Year: 2022

The politics of climate justice, migration and mobility

Posted on by Emily

Special series on Migration, Mobilities and the Environment

Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB) and the Cabot Institute for the Environment bring together researchers from across the University of Bristol to explore connections between movement and the environment from a multi-disciplinary perspective. These diverse approaches highlight the importance of developing frames that incorporate both migration and environment, and in so doing benefit our understandings of both. Here, the directors of MMB and the Cabot Institute introduce the blog series.

By Bridget Anderson and Guy Howard.

Migration is often mobilised to illustrate the enormity of the challenge of climate change. Some Small Island States in the Pacific, for instance, may become uninhabitable with sea-level rise. Highly vulnerable countries in South Asia, including Bangladesh and the Maldives, may see large proportions of their populations forced to move because of sea-level rise, floods and salinisation of water. US climate envoy John Kerry recently fuelled fears of a future where food production collapse would force a ‘hundred million people’ to move. His comments strongly implied that even those of us who imagine we are protected from the frontline of climate change will be faced with the challenges of ‘climate refugees’ in their millions.

Seven Sisters Park flooded, 2020 (image: Peter Castleton on flickr)

Kerry’s remarks were heavily criticised, but this is not to deny that there is a connection between the world’s ecosystems and environment and human movement. It is easiest to causally relate environmental factors to migration in situations of ‘rapid onset disasters’ – destructive events that occur suddenly, such as typhoons or floods. In these situations, people move to survive, but often to a place of safety a short distance away, and they return to rebuild homes and lives once the emergency has abated. But many environmental changes are taking place over periods spanning two or three generations. ‘Slow onset’ environmental change can be a primary or contributing factor to deteriorating socio-economic conditions – increasing periods of drought, or crop yields declining rather than collapsing, for instance. In these circumstances, migration can be an important way to diversify income streams. Environmental change may also contribute to shifts in land usage and land ownership, which again may result in migration.

Declining resources can also prevent people from moving, especially when resources are slowly depleted over a generation or more. Limited access to capital can force people into illegal or exploitative migration or lead them to delay moving until forced to do so in an unplanned way – perhaps because of a rapid onset disaster that they no longer have the resilience to cope with.

The challenges faced by people who don’t move may become more severe when combined with conflict. For example, in Somalia, armed conflict has hindered the movement of pastoralists, who would otherwise relocate as a response to drought. It has also limited the possibilities of humanitarian organisations to assist them. Human mobility and environmental change are deeply interconnected but need to be understood systemically not simplistically if we are work towards climate justice.

Understanding the relationship between migration and environmental change in a more holistic and integrated way has important policy implications. For example, economic factors can mean that people migrate to places of environmental instability as well as migrating from places of environmental instability. Currently 55% of the world’s population lives in cities, and it is forecast that by 2050 this will increase to nearly 70%; nearly 60% of forcibly displaced people move to urban areas (World Bank, 2020). Many cities are extremely vulnerable to future environmental change, and already experience high temperatures, sea level rise, water stress and threats to health. Rural to urban migrants are often especially vulnerable, as they tend to move to neighbourhoods with high population density that are prone to environmental risks – think of the favelas in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, or the slums of Dhaka, Nairobi and Mumbai.

In these contexts, migrants, whether rural-urban or international, can be represented as an environmental problem in themselves. The movements of the poor are also represented as a root cause of problems: migration destroys carbon sinks, ‘environmental refugees’ put pressure on already scarce resources and services and so on. Rather than seeing the interconnections of human movement and climate change, the risk is that the politics of climate and the mobility of the poor – that is, ‘migration’ – are framed as oppositional. As a result, in wealthy countries we are seeing increasing tensions between politics of the environment and politics of migration, as illustrated by John Kerry’s remarks.

It is critical, then, to recognise the complexity of the connections between (human) movement and ecosystems. This new blog series, co-published by MMB and the Cabot Institute for the Environment, draws attention to some of these connections and raises questions for further research to help us understand in more depth the relationship between movement and the environment, and its political significance. The contributions in the series approach this relationship from many angles, ranging from the role of water access in shaping migration to debates around the status of the ‘environmental refugee’. One analyses the environmental footprint of home working versus office working to explore the sustainability potential of our increasing immobility. Others focus on animals and plants on the move: we have writing on the ecological context of bird migrations and on the hyper-mobility of the European eel. Meanwhile, other posts look at the movement of goods and how humans locate themselves in, and move through, landscapes of extraction and risk. In bringing together such diverse topics we hope this series will encourage new conversations about the connections between migrations, mobilities and environments.

Bridget Anderson is Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship at the University of Bristol, and Director of Migration Mobilities Bristol. Guy Howard is Global Research Chair Environmental and Infrastructure Resilience at the University of Bristol, and Director of the Cabot Institute for the Environment.

UK-Rwanda refugee deal: first thoughts

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By Miranda Butler.

The UK-Rwanda memorandum of understanding on asylum processing is now available. It sets out the terms of the agreement between the countries at a high level but provides some insight into how this scheme is supposed to work.

Before removal

Importantly, the UK has committed to undertaking an ‘initial screening’ of asylum seekers. How this will compare to current asylum screening interviews is yet to be seen but it is clear that the UK is intended to identify vulnerabilities and inform the Rwandan authorities about them.

Given the well-recognised shortcomings of such Home Office screenings, including the widespread failures to identify serious mental and physical health problems as well as trafficking victims and torture survivors, there are serious questions about how effective this expedited system will be. 

Many new arrivals need legal advice and expert evidence to demonstrate their vulnerabilities to the Home Office’s satisfaction. I anticipate a swift legal challenge if there is no automatic right to such assistance for those facing removal to Rwanda.  

Merely raising an asylum claim at the initial screening will not be enough to prevent removal: the Nationality and Borders Bill, when passed, will make such claims inadmissible. Human rights claims may be enough to prevent removal but this will no doubt lead to numerous urgent out-of-hours judicial review applications, as undesirable as that is for all involved. 

Under paragraph 3.2, Rwanda has to approve all transfer requests prior to relocation. This may well add delay and uncertainty to the process. It also means that the system is fundamentally discretionary, open to advocacy and political pressure on both sides. 

Unsurprisingly, the UK will make the removal arrangements:

6.1 The United Kingdom will arrange the Relocated Individual’s transport to Rwanda and will ensure that all the necessary authorisations have been obtained from the relevant authorities of the United Kingdom, any countries of transit and Rwanda in relation to the traffic of commercial or chartered flights or other means of transport.

6.2 The United Kingdom will assume responsibility for the safe transportation of Relocated Individuals to Rwanda by aircraft, including the provision of escorts as necessary.

So decisions about whether someone is fit to fly will be made (and challengeable) in the UK. Again, practitioners will want to know whether and how they will be able to take instructions on challenges like this. 

