The Biopolitics of Asylum Seeker Housing Provision in the United
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! ! ! The Biopolitics of Asylum Seeker Housing Provision in the United Kingdom! ! The COMPASS Asylum Housing Project! and the Securitisation of Home! ! ! Steven Andrew Hirschler! ! ! ! PhD! ! ! University of York! ! Politics! ! ! March 2015! ! Abstract! ! This thesis uses data gathered from twenty-six semi-structured interviews with asylum seekers and eighteen area support workers and volunteers in three UK dispersal regions – Glasgow, Yorkshire and Humber, and the North East of England – to explore residents’ perceptions of their housing and community experiences under the Home Office’s ‘COMPASS’ project. Through individual accounts with refugee and asylum support service staff, I highlight specific housing conditions ranging from the quality of housing to respondents’ perceptions of safety and community inclusion. For those who experienced moves during the transitional period between contracts, I gather observational accounts of the practical, psychological and physical effects of being moved, which include the management of children moving schools or residents being placed further away from shopping facilities, support services and health care practices.! ! The empirical research is situated within a historical account of British immigration policy dating back to the twelfth century and a theoretical framework of Foucault’s biopower and the expansion of Deleuze’s ‘society of control’. Attempting to distance this research from alternative theories of biopower, such as that of Agamben and Hardt and Negri, which I argue conflate biopolitical and sovereign methods of control, I demonstrate the resistive capacity of asylum seekers through their engagement with support agencies or their individual decisions to disengage their contact with housing provider representatives. Through an analysis of interview responses using purposive coding methods, I assess the extent to which current UK housing practices represent a deliberate policy of ‘deterrence’ and the degree to which contracts with multinational private security firms reflect a neoliberal strategy of privatisation and market creation concurrent with state aims toward population management and control.! ! ! "2 Contents! ! Abstract! 2! Contents!3! Included Figures!5! Acknowledgements!6! Author’s Declaration!7! Introduction!8! Research aims and literature overview!11! Research methodology!16! Ethical considerations!22! Chapter 1: Navigating theories of biopower!28! 1.1 The Agambenian dimension to asylum studies!35! 1.2 Challenging Agamben and considering asylum housing ! through a new lens: Hollifield’s ‘Liberal Paradox’!40! 1.3 Foucault’s ‘biopower’ in context!43! Chapter 2: Patterns of Exclusion: A History of UK ! Immigration Control!51! 2.1 Exclusionary precedence: a history of immigration controls ! from 1290 to 1920!54! 2.1.1 1290: Edward I’s Expulsion of the Jews!54! 2.1.2 1793: The Enemy Within!58! 2.1.3 The Aliens Act, 1905!60! 2.1.4 Aliens Restriction Act 1914!65! 2.1.5 Aliens Restriction (Amendment) Act 1919 & ! Aliens Order 1920!66! 2.2 ‘We have been here before’ - constructing the ‘undeserving’ !68! Chapter 3: The governance of exclusion: sovereignty, immunity ! and the securitisation of home! 78! 3.1 Forging Britishness: Explanations of Identity Construction!79! 3.2 Immunisation and Domopolitics!85! 3.3 Uncoupling sovereignty from the human rights debate!90! Chapter 4: Asylum service provision and the consolidation of ! securitised (and marketised) mechanisms of social control!95! 4.1: Dispersal and its effects!98! 4.2 COMPASS: Securitising and marketising asylum service provision!107! 4.3 Introducing selected dispersal regions!117! 4.3.1 COMPASS and dispersal trends!119! 4.3.2 Glasgow!120! 4.3.3 North East of England, Yorkshire and Humber!123! Chapter 5: Views of COMPASS from the asylum service sector!128! 5.1 The role of the refugee and asylum support sector in Britain!130! 5.2 The impact of financial cuts and funding dependencies!132! "3 5.3 Comparing social welfare considerations before and after ! COMPASS!138! 5.3.1 The changing nature of inter-agency collaboration!140! 5.3.2 Assessing equality impact in a post-COMPASS ! environment!144! 5.4 Agency of the excluded? Asylum Seekers and Refugees ! as volunteers!146! 5.5 ‘Shadow State’ or opportunities for resistance? Refugee ! agencies, activism and the risks of co-optation!152! Chapter 6: The context of asylum housing: past trauma and the ! transition to COMPASS !159! 6.1 Pre-migration trauma!163! 6.2 Experiences within the ‘detention estate’!167! 6.3 Life in transition!177! 6.4 The beginning of ‘all of the chaos’: experiences during the ! transition to COMPASS!180! 6.5 ‘Welcome Packs’ and Information about Dispersal Areas!183! Chapter 7: Experiences within the asylum housing ‘estate’!186! 7.1 Zones of discomfort!187! 7.2 Quality of COMPASS accommodation !191! 7.3 The biopolitics of staff/resident relations!201! 7.4 Experiences of discrimination! 206! 