By Roiyah Saltus

The 2007-8 economic crisis, and the dominant policy response of austerity brought about measures that have led to drastic reductions to social welfare and the wide-ranging impact of this on increasing numbers of people.  History has shown that during economic recessions and downturns a version of the blame game opens up and since the latest economic crisis there has been an ongoing attack on the welfare state in Britain and on the recipients of its services that is without parallel since the establishment of the welfare state at the end of the Second World War. Shaped by the intersections of social identifiers such as class, ethnicity, gender, and immigration status, people and groups already facing marginalisation and social exclusion are finding themselves under increasing pressure. What this study has revealed is that the routine crises and precarity that for some underpins the austerity agenda has long been an established part of the lives of those living under UK immigration regimes.

A key element of this are the  powerful negative representations of migrants, and the places they inhabit, that are presented in statistics and in media, which often remain fixed long after the realities they purport to describe have changed (if they were ever a ‘reality’ in the first place).  Such representations and messaging can have a considerable negative impact. Many of the participants in our study are finding themselves increasingly addressing not only the social, political and economic inequalities of life under immigration regimes but also the real material impact of their perceived exclusion from the preoccupations and reassurances given to those considered to be part of the body politic. Who’s addressing  the routine crises and precarity of their lives that the austerity agenda is working to so exacerbate?

The film we recently launched as part of our study touches briefly but profoundly on some of the experiences of the participants, including the following recollection from a focus group participant in Cardiff:

 Then my child was like three months old when my husband was taken.  They came into my house.  They said they came in 4am.  I was sleeping with the kids.  I was naked.  They came to my bed room.  Opened my door, I was deep asleep.  They saw me sleeping.  They went back to see my sitting room, they had their coffee in my sitting room.  They had their coke in my sitting room.  It was just like their own place.  Then five a.m. they came back.  They tapped me.  Opened my eyes.  People in my house.  My children were sleeping.  Everybody woke up.. They hand cuffed his dad and he was put at the back of their van.   What, what I really want to ask today.  Do they even think about the children? 

What is evident is that although the Go Home campaign can be understood as a public performance aimed at reassuring those perceived to be troubled by immigration, the fear it also sought to engender went beyond those who may have had irregular status, with second generation migrants also becoming fearful that they were being targeted. Our research also reveals that government communications have to be understood within the wider context of routinized, localised displays of strength that many witness or become involved in, for instance during dawn raids and surprise removals. The aim to instil public reassurance can work to exacerbate domestic, localised fear and anxiety that for some is part and parcel of the immigration process. For some the aggressive nature of the campaign was twinned with these displays of force in private, domestic spaces where children and partners watch their loved ones being forced into vans, and from where others had just missed being “taken”. Fear and other emotions (anger, incredulity, frustration) were not just felt more widely, but perceived on a collective level and variously embodied on a personal, domestic level.

This study is nearing its final months of funded activity. The preliminary findings are available, and the work of bringing together the findings remains ongoing. The film provides further context and an additional layer of understanding. For sure, papers, reports and conferences will be forthcoming. But for me what will remain for a long time coming is the thought of strangers occupying a space a family has come to call home, spending time in that space before awakening the family to remove a member. We live in a country where this is commonplace.  How do we sleep soundly?

By Sukhwant Dhaliwal

Southall Black Sisters protest against immigration enforcement raids in Southall, July 2013

As the Labour Party’s Pink Bus gets on its merry way, there is growing speculation about how women will vote at the General Election and what we know about their main concerns. A poll conducted by TNS BMRB for BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour found that immigration was number 4 in the top 5 concerns for the women that were polled (it was number 3 of the top five concerns for men). A little more insight is provided by extracts from a focus group session they conducted with six women from Bexley Heath in south east London. One gets the sense that they view immigration as a problem but, other than a passing reference to border controls and the impact of global elites on London’s house prices, there is little detail about what specifically or how immigration concerns them. In fact some of the interviewees in our research suggested that references to immigration are more of a proxy for other grievances, particularly concerns about the economy, access to housing and welfare support. And our own surveys have found, it’s difficult to capture, statistically, the multiple things that are meant when people say they are concerned about immigration.