After removal

Those removed in Rwanda will be accommodated (apparently for free) by the Rwandan government. Rwanda has agreed to provide accommodation that is ‘adequate to ensure the health, security and wellbeing’ of those relocated. The MoU stipulates that asylum seekers brought to Rwanda will not be detained in this accommodation (although the Home Office’s own changing narrative about whether asylum seekers are detained in the Napier and Penally camps raises questions about the genuine liberty of those removed).

8.2 A Relocated Individual will be free to come and go, to and from accommodation that has been provided, at all times, in accordance with Rwandan laws and regulations as applicable to all residing in Rwanda.

There is nothing specific in the agreement about those removed being able to access healthcare, financial support, or other services. Nor does it explain whether asylum seekers will be able to work. These are pressing questions which, even at a high level, we might have expected the parties to agree — especially as Rwanda does not provide universal healthcare free at the point of use. 

Rwanda also agrees to treat those relocated in accordance with the Refugee Convention and with ‘international standards’. The UK government insists this agreement is compatible with the Refugee Convention which, if correct, means there’s little to stop Rwanda sending asylum seekers to another third country. This sort of high-level agreement depends on a sustained commitment to human rights in both countries, which sadly is not reflected in reality.

Those relocated should have access to legal assistance in Rwanda throughout their asylum claim:

Rwanda will ensure that…

9.1.2 each Relocated Individual will have access to an interpreter and to procedural or legal assistance, at every stage of their asylum claim, including if they wish to appeal a decision made on their case…

But the MoU does not state whether such legal assistance will be free, nor does it stipulate any minimum requirements.

Those recognised as refugees in Rwanda will be granted the same level of support and accommodation in the country as they had while their claim was being processed. There is no clear time limit on their entitlement to support and nothing about other conditions of stay. 

Those refused asylum may be returned to their countries of origin or can try to obtain permission to stay some other way under Rwandan immigration laws, if possible.

Rwanda agrees to take all reasonable steps to return people to the UK if the British authorities are obliged to do so:

11.1 Following a request made by the United Kingdom, Rwanda will take all reasonable steps in accordance with international human rights standards to make a Relocated Individual available for return to the United Kingdom should the United Kingdom be legally obliged to facilitate that person’s return.

Clearly the Home Office anticipates at least the possibility of UK courts making ‘bring back’ orders. 

Under paragraph 16 of the agreement, the UK has agreed to resettle a portion of Rwanda’s ‘most vulnerable refugees’. This raises the question of how we can be confident that Rwanda can care for vulnerable asylum seekers being sent from the UK. It reflects the surreal and inhumane two-tier system the Home Office is creating: performative cruelty for those arriving in the UK without permission, justified by some limited and restrictive routes for resettled refugees.

This is against both the spirit and the letter of the Refugee Convention. 

Grounds for concern already

Whichever country is involved, offshoring is legally unjustifiable and reflects the broader failure on the part of the Home Office to comply with the requirements of international law to welcome refugees regardless of their method of entry.

Nevertheless, the choice of Rwanda is concerning given its history of human rights violations, including towards asylum seekers. Only last year, the UK expressed concern over ‘continued restrictions to civil and political rights and media freedom’ in Rwanda, noting allegations of extrajudicial killings, deaths in custody and torture. It recommended that the Rwandan government ‘screen, identify and provide support to trafficking victims, including those held in Government transit centres’. That such a recommendation is necessary does not bode well for the commitment enshrined within the MoU to support trafficking victims sent from the UK.

It remains to be seen how the MoU will be reflected in policy and practice, but there is good reason to be concerned about the legality of this agreement and the impact it will have on vulnerable asylum seekers. No doubt there will be both individual and systemic legal challenges to this offshoring plan, brought by hardworking, underpaid legal aid lawyers who — far from being ‘politically motivated’ — know the human cost of government illegality.

Miranda Butler is a barrister at Landmark Chambers practising in all areas of immigration, with a particular focus on asylum and human rights.

This post was originally published by Free Movement on 14th April 2022.

The cure or the cause? The impact of medical tourism on global health inequality

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By Ella Barclay.

Migration motivated by the improvement of one’s health is not a new phenomenon. Nineteenth-century doctors around the world prescribed visits to foreign spas to improve wellbeing and London’s Harley Street was one of many internationally renowned centres for medical care. Despite this, there has been a recent boom in such movement, with individuals increasingly opting to access care beyond their state borders (Morgan, 2010). This phenomenon, termed ‘medical tourism’, has developed into a globalised industry, with states now viewing healthcare as a commercialised product. Various destinations have chosen to profit from this trend, even marketing themselves as ‘international healthcare capitals’ (Hanefeld et al., 2014). However, concerns have been raised regarding the actual value of this phenomenon, with many questioning whether this growing market is helping or hindering global equality.

Medical tourism as the cure

Contrary to the assumption that the healthcare industry thrives in economically developed countries, the rise of medical tourism has been described as a case of ‘reverse globalisation’ (Connell, 2013), shifting power and wealth back into less economically developed states (LEDCs). These destinations have embraced the commercialisation of international medical care, offering up affordable treatment to citizens of, typically, more economically developed states who wish to travel abroad for their procedures and simultaneously experience the tourist aspects of these ‘exotic’ destinations (Johnson et al., 2010). Funnelling large sums of their state budget into this sector, LEDCs have profited greatly from this phenomenon, with medical migrants contributing significantly to the medical and tourist sectors.

(Image: Annie Spratt on Unsplash)

The growth of this industry within LEDCs also counters the effects of ‘brain drain’, by creating jobs within the healthcare sector (Oberman, 2013). Where the mass migration of medically trained individuals to Western states was previously the norm, leading to labour shortages within native states, the rise of medical tourism in LEDCs has created many new healthcare centres, offering highly paid jobs to citizens (Cohen, 2011). This again boosts the state’s economy by allowing for a ‘return investment’ in their residents; the individuals who are trained within (and, therefore, funded by) the state remain within that territory to ‘give back’ to the economy. Here, one could argue that Western states will suffer from labour shortages as we heavily rely on this migrant workforce. However, as people increasingly seek treatment abroad, the strain on state resources will be simultaneously alleviated. Subsequently, the wait time for elective treatments within national systems will be reduced, thereby benefiting medical tourists and residents alike.

Lastly, with the growth of the global market for any commercialised good comes competition and innovation (Lee et al., 2011). Each state wants to offer the newest and best treatment to its high-paying customers, thereby continually funding medical research, technology development and infrastructure, to ensure they are the go-to medical tourist destination. This ongoing competitiveness has hastened medical advancements over the past two decades and greatly improved the quality of healthcare available globally.

Medical tourism as the cause

The novelty of this phenomenon means the medical tourism market is not well regulated. Although the quality of care provided by verified clinics is improving, there are no regulations in place to prevent unqualified and illegitimate clinics from targeting foreign patients. Defined by critics as ‘rogue medical tourism’ (Hunter and Oultram, 2010), individuals offer impossibly cheap treatments, exploiting the naivety and frugality of medical migrants by allowing non-medical staff to carry out procedures in unsanitary and inadequate surroundings. This aspect of medical tourism not only causes harm to the individual but also re-asserts the strain on their home healthcare system, as they will inevitably want to address any ‘botched’ treatments within their own country.