7.5 Life on the periphery: Experiences living outside support!207! Chapter 8 and Conclusions: Challenging ‘bare life’: struggle and ! resistance within the securitised home!210! 8.1 Avoiding stagnation: asylum seekers’ involvement in ! self-enrichment and entertainment activities!212! 8.2 The role of support organisations in challenging the conditions ! of ‘bare life’!214! 8.3 Examples of agency and resistance within the society of control!217! Concluding Remarks!218! Appendix 1: Information Sheet for Asylum Seeker!223! Appendix 2: Information Sheet for Service Worker!224! Appendix 3: Interview Coding Scheme (Asylum Seekers)!226! Appendix 4: Interviewed Asylum and Refugee Support Workers!229! Bibliography!230! ! "4 Included Figures! ! Figure 1.1: Number of dispersed asylum seekers under Section 95 !102! !(1999 IAA) from Q4 2001-Q4 2013! Figure 1.2: Percentage of total number of asylum seekers in receipt of !102! accommodation support under Section 95 Support (1999 IAA) by region: ! !Q4 2003 through Q4 2013! Figure 1.3: Children in UK immigration removal centres from! !2009 to 2014!113! Figure 1.4: Number of Dispersed Asylum Seekers in Glasgow by Year!121! !! Figure 1.5: Percentage of Total UK Dispersed Asylum Seekers in ! !Glasgow by year!121! Figure 1.6: Number of dispersed asylum seekers in the North East ! of England by year!125! ! Figure 1.7: Percentage of Total UK Dispersed Asylum Seekers in the !125! !North East of England by year! Figure 1.8: Rate of asylum seekers dispersed to Middlesbrough, !125! Newcastle and Sunderland as percentages of the overall ! !dispersal rate to the North East of England by year! !Figure 1.9: Demographic data of interview participants (asylum seekers)!163! "5 Acknowledgements! ! I wish to thank my wife, Lydia, for her hard work and patience during the years spent researching and writing this thesis and for remaining resolute in the face of challenging life events. Without the limitless love and support of my parents, Patricia and William, and my brother, Michael, my years at university would not have been possible. Added appreciation goes to my wife’s family and a small, but considerably close network of friends.! ! I reserve special thanks for Dr Simon Parker, my academic supervisor over the course of two degrees. I cherish his friendship, enthusiasm, and intellect. I am humbled by his tireless efforts, along with those of his wife, Esme, to promote equality and compassion in all forms of human engagement.! ! Thanks go to Professor Paul Gready for his measured outlook, his helpful advice in conducting practical research and his attempts to rein in my tendency toward hyperbole.! ! ! "6 Author’s Declaration! ! I, Steven Hirschler, confirm that this thesis is wholly my own, original piece of work. No element, part or whole, has appeared in any other published form or distributed in another format. As this was a self-funded dissertation, I am neither dependent upon nor affiliated with any funding body. As a research student within the Department of Politics at the University of York, I was required to apply for approval from and fulfil the obligations of the Economics, Law, Management, Politics and Sociology Ethics Committee.! ! "7 Introduction! ! !At the outset of this research project, I had in mind an entirely different series of aims and objectives. In late 2010, asylum and refugee services in the United Kingdom were facing a transformative period; funding cuts and diminished access to charitable grant resources were impacting services’ abilities to meet the needs of communities that had come to rely on them for critical advice and support. The charity, Refugee Action, published a report in January 2011 that highlighted the many areas of its service affected by a reduction in Home Office funding, which included a 63 per cent cut to its One Stop Service, a 50 per cent cut to its Initial Accommodation Wraparound Service and a full termination of funding for the charity’s Refugee Integration and Employment Service. As a result, Refugee Action shut offices in four cities and reduced services in three others (Refugee Action, 2011: p. 1). Around the same time, in November 2010, the Ministry of Justice released its Proposals for the Reform of Legal Aid in England in Wales, a document that set out the coalition government’s aims to reduce Legal Aid spending by 23 per cent, which would represent a £350m savings per annum by 2014-15 (Ministry of Justice, 2010: p. 5). In response, Anne Singh, an immigration lawyer, and Frances Webber, a retired immigration barrister, published a report itemising the effects Legal Aid cuts would have on the lives of destitute asylum seekers, which included possible threats to their ‘fundamental human rights’ (Singh and Webber, 2010: p. 6). In this climate of diminished access to legal and practical support, I believed that an important investigation might be one that analysed interview data collected from asylum and refugee support staff responding to questions about the ways in which these cuts were impacting their abilities to deliver services and the effects these changes were having on the conditions and circumstances of asylum seekers living in the UK.