Post conflict identities: Affiliations and practices of Somali asylum seeker children

Abstract

Following the 2005 terrorist attacks on London it emerged that two of the terrorists charged with the failed 21st July bombings had arrived in the UK as child asylum seekers from East Africa. In the ensuing debate the bombers were represented as children that turned to hate. In this discussion paper we draw on empirical work conducted in Sheffield, UK to explore the identities, affiliations and practices of Somali asylum seeker children, aged 11–18.1 Specifically, we argue that the actions of the two bombers need to be framed within a broader understanding of the complex processes of social identification that take place as young people negotiate what it means to be a child in the context of different ‘age’, gender and racialised expectations and against a backdrop of discrimination and social exclusion in different relational geographical spaces. We begin by outlining the context of UK immigration policy, before reflecting on dominant constructions of both childhood and asylum seekers. We then discuss how these may shape young refugee and asylum seekers' own narratives of the self and the role that their mobility and specific sites of identity formation may play in this process. In doing so, we contribute to children's geographies by addressing a group – refugee and asylum seekers – that has been neglected within the sub-discipline.

¹This ongoing research is being funded by the ESRC Identities and Social Action Programme (Award No: RES-148-025-0028)

Keywords:

• Children
• asylum seeker
• Somali
• identity

Notes

¹This ongoing research is being funded by the ESRC Identities and Social Action Programme (Award No: RES-148-025-0028)

1. Of the others thus far charged with involvement in the 21st July attacks, three are alleged to have gained entry as Somali asylum seekers. Osman Hussain arrived in the UK in 1996 via Canada as a Somali asylum seeker. It is now known that he was actually from Ethiopia and strategically claimed a Somali identity using false papers to gain political asylum at the age of 18. A fourth bomber Ramzi Mohammed and his brother Wharbi also entered the UK from East Africa claiming to be Somali asylum seekers.

2. The Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 does not apply to children arriving under the age of 18 who are granted leave to remain under the Children's Act (1989) under which they are placed into the care of a Local Authority until their asylum claim is assessed at 18.

3. Several of the interviews had come to the UK via a spell living in Denmark, as such Danish was their second language and English their third language. One of the project team members is Danish and she was therefore able to interview them in their language of choice.

4. Bradford has a large minority ethnic, predominantly Pakistani population.