International clinics may also offer treatments that are illegal in other states, such as euthanasia or stem-cell research (Higginbotham, 2011). The availability of these treatments could be seen to enhance autonomy, however, there remains a question of where the line can be drawn concerning treatment that is seen as unethical in one state yet permitted and even promoted in another. Evidently, claims of ‘enhanced quality of healthcare globally’ by proponents of medical tourism are debatable.

Similarly, there is a question of whether this supposedly high-quality healthcare benefits all persons, or simply the elite few who can enjoy the luxury of medical tourism. Having recognised the potential economic value of this industry, state funding currently prioritises healthcare efforts that serve foreign, wealthy patients, as these yield a profit. More money is put into the development of the luxury provision of healthcare, than into the necessary provision of healthcare to impoverished persons; in an effort to harness the full potential of medical tourism, states are neglecting the wellbeing of their own citizens (Bookman and Bookman, 2007). Not only are these individuals denied access to this high-quality care due to their inability to pay, but they also lack basic health rights, such as access to sanitation and clean water, highlighting the need to invest in this lower sector of care provision, not de-fund it. This constitutes a ‘dual medical system’, in which the standard of care available is dependent on one’s socioeconomic status, thereby increasing healthcare inequalities within the state (Manna et al., 2020). Although medical tourism may reverse the effects of globalisation by placing wealth back in the hands of LEDCs, on a national scale the growth of this industry makes the disadvantaged worse off. Claims that this phenomenon is benefiting LEDCs when inequality within these states only grows are misinformed.

Conclusion

Medical tourism may have the potential to benefit global health inequality, but the current over-investment into this sector is exacerbating the already compromised health of those worst-off, creating a dichotomy within the provision of healthcare. To view health as a commercialised product rather than a human right is to ignore the importance of access to healthcare for basic wellbeing and growth. Until this inequality is addressed, and a basic level of care is provided to all within and across states, it is both misguided and unethical to invest in a global industry that favours luxury over human rights.

Ella Barclay is a PhD student in Sociology at the University of the West of England. Her research focuses on the sexual and reproductive rights of undocumented migrants within the UK’s hostile environment and involves ethnographic research with migrant mothers in Bristol. Ella completed the MSc in Migration and Mobility Studies at the University of Bristol in 2020 and is an MMB Alumni Ambassador.

Vicarious strength: friends and befriending in UK immigration detention

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By Joel White.

‘We use the word friend here. Not client, or service user. Not asylum seeker, or refugee. We try to say friend.’

These were the words that stuck with me most after a volunteer training at the Unity Centre, a drop-in space for people going through the asylum and immigration system in Glasgow. Years later, during 12 months of ethnographic research with people navigating this system across the city, I found myself returning to such ideas of friendship, thinking specifically about how people who had been through immigration detention drew on such ideas in navigating their ‘detainability’.  

I asked my friend Alyssa, who I met at Unity Centre, about this and she told me:

You know, in Yarlswood [an Immigration Removal Centre, in England], I didn’t know about the Unity Centre. But without fail twice a week I’d get a call from them. I didn’t know these people. I can say that. They would ask: ‘How am I? How are things?’ They listened to what I had to say. For me, that was important. People from Church would call too and come to visit.

So, you know, for me, friendship means strength in the struggle, but vicariously. Vicarious support. If [you are inside and] two people get deported, nobody has any strength at all. But if we are outside, we are here, we are caring, you get … I don’t know what to call it … like … vicarious strength?

Balloons at a protest at Dungavel House Immigration Removal Centre, South Lanarkshire, 2017
(image: Joel White)

Friendship was a key idea and practice for a range of people I met during my fieldwork, spanning from the kind of politically levelling and vicariously binding vision of ‘the friend’ we see above, to more codified forms of ‘befriending’, particularly in the context of NGO detention visiting groups. Linking all these visions of friendship was a focus on the political importance of relationality, a sense of building commitment and trust as a way to meet and resist the violence of the British border regime.

From the outset, I tried to link this to a methodological question about doing research in such a system: is it possible to be a good ‘friend’ through academic work? Can research on migration join in building ‘vicarious strength’? Or is friendship necessarily outside such remits, and what would that say about academic notions of consent, participation and ethics?

Humanitarian kinship

Considering friendship as a methodological as well as theoretical issue meant focusing on how people I worked with interpreted being a ‘friend’, rather than the somewhat limited anthropological writing on the topic. Friendship has been a key topic in activist and migrant solidarity writing for some time – linking to ideas of affinity, anarchist ethics, mutual aid and antiracist organising tactics. One popular zine I encountered during my fieldwork drew on Foucauldian and Queer ideas of relationality to talk about friendship as a ‘destabilizing, empowering, desubjectifying process’, a way to examine possibilities for collectivity and revolutionary change.

Another book that was popular with activists I got to know through places like the Unity Centre asked: ‘If capitalism works by dismembering transformative relationships, can friendship be revalued as a radical, transformative form of kinship?’ Such work raises questions about the granular task of building interpersonal connection and solidarity within a system that is deeply racialized and gendered. This, in turn, expands and augments questions about academic ethics processes and positionality, pushing researchers to consider if and how they are sharing in the struggles of those they get to know. 

Many NGO groups also theorized friendship in particular ways, with groups that visit detention across the UK often framing this in terms of ‘befriending’. Such initiatives worked to create interpersonal bonds across complex forms of difference, and though on face value they were more codified – through trainings, ‘visitor packs’, mentorships and audits – NGO visiting often ended up being fairly improvised and loose in its own way.

I met a large range of detention ‘visitors’, including a significant number who had been through detention themselves, who approached the question of ‘befriending’ in widely different ways. Many saw themselves as part of a tradition of  ‘welcome’ and ‘sanctuary’ (see also Darling, 2010) that drew on what Tom Kemp calls a ‘mythology of British hospitality’: this linked to a history of often Quaker-led prison visiting and reform initiatives that considered friendship as doing ‘God’s will’. Others brought religiosity to their visiting in a more overt sense, as a Christian duty, while some used visiting to get experience while studying or in the middle of their own struggles for the ‘right to work’. For some this was a directly personal and familial thing, as one woman told me:

I didn’t know there was a detention centre here [in Scotland], but my son was detained down south and was removed to Zimbabwe. I’d visited him in England and realised how long people were there.

Seeing him closed away from the world, it really hurt me […] I’ve seen what my son went through and I’d like to give as much support as I can to people who are in detention. And it’s my passion to help people who are in need.

So, I decided it was good to do that here. I felt like I needed to visit people in detention because I know what they go through.

