noborder @ the european social forum

04.Nov.02 - The European Social Forum, which will take place in Florence from the 6th to the 10th of November 2002 is the first continental European meeting, following the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. During the forum a number of events will take place [either as part of the forum or related to it] that focus on the situation of migrants, refugees and sans papiers in Europe. Two meetings seem to be particularly interesting: 'Migrants, sans papiers and refugees European meeting' on the 7th of november and the 'Migrants European Assembly' on the 8th.
Other intresting projects are the 'noWork noShop' space/non space hosted by the Movement of the desobedients, the 'Eur@ction HUB' lab organized by a number of European groups and 'everyone is an expert's effort to link up Florence with manchester by a satellite internet connection:

nov 7th: Migrants, sans papiers and refugees European meeting
nov 8th: Migrants European Assembly
nov 6th -10th: nO WorK No ShOp - for a space/non space of the european networks to go through the esf
nov 6th -10th: Eur@ction HUB - satellite experimentation lab for media+social activism
nov 6th -10th: 'everyone is an expert' linking the esf with futuresonic, manchester

Migrants, sans papiers and refugees European meeting - 7th November 2002 - Florence

Talking about the Schengen Europe is more than ever present in a moment in which the policies of the States of the European Union are harmonizing on more and more repressive and racist laws, marking them with the fight against immigration, and giving at the same time all the useful instruments for an easier exploitation of the migrant workers. The migrants-work nexus is now present in all the European countries, even if in different forms, with the common point that's the condition for their staying in EU: the needs of our economies; more and more restrictive measures are introduced for the'regular entries' or the regularizations, together with and harder control and closure of the borders (the first European Police will be just the Border Police): this fact is increasing the presence of 'clandestines' and the impossibility for them to regularize themselves in a permanent way. Controls and the militarization of the coasts, of the seas and of the frontiers are increasing: this decision has already produced hundreds of dead and thousands of new slaves, as in italy as in the rest of Europe.
We think that it is not enough anymore to oppose the worsenings of the national laws about immigration without having a clear outlook of how the single states (with left or right governments) answer to this phenomenon and overall without working out a comprehensive criticism and analysis of what mean to be a migrant in the Fortress Europe.
In front of similar denials of rights, similar practices of segregation and detention, similar exploitation forms, we feel the need to organize an opposition level that has to be international and to connect the antiracist and self organized migrants collectives and movements that exist in Europe and that struggle in their countries.

We consider that it is a fact of primary importance that in these struggles the migrants are the main actors together with those movements that share their claims connecting in the daily work the struggles for the needs and the rights, as the autochthonous' as the migrants'.

We need a confrontation that take out the meaning and the condition of being detained in a deportation centre in Italy as in England, the meaning of the 'residence obligation' in Germany or the 'double penalty' in France, that join the disputes for the work with the ones for the stay permits; to estimate the praticability even in Italy of international campaigns such as the ones against IOM or against the Air Companies that make expulsions. Starting from each experience and from the migrants meeting debate in Strasbourg, we want to keep on this course with all the italian and international self organized migrants collectives calling a discussion and confrontation meeting that might also bring into the European migrants meeting of Friday the 8th some contributes and proposals. We think that nowadays it is necessary to promote a general mobilization at a European level that express the claims of the migrants and that could call the first european demonstration on immigration directly at the EU Parliament: Bruxelles.
The meeting will be on the 7th of November at 14.00 in P.za SS. Annunziata - Florence.

Movimento Antagonista Toscano, Confederazione Cobas

Migrants European Assembly - Florence November the 8th 2002

Draft by the Table of migrants of the European Social Forum

In Italy, as in other European countries, Australia and the USA, the governments have assumed the national and regional policies of closing borders and fight against 'clandestine immigration' as priorities. The overcoming of Fordist model of production, the cut of labour-supply in the traditional manufacture sector, the slow-down of the growth in the main economies, the consequent increase of the unemployment within the countries belonging to the so-called First World; all these factors push the most powerful States to control and limit the circulation of the workers.

Beyond such structural reasons, one has to consider also the consolidate tendency in western societies to make a political and ideological use of the theme of the control and limitation of immigration: the ordinary racist view of immigration as 'invasion', of the immigrant as a source of danger and of clandestinity as synonymous of criminality, is often used as a convenient tool for electioneering.

All this happens while in the south and east of the world the process of globalisation determines the crisis of the local economies and the increase of the poverty rate: the consequences are the multiplication of the migratory fluxes and of the number of countries they originate from. At the same time the migratory movements in recent years have shown an increasing degree of autonomy, becoming a form of organization 'from below'. That is, a trans-national mechanism which fosters sociality exactly where it is put aside by the capitalistic powers.

