Short explainer

The main criticism of harmful immigration policies is that they are “too expensive.” The Rwanda plan was bad not because it is “expensive” or “unworkable”, but because it is inhumane. The Bibby Stockholm or inhumane asylum accommodation are bad because they harm migrants. 

Ultimately, policies like detention, deportation or offshoring plans like the Rwanda plan or inhumane accommodation like the Bibby Stockholm or putting migrants in disused military sites would still be wrong even if they were cheap or free. 

Immigration policies like the outsourcing of asylum accommodation or border policing to private companies for million pound contracts, or forced offshoring of racialised people for a fee, clearly demonstrates how people from the Global South are still dehumanised as merchandise. Ultimately, these systems are put in place to maintain White supremacist control, isolation and containment (or ‘management’) of Black and Brown people. All under the guise of cost management and “being tough on immigration”.

We must stop defaulting to arguments based on cost. We cannot put a price on humanity or someone’s life. If we truly want to seek migrant justice, and justice for People of Colour, then we have to reframe our arguments. 

Long explainer

The ‘cost’ of specific immigration policies often forms the basis of cross-spectrum political criticism. Critiques of the infamous Rwanda Bill were a poignant example of this, with the main opposition resting on how expensive the scheme is. However, this argument demonstrates a broader issue with mainstream criticism of immigration policies. 

The Rwanda plan was bad not because it is “expensive” or “unworkable”, but because it is inhumane. Similarly, the Bibby Stockholm or inhumane asylum accommodation are bad because they harm migrants.

Criticism of recent immigration policies under the increasingly cruel hostile environment tends to centre around how much they cost. Despite the inhumane and isolating conditions onboard the Bibby Stockholm barge- which saw the death by suicide of Leonard Farruku in December 2023, the main opposition to the accommodation continuously focuses on the ‘cost to taxpayers’.

Criticism of the Rwanda Plan took on a similar focus. Shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper MP, has focused on the cost as part of her criticism of the Government’s immigration plans. In December last year, she stated: “Hundreds of millions of pounds could now be £400 million, and I would like the immigration minister – whichever of the immigration ministers is winding up today – to explain whether in fact this is now a £400 million plan.” 

The fixation on cost calls into question if this critique can ever truly go hand-in-hand with any ethical argument. Fundamentally, we must consider the conditionality of the argument: if the Rwanda plan or other immigration policies were cheap or free, would that satisfy opposition to it? The answer is surely no because if these plans were not “expensive” then they would still be inherently cruel and wrong.

Capitalism and commodification of values

We can define capitalism as it actually exists in the world as an economic system that takes things which have a value but not price (humans, nature, ideas) and turns them into resources which can be owned and given a price which can then be bought and sold. 

Capitalism has its origins in the enslavement and colonisation of indigenous people’s abroad and the violent enclosure of common land at home. This history has contributed to a deeply hierarchical international economic system. Today, governments and businesses in the Global North extract resources and protect their wealth from the Global South through a variety of mechanisms including debt, trade agreements, military power, tax havens, intellectual property and direct political intervention. 

Increasingly diverse areas of life now justify their existence in terms of their contribution to the economy. One famous children’s charity justified a campaign to encourage dads to read to their children on the basis that improving literacy would increase GDP by 1.5 per cent by 2020. In 2014 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a prominent economic institution, highlighted that mental health issues cost the UK around £70 billion every year.

Migration deals commodify racialised people

From the 17th century and beginnings of the transatlantic enslavement of people from Africa, Black and Brown people have been continuously treated as merchandise in a capitalist world. This laid the foundations for the racist norms that continue to persist in social, political and economic power structures in 2024. 

In Capitalism and Slavery, published in 1944, Eric Williams, a young historian who later became the first Prime Minister of an independent Trinidad and Tobago, forcefully argued that slavery was central to the transition from feudalism to our modern economic system of capitalism.  

The transatlantic enslavement trade also played a major role in the development of two central finance and insurance institutions in our modern economic systems. Donald E. Grant Jr demonstrates the links between many major financial and insurance institutions today including Lehman Brothers, Lloyd’s of London, Aetna Insurance, Barclays, JPMorgan Chase and the enslavement-driven cotton industry. Narratives and litigation records from the time demonstrate how these organisations monetised the African enslavement trade to leverage resources for the building of their personal empires and global brands.

Philip Roscoe describes that the ‘obscene novelty of the slavers’ banking system was that this financial value was secured on human bodies’. He also relates the story of the captain of the slave ship Zong. On a voyage in 1781 he realised he was unlikely to land his cargo of sickening and malnourished slaves, so he ordered 133 people to be thrown overboard. The perverse legal logic was that if part of the cargo had to be jettisoned to save the ship, it would be covered by the insurance. Insurance made the value of this human capital real and bankable.

Not only have financial and insurance companies which exist today benefited economically from enslavement as outlined above. Important finance and insurance practices were developed in this period which are widely used today. Slavery has been central to US, European and global economic development, not separate or opposed to it.

Immigration policies like the outsourcing of asylum accommodation or border policing to private companies for million pound contracts, or forced offshoring of racialised people for a fee, clearly demonstrates how people from the Global South are still dehumanised as merchandise. This concept can also be seen in the for-profit private prison system and mass incarceration of People of Colour. Whether it’s prisons or the immigration system, the State and private companies view racialised people as something to be dealt with or a bargaining tool for economic gain. 

Furthermore, the existence and growth of the asylum accommodation estate requires a similar analysis of how states view racialised migrants. Asylum accommodation has been a vocal point of debates on migration in the UK in the last few years. The Government has promoted ideas of turning barges or disused military bases into asylum accommodation after criticism that hotels were ‘costing too much’. However, plans to move asylum seekers to isolated and fortified accommodation demonstrates something more sinister, and we can learn a huge amount from opposition to the prison industrial complex. Ultimately, these systems are put in place to maintain White supremacist control, isolation and containment (or ‘management’) of Black and Brown people. All under the guise of cost management and “being tough on immigration”.

By focusing the argument on cost, opposition merely continues to reinforce this racist argument that reduces People of Colour from the Global South as goods to be exchanged, rather than human beings at risk of harm. The ‘expensive’ argument continues to be the loudest critique, all while ‘pro-migration’ arguments call for higher net-migration quotas to fill employment gaps and carry out cheap labour.

Consistently leading arguments by focusing on the cost undermines any ethical argument we seek to make. It puts a price on migrants’ lives and this continues the colonial tradition of reducing people from the Global South as a ‘problem’ to be managed or something to be exchanged for money. If we truly want to seek migrant justice, and justice for People of Colour, then we have to reframe our arguments.

Check out our Words Matter campaign.

Find out more: 

• Commodification of racialised people through immigration systems – Migrants’ Rights Network 
• People’s Economy Website