Thousands of refugees seeking safety, and others seeking prosperity attempting to reach the so-called developed world is a ubiquitous fact of our globalizing world. If you want to get rid of them, design ways to police them. If you want to help first, that is altogether a different task.

More than 35,000 African immigrants reached the Canary Islands clandestinely in 2006. In parallel and in the same space, more than 10 million tourists a year spend their holidays on these same islands. This paradoxical situation, in which tourism and immigration converge in one place, that is to say, the beach, is a characteristic and at the same time an ambivalence of overmodernity.[1] In the holiday areas of the Canaries, tourists, immigrants who have arrived in precarious craft, native workers and already legalized immigrants coexist. Their beaches are incessant public spaces, if we accept that ‘public spaces are places where strangers coin- cide’, as defined by Zygmunt Bauman.[2] Under these circumstances solidarity with the immigrant becomes evident. Yet tourism entrepreneurs, politicians, some tourists and, lastly, the citizens of the Canaries see the arrival of these immigrants on ‘their’ beaches as worrying. Last October 29th at least 2,000 people – the organizers spoke of 20,000 – staged a demonstration in Santa Cruz de Tenerife against the arrival of immigrants. Control of the population, a residency law, measures to eradicate the trade in human beings and the defense of ‘the identity of our homeland’ were some of the demonstrators’ demands. Regrettably, a disturbing increase of racism and xenophobia has taken place in the Canary Islands, although not there alone. On one hand, it is easy to forget that only 15 years ago this was still a land of emigrants. On the other hand, we do not acknowledge that we need ‘others’ to determine who or what we are. ‘We need to identify’ the clandestine immigrant who arrives from Africa ‘as the Evil so that the Good becomes apparent. Some do it in order to exploit them, others to sate their racist anger, others to display Christian or parachristian philanthropy, others to delight in and unite a multi-ethnic, multiracial, multicultural world, and others to turn them into an attractive field of academic research. We all need to identify them,’ as the anthropologist Fernando Estévez shrewdly points out.[3] Immigration is the primary concern of most Spanish citizens, leading unemployment and terrorism, and the Spanish government is putting forward socio-labour solutions, taking into account the needs of the labor market and the existence and coming arrival of vast numbers of immigrants ‘without papers’.[4] That the Spanish economy – and that of the Canaries in particular – needs these immigrants to continue developing was as much as admitted by Adán Martín, President of the Regional Government of the Canary Islands[5], when he warned that ‘we cannot omit legally channeling immigration that, on the other hand, is necessary for the first world. It’s a different story now. We must turn around what is today the fear of an intense wave of illegal immigration into Europe through the Canaries and turn it into an opportunity for the Canaries.’ Security is seen mainly in terms of repression. More specifically, the architectural and urban development response prompted by security in developed countries is usually directed towards resolving ‘insecurity’, the dangers and the risks, preventing access by strangers. It is the architecture of fear and intimidation that is being offered as a solution. This has led to a barrier to protect us from the ‘others’. This year alone the Ministerio del Interior Español (Spanish Interior Ministry) has sent back more than 8,000 irregular immigrants on 130 flights. These repatriations are meant to show the immigrant that his or her journey can finish where it started. Other fates which he or she might face along the journey are: death, disappearance, imprisonment, abandonment, marginalisation or, at the very best, hope for a future. The conditions of immigrants’ vulnerability[6], as individuals with human and labour rights, are what are really in question. Solutions must be sought which ensure their safety and their rights along each point of their exodus, finding both concrete, immediate solutions and measures of a general nature for the long term. Concrete, immediate solutions are already being implemented, but everyone should more intensively utilize the wide-ranging experience in ephemeral, low cost, portable structures offered by military architecture and technology. Clandestine immigrants have urgent needs: a roof over their heads, basic infrastructure (health, school, social), rescue facilities, and mobility apparatus. Furthermore, towns must take on the responsibility of serving as refuge areas for those who need short-term shelter. Long-term solutions involve eradicating hunger, canceling the foreign debt of underdeveloped countries and securing democratization. We should recognize and fight against ‘the relationship of cause and effect between debt and hunger, these weapons of mass destruction deployed against the most weak’.[7] However, no solution is both total and definitive; the problem of immigration is complex and global. As Le Corbusier would advise: the architecture and town planning of spaces destined for ‘vulnerable immigration groups’ should not accentuate how they differ from us, identifying them as being different; neither should they be based on a design of exclusion, but rather they should integrate these differences without eradicating them.

Phases
The following table details the 5 phases through which the African immigrant passes, the dangers entailed and possible social, political, legal and financial solutions. Furthermore, immediate, concrete suggestions for actions are added to prevent the future suffering of these irregular immigrants. Some have already been set up, but others could be carried out without considerable investment.

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Concrete Solutions
With regard to immediate action that could be undertaken to improve the safety of clandestine immigrants, we should utilize varied solutions to construct temporary, low-cost areas to be used at any point along their journey, conceptualised as follows:

A. Minimum Housing
– Technically refined version of the primitive tent, associated with nomadism. The union of textile companies and pneumatic structures, supported by constant air pressure, would permit temporary, easily transported structures.
– Cardboard tube structures like those used by Shigeru Ban for the Rwanda refugee camp in 1999 for UNHCR. Previously aluminum posts and plastic had been used, but refugees ended up selling them. Nearby tree trunks were then used, but deforestation was a very serious concern. At that point a low-cost alternative was sought: cardboard tubes that could be constructed cheaply with simple machinery, reducing transport costs.
– The use of interwoven recycled material would permit the use of any type of plastic, plant fibers, old cloth, dry branches, metal, etcetera, generated by first world recycling operations or extant locally.
– The recycling of shipping containers which can be turned into housing with minimum investment.

B. Infrastructure: Health, Police, Shelter, Workshop, School or Social
– Immediate Emergency Response Equipment for the arrival of immigrants on Canarian coasts to consist of three vehicles: an ambulance, one transport vehicle with a field hospital and another with assistance equipment. The inflatable field hospital covers 50 square meters when open, but less than one cubic meter when deflated; two people can transport it and it is operational in 10 minutes. It consists of four props inflated by an electric motor and holds 20 stretchers plus a first-aid kit.
– Internment centers for immigrants in the Canaries – capacity for 250 detainees guarded by 32 policemen. The outer protection wall of prefabricated concrete is 4 meters in height. Two meters away another 6-meter high metal fence is placed with sensors every meter.
– Recovery of industrial warehouses, factories, obsolete infrastructures or containers.
– Given their light construction, flexibility, transient nature and protection green- houses, familiar across the Canaries for the mass cultivation of bananas, could be utilized as temporary reception centers, low-cost housing – as the French architects Lacaton & Vassal have already done – or as sanitary installations.

C. Survival and provisioning equipment
– Rucksacks with a basic survival and provisions kit like those used by the military.
– Self-inflating rescue craft like those on planes or boats.
– Thermal, waterproof clothing.
– Lifejackets.

D. Mobility apparatus
– First world recycled vehicles: bicycles, motorcycles, cars, buses, motorboats, etc.
– Alternative prototypes to the use of fuel, by means of solar and other energy

Creative Design Agenda
No 5
• Invent Program
• Empower
• Provide Choice
• Focus on Trust
• Engage…

Stop thinking that all security design is keeping people out. It may be possible to draft a system of rescue, reha- bilitation and integration that will ultimately be beneficial to society.