Forced migrants in higher education: ‘sanctuary scholarships’ in a hostile environment

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how the hostile environment manifests in UK higher education. Our findings highlight the specific challenges encountered by asylum seekers in negotiating access to, and participating fully in, higher education. This group are categorised as international students, rendering them ineligible for student finance to meet the cost of living and university tuition fees in addition to exclusion from mainstream benefits and the labour market. The empirical data generated through a survey of universities, students and support organisations is explored first through the concept of universities as sites of bordering and the original framing of the higher education border. Second, the data is used to picture the state of solidarity at this border, arguing that redistributive solidarity and solidarity as ‘standing up beside’ are needed, but both require further investment from HEIs. In conclusion, we argue that the hostile environment creates overlapping and intersecting restrictions on these students and that this, amplified by the complex relationship between HEIs and the state, causes a conflict of solidarity between, on the one hand, supporting students and, on the other, officiously complying with the Home Office.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• asylum
• bordering
• solidarity
• sanctuary scholarships

Acknowledgements

The authors want to thank colleagues for their comments on earlier drafts: Eleanor Drywood, Nick Gill, Lucy Mayblin, Anne Neylon, and Louise Waite. We are grateful for the feedback on presentations of drafts of this paper from the IV CINETS Conference, Queen Mary, University of London; the Migration, Race and Borders Network, University of Liverpool; and the workshop, The (Un)deserving Migrant?, Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris. Thanks also to Hattie Ditton of Refugee Women Connect, who helped us in forming the ideas for this project and with data collection. All mistakes remain ours.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Different regimes for access to HE operate in each part of the UK. The most restrictive for forced migrants is in England; Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland provide access to student funding for a broader range of immigration statuses. Further information can be accessed on the UCAS website: Student Finance for Refugees & Asylum Seekers: https://www.ucas.com/finance/additional-funding/student-financerefugees-and-asylum-seekers. In contrast, immigration powers are not devolved and operate at UK level.

2 Similar scholarships are provided by charitable organisations. These are out of the scope of this paper because the institutional configuration and relationship with the state is quite different to that of universities, such that a separate analysis would be required.

3 Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998, s.22(2) enables the adoption of Regulations governing eligibility for student grants and loans and s.26 governs the imposition of conditions as to fees. The enacting provisions, the Education (Student Support) Regulations 1998, contain eligibility criteria in Sch.1.

4 Immigration rules, paras 245ZT-245ZY, 23 May 1994, HC 395 (as amended).

5 The purpose of the Office for Students is to represent the interests of all students (Home and International). Further details: https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/the-register/search-for-access-and-participation-plans/#/AccessPlans/ (accessed 17 February 2020).

6 Universal Credit Regulations 2013, r.9(4).

7 Education (Student Support) Regulations 2011, r.4(1) and (2), Sch.1(4) for refugees and 1(5) for humanitarian protection.

8 Education (Student Support) Regulations 2011, Sch.1(5)(1)(b).

9 See similarly: Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 (IAA), s.4.

10 IAA, s.94(1) defines asylum seekers as: ‘a person who is not under 18 and has made a claim for asylum which has been recorded by the Secretary of State but which has not been determined,’ where a claim for asylum ‘means a claim that it would be contrary to the United Kingdom’s obligations under the Refugee Convention, or under Article 3 of the Human Rights Convention, for the claimant to be removed from, or required to leave, the United Kingdom’.

11 An asylum seeker is not permitted to work unless she has been waiting for longer than twelve months for an initial decision, and only then in jobs listed on the shortage occupations list, Immigration Rules, paras 360–360E.

12 IAA, s.115 as amended.

13 IAA, s.95(1).

14 Education (Student Support) Regulations 2011. Sch.1(2)&(3) require settled status and three years’ ordinary residence, neither of which asylum-seeking students will be able to demonstrate.

15 Article 26 was a Helena Kennedy Foundation project, promoting access, participation and success of forced migrants in higher education through developing sanctuary scholarships. Murray was the Co-founder and Director of the Article 26 project from 2010–2018.

16 Original concept developed in Murray’s doctoral thesis (2018a).

17 Immigration Act 2016, s.61 and Sch.10(2)(1)b.

18 Immigration Rules, paras. 245ZT- 245ZY.

19 Immigration Act 2014, ss.21(2), 22 and 33A. This ‘right to rent’ provision has been ruled unlawful by the High Court for leading to discrimination against British citizens from ethnic minorities and non-British citizens, R(Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants) v SSHD [2019] EWHC 452 (Admin).

20 The New York Declaration 2016, [paras77–79], encourages states to ‘expand the number and range of legal pathways available for refugees to be admitted to or resettled in third countries’, which, the Global Compact on Refugees 2018 clarifies, includes via higher education. Globally, HEIs have more responsibility to help mitigate the challenges incurred through forced displacement through access to education and support programmes.