In this period of economic crisis, public sector cuts, and escalating class struggles, Marxist theory offers social workers and service users important tools to help understand the structures of oppression they face and to devise effective means of resistance. This book uses Marxism’s lost insights, reinterpreting them for the current context by focusing on one particular section of the international working class: refugees and asylum seekers in Britain. Shuo Liu finds that this book offers a unique understanding of the refugee’s position in Britain, and is a valuable contribution to the anti-racism effort.
Refugees, Capitalism and the British State: Implications for Social Workers, Volunteers and Activists. Tom Vickers. Ashgate. 2012.
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This book is aimed at providing an analysis of the conditions and needs of refugees in Britain. Adopting Marxism as an analytical tool, together with empirical research conducted in Newcastle between 2004 and 2010, Vickers offers us an insight into the interplay between state policies, refugees’ experiences and the way conflicts are mediated. Essentially the aim of the book is twofold: first to analyse the material basis of the oppression of refugees in Britain by the British state; and second to point out that the British state has been cultivating a “refugee relations industry”, within a broader narrative of “social capital building” to “manage” this oppression.
From the outset, Vickers defines refugees as people “who seek asylum” (p. 1). Seeing through the Marxist lens, he argues that refugees constitute a section of the international working class, who also belong to the “international reserve army of labour”. The majority of the refugees are from the countries that occupy an oppressed position; meanwhile Britain, as the first fully developed capitalist country and the biggest colonial and imperialist power, stands as a dominant and parasitic oppressor in the global imperial capitalism system. The explanation of the phenomenon of refugee/migrant flows can be found in the capitalist interests of Britain itself, the author argues, that the smooth running of imperialism “depends on the international division of the working class into a super-exploited majority, mostly located in oppressed countries, and a relatively privileged, and consequently docile, fraction within imperialist countries” (p. 26).
Since it began nearly four years ago, the Eurozone financial crisis has had wide reaching effects across the continent and beyond. Europe in Crisis: Bolt From the Blue? is an early attempt to understand the complexities and existential challenges that the EU now faces. The book looks at the crisis’ history and causes, as well as what some of its outcomes might be. Miguel Otero-Iglesias finds this condensed account of the crisis to be a valuable one, especially in its coverage of the role of countries such as Germany and Spain.
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Syria’s 1970 bloodless coup by General Hafez al-Assad put in place a powerful autocratic machinery at the core of the state which continues under the control of his son Bashar. Power and Policy in Syria presents an analysis of Syria’s political structure: a ‘despotic’ state monopoly, a bureaucratic climate marked by fear, and an administrative structure through which centralized control is exercised. Andreas Aagaard Nøhr finds that this book’s value lies in the bold boundaries it attempts to push rather than its ultimate conclusion.
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