Immigration - new material (35)
01 December 1994
Review: Women's movement: women under immigration nationality and refugee law. Jacqueline Bhabha and Sue Shutter Trentham 1994. 300 pp 12.95.
In the fourteenth century we are told the nationality of a British father's foreign-born child depended on whether the mother had travelled abroad with or without her husband's consent. "Women's Movement" first published in 1985 as Worlds Apart and substantially rewritten since then moves through six centuries to Fortress Europe to show how from virginity testing to the primary purpose rule which keeps foreign husbands out to the one-year probation rule which keeps women trapped in violent marriages on pain of deportation to the sole responsibility rule which stops their children from joining them women have suffered under the double oppression of racism and sexism in Britain's immigration control. What emerges loud and clear from the book is that campaigns which adopt the theme of sexual equality inevitably result in rights being levelled down and barriers formerly erected for men only being re-erected as gender-neutral.
Both the devious history of immigration control and the responses to it by campaigns are traced in an extremely well-informed and valuable resource.
Review: "Het Recht Op Dromen ontwikkelingen naar een onafhankelijk Koerdistan" (The Right to Dream; Moving towards an independent Kurdistan).
The Dutch anti-militarism campaigning group AMOK has published a book about the Kurdish liberation struggle which aims to bring some clarity to the complicated political picture of the Kurdish movement in Iraq Turkey and Iran. By providing an insight into the historical and political structures which lie at the heart of this issue the authors hope to make the new conflicts, including those within the Kurdish community easier to understand. This book also discusses why it has proved so difficult to organise any solidarity movement with the Kurds.
Although the Kurds were the first people to be helped in the age of the New World Order they now face a battle against being forgotten. Het Recht op Dromen is written by Joost Jongerden in co-operation with Guido van Leemput with photographs taken by Judith Scheltsema. Jongerden an occasional contributor to the AMOK magazine has visited Free Kurdistan four times in the last few years speaking both to the political leaders of the Kurdish movement and many "ordinary" Kurds. Guido van Leemput the editor of VeeDee AMOK has also visited Free Kurdistan and has written a chapter on the developments in Turkish Kurdistan. The book costs 28 Dutch Guilders plus p&p and is available from: AMU/Ravijn PO Box 76116 1070 EC Amsterdam Netherlands or Papieren Tijger PO Box 2599 4800 CN Breda Netherlands.<