Spells of belonging

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 128-131
Author(s):  
Susannah Crockford
Keyword(s):  
Family Relationships ◽  
Civil Service ◽  
Hostile Environment ◽  
Home Office ◽  
Common Strategy ◽  
Immigration And Asylum ◽  
The Uk ◽  
British Home

Anna Tuckett’s piece on the paper trails left, created and curated by migrant streams crossing Europe raises questions on how social personhood is legally affirmed or undermined by legal paperwork. As is now a well aired fact, those UK citizens affected by the ‘hostile environment’ instituted by the British Home Office (HO) from 2012 onwards were disproportionately black and descended from former Caribbean colonies (Olusoga 2019). I consider my experience relating to immigration practices and assumptions to indicate aspects of this environment in the making. In 2004, I spent six months working for the civil service in the UK as a blandly labelled ‘presenting officer’. A presenting officer presented the Home Secretary’s case for refusing immigration and asylum claims that the applicant had appealed. In such cases, it was common strategy to draw attention to the lack of consistency, in terms of both narrative and between a person and their papers. Narrative consistency was required: the same story had to be told to the case officer on presenting a claim and in the courtroom to the adjudicator and in any and every opportunity to retell the tale the applicant had. Any inconsistency was taken as evidence of deceit. A person had to be able to document their birth, entries and exits to the UK, schooling, workplaces, income and family relationships. The requirements of consistency reified relationships that had documentary existence over those that did not. Lack of documents undermined a person’s ability to make their case.

scholarly journals Redrawing the border through the ‘Right to Rent’: Exclusion, discrimination and hostility in the English housing market

2020 ◽  
pp. 026101831989704 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Mckee ◽  
Sharon Leahy ◽  
Trudi Tokarczyk ◽  
Joe Crawford
Keyword(s):  
Racial Profiling ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Criminal Prosecution ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Hostile Environment ◽  
Home Office ◽  
Illegal Migrants ◽  
Guidance Documents ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Right

The UK Immigration Act 2016 is central to the Conservative Government’s drive to create a more hostile environment for potential migrants and current ‘illegal’ migrants residing in the UK. The Right to Rent provisions of the Act, which require private landlords in England to conduct mandatory immigration document checks on prospective tenants, or face sizeable fines and criminal prosecution, have been highlighted as a key facet of the legislation. Drawing on qualitative interviews with key experts and analysis of Home Office guidance documents, we argue the Right to Rent has turned the private rental market into a border-check, with landlords responsibilised to perform ‘everyday bordering’ on behalf of the State. This creates a potentially discriminatory environment for all migrants, as well as for British citizens who lack documentation and/or may be subject to racial profiling. It may also be forcing vulnerable, undocumented migrants into even more precarious housing situations.

scholarly journals The negative health effects of hostile environment policies on migrants: A cross-sectional service evaluation of humanitarian healthcare provision in the UK

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie J. Weller ◽  
Liam J. Crosby ◽  
Eleanor R. Turnbull ◽  
Rachel Burns ◽  
Anna Miller ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Service Evaluation ◽  
Population Characteristics ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Hostile Environment ◽  
Healthcare Provision ◽  
Home Office ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Uk

Background: Recent UK ‘hostile environment’ immigration policies, including obligatory charging and sharing of confidential data between NHS Digital and the Home Office, have created an atmosphere of fear and exposed already highly marginalised and vulnerable groups to significant health risks by increasing barriers to accessing NHS care.  Methods:  This is a cross-sectional observational study of patients accessing healthcare at Doctors of the World (DOTW) in the UK. DOTW is a humanitarian organisation, providing care to those excluded from NHS healthcare. We aimed to describe population characteristics of individuals using DOTW services and identify groups at greatest risk of facing ‘hostile environment’-related barriers to NHS care, specifically being denied healthcare or fear of arrest. Results: A total of 1474 adults were seen in 2016. Nearly all were non-EU/EEA nationals (97.8%; 1441/1474), living in poverty (68.6%; 1011/1474). DOTW saw a large number of undocumented migrants (57.1%; 841/1474) and asylum seekers (18.2%; 268/1474). 10.2% (151/1474) of adults seen had been denied NHS healthcare and 7.7% (114/1474) were afraid to access NHS services. Asylum seeker status was associated with the highest risk (adjusted odds ratio (OR): 2.48; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.48-4.14) of being denied NHS healthcare and being undocumented was associated with the highest risk of fearing arrest (adjusted OR: 3.03; 95% CI: 1.70-5.40). Conclusions: Our findings make visible the multiple and intersecting vulnerabilities of individuals forced to seek care outside of the NHS, underlining the public health imperative for the government to urgently withdraw its ‘hostile environment’ policies and address their negative health impacts.

scholarly journals Feeling/being ‘out of place’: psychic defence against the hostile environment

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-164
Author(s):  
Nini Fang
Keyword(s):  
Object Relations ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Hostile Environment ◽  
Immigrant Worker ◽  
Internal Dynamics ◽  
Home Office ◽  
Object Relatedness ◽  
The Uk

What is it like to be an immigrant worker in a ‘hostile environment’ in the UK? How does the form of discursive environment, which sees immigration as a social epidemic, impact on an immigrant worker’s experience of their cultural (dis)localities and subjectivity? In this article, I draw on my personal, psychoanalytically informed voice to explore these questions, by foregrounding the materiality of the hosting environment as the place in which the present relational matrix takes place, in which the internal dynamics of object relations are lived in the present sense, and the idiosyncratic expression of selfhood assumes forms.The materialised reality of the place matters not least because it is drenched in power relations but also as it is where an immigrant worker seeks to live. The hostile host, in this sense, sees immigrants not simply as its guests (Derrida and Dufourmantelle, 2000), but as unwelcome yet persistent guests to be yoked to their place of otherness and inferiority. By presenting vignettes of my encounters with the Home Office, I call into question the existential conditions of the immigrant worker and the potentiality for object-relatedness on relational grounds problematically punctured by hostile rhetoric. Could an immigrant’s sense of locality ever be anything but ‐ evoking Said ([1999] 2013) ‐ ‘out of place’? To address this, I will explore ‘out of place’ not simply as an emotional, lived experience, but also as a state of being that is embodied, psychically worked on and strategically evoked in resisting the power of the hostile host.

