Un/deserving migrants and resisting dehumanisation (original) (raw)

2017, Manchester University Press eBooks

Un/deserving migrants and resisting dehumanisation Satwinder: Those that are good people should be given a visa and those who are bad people should be returned. (Ealing and Hounslow focus group, conducted by Sukhwant) Satwinder is someone who migrated to the UK, and who talked to us about the unfair treatment and prejudice she had received since doing so. Yet, her views seem close to the stance taken by the Immigration Minister Mark Harper, quoted in the opening to Chapter 2. Satwinder spoke about herself as having 'earned the right to live or settle in Britain', and others as less deserving of that right. The difference from Harper's 'rational' distinction (based on legal definition) is that here the distinction is being made on openly moral judgements of whether people are 'good' or 'bad'. For Satwinder there are those 'that are working' (good) and there are those that 'get caught up in drink and drugs and should not be here … women drinking and smoking' (bad). A similar sentiment was echoed in a Bradford focus group by Nadia, an Iranian woman who had been settled in the UK for decades and now volunteers at a refugee and asylum seeker group. She said that perhaps it was good that the Go Home van scared some people: Nadia: But I think sometime maybe it's good. Why I say that? I used to have a friend, and I haven't seen her for years, she was Asian, Pakistani, she married another Asian, it took them years to call them here to get married, marriage took only 3 days, he used her 3 days and after third days said, 'I only married to come to this country', and he just vanished. After 2 days they can't find him, so if for people like that I think it's good. (Bradford Focus Group, conducted by Hannah) Though Nadia's example might seem to be more closely concerned with the abuse of immigration rules than Satwinder's, both women