Through my research I came to consider initiatives like detention visiting as part of a broader trend towards what I call humanitarian kinship – forms of humanitarianism that focus on interpersonal connection as a way to ‘do good’. Narratives of ‘befriending’ aim to transform the moral subjectivities of both visitor and ‘detainee’, with the latter clearly positioned as suffering ‘victim’ in certain ways. As the quote above shows, however, this was often blurry and complex.

While it’s tempting to treat activist and radical notions of ‘friendship’ in opposition to the humanitarian kinship of ‘befriending’, both involve efforts to incorporate groups of people in a community of relatedness, conditioned by the racialized violence of the UK border regime. By attempting to methodologically share in the ethics of friendship used by the people we meet, ethnographers can expand and question our ideas of consent, accountability and participation.

Joel White lives in Glasgow and is a Teaching Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. He completed a PhD at the end of 2021 entitled, ‘Holding Space: Friendship, Care and Carcerality in the UK Immigration Detention System’.

‘Six new home carers near you!’ How digital platforms shape domestic services

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By Jing Hiah.

Finding cleaning and child rearing services is easier than ever in many parts of the world. Install an app on your phone and start browsing through hundreds of (female) workers. If you decide not to directly hire their services – perhaps you feel too embarrassed (can’t we take care of ourselves?!) – you’ll be sent reminders by email: ‘Six new home carers near you. Contact them now!’

Domestic service is reportedly the fastest growing sector in the platform or ‘gig’ economy – that is, economic activity facilitated by digital platforms that mediate supply and demand, creating digital marketplaces. Rising demand for home-based care and domestic workers and health professionals (and even virtual nannies during the COVID-19 lockdown) has been prompted by factors including women’s entrance into the paid labour market, longer lifespans and the retrenchment of the welfare state. Platform companies like Care.com, Helpling and Handy have designed digitised infrastructures that connect domestic workers to those wanting their services. This is the focus of my project ‘New mobilities or persistent inequalities’, which I will be researching during my 20-month stay at the University of Bristol.

(Image: Magnet.me on Unsplash)

New mobilities or persistent inequalities?

Paid domestic work can be broadly understood as all tasks conducted in the private household including cleaning, child rearing and care of the elderly. While inequalities and difference in paid domestic work are hotly debated, it has been cited as a quintessential example of ‘invisible work’ due to its poor labour conditions combined with legal disenfranchisement, which make the sector vulnerable to exploitation. Furthermore, the demand for domestic workers is highly gendered, as it is associated with women’s ‘natural’ qualities. Racialisation also plays a part, with some minority groups considered to be better fitted to perform domestic work, and this has intersected with female migration in different parts of the world. Immigration regulations further control the rights and mobilities of domestic workers, whether they have entered on domestic worker, family reunion or other visas, or overstayed.

Anonymised example of an app for finding domestic workers (created by the author)

My project will explore how vulnerabilities and inequalities in domestic work are shaped by digital platforms. The literature so far suggests that these platforms offer some groups of marginalised workers, such as migrants, racialised minorities and workers with familial obligations (often women), new and flexible opportunities to access work. However, there is also growing evidence that platforms contribute to a degradation of employment relations. They do not guarantee minimum wages or income security and they challenge worker organisation. Furthermore, work on surveillance capitalism and visibility regimes has found the digital infrastructures of platforms and the associated online visibilities of workers to cause further inequality in the domestic employment relationship.

So, what about the ‘six new home carers near you’? It’s important to remember that the carers have no idea who ‘you’ are and neither do they know anything about your household. You do all the picking and choosing. This picking and choosing, research shows, is not only based on the profiles of the individuals on the app: employers also often check the broader social media presence of workers, for example on Facebook and Instagram. For some workers it has become a full-time (unpaid) job to perform gender and ethnicity through their platform profiles. Meanwhile, they have no idea about the appearance, relationships or even gender, race, occupation or name of potential employers. Workers therefore often have to give up their privacy, manage their various connected social media profiles and invest in social media skills, which they may be unfamiliar with and certainly don’t get paid for.

Possibilities for ‘good’ platformed domestic work jobs

So today I was trying to get the attention of [the kid the nanny is taking care of] and he was glued to his Switch. I gave him ample warning that we were about to change to a different task and he has 5 minutes left before we move on. He told me no, that he wants to keep [playing] and that he’ll just ask his mom for more time. Imagine my surprise when [their] mom storms out of the room, takes the Switch, and firmly says ‘I never want to hear that again. Nanny is always right and don’t you forget it.’ And just walks away….

This family is definitely my unicorn family, and it was just solidified today that I never want to leave them! I felt so freaking empowered!

(Post on an online nanny support group.)

Inequalities related to paid domestic work have been recognised to be pretty persistent and these inequalities may have become even more serious when mediated by the digital infrastructures of platforms. Yet does that make a job in paid domestic work by definition a ‘bad’ job? The post of the (self-identified) nanny above on an online nanny support group gives us some insight into various aspects of what, according to sociologists of work, makes a job a ‘good’ job – namely a sense of autonomy, control over work activities and social contact (other aspects include income, health and control over work hours).

So, while the employment relationship between paid domestic workers and their employers may be characterized by inequalities, what also matters is the manner in which employers and workers approach these inequalities in their everyday relationships. The various discussions in the online nanny support group show that it is not only important to workers to be treated fairly, but that many employers also do their best to secure fair and good relationships. Since there has been less work done on the perspectives of employers, the aim of my project is to also include their perspectives in my analysis of platformed domestic work. I am looking forward to hearing from employers and workers how they secure fair relationships in platformed domestic labour relations.

Jing Hiah is an Assistant Professor in Criminology at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and a Dutch Research Council (NWO) Rubicon Postdoctoral Fellow. She is visiting the University of Bristol from December 2021 until July 2023 as a guest of MMB and SPAIS. During this time she will be carrying out her study on domestic labour platforms funded by the Dutch Research Council, the Erasmus Trustfonds and an innovation grant of the Erasmus School of Law.

Brexit, COVID and stay/return narratives amongst Polish migrants in the UK

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By Magda Mogilnicka.

Following EU enlargement in 2004, Polish migrants quickly became the largest migrant population in the UK. Since the Brexit referendum in 2016, however, the Office for National Statistics has documented a decline in the Polish population by around a quarter. A further drop in numbers was noticeable after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the estimated population of Polish citizens at the end of 2020 at 691,000 compared with 818,000 in 2019. Both the rise and the fall in numbers have been widely understood in terms of Poles as economic migrant workers and their contributions to the economy. But how do Polish migrants themselves reflect on their presence in the UK? In 2021 I carried out a research pilot study to learn more about the impact of COVID and Brexit on Polish people living in Bristol, and whether they are currently considering leaving or staying in the UK.