scholarly journals Creating a ‘hostile environment for migrants’: the British government’s use of health service data to restrict immigration is a very bad idea

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucinda Hiam ◽  
Sarah Steele ◽  
Martin McKee
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Service ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Health Impact ◽  
Hostile Environment ◽  
Home Office ◽  
Department Of Health ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Service Data

AbstractIn January 2017, the UK Government made public a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Department of Health, National Health Service (NHS) Digital and the Home Office. This Memorandum allows for the more expedited sharing of a patient’s non-clinical data, specifically from the NHS England to the Home Office. The Government justified the MoU as in the ‘public interest to support effective immigration enforcement’. In this review, we seek to unpack this justification by providing, first, a background to the MoU, placing it in the context of creating a ‘hostile environment’ for migrants – a project initially sought by Theresa May in her time as Home Secretary. We then explore the potential impact of data sharing on individual health, public health and on health professionals. We conclude that the MoU could threaten both individual and public health, while placing health professionals in an unworkable position both practically and in terms of their duties to patients around confidentiality. As such, we agree with colleagues’ position that it should be suspended, at least until a full consultation and health impact assessment can be carried out.

Alternatives: A Socio-political Commentary from the USA

1990 ◽  
Vol 18 (1_part_1) ◽  
pp. 3-10
Author(s):  
Andrew N. Rowan ◽  
Karl A. Andrutis
Keyword(s):  
Toxicity Testing ◽  
Home Office ◽  
Political Commentary ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of ◽  
Animal Use ◽  
The Uk ◽  
British Home ◽  
Congressional Action

The socio-political aspects of the alternatives concept in research and toxicity testing is discussed, primarily from a US perspective. A history of the alternatives concept is provided, describing some of the events which occurred in Europe and the UK in the 1970s/1980s. British Home Office statistics on animal use, showing its decline from 1976, are included. The recent history of the debate over the alternatives concept in the US is discussed, including Congressional action, NIH attitudes, and the Draize campaign. Current attitudes toward alternatives in the US, and the issues surrounding their adoption and use in toxicity testing and in biomedical research, are presented.

Management of deradicalisation in the UK: reflections of a clinical psychologist

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Feryad A. Hussain
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Psychologist ◽  
Healthcare Team ◽  
Psychosocial Issues ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Home Office ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
Violent Action ◽  
Clinical Counselling ◽  
The Uk

Radicalisation to violent action is not just a problem in foreign lands. Research has identified numerous politico–psychosocial factors to explain why young people from the UK are now joining terrorist groups such as ISIS. Our understanding has been expanded by the accounts of “returnees” who have subsequently either self-deradicalised or joined a government deradicalisation programme in the role of an Intervention Provider (IP). These individuals are now key to the deradicalisation programme. This article presents the reflections of a clinical psychologist who worked within a social healthcare team managing psychosocial issues related to radicalisation, in conjunction with an allocated IP. The project involved individuals from the Muslim community and, as such, issues discussed are specific to this group. It is acknowledged that the process in general is universally applicable to all groups though specifics may vary (under Trust agreement, details may not be discussed). This article also aims to share basic information on the current Home Office deradicalisation programme and raises questions about the current intervention. It also offers reflections on how the work of IPs may be facilitated and supported by clinical/counselling psychologists and psychotherapists.

Very Serious Books

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Forster
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
World War I ◽  
Social Agency ◽  
World War ◽  
Home Office ◽  
Women’S Sexuality ◽  
Surplus Women ◽  
British Home ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Well Of Loneliness

This chapter draws on the records of the British Home Office to reconsider the censorship of two novels by women in the late 1920s: Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness and the Norah James’s less well-known Sleeveless Errand. It argues that the suppression of these novels was a function of the way they were positioned and received as “serious” works, capable of effecting social change. The chapter argues that specific circumstances in the late 1920s also shaped the perception of the novels. A perception that World War I had radically imbalanced the British population by creating two million "surplus women" created an context where representations of women's sexuality were perceived as especially dangerous. Hall’s representation in The Well of Loneliness of the book as a medium with authority and social agency made both novels seem especially dangerous in this context, and thus, in the eyes of the Home Office, worthy of suppression.

Britain’s authoritarian turn

Race & Class ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 030639682198918
Author(s):  
Frances Webber
Keyword(s):  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Home Office ◽  
Legal Accountability ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Overseas Operations ◽  
Immigration And Asylum ◽  
Looking Back

Looking back, in December 2020, at the year since Boris Johnson’s Conservatives were swept back into government with a huge majority, the author identifies a raft of new laws, Home Office measures and government proposals in the fields of policing, crime, and immigration and asylum which embody long-held rightwing projects. Coming on top of already discriminatory practices, these include restrictions on the fundamental right of peaceful protest and freedom from invasive and racist policing, the subjection of migrants and asylum seekers to dangerous and inhumane conditions and the removal of legal protections for asylum seekers. Simultaneously, Bills going through parliament restrict or remove altogether the legal accountability of state actors, including soldiers on overseas operations and police informants, for crimes including torture and murder. Citizens’ recourse to the courts to challenge unlawful ministerial decisions is also under threat.

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