Time in the shelter: Asylum, destitution and legal uncertainty (original) (raw)
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The detention of asylum seekers in the UK
Punishment & Society, 2005
Media and political representations of asylum seekers and refugees have been infused with language denoting images of ‘danger’, ‘criminality’ and ‘risk’. Despite attempts to provide for those seeking asylum in the UK, those in need have frequently been stigmatized and criminalized. Policies and practices, intended to respond to those fleeing economic hardship or political persecution, have been guided by such depictions. This article illustrates the use of detention as a mechanism for purportedly securing the containment and removal of ‘illegals’. While the use of detention may be seen as an attempt to deter ‘undeserving’ asylum seekers from seeking sanctuary in the UK, this article argues that this practice is, in effect, a fundamentally punitive method to assuage public fears concerning supposed ‘risk’ and potential dangers to ‘security’.
Welcome to Britain: The Cultural Politics of Asylum
Questions of asylum and immigration have taken centre stage in national and international debate and figure prominently in the domestic political agendas of wealthy states and nations. In Australia, Europe and the US, harsh and punitive asylum and immigration laws are being enacted incrementally and asylum-seekers are subject increasingly to detention. Through a focus on the detention of asylum-seekers in the UK, this article makes a critical intervention in current theoretical debates around asylum. Focusing on the writing of Giorgio Agamben, this article suggests that within political and cultural theory, there has been a turn to the figure of the asylum-seeker (and the refugee) as a trope for theorizing the political constitution of the present. By opening up a critical dialogue between humanitarian, media studies and abstract theoretical accounts of immigration detention, this article produces a critique of the ways in which theory appropriates the figure of the asylum-seeker.
Stateless By Any Other Name: Refused Asylum-Seekers in the United Kingdom
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2011
This article maintains that there are certain aspects of the UK asylum system which may lead to statelessness-like situations. In order to understand how this can happen, we reconsider Hannah Arendt's concept of statelessness, which entails three losses of home (exile), state protection (basic rights) and having a place in the world (political rights). Through interviews with refused and long-term asylum-seekers in Oxford and London, and one focus group, we examine the impact of negative asylum-application decisions on applicants’ access to rights. The main finding of this research is that, when denied state protection, refused asylum-seekers endure an existence not unlike stateless people. This study calls into question the application of key principles of human rights as they relate to refused asylum-seekers, especially the tenets of dignity and non-discrimination, and the right to family life.
2010
"This thesis uses an empirically informed Marxist analysis to investigate the role of interests, consciousness and unpaid activity of refugees and asylum seekers in shaping their relationships with the British state, including case studies from the city of Newcastle upon Tyne. I argue that antagonism between the British state and refugees from economically underdeveloped countries is rooted in capitalist relations of production, with Britain occupying an imperialist position. The thesis advances a novel perspective on ‘social capital’, understood as purposive and sustained forms of non-contractual engagement, with implicit norms and values. Social capital is ‘unmasked’ as a way of understanding and intervening in relations at an individual level, in order to influence change at a social level. I argue that the tendency of recent Labour governments’ policy has been to break up social capital formations among refugees which are seen as threatening, whilst actively cultivating formations which engage refugees on an individual basis, as part of managing their oppression. The thesis identifies contradictions and possibilities for resistance within this process, such as simultaneous tendencies for volunteering to contribute to more collective forms of identity and more individualised forms of action. The multi-level research design explores processes connecting the individual to the global. Empirical data is used to interrogate and develop a theoretical framework which is rooted in classical Marxism, draws on insights developed within qualitative social research methods and anti-oppressive practice, and engages creatively with challenges from post-modernism and feminism. The methodology combines: theoretical research; secondary statistics and literature at an international level; interviews with key participants and archival research on local histories of migration and settlement, including three organisational case studies; four contemporary organisational case studies; and individual volunteer case studies based on semi-structured interviews and focus groups with eighteen refugees and asylum seekers."
Coping with Vulnerability: The Limbo Created by the UK Asylum System
International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2020
Upon arrival in the United Kingdom (UK), asylum claimants undergo a complex application process with no guarantee of being granted leave to remain. Throughout this process, applicants live in ‘limbo’ with no certainty regarding their future. They are forced into poverty, are at risk of destitution and often live in substandard accommodation, all of which causes further harm, compounding the circumstances from which they have fled. This paper explores the stress and vulnerability faced by male asylum seekers during the application process and how they cope or resist vulnerability during this time. Based on narrative interviews, this research finds that the most stressful experiences for participants include living in ‘limbo’ throughout the asylum application process and beyond. As such, many coped by using distraction techniques, seeking support and through cognitive restructuring.
eSharp, 2017
In September 2015 photographs of the body of a young Syrian boy, who had drowned attempting to make the crossing by boat from Turkey to Greece, were published in newspapers around the world. These images led to a rise in public and political sympathy and support for refugees in many EU countries. However, such sympathy was short-lived, prompting some journalists to describe 2016 as 'the year the world stopped caring about refugees' (Safdar & Strickland 2016). In this paper, I begin by discussing changes in UK immigration and asylum policy over the past 30 years and highlighting the ways in which successive governments have introduced legislation that has created a 'hostile environment' designed to deter asylum seekers from entering the UK and to encourage failed asylum seekers to leave the UK. Such policies have restricted the civil and social rights of asylum seekers whilst simultaneously the UK government has focused upon policies for the integration of those granted refugee status only. This paper will report on the findings from interviews conducted with 19 refugees and asylum seekers living in Wales and the ways they spoke about their rights in the UK. Each of the interviewees had been living in the UK between one month and twelve years at the time of interview. The data are taken from a wider project focusing on refugee and asylum seeker integration in Wales. I show how policies introduced in recent years have led to restrictions on the day-today lives of asylum seekers in Wales and their ability to integrate, focusing particularly on the accommodation provided to asylum seekers via the current dispersal system and the barriers faced in accessing education.