Since the referendum there has been a surge in British citizenship and EUSS scheme applications made by EU citizens, which demonstrates that concerns around Brexit and the pandemic have driven some EU citizens to take actions to anchor themselves in British society. However, recent media debates have focused on the return of many EU citizens to their countries of origin, which has been understood as an exodus that will affect the British economy. Commentators have pointed at Brexit and the pandemic as contributing factors in these individuals’ decision to leave, and the impact of these events on a rise in hate crime towards them, being made to feel unwelcome and uncertainties around their future.

Although many Polish people are leaving, it is unclear how many of them have also secured EU Settlement Scheme status or applied for British citizenship. The current return migration should not, therefore, be seen as a definite, long-term departure. Neither should their potential relocation back to the UK be interpreted as a long-term stay. In other words, the Brexit or COVID related changes in status and mobility are not fixed.

Polish grocery store in Plymouth, UK, 2015 (image by Chris on Flickr)

Polish migrants in my pilot research study clearly voiced their anxieties about their future in the UK. In 2021 I interviewed 15 Polish workers employed in a variety of sectors, such as hospitality, the NHS, food distribution, supermarkets and the public sector. The project explored how Brexit and COVID were affecting their everyday lives. This led to discussions about the possibility of returning to Poland.

At the time of the study, Brexit was overshadowed by COVID-19.However, the respondents readily shared memories of the vote to leave the EU five years earlier. Above all they described a feeling of disappointment and betrayal.

Most participants knew of someone who had already left the UK and were sympathetic towards the decision. The returns were perceived as a loss for the British industries, as stated by a female participant Edyta: ‘Watching all those construction sites in our neighbourhood, I thought to myself: “Who is gonna work here?” (…) Poles are leaving, escaping (…) because it doesn’t pay off for them anymore (…). So, who is gonna work here?’ Similarly, Marta noticed that Polish people might be better off financially in Poland: ‘The British pound is not as strong a currency as 15 years ago. We cannot save as much anymore.’

Other respondents also reproduced the discourse of Poles’ economic contributions as migrants. One of them, Ania, claimed that the UK is already experiencing a shortage of labour force: ‘They say: “immigrants are taking jobs away!” Now farmers cannot find anyone to work so what jobs are we taking away?’ Some suggested that British people would eventually regret their decision to leave the EU as they are losing an essential labour force. These narratives draw on the stereotype of a hardworking Polish migrant and reproduce the sense of validity and usefulness of Poles in Britain as migrant workers rather than citizens deserving to be here.

Although the participants justified other migrants’ decisions to leave, they themselves had no intention to do so in the near future. Interestingly, the narratives about staying also constructed Polish citizens as migrant workers. A notion of their irreplaceability has led some to believe that their position in the UK is secure, as expressed by Monika: ‘They won’t kick us out – they need immigrants, Brexit is just an economic stage in their country’s history, I don’t take it personally.’ Similarly, Marcin claimed: ‘I’m not scared of losing my job. I will find another one easily.’ Over the years, Poles have earned a good reputation as a ‘hard-working’ migrant group. As Marta stated: ‘One of my customers said to me: I voted Brexit but have nothing against Polish migrants. They work hard.’ Although Brexit continues to have serious consequences for EU migrants’ mobility, the participants were convinced that their legal status was secure. Their stay narratives – similarly to their return ones – constructed Polish people as migrant workers in British society.

By contrast, the participants expressed their sense of belonging to Poland through nostalgic memories about family, friends and places. These feelings had been intensified by the pandemic. The sudden travel ban following the start of COVID-19 made it impossible for them to see their families, which led some participants to seriously consider leaving the UK for good. They rethought their values and the importance of their families, as seen in Ania’s reflection: ‘I’m the only child, my parents miss me. They are 80 and 79, I don’t know for how much longer I will have them.’ Marta’s memories of Poland expressed deep nostalgia: ‘I miss Poland so much. I miss gardens, parks, people, everything!’ This romanticised picture was reinforced by Monika: ‘I miss four seasons (…) I feel like I’m missing out on so much by being here.’

My respondents rationalised other Polish people’s decisions to leave as a financially more secure option and as a loss to the British economy, but they talked about their own potential return in terms of an emotional connection to Poland, which was missing from their narratives about the UK. Those who expressed a sense of belonging to the UK talked about it in terms of their local links to neighbourhoods, workplaces and mortgage commitments, or having children who feel more at home in the UK than in Poland.

Their stay and return narratives therefore reproduced dominant discourses in UK society that identify Poles as migrant workers whose value is measured in economic terms. In other words, they are seen as economic actors rather than as citizens – an issue for many migrant groups. Their narratives are also in dialogue with broader media and political discourses in the UK that construct them as the racialised East European Other – that is, cheap, low-skilled economic migrants praised for their hard work, but also facing political hostility and racism. These discourses position them below the white British majority in hierarchies of belonging. And yet, as seen in my participants’ responses, many Polish migrants today point to the UK’s labour shortages resulting from Brexit and the pandemic and use this to re-negotiate their identity as economic workers ­that once again need to be appreciated.

Magda Mogilnicka is a Lecturer in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Relations, University of Bristol. Her PhD thesis, ‘Lived diversities of conditional citizens: Poles’ encounters with difference in Britain’, investigated everyday ambivalent experiences of learning to live with diversity in the context of British national hierarchies of belonging.

The power of collaborative art in research for social change

Posted on by Emily

By Rebecca Yeo.

On Human Rights Day, 10th December 2021, a mural on the wall of Easton Community Centre was officially opened. It brings together and promotes messages from Deaf, Disabled and asylum-seeking people living in the Bristol area. The collaborative process of creating the mural is the latest in a series of projects facilitated by artist Andrew Bolton and myself, including work in Bolivia and in the UK. In this most recent project in Easton we specifically sought to bring together the Disabled people’s movement and people with experience of the UK immigration system, as well as to develop creative means of engagement during the pandemic.

‘Disability and migration: a mural for social change’, Easton Community Centre, Bristol, 2021 (image: Mark Simmons)

My research focuses on responses to disability and forced migration in the UK (Yeo, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021). Within this, I investigate and seek to reduce the barriers separating the asylum sector and the Disabled people’s movement – there is considerable overlap in the experiences of people in both. Many asylum seekers, for example, experience severe mental distress or have other impairments. However, with this mural we were not only working with asylum seekers who identify as Disabled but with a wider section of both groups to build an understanding of the similarities and differences in their experiences.  

The mural conveys key messages of the hopes and struggles faced by asylum seekers and Disabled citizens. Some people contributed images and others used words to explain what they wanted the world to understand. Andy, the mural artist, worked with each person to include elements of their ideas or images in the overall design. Some people helped to paint the mural background directly onto the wall. Others painted their contributions onto wooden boards, which were then varnished and fixed to the wall. Alongside the painting, each person was invited to contribute to a short film, explaining their messages in their own words.

This collaborative and creative research approach brought together people whose voices are rarely heard in the mainstream media. The images highlight that the asylum system itself is actively and deliberately disabling, but the mural also makes clear that these injustices are not inevitable. The top of the mural is divided into three rainbows: on the left, a colourful rainbow represents visions for how things could be; in the middle, the rainbow has more muted colours, representing things changing for better, or worse; and on the far right, a grey rainbow represents the worst injustices. 