The existing contradiction between the structural dimension of the migration phenomenon (produced by the present model of development) and the policies of closing borders adopted by the governments of the richest countries are fostered by the segmentation process of labour-demand: even in the presence of unemployment, a trade off between the local supply and demand of labour still exists in the richest countries, especially as regards the most vulnerable, less qualified and more precarious people.

In Malaysia, Europe, Argentina and the USA, the migrants are mostly asked to work in the area which is defined most elegantly as 'informal economy', an area that, indeed, often overlaps with moonlighting or, at most, casual labour, characterised by the absence of a contract and its guaranties.

For this very reasons, from the point of view of the capitalistic globalisation, there is no contradiction between the adoption of policies of restriction of immigration and the persistency of a labour demand not covered by the internal supply.

The policies of closing borders, the restriction of the regular entry channels, the dismantlement of the judicial status of foreigners by means of the adoption of stricter rules, the lack of acknowledgment of the rights of citizenship: all this is functional to utilising migrants as low-cost workers, highly subject to blackmail and, hence, more 'flexible' and more viable to be expelled. Therefore, the policies on immigration, usually presented as the best instrument for fighting the irregular immigration, are indeed the very first cause that fosters immigration.

So we have to take note that international migrations have assumed a structural dimension and have become an integral part in the actual model of economic development (even though we have to reaffirm that speaking of a very explosion of them is wrong). The governments are perfectly aware of such facts but they have also an interest to adopt restrictive policies: what they truly want is to maintain the liberty to absorb or expel low cost workforce as they like and this happens to be easier by forbidding the migrants to come legally in our territories and by denying them any precise judicial status. The illegality forces migrants to accept any job at any condition, and allows governments to exclude them from the social security systems and policies of integration.

The migration policies at a global level are then characterised by a limitation (total or partial) of the legal economic migrations; by the multiplication of the excuses of the turning down of people at the frontiers; by the denial of the substantial right of asylum (envisaged by the Geneve Convention of 1951); by the concentration of public funding in the reinforcement of the police armies guarding the frontiers; by the lack of public policies of hospitality and integration (and by the abandonment of the few existing ones); by the construction of those which are called 'temporary permanence centres' in Italy and but that in Australia and UK, more truly, 'detention centres'. These are genuine camps in which not only immigrants are detained, but also people just asking for asylum, who haven't committed anything wrong but whose unique 'fault' is not having the residence permit.

The European policies

The commitment of 'rendering communitarian' the policies regarding immigration and asylum within the next five years, was taken with the coming into force of the Amsterdam Treaty (May 1999). But the sole theme as regard to which the European countries have appeared as capable to act harmoniously both at a political and a technical level (and even before an effective harmonisation of the policies at the formal level), has been the one concerning the policies of admission and fight against illegal immigration.

From Tampere to Sevilla this has been uninterruptedly the Europe's obsession. That is, an approach incapable of seeing the relationship between the policies of migration and the increasing trade off, due to globalisation, between northern and southern nations; and again, an approach that subordinates the fundamental human rights to the needs of the labour market and to the interests of economics.

Even though various proposals about the integration of the migrants and about the asylum question have been discussed, the only certain measures that the EU has adopted are the ones destined to underpin the European fortress and to foster repressive politics: these measures indeed have been presented as the pivotal tool for fighting against illegal immigration and to govern migrations.

As it appears evident, the guarantee of the rights of citizenship for foreign people, but also for the people regularly fixed on a territory constitutes the last concern of Europe. The notion of European citizenship, proposed for the European Chart of Right is indeed a very narrow conception of citizenship: it is only conferred to native citizens. The millions of migrants that reside in Europe permanently and that contribute to the European cultural and economic wealth are destined to be lacking rights: at the most they could, in some countries, benefit from the permission of limited, conditioned and partial rights.

The role of the movements

The movement of the Italian migrants has been capable of combining in the last year the protest against the segregationist logic of Berlusconi's government, that proposes the judicial social, civil and political apartheid of migrants; the refusal of the reduction of migrants to labour goods with the defence of the rights of the Italian and foreigners workers; the fight against the neo-liberal globalisation e the demand of a free circulation of people; the claim of a different system of re-distribution of the world wealth together with the defence of the basic human rights.

