“Are we criminals?” – everyday racialisation in temporary asylum accommodation

ABSTRACT

This paper critically examines the placement of people seeking asylum in temporary accommodation during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is based on a 14-month collaborative ethnography conducted between 2020 and 2022 with asylum seeking individuals in Glasgow. While moves to temporary accommodation were framed by state authorities and private firms as providing a “safe environment” from COVID-19, we show how these relocations amounted to a racialised process which constructed our participants as “undeserving” and “unworthy” of protection and care during a period of crisis. Our analysis highlights how this racialisation took place not only on a policy level but also in practice through everyday encounters with private provider staff. Advancing the literature on asylum housing and dispersal through new theoretical and empirical contributions, we argue that the rise of temporary forms of asylum accommodation can be understood as constitutive of racial modes of belonging within a regime of differential humanity.

KEYWORDS:

• Asylum seekers
• COVID-19
• Hostile environment
• Housing
• Outsourcing
• Racism

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our participants for giving their time, sharing their experiences and for being part of the project, especially as it took place during a very challenging period of the Covid-19 pandemic. We are also very grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback and suggestions for improving the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10380855/Migrants-staying-four-star-hotel-rooms-125-night-British-taxpayer.html

2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-56325360

3 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/08/end-housing-asylum-seekers-old-army-barracks-uk-ministers-urged

4 https://news.sky.com/story/giant-barge-to-house-hundreds-of-asylum-seekers-set-to-arrive-in-uk-heres-its-journey-12872020

5 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/11/merseyside-violence-outside-hotel-housing-asylum-seekers-arrests

6 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-53205396

7 https://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/information/refugee-asylum-facts/what-is-the-nationality-and-borders-act/

8 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-asylum-accommodation-contracts-awarded

9 Prior to this period Mears Group – the private provider of asylum housing in Scotland – had not used hotels as a form of accommodation.

10 For ethical reasons, all names in this report have been anonymised. Instead, we use pseudonyms or nicknames chosen by participants themselves. We also have allocated an age group to participants rather than reveal their exact age.

11 https://homeofficemedia.blog.gov.uk/2020/07/03/factsheet-asylum-accommodation-and-applications/

12 https://www.gov.uk/asylum-support/what-youll-get#:~:text=Cash%20support,cash%20from%20a%20cash%20machine

13 https://righttoremain.org.uk/toolkit/asylum-support/#section98

14 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/living-in-asylum-accommodation/living-in-dispersal-accommodation-english

15 Statement of Requirements to the Asylum Support and Accommodation Contract (AASC), p. 24. http://data.parliament.uk/DepositedPapers/Files/DEP2018-1112/AASC_-_Schedule_2_-_Statement_of_Requirements.pdf

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the UK Research and Innovation/Economic and Social Research Council under the Grant: ES/V015990/1.