At the start of the first rainbow, a chain of interconnected people provide help and solidarity to each other (left). However, the University of Bristol’s Student Disability and Accessibility Network explained how this chain of support has been made increasingly fragile through underfunding, and how responses to COVID have been pulling it apart.

Together with many other Disabled people, students expressed their relief when, during lockdown, university lectures along with many public events became accessible from home. They hoped that lockdown might increase empathy and commitment to long-term provision for people who need remote access. However, Lizzy Horn, a woman who has been largely housebound for the last 13 years described her frustration when, after the first lockdown, the need for remote access was again sidelined. She contributed this Haiku:

Gaze from my window,
The world moves on once again,
I am left behind.

Meanwhile, people seeking asylum described the disabling effects of government policy. Under the colourful rainbow, a group of people chat happily. But in the centre, under the fading rainbow, one man stands with his backpack after leaving a house (below). On the right, the same man is homeless, crouching in a bush. Without food, shelter or hope for the future, he explained that asylum policy had caused him to ‘lose [his] mind’. A uniformed officer and a suited man stand together ignoring the homeless man. These figures represent immigration officers and politicians as well as those in academia, local government and beyond who collude with the police and government policy rather than risk speaking out against injustice.

Three stages of homelessness

Above this, a series of cages hang from the sky bring together experiences of asylum seekers and Disabled citizens. People from both groups talked about feeling trapped and being unable to move on in their lives. In the first cage (right), under the muted rainbow, a wheelchair user is surrounded by confusing information from social and mainstream media. The socially constructed nature of the cage is highlighted by having a second image of the same wheelchair user under the brightly coloured rainbow, but this time sitting in a comfortable pagoda, able to engage with and contribute to the world (see cage image above).

The middle cage (below) contains a Deaf person with their arms out signing ‘Where?’ In front of the cage there is a hand with the words, ‘Where is the interpreter?’ This image from Lynn Stewart Taylor is the symbol for the campaign that she established in response to government failure to provide British Sign Language interpreters for public health announcements about COVID. As with many images in this mural, the image is also very relevant to a wider population: government announcements about the pandemic have routinely been provided only for English language speakers. The final cage holds a dead canary, evoking the historical practice of taking canaries into mines to warn of gas leaks. This mural warns that urgent action is needed to save lives. 

Next to the final cage there is a drawing of Kamil Ahmad, a Disabled asylum seeker who was murdered in Bristol in 2016. The image is repeated from his contribution to a mural in 2012 – it depicts him holding his head in despair at the injustices caused by the Home Office. The mural is dedicated to him, in a quest to build solidarity and prevent further injustices. 

The mural enabled participants to claim a space in a public setting and raise awareness of their experiences of marginalisation. The images and messages will also be submitted to the United Nations as part of this year’s shadow report from Deaf and Disabled people. The UN uses this report, alongside an official government submission, to assess how the UK is meeting its obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled People. This is the first time that the experiences of asylum seekers have been included in the shadow report.

In these ways, this mural is intended not just to convey people’s experiences but also to contribute to change. The key message is that if we work together it is possible to build a better world and extend the colourful rainbow to include everyone. It calls for solidarity between the asylum sector, the Disabled people’s movement and allies – as one contributor put it, ‘togetherness is strength’.

Rebecca Yeo is an ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School for Sociology, Politics and International Studies, University of Bristol. Her research focuses on refining and promoting a social model of asylum as a means to transform responses to disability and forced migration in the UK.

All images by Rebecca Yeo and Andrew Bolton except where indicated.

Collateral damage: the implications of border restrictions on practitioners working with refugee populations

Posted on by Emily

By Vicky Canning.

The acknowledgement that asylum systems across Europe are ‘hostile environments’ for migrant groups has increased in academic and practitioner consciousness, particularly in the aftermath of the 2015 refugee reception crisis. However, although the impacts of socio-political hostilities on migrants are well documented, little has been written about the implications of border restrictions on practitioners working with refugee populations. In recent years I have led a research project that expands the focus of hostilities to consider the variable impacts of intensified bordering practices on this group.

Based on qualitative research across Britain, Denmark, and Sweden (2016–2018), the project highlights that increasingly restrictive or punitive approaches to immigration have had multiple negative effects on practitioners in this sector. This has potential for longer term negative impacts on the practitioners themselves, but also – importantly – on refugee populations who require various forms of legal aid, or social and psychological support. The working conditions of practitioners is often reflected in the standard of care that they are able to offer. Vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue are two of the most commonly cited problems. Importantly, and as this blog addresses, this research indicates that practitioners are facing new and serious problems working in this area, many of which are direct outcomes of the intensification of Northern European border regimes. 

(Image: Jannik Kiel on Unspalsh)

Emotional and workplace impacts on practitioners

Interviews with practitioners indicate that increasingly restrictive or punitive approaches to immigration have had multiple effects on those working in this sector. One stark issue highlighted by lawyers, psychologists, detention custody officers and support workers is that they felt their ability to effectively perform their own role well has been compromised. Some indicated increasing levels of stress and, in Sweden in particular (a strong state centric welfare model), a decreased faith in state and state decisions. Terms such as ‘powerless’ and ‘stress’ were included in practitioners’ responses to questions about the impacts of escalated harms in asylum – in particular, when they felt they could support people seeking asylum while being held in an indefinite state of uncertainty or crisis.

Keeping up to date with the workings of the asylum process is increasingly difficult at a time when laws and policies are changing regularly, thus affecting the rights or welfare entitlements that people seeking asylum can access. This is particularly difficult for practitioners who are working with refugee groups to provide humanitarian assistance, as they find themselves in positions where they are implementing laws they cannot agree with. Those working with survivors of trauma or sexual violence raised concerns about their client’s inability to focus on therapy or integration programmes due to risk of dispersal or other illnesses getting worse. People seeking asylum can be more concerned with pressing issues arising in the immediate future, such as the threat of homelessness, fear of detention or deportation, or concern for family and friends still residing in areas of conflict or migrating across borders.

The trend towards disempowerment

Practitioners also highlighted feelings and experiences ranging from sadness or upset to disempowerment and hopelessness. People working in a deportation centre in Denmark felt dismay at the lack of clarity regarding the expectations of their role and that their participation did not always have a positive impact:

‘I had days when I went home thinking that today I was definitely a part of the problem, not the solution, today my presence here was a band aid at best but the patient’s haemorrhaging and I’m not actually doing what I’m supposed to be doing.’

In some places, the limits to the support that practitioners are able to provide are not only affected by economic resources but also managerial and policy decisions on what is or is not allowed. As one nurse in an immigration detention centre reflected, ‘You want to do more than you are allowed; you are not allowed to.’