Moreover, renewed debates about intersectionality should act as a timely reminder that women do not speak with one voice and that the increasing hardline on immigration could be understood differently by women depending on the way that they experience multiple axes of power at any one time. It could be the case that the women that most acutely feel the impact of the Home Office’s immigration campaigns are from ethnic minorities and particularly (but not only) those subject to immigration controls. It is not clear how many of the Bexley Heath focus group participants were from minority communities but we worked closely with our west London community partners, Southall Black Sisters, to facilitate two focus groups with a total of 15 women of Asian, African, and Caribbean descent. The two groups comprised a mix of British nationals, those that have been resident in Britain for a considerable period of time, those that recently gained leave to remain in the UK, and also a number of women that are awaiting news of applications or appeals. Their comments offer new insights into the ways in which women might be concerned about immigration and also how this may feature for women as an electoral issue.

Image of immigration enforcement raid circulated on Twitter, July 2013, used in our focus group.

The west London focus group participants were shown a set of four images, each depicting a different Home Office immigration campaign or recent tactic. For each image, we asked them to discuss the following:

• What does this picture bring to mind?
• Have you always felt this way?
• How do you think this impacts on how you live your life?
• How do you think this impacts on community relations in your area?

The discussions were emotional; they talked openly about the visceral experience of immigration in their lives and the lives of people they know. There was an overwhelming sense of fear and stress. Even those that had gained leave to remain in the UK expressed anxiety about being stopped at transport hubs. One such woman panicked when she saw UK border agency officers and dogs at the exit barriers of a London train station. She became so nervous that she turned away from the exit barriers and jumped on a train. In this panic, she boarded the wrong train and when she eventually reached home she stayed indoors for some time because of a fear that her leave to remain might be revoked.

Furthermore, this restriction on movement could impact on women’s ability to access the places of support that they need to deal with their circumstances and effectively respond to the immigration system such as getting to women’s organisations, support groups that are vital for their ability to stay strong during these stressful periods, and lawyers that could help ensure that they have access to the right information. For a subsection of the population where mental health, suicide and self-harm have been reported as disproportionately high, it’s alarming to hear how women’s mental health is being impacted by these campaigns. In fact two women provided examples of migrants that had committed suicide.

News coverage of Prime Minister ‘beds in sheds’ immigration raid, image used in our focus group.

Many of the women at the Ealing/Hounslow focus groups were concerned about the way that Home Office tactics are stigmatising immigration claimants as criminals and dehumanising them. One woman likened immigration raids in the UK to the stealth tactics of armed robbers in Nigeria, while another woman said that it reminded her of the way that stray dogs are entrapped and captured in India. Connected to this were concerns that local people are informing on each other and that suspicion within communities has grown.

News coverage of immigration enforcement raids in Southall, used in our focus group

A number of women talked about feeling ‘provoked’, ‘harassed’, ‘threatened’ and targeted. They felt angered by what they saw as a threat to the personal security, stability, and freedom of movement of their friends and others within their minority communities. And racism and racial profiling featured as a strong aspect of their concerns, of the sense that their communities, their particular friends and families are being targeted.

In most part it was felt that the Home Office immigration campaigns don’t reveal or enable a proper discussion of the real life stories behind the images. For a state that frequently claims to be the harbinger of rights (particularly of women’s and children’s rights), equalities and freedoms, far too little is being said about the struggles of those that are impacted by these publicity campaigns.

The women that participated in Radio Four’s poll and focus group seemed to display a great deal of cynicism about elections and politicians. Our findings from the Ealing/Hounslow focus groups indicate something similar but for very different reasons. The BME women from Ealing/Hounslow were cynical about the use of immigration as a way to please a particular section of the electorate. If their view of the use of immigration in the run up to the May 2014 elections is anything to go by, politicians would do well to bear in mind that for some people these immigration campaigns are doing more to reinforce the view that their ethnic minority vote is less important to politicians than the white majority vote.

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