the us and western europe have been investing huge sums in the seeming perfection of a border regime that seeks to rather steer than stop the stream of lowest salary workers via ultramodern control and surveillance techniques.

4. today borders exist everywhere: at social welfare centres, at railway stations, in city centres as well as at state borders. whereever people are asked for their papers, there are borders. but papers are tending to lose their material characteristics. what's crucial is that they can be read by machines and squared with data banks within seconds. whereas borders served to in- or exclude population groups in the disciplinary society, their now multiplied function reveals a slow shift towards a "society of control". under the primateship of population politics new control and surveillance techniques, whose specific character is not the construction of a barrier but the establishment of a network, come into action: the squaring of finger prints, the plans for an asylum card, infra red surveillance and a mobile police station.

5. there are many ways in which someone can become illegal: the all european harmonization of employment and residence laws as well as the aggravation of the right of asylum in most european community countries force hundreds of thousands of people, including many who have already had legal status for years, into illegality. the system of "safe third countries" as well as the "airport regulation" force migrants already at the point of entry into illegality. and those who outstay official permittance or acceptance are also regarded as "illegal". illegality means constant fear of denunciation or blackmail, since the consequences of being discovered are punishment, remand pending deportation or immediate deportation. it means total lack of protection face to face with authorities, employers and landlords, but also in cases of illness, accidents or encroachment. It also means having to dread social contacts and being on one´s guard all the time.

6. experiences from practical work with refugees or illegalized people point at one problem in particular: any possible help, any concrete starting point is "actually without any perspective". there is no strategy, no solution, there are, at best, interim solutions. for most of the illegalized people everyday life consists of a number of various survival techniques and avoidance of discovery, of a continuation of their flight and starting again. The praxis of political refugee work finds itself increasingly asked to provide concrete help outside state control. often, this kind of praxis is denounced as "social work" or "pure charity" by self appointed strategists of the world revolution. however, the more recent anti racist praxis, escape support actions and refuge fortresses reveal a radicality that hasn´t got anything in common any more with the utopism and romanticism of failed social movements and could project far beyond them.

7. "a network of castles" doesn´t have to be the aim of only anti racist work. a network of (refuge) castles, not "liberated areas" but rather places, which are temporarily beyond state control - whether in public or secretly, whether the reasons for this are that they had to be fought for or that they are still just about accepted by the reigning authorities. the (refuge) castles communicate via a network of sometimes thinner, sometimes stronger threads, exchange knowledge and experiences, intimate hiding places and secret paths to each other. the structure doesn´t exist as an end in itself. when its purpose comes to an end it dissolves and reforms somewhere else. its basis is an idea of community, a social thought, which is capable of saying no to mendacious familiarity and the intimacy of brotherhood. its basis are anonymity, diversity and the vacant space: there is no truth, only tactical legitimacy.

8. communication doesn´t refer to any common cause, mystified unity or consensus. communication only consists in the communicability of the message. imagination doesn´t dispose of any more images. the text flows and thinking is without images. the media are used and then dropped again. since this kind of tactic cannot aim at any kind of public, it connects with, overlaps and overlays aesthetic and formal processes. what counts is the prospect of a short term advantage, or the fun of laying false paths. nothing is predictable, and thus every sign has to be looked at, however insignificant it may be.

9. the era of damaging symbols is over. in the attack with biotechnologies, population-policy and socio-technical measures the informational machine tries to control every movement, every permitted or forbidden standpoint. it seems that, today, storming these machines means to sabotage their information exchange, the data nets. by alienating them from their purpose or using them for one´s own purpose, by trespassing or interrupting the seemingly smooth flow of information - even with pincers.

10. the battle of many migrants, headed by the sans papiers in france, is about the achievement of social and political equality - independently of a particular country of origin or the possession of a job, a possible criminal record or the status of residence. This goal provides the background for such diverse and overlapping demands as free access and papers for everybody, freedom of mobility and open borders, self-determination and equal rights. in the face of the ruling conditions no other political or extra-political solution is imaginable than one which refers productively to the struggles and the self-organisation of migrants and which creates diverse practical and theoretical, social and aesthetic connections. "nothing, however, can tell us in the end, how and where people would accommodate themselves, if only we would let them."