The emotional effects of seeing people living in avoidable and degrading circumstances are also clear. Many felt that cuts to staffing or services reduced their ability to offer adequate support, as one women’s support worker in Scotland indicated, ‘It really is crippling ‘cause we can’t meet the needs. Literally turning people away every day who are in crisis, so that is awful.’ Shortly after this interview, in 2016, the interviewee contacted me to say their role had been removed. To date, it has not been replaced.

Breaking trust

Finally, this research found that impacts on practitioners are exacerbated by increasing mistrust between people seeking asylum and governmental and non-governmental organisations, particularly in the UK and Sweden. For others, the emotional impacts of witnessing the degradation of people seeking asylum were palpable, as a social worker in the North West of England suggests:

‘Sometimes we need to separate our feelings away from the client, but for the first time since I have worked in this field I felt as if I was about to cry when I went to the hospital because I’ve never seen somebody who has been neglected by the system like this woman I came across, because you don’t treat people like this, this is unacceptable in 21st century Britain’.

Practitioners often alluded to a loss of faith in humanitarianism in their respective states. One torture rehabilitation director remarked that, ‘they’re testing this unfortunately, a social experiment, how far they can get with their whip’, while a barrister in London questioned the rationale of governmental agendas, asking ‘Even if you accept the premise that migration is a problem and needs to be reduced, why don’t you wait to see what the last set of bad laws did before you bring in the next of the bad laws?’

In Sweden, a typically state centric nation, the impacts of this increasing mistrust were strengthened with the introduction of the REVA Project – a collaboration between Swedish Police, the Migration Agency and prison service that targets people suspected of living illegally in Sweden in order to speed up detection and deportation – which has received subsequent criticism for racism (see Barker 2017).

Migrant groups and practitioners are therefore left in precarious positions: anyone without documentation or who is awaiting the outcome of an asylum claim may be subject to arrest and possible detention or deportation, while some practitioners simultaneously lose faith in governmental agendas and face reduced capacity to undertake their role due to external pressures.

In the UK, the Nationality and Borders Bill, now in the House of Lords for readings after being debated for only nine minutes in the House of Commons, will inevitably continue this trend, creating an ever more hostile environment towards migrants and in which practitioners working with refugee populations have to operate, a trend I have previously critiqued as degradation by design.

Vicky Canning is a Senior Lecturer in the School for Policy Studies (SPS), University of Bristol. Her research focuses on the rights of women seeking asylum and support for survivors of sexual violence and torture across NGOs and migrant rights organisations, and on mitigating border harms. A longer version of this blogpost was published by SPS on 17th December 2021.

New report on ‘Organising a People’s Tribunal’

Posted on by Emily

By Don Flynn.

A new study of the tactic of mounting a People’s Tribunal (PT) to indict a government for its breach of human rights standards has been published by a group of activists and academic researchers involved in organising the 2018 London Hearing of the Permanent People’s Tribunal on Violations with Impunity of the Rights of Migrant and Refugee People.

The report, ‘Organising a People’s Tribunal’, considers the role that a PT might have in addressing the issue of the regularisation of status for a diverse group of people, numbering hundreds of thousands, who have fallen into a precarious standing with immigration control as it has unfolded as a deliberately constructed hostile environment for migrants.

Protest against the Nationality and Borders Bill, Whitehall, London, November 2021 (image: Status Now Network)

It identifies the strategic difficulties that exist for campaigners for migrant rights when their work is undertaken by a large number of separate organisations and projects, pursuing objectives that are specific to particular migrant groups or dealing with particular issues. This leads to what is described as an inevitable tendency towards the silo-isation of activity, which sometimes leads to outright competition between groups vying for the attention of audiences and funders.

A result of working in silos is that messages about the broad character of the migration control system and its impact on migrant lives tends to become fragmented and the possibility of achieving significant change is arguably reduced.

PT objectives

The organisation of a PT is intended to address this problem by setting objectives that are seen as having five basic objects:

1. Visibility – it brings much needed visibility and profile to a large-scale human rights violation, and puts this topic on the political agenda.

2. Voice and power – it creates a platform that enables diverse groups, particularly those who are traditionally excluded from public debate, to engage with and into dialogue with one another. It encourages them to give a public account of their knowledge and experience and have them recognised as truth.

3. Building solidarity – it provides an opportunity to identify points of difference and to find a path across them. A powerful account of the mechanisms and the impact of rights violations can emerge, which can point the way to mutual collaboration in finding common solutions and to exert more pressure on government and other actors for change.

4. Power ‘from below’ – rather than a legally enforceable verdict, a PT can create the momentum and solidarity to act on its findings and enact the judgement ‘from below’.

5. Speaking across groups – powerful moments of previous tribunals occurred when non-migrant voices – e.g. from trade unions, anti-austerity campaigners, disabled people’s movements – were raised alongside migrant testimony. This required mobilising networks and trust so different groups were willing to share their experiences. These moments created empathy and solidarity across groups and created stronger possible interventions into mainstream political debate by showing that the injustices shown up by the tribunal are not ‘just about migrants’ but intersect with other lives. Migration matters for all of us.

PTs have been undertaken across a range of issues in recent times and this new report urges anyone planning to do the same to approach the work with a degree of flexibility that is tailored to the evidence, the communities providing it and also the audiences whose views the activity is seeking to influence. Though not to be read as a checklist for things which have to be done for a successful tribunal, it sets out a comprehensive overview of the considerations that will structure the organisation of the project. These include:

·       securing financial resources and managing the budget;

·       providing administrative support;

·       managing the evidence collection process;

·       appointing, liaising with and supporting the jury;

·       carrying out internal and external communications work in line with the agreed communications strategy;

·       organising engagement and outreach activities in line with the agreed strategy.

It recommends planning the event as a medium-term project with a time scale of around 10-12 months. With this level of commitment required the obvious question is what might come out of the exercise that justifies its effort?

Migrant rights – an ‘outlier project’?

What is aimed for is an end to conceiving of solidarity with migrant and refugee people as an outlier project that only engages with a political subculture making internationalism and human rights the hallmark of its concern. We are now entering a third decade of what can rightly be called hostile environment policies and, though their most egregious scandals continue to breakthrough and outrage public opinion, government authority has shown a considerable capacity to overcome its stumbles and continue along the same road.

The main reason for the success of the hostile environment is its ability to present the predicament of migrant and refugee people as something that is apart from the experiences of the ‘real’ working class, which is presented as non-mobile, oriented to stable community life as opposed to transience, and holding values which are not shared by the newcomers. The view, which prevails across the mainstream of public opinion, continues to be that citizens and migrants stand at opposite poles to one another and the role of government in a democratic parliamentary system is to stand with the former against the latter.

A well-organised PT is intended to create opportunities to reach out to migrant and refugee experiences in communities and workplaces and articulate the record of exploitation, discrimination and marginalisation that has direct parallels with those of the majority of citizens. In doing this it should reveal commonalities of experience and begin to mark out the responses needed to confront and fight back against the rising tide of inequality and social injustice.