This capacity of putting in its proper context the theme of the rights of citizenship and of the rights of the migrants in the agenda of the movement against globalisation constitutes the most relevant news. The theme of migration has finally come to be taken by the movement as a cross-cutting question, connected to the processes of the re-structuring and de-structuring of the labour market and to the policies of welfare demolition.

The European Social Forum allows us nowadays to make a huge improvement: the construction of a European movement of migrants and for the rights of migrants, able to oppose to the idea of 'Europe as exclusion' an alternative 'open Europe', the latter being a multicultural, 'half-breed', built upon radically different principles, like as:

- the guarantee of the right to migrate and to enter Europe;

- the free circulation for everybody, including the citizens of 'third countries';

- The regularisation of all the 'sans-papier';

- the idea of an 'inclusive' citizenship, which has to be not only formal , but also civil and social and, so being, able to guarantee civil, social and political rights to all the people that live in a specific territory permanently;

- the guarantee of an equality of rights for all the work-force and the introduction of measures for the safeguard of the exploitation of foreign workers (included those precarious and/or without contract);

- the guarantee of the right to ask for asylum.

It's our opinion that our debate in Florence should be focused analitically on three pivotal themes. First of all, the new regime of borders that has spread over Europe in the last decade, the repercussions of which on both the outside (the so-called 'domino effect' through which it moves towards east and south, firstly involving those countries which are prospective EU members) and the inside (flourishing of detention centres and expulsion systems and tendency to introduce hierarchies in European societies).

Second thing, the movements of migrant people and for the rights of migrants which already exist in Europe; we have to focus upon their features, their spheres of action and forms of demonstration. Finally, we have to discuss the migrant labour in its increasing relevance for the composition of the European workforce and the experience of mobilisation that are growing bigger everywhere, from Spain to Italy.

We propose that those who are going to take part in the Florence Assembly discuss together the necessity of building a European movement for the rights of migrant people through which promoting initiatives, mobilisations and common campaigns next year. It has to be not yet another formally organised network but, rather, a real channel of political communication and exchange of knowledge, experiences and fights. As to us, we will indicate three crucial points concerning which the movement should express itself in Europe.

The right to migrate

No economic, political and social reasons can justify the deprivation of the freedom to emigrate, which is acknowledged to everybody by the articles 13 and 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Should a campaign having as its main priority the introduction of mechanisms for the permanent regularisation of those able to constitute a basis for social integration be put into effect, the order of priorities in the European agenda would be overturned. The rights of migrants cannot be subordinated to the interests of the work donor. The policies for entrance cannot be made contingent. And the militarization of the borders fosters the traffic of human beings, the irregular immigration and the concealed labour, instead of fighting them.

No detention

Detention centres are the symbol of the neoliberal policies of criminalisation of migrants: in Woomera (Australia) and Sangatte (France), Ponte Galeria (Rome) and Malaga (Spain), Machester (UK) and Zurich (Swiss), they are always places of suspension of the rights and one of the principal means by virtue of which the governments try to render repressive policies against the migrants effective.

Women and men are detained for months in jails, guarded by military forces and bounded by barded wire, just because they are guilty of having sought a better life.

We propose a European campaign for closing such centres of detention and blocking the construction of new structures (in Turin, in November the 30th 2002, a street demonstration against one of these centres will take place).

The right of asylum

Since the Gulf war, the world governments have decided to re-legitimate the use of war as an instrument for the resolution of international controversies. The intervention in Kosovo determined the introduction of the allegedly 'humanitarian war'. And after September the 11th, they have contrived a device for justifying, once again, the indiscriminate use of weapons against the civilians: the so-called 'preventive war'.

But the refugees and the people asking for asylum -who, for the great majority, are the direct consequences of these wars- have their right of asylum denied every single day. We propose to start a European campaign for the effective guarantee of the right of asylum for all those who are persecuted for political reasons, regardless of the nature of the prosecutor. This campaign should ask the EU to adopt policies that bound the member states to uniform their systems of reception and policies of integration of people asking for asylum and refugees as soon as possible.

