Q&A with Daniel Trilling
"Many of the rigid-seeming categories that we apply to migration start to break down when you see things from the perspective of people on the move."
Throughout the Orwell Festival we’re sharing new writing and insights from this year’s finalists. The Orwell Prizes for Journalism 2022 shortlist, released last month, highlights the finest politically engaged journalism published in 2021. To see the list, and all our awards, visit our website here.
Daniel Trilling is a freelance journalist and author who writes for the Guardian, London Review of Books and others about migration, nationalism and human rights, and whose shortlisted pieces include pieces on the policing of Europe’s borders and the crisis in Afghanistan. We asked Daniel about the story behind his first article, an in-depth investigation into the UK’s own ‘broken’ Home Office.
Daniel Trilling will be in conversation with fellow Orwell Prize finalist Sally Hayden at Foyles Bookshop Charing Cross, London, this Monday 4th July, from 7pm, to discuss their reporting on migrant routes into Europe. Tickets from Foyles here.
Your 2018 book Lights in the Distance followed the lives of people caught up in the refugee crisis across Europe. What prompted you to tell the story from 'inside' the Home Office?
I spent a long time trying to show the reality of life for people at the sharp end of border control. In particular, I wanted to show how many of the rigid-seeming categories that we apply to migration start to break down when you see things from the perspective of people on the move. I'll never forget one of my interviewees, a man who was rescued from drowning in the Mediterranean, telling me: "it's not as if one person has 'refugee' printed on his forehead and another has 'economic migrant.'"
Increasingly, however, I got interested in the people who administer the system, and the institutions through which they do it. The Home Office, as it relates to immigration, is a classic example of an institution whose existence we take for granted. We've even become used to the steady stream of negative stories that emanate from the department. But why does it exist? Who built it? Does it work in the way the people who run it intend it to work?
‘Inside the Home Office’ describes a deep-seated blame culture, an internal fear of being 'not fit for purpose', which in turn fuels defensiveness around existing policies and practices. What do you make of calls for the department to be abolished?
For me, calls to abolish the Home Office miss the point. The way the Home Office is tells us something about the way Britain works. It is the product of several generations of politicians who thought you could buy off voters with promises of ever-tougher immigration control - and of austerity-driven Conservative governments who thought you could farm out large parts of that task to wider society. Its policies are built on more than 50 years of laws designed to exclude people from citizenship, sometimes explicitly on the basis of race, as Britain made the transition from empire to nation-state. It has been shaped from the outside by a billionaire-owned right-wing press that claims to speak on behalf of ordinary British citizens but which opposes genuine efforts to build solidarity among working people - such as the current strikes over pay and conditions - and offers them division instead. It wields immense power over the lives of individuals but accountability has been diffused via a labyrinth of regulations and outsourcing contracts.
There is a long and admirable tradition of abolitionist politics, which holds that in order to create a world without borders you also have to transform the social conditions that make national borders a fundamental part of the world we live in. If that's what meant by "abolish", then fine. If not, then I worry it's just a substitute for thinking about how we change the country that gave rise to the Home Office.
How difficult was it to convince your sources to talk on record? Besides Theresa May, was there anyone you wanted to talk to, but didn’t?
Most people were happy to talk as long as they remained anonymous. Among former staff, even those who were strongly critical, I felt there was a residual loyalty to the department. It's not an ideal arrangement for a journalist, and I think the culture of off-the-record briefing in Westminster enables an overly cosy relationship between politicians and the commentariat. I tried to mitigate that by speaking to as many people as possible and seeing what patterns developed.
There are always more people to talk to. I felt that I was only just scratching the surface and that I could have gone on interviewing hundreds of people, adding more and more detail to the map. But that's journalism. Someone (usually your editor... thank you David Wolf) needs to say stop.
To what extent does this government's attitude to immigration represent something new in British politics?
On the face of it this government is offering a version of what governments have offered voters for years: let's encourage the good immigration ("the brightest and best") and stop the bad. But things always turn out to be more complicated than that, because immigration is about human beings with minds and desires of their own. Lorry drivers don't obediently queue up for work just because you want presents delivered in time for Christmas. People fleeing war don't necessarily stop getting into boats because you've appointed a Clandestine Channel Threat Commander.
The question, then, is what happens when things don't go the government's way? It's here that I think the current government differs from its predecessors. It is driven by culture war politics that lead it to respond with symbolic (but nonetheless real) acts of brutality such as the Rwanda policy when its authority is threatened, and to attack elements of the liberal democratic system it believes stands in its way. Diffuse issues are all linked together into a single battle against the blob, or the metropolitan liberal elite, or cultural Marxism, or whatever the Mail, the Telegraph or the Sun decides to call it this week.
This approach helped deliver an election in 2019 - but it is now starting to upset parts of society you might not expect. The increasing willingness of Home Office staff to speak out against their own department's policies is part of the growing backlash. People need to keep on speaking out.
Daniel Trilling is a freelance journalist and author who writes regularly for the Guardian, London Review of Books and others about migration, nationalism and human rights. His most recent book, Lights in the Distance: Exile and Refuge at the Borders of Europe, was shortlisted for the 2019 Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing.