Category: Bordering control justice

Arts against racism and borders

Posted on by Emma

By Pier Luc Dupont

The first workshop of the MMB research challenge Bodies, Borders, Justice, entitled Arts against racism and borders, was held in the evening of the past 13 May. A dozen academics from arts and humanities, policy studies, sociology and law gathered in the welcoming Verdon Smith Room overlooking the Royal Fort Gardens to discuss the possibilities of the arts, and particularly the creativity of migrants themselves, to shape public discourses and perceptions of free movement. This is particularly important in xenophobic times which bring to the fore mobility researchers’ ethical duty to engage with the widest possible range of stakeholders.

On this occasion we were able to learn from the rich experience of three outstanding speakers. Zita Holbourne, national chair of Black Activists Rising Against Cuts and joint national chair of Artists Union England, has long been involved in the fight against racism and border controls as an artist and activist. After the Grenfell fire for instance she supported survivors by bringing their artistic work to the attention of a wider public. Agata Vitale (Bath Spa University) and Judy Ryde (Trauma Foundation South West) both participated in a study on arts-based interventions to promote resilience among refugee women living with HIV. Their presentation, offered with Sarah Klein (an arts therapist at TFSW), discussed how the arts can help migrants overcome isolation and express experiences of injustice that can be difficult to formulate verbally.

It was extremely motivating to hear about so many creative ways in which researchers can engage with those who move. The stimulating discussions that followed the presentations also raised important questions, such as:

  • How can/should we use artistic work that was not originally created for research or political purposes?
  • How can we expand and diversify the audience exposed to this work?
  • How can we add an artistic dimension to our mobility-related communications, whatever their format?
  • How can class or race privilege be taken into account when engaging with vulnerable creators?
  • How can creators themselves benefit from this engagement?

Those who would like to reflect on these issues are welcome to have a look at some of the initiatives that were mentioned in the presentations and discussion:

Of course the arts are only one of many ways for academics to learn from those labelled ‘migrants’. To explore socio-legal engagements we invite you to read the judgement on Hostile Environment recently delivered by the Permanent Peoples Tribunal on the rights of migrants and refugee peoples, whose panel of judges was presided by MMB Director Bridget Anderson.

Language as a component of integration

Posted on by Emma

By Tom Dixon (ACH Senior Project Officer) and Pier-Luc Dupont from MMB

On 16th April, ACH and Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB, University of Bristol) hosted the third in the series of joint workshops, this time on the topic of Language. Tom Dixon, Senior Project Officer and Rachel Sharp, Support and Integration Team Leader presented from ACH and Pier-Luc Dupont from MMB. The audience was made of academics from various universities across the South West and Wales.

Workshop held at the ACH offices

This workshop was the final in a series of joint workshops aiming to break down barriers between academia and practitioner organisations. ACH has delivered ESOL both via traditional methods and using our own innovative methodologies.

ACH talked about the current model for ESOL provision in the UK and the limitations and issues inherent to it. We also then discussed some of our alternative approaches including English My Way and our SEESI ‘life before language’ methodology.

MMB discussed the problems posed by nationalist approaches to language learning and more specifically by the assumption that the linguistic needs of migrants and refugees are limited to the learning of standard English. As studies on cultural diversity and transnationalism have shown, intra-state linguistic diversity and international mobility mean that plurilingualism and translation services are often necessary for people to participate in economic, political, cultural and social activities. In this context, the challenge is not only to find out how to teach languages effectively but also what languages to teach, to whom, and at what level of proficiency or formality. To answer these questions, language educators must understand why people may want to use certain languages at specific stages of their life course. They must then identify the barriers they face and design interventions to overcome the barriers in the short, medium and long term. In some cases, this may entail the simultaneous teaching of English and other languages or the development of multilingual public and private services. MMB illustrated this with the lived experience of Roma participants in an EU-funded project on justice (ETHOS), which found that linguistic exclusion and stigma were often bound up with racism and other sources of inequality.

After the two short presentations a discussion followed with all participants asking questions of the presenters. These discussions quickly moved from language learning to a broader conversation about learning in general, employment and wider integration. This direction is indicative of the intersectional nature of work undertaken at ACH and MMB and why taking a holistic approach to integration is so essential.

All three workshops have been very useful in sharing expertise with a wider audience and learning from each other.

ACH is always keen to remain informed of relevant academic work which can improve the way in which we support tenants and the wider refugee community in Bristol. If you want to learn more about our projects and approaches, please contact tom.dixon@ach.org.uk.

Risky Relationships

Posted on by Emma

By Katharine Charsley, University of Bristol and Emma Agusita, University of of the West of England

Access denied illustration
Credit: Radley Cook @radleycook. Illustrator for the Visualising Love exhibition

The Risky Relationships workshop, held at the Arnolfini on 27th & 28th March 2019, aimed to explore the navigation of immigration regulation in family and intimate relationships from a variety of perspectives.

The event invited participants to view the contemporary landscape of family migration and ‘intimate mobilities’ (Groes & Fernandez 2018) from the analytical perspective of risk. The optic of risk has appeared in various forms in the migration research literature, including work on migration decision making, household risk management strategies, and the physical risks of some forms of cross-border mobility. Issues of families and relationships have, however, been neglected amid a focus on economic and refugee migration.  This absence is all the more surprising considering how discourses of risk are employed to justify tightening restrictions on family migration, and to distinguish some kinds of border-crossing relationship from others. For couples and families divided by borders, or with mixed immigration status, immigration regulations create risks of separation, and futures contingent on navigating a variety of economic, legal, practical and emotional risks. Increasing restrictions to family migration have both heightened the risks involved and expanded them to affect a wider variety of actors. These risks are often patterned along ethno-racial, gender and class lines.