We invite all the organisations and European movements which are interested in taking part to the Florence Assembly -that will take place on November the 8th from 18 to 21 inside the Fortezza da Basso - to send us their contributes. In a preparatory meeting, on November the 7th in the Arci Centre in Piazza dei Ciompi 11 at 12 am, we are going to meet each other and organise the main event together. Hence, we strongly believe that everybody should immediately make both comments and criticisms to our own proposal and short info sheets on specific, 'local' situations known to all the others.

nO WorK No ShOp

For a space/non space of the european networks to go through the esf

Starting from the requests that, from different parts of the movement and especially in the debate of the european networks (for example we look at the euraction hub project, born during the last meeting in Barcelona on the 5th October, but also in the previous meetings of Siviglia, Leiden, Sredisce, Bruzelles, Copenhagen) have been raised on the question of an open space able to go through the ESF, producing elements of research and of independent relations, is our intention to give a clarification regarding how the movement of the desobedients will be in Florence.
Rather than give birth to an identitary and perimetred space we think that we should work to build a moment which will focus on the act of the european network and not only italian defining flexibles convergencies on the themes and on practices.
It is for this reason that the place of which we intend to be part, the space NO WORK NO SHOP that will be located in the racecourse building, will be characterized by a permanent workshop which has its constituent axis in the experimentation of Global tv, a satellite tv which can be seen in Europe, Palestine, Iraq, Turkey and which will try to make active a new frontier of the independent communication.
This one will be defined by an open organizational form which will provide two daily meetings of editorial briefing and the dislocation od six autonomous "islands" of direct programms able to tell about the days of the forum. Global TV could be the opportunity to put in relation the different subjects that think that language and communication guerrilla are leading elements of their political action.
Besides tv, the project Global will develop throgh a network of radio which will work on a satellite channel and through a magazine which will create the number zero during the days of Florence.
The other topics of discussion and experimentation of the space NO WORK NO SHOP will gravitate around the questions of knowledges and of intellectual properties, income and new forms of conflict on work, zapatism and diplomacy from below, the european horizon and migrants.
In the same time NO WORK NO SHOP candidates to be a crossing place also from other spheres of debate and of convergence expressed from the grassroot european networks.
We have said many times to be part among the others of the movement and we have banned any vocation to self-sufficiency and for this reason we think that Florence and our choice to cross not in a linear way the forum, could be an opportunity to share experiences for who, even if expressing elements of critic towards the official forum, doesn't intend to choose a path of separation. This proposal is adressed to all the subjects and networks which of the conflict and radicality make indissociable moments of production of language and of consensus and which intend the conflict itself in terms of inclusive and constituent practices, able to talk and to build relations.
The act of network, the method of organisational horizontality, in our opinion, doesn't exclude the assumption of the connection of relation between act and communication, praxis and production of sense.
So we invite everyone to express as soon as possible on this document in order to produce around Florence a dynamic of multiplication of relations rather than an anorexia of the same.


From an undetermined place on the Earth
Second year of the Permanent Global War

Movement of the desobedients

provisional program of nO WorK No ShOp in Florence

The place No Work No SHOP will be the racecourse building (Ippodromo delle Cascine, parco delle Cascine), this building can give accomodation to at least 3000-5000 people indoor This place will be used for workshops and sleeping. Two main permanent workshops will happen in these days: the global TV and the global radio project.

Global TV (Hot Bird a 13° E Downlink Frequency: 12.520 Polarization: Vertical Symbolrate 27.500 kSymb/s con GlodBox canal 150) will be installed in the no work no shop place and will start to broadcast starting from the 6th at night. As far as tv there will be on the air programms and archive material and we invite everyone to bring videos, and everything could be broadcasted during the days of the forum. There will be editing meeting twice everyday: at 12.oo and at 20.00. The global tv will cover two days of the forum (9th and 10th November from 14.30 to 24.00h), streaming on www.altremappe.org

Global radio: We want to build up a european editing, we're very interested in the idea ofa radio which could connect different points of Europe and different places in the Mediterranean area as Tunisia, Palestine and Iraq. The radio project will start in Florence but will go on for a year after it and will cover the topics of migration and european laws, borders and war, genetic manipulation and the events of the social forum, the radio programms will start on Wednesday with reports from people on the borders who will follow the arrivals of the european delegations. Tune in on Radio Sherwood dal Triveneto, on the Satellite (Hot Bird 6 a 13º E Downlink Frequency 11.095,91 Polarization: horizontal Symbolrate: 27.500 KSymb/s), or on the web site www.sherwood.it

First meeting of the global radio/TV project will be on Wednesday 6th at the Ippodromo at 21h.

Global magazine
The third workshop on communication will be the creation of a number zero of global magazine" a magazine which intends to be a european project .