Status Now Network initiative

The study reports on the initiative currently underway involving supporters of the Status Now Network (SNN), which has floated the idea of a People’s Tribunal on the theme of ‘irregularisation by design’. This is intended to indict the UK government for policies that have been undermining regular and secure immigration statuses and rights over a period of decades, producing the current situation in which insecurity and risk remain prevalent for migrant and refugees many years after they have entered the country. The SNN group working to develop this project will be organising a roundtable on the lessons set out in the study, with a view to incorporating the most relevant of these into its own plans. If you are interested in participating in this roundtable please email info@statusnow4all.org.

You can download the report ‘Organising a People’s Tribunal’ as a .PDF or Word document.

Don Flynn is a commentator who has worked in migrant rights since providing legal advice at a community law centre in the 1970s. He helped found and was director of the Migrants’ Rights Network and has been a trustee and steering group member of several migrant organisations since.

This post was first published by the London Hearing of the PPT on 21st December 2021.

Environmental racism in the borderland: the case of Calais

Posted on by Emily

By Travis Van Isacker.

The hostile environment has been shorthand for the United Kingdom’s border regime since it was coined in 2012 by the then-Home Secretary, Theresa May. Originally describing a socio-political environment within the UK designed to make life impossible for people unable to prove their immigration status, it has since been extended to the country’s extraterritorialised borderlands, Calais especially. As the concept travelled, its scope was expanded to include the urban and natural environments that also work to segregate migrants, drive them from the city and frustrate their journeys to Britain.

But what makes environments hostile? Calais is not naturally an especially inhospitable place, nor is it uniformly hostile to all human life. Rather, it has been made hostile for the racialised migrants who are neglected, injured and all too often killed there as a result of the border. That this state-mandated violence occurs to sustain an unequal global distribution of mobility rights and privileges for differentially racialised people means Calais’ hostile environment might best be understood as one of environmental racism.

Aftermath of destruction at Zone du Virval, across from Calais’ hospital, to prevent re-settlement by migrants, 22 October 2021 (image: author’s own)

Environmental racism is a concept typically associated with environmental rather than mobility injustice. Recently, however, it has been expanded in ways which help to unpack the racism, border violence and destruction of migrants’ living spaces in Calais. Willie Jamaal Wright (2018) argues that destroying the environments that Black communities inhabit cannot be understood separately from racist physical violence against Black people. For him ‘environmental racism includes the mutual devaluation of Black bodies and the[ir] spaces’ and is expressed through the ‘mutual malformation of people and environments’. Wright also points out that environments are not only destroyed as a route or corollary to the elimination of racialised people but become weaponised in the violent processes that do so. Thus, we can understand environmental racism as the destruction as well as instrumentalisation of environments to enact racist violence.

Classic studies of environmental racism focus on how communities of colour in the United States are overwhelmingly targeted for dumping waste and locating polluting industries. Calais has its own examples of this. Most notable is La Lande, a former landfill lying in the shadows of the Tioxide and Graftech chemical factories that became home to ‘The Jungle’ in 2015 with the eviction of all other camps and squats in the city. La Lande was a toxic and hazardous site, scattered with harmful waste caused by years of illegal fly-tipping, and that was a designated Seveso area ‘subject to an increased risk of chemical accident hazard’ (Statewatch, 2020). The air quality was particularly bad and held a sour tang. Frequently this was punctuated by the burning of lachrymogenic gas fired by police, illustrating that life in the Jungle not only had to survive ‘slow violence’, as residents’ bodies absorbed pollutants and endured neglect, but the open assault of state agents.

French riot police tear gas a group of Jungle residents demonstrating on the motorway, 20 August 2015 (image: Calais Migrant Solidarity)

Since the Jungle’s destruction in October 2016, the camps that migrants create in and around Calais have been mercilessly evicted and destroyed every day, even during blizzards. People’s warm clothes and sleeping bags are confiscated or intentionally soiled by police and city workers in the process. Their goal, in addition to preventing camps from becoming visible or attaining any material durability, is to keep migrants exposed to the elements so they decide themselves to leave Calais and abandon their attempts to reach the UK. Calais’ meteorological conditions – the rain, wind and cold – are thus put to work perpetuating deterrent border policies by inflicting misery and enforcing hardship upon those made to live rough in the city.

Criticism from NGOs led to these destructions being rhetorically rebranded ‘cleanings’. Racialised migrants, already constructed as dirty and contaminated through a racist imaginary, are scapegoated for polluting the environments in which they live, in turn justifying the relentless attacks on their homes in the name of environmental protection. Maria Hagan (2019) writes that these operations in fact do more damage as the slashed tents and spoiled belongings are ‘left on site or thrown into puddles or ponds nearby, not only polluting the environment but making it less liveable for the displaced’. The cleaning euphemism, while intending to downplay the violence of constantly evicting and destroying migrants’ homes, in fact betrays the racism behind these operations when it becomes clear that they are intended to clean the sites of people, not their waste.

A ‘cleaning’ operation close to Calais’ Fort Nieulay, 13 January 2022 (image: Paula Saura).

Despite daily evictions, migrants continue re-establishing camps in the same locations each day. Recently the city started using a new tactic to try and prevent re-settlement: the total destruction of the natural environments in which camps are located. Especially in areas too large to be fenced off (as already so many sites in Calais have been), excavators and bulldozers raze the land, cut down trees, and mulch the shrubbery following evictions. Destroying these environments denies migrants the modicum of shelter and privacy the scrub provided, rendering them hypervisible to police and fully exposed to the elements.

Reflecting other borderlands, the cold and violent seas of the English Channel have recently become both border agent and medium of conveyance for people’s irregular journeys. For decades its hazards presented a natural barrier to crossings, but the intense securitisation of lorry parks, the Eurotunnel terminal and ferry-port over recent years has left navigating this narrow but dangerous marine passage in overcrowded and unseaworthy vessels the only choice available to most. The increased exposure to hypothermia and death by drowning are not natural hazards of such journeys, but rather consequences of the racist border regime that prevents illegalised travellers from safely cruising on ferries or gliding through underwater tunnels like the rest of us.

These examples of environmental racism in Calais’ borderlands illustrate how the border harms the city’s environment while making it harmful to racialised migrants. However, the concept of environmental racism also draws attention to the social, cultural and political environment of racism through which border violence is generated and justified. Recognising racism as environmental – in the words of Christina Sharpe (2017) forming ‘the totality of our environments… the total climate’ – demands that our critiques extend beyond a focus on the hostility of borderlands to address the racist politics at their root if we are to abolish them and cultivate something new.

Travis Van Isacker is a Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Brighton. This year he will be joining Migration Mobilities Bristol as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the ‘Moving’ domain of the ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures. This post was adapted from elements of his doctoral thesis ‘Counter-mapping citizenship: bordering through domicide in Calais, France’ (2020).