The project of global magazine will be presented on Friday 8th at 16.ooh at the Ippodromo

This building will also host other workshops, at the moment the agenda is:

Thursday 7th 17.ooh
Students assembly on desobedience and intellectual property

Friday 8th h12.00
meeting on Chiapas organised by Ya Basta entitled: 'Chiapas-Europa. The zapatist experience between local resistance and global struggles, an open debate with Adelfo Regino, del Congreso Nacional Indígena; Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, periodista de 'La Jornada', diario mexicano; Ramon Mantovani, deputate of Rifondazione Comunista; Gianfranco Bettin.

h 14.00
workshop campaign boycot World Bank
h 16.00
presentation of global magazine and meeting of the european networks we will present the number zero of Global Magazine where you can read about europe (Beppe Caccia, Peppe Allegri) about income ( Papi Bronzini, Marco Bascetta and of war ( video interviewto Toni Negri and Naomi Klein,Giulietto Chiesa). The presentation of global will be an opportunity of discussion about contents and practice around communication. Will follow the meeting of the Laboratory of the South
h 19.00
laboratory of creative resistance in preparation of the demo against the detention center in Torino 30th November
h 21.00
general desobedients assembly with all the european networks In the night party

Apart from this provisional agenda we would also like to suggest some workshops in which we will be involved which will take place in the official space of the forum

Thursday 7th
Meeting to prepare the assembly on migrants of Friday at 12.00 Arci, Piazza dei Ciompi 11

h 15.30
seminar on total institutions (jail, detention centers)
h19.00
debate Padre Zanotelli and Luca Casarini on desobedience and non violence

Friday 8th
14.30/19.30
seminar on new municipality
14.30/17.30
European social consulta seminar
17.00
seminar on antiproibizionism MDMA network
18.00
assembly with the european networks on migrants

Eur@ction HUB: satellite experimentation lab for media+social activism 6-10 november 2002, Florence

In search for Space
Let's open a convergence Space
Let's displace Florence

HUB is oxygen, not carbon dioxide. Hub wants to be fresh, unpolluted air that freely diffuses across allegiances, practices, methods. Hub creates space for moments and sites of cooperation, experimentation, creation, and action.

HUB is a trail where different paths cross, a space opening up other dimensions, a site enabling free access to cross-breed and socialize information, knowledge, and express muliplicity of forms, attitudes, ways, experiences of media and social activism.

HUB exists insofar as it materializes in the liberation of a metropolitan public space; it is an area of time, land, imagination emerging from the temporary networking and interconnection of various subjects, individual and collective.

HUB is born out of sharing a method based on decentralization, consensus decision-making, transparence and public communication of practices and decisions

HUB is a journey taken by individuals participating in groups, collectives, networks across Europe and the planet, such as: Indymedia, Intergalactika, Chainworkers, Las Agencias, Yomango, Movimiento de Resistencia Global de Catalunya, Comunicaccio, Laboratorio Desobediente (Spain), Universidad Nomada, Colectivo de Solidaridad con Chiapas, Dinero Gratis, Ninguna persona es ilegal, Apprentice Agitators for a Global Resistance Network (France) etc., etc.

HUB is not charted onto predetermined political terrains, is not listed on the bad guys/good guys records, is neither within nor without the ESF

HUB is a work in progress. It grows as people post new ideas and proposals on the website www.inventati.org/hub

HUB is:
- Mediacenter, a space for digital media experimentation.
- Laboratorio Intergalactika, a place to compare and experiment with new forms of action and organizing.
- Cocktail Block, mobile unit of festive alchemy, nutrient and proteic-tactic actions.
- Space Jamming, cultural clogging and détournement, net art, subvertising
- esa (Euro Social Activism) Lab, to set up connections, campaigns, strengthen social networks, develop common paths of conflict and liberation across the EU
- Tango Argentino, a lab of daily subversion inspired by Argentina's self-government and direct action practices.
- Lab on Social Knowledge, discussion panels to democratize access to education and information, research and study, by designing social investigations and radical cartographies.
- Reclaim the money, welfare activism and social debate on generalized, guaranteed basic income.
- Reclaim the media, creation of independent media and grassroots media infrastructures to be accessed from below and in a communal way, to protest, sabotage, and campaign on the official media.

HUB wants to affirm new social and communication rights.
HUB is an area for creation and free enjoyment of goods and techniques.

Europa, october 2002

more information, directions and a provisonal program here

'Everyone is an expert' will be in florence from tuesday/wednesday (november 5th/6th) til sunday 10th with our bus, the expertmobile. the bus is a mobile internet accesspoint with a tent 3*9 m. we want to screen several videos from antiracist and anti-globalization campaigns and actions. moreover we install a live connection with the open migration conference in manchester during the same time. finally we bring the second edition of the make-world newspaper to the forum. The idea is to create a little meeting point with information, music, talks and drinks inside the forum.

more information: everyone is an expert - the expertbase | the european social forum - another world is possible