‘Genuineness’ in migrant relationships

Sponsored by Migration Mobilities Bristol, The University of Bristol Faculty of Social Science and Law Strategic Fund, and University of the West of England Faculty of Arts, Creative Industries and Education, the workshop included contributions from social science, arts and culture, and legal practitioner perspectives. After an introduction from Katharine Charsley outlining the topic and the many layers of risk discourse and risk management which interact in creating the landscape for contemporary family migration (from government policy through legal practice to family networks), Emma Agusita and Iris Sportel explored the issue of genuineness –  a key criteria for immigration applications based on marital relationships. In both papers, we saw how dominant discourses colonise the internal dynamics of couples, so that they may constantly seek to document and display the genuineness of their relationships, or question the intentions of a foreign spouse.

Sian Pearce from Avon and Bristol Law Centre spoke about the risks for former unaccompanied minors who struggle to establish a right to stay in the UK as a result of inadequate representation and restrictive interpretations of the law. Any relationships formed by those with ‘precarious’ immigration status (including those with long-standing foster parents) are given little weight in tribunal considerations, but the issue of precarity has wider implications in this field, as only those with Citizenship or Indefinite Leave to Remain are exempt from this category.

Risks from control

Anna Lindley’s paper on immigration detention showed how whilst the case for risk of harm to migrants from detention is often difficult to make given restrictive definitions, considerations of risks to society presented to justify detention are much more expansive, and often based on problematic evidence. Natasha Carver’s paper contrasted the risks faced by Somali couples attempting to reunite under British immigration law, with the easier experience of those able to access spousal immigration through EU membership. As a result, the latter category of couples are sometimes unprepared for the risks and requirements of subsequent settlement applications. Bridget Anderson’s reflections on risk, uncertainty, temporality and agency in understanding migration and mobility brought together many threads from our discussions, interweaving them with new theoretical insights.

Visualising risks

Various forms of written and artistic creativity further stimulated our discussions. Some presentations from researchers who had dealt with issues of immigration in their own relationships had auto-biographical elements. Emma Agusita’s Visualising Love exhibition  brought the experiences of couples negotiating the UK’s spousal immigration regulations to life, whilst Sine Plambech’s award winning film Heartbound documented how Thai-Danish families develop and manage transnational family lives shaped both by risks of loneliness, poverty, separation, and hopes for the futures.

The workshop clearly established that this is a topic in need of attention – not only from the point of view of academic understanding, but also as a pressing issue for families navigating immigration regulations. We hope to address this gap in future collaborations drawing on the conversations and networks we established over these two fascinating days.

Blog co-authored by:

Katharine Charsley, University of Bristol

Emma Agusita, University of the West of England

New Thinking on Integration, Employment and Language

Posted on by Emma

By Bridget Anderson and David Jepson (ACH)

Academics have a lot to learn from people who are on the frontline. Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB) can, for example, learn from people who speak from their personal and organisational experiences of immigration controls and the hostile environment. We also believe that academics have something to offer in return – an analysis of patterns of experiences and how these are institutionally and historically embedded.

For example, ACH/Himilo is an organisation which has considerable knowledge of the issues confronting service provision and integration. It has grown in ten years from a small-scale housing provider to a leading provider of integration support for refugees and migrants, working with 2500 people per year. It challenges many assumptions about how newly-arrived communities should be ‘integrated’ and it has started to set out a new paradigm through the #rethinkingrefugee approach.

However, ACH recognises the need to test thinking more widely and to take advantage of the many academic experts in Bristol who can bring different perspectives. Furthermore, both MMB and ACH/Himilo recognise that we can learn from the talents, experiences and aspirations of newly-arrived communities and thereby benefit the individuals themselves and the wider community. It is through groups like MMB, ACH/Himilo and other key bodies such as the Mayor’s Office collaborating that we can make Bristol into a knowledge hub and make real progress in building inclusive communities.

For this reason, ACH/Himilo approached MMB suggesting we jointly organise a seminar series on the themes of integration, employment and language.

We both agreed that these would be discussion orientated, with short presentations, one from an academic and one from a practitioner. We decided on a maximum of twenty participants, ten from University of Bristol and ten non-academic interested stakeholders. We held the first of these, on integration, on 11th February 2019 in the Will Memorial Building at the University of Bristol, and we found it highly stimulating and engaging.

Of course, we were helped by having two fantastic presenters. Dr Katharine Charsley from SPAIS (Sociology, Politics and International Studies) got us off to a great start by presenting a model of integration processes that she has developed with Dr Sarah Spencer (COMPAS, University of Oxford).

This disaggregates the different types of integration that matter to an individual: the social, structural, civic/political, cultural and identity. Integration in one area does not mean integration in another and disaggregating in this way can help us design and evaluate policies better.

She was followed by Richard Thickpenny from ACH/Himilo, who discussed the ‘Invisible Line of Control’. Unreflexive policy and practice can mean that policymakers and practitioners can predetermine below optimal results for the people they want to support. For example, ACH had found that three quarters of refugees were working in entry level jobs and staying in them, not progressing to develop or adapt the skills that that they already have. In this way, interventions can end up limiting the potential of refugees to achieve full integration. Both presentations illustrated the importance of a holistic approach and attending to the unintended consequences of integration policies.

The subsequent conversations were very lively. We tackled the challenge of the basic assumptions of the language of integration – what is it that people are ‘integrating’ in to? Why is it only migrants and refugees who are targeted by integration policies? Why do we assume that the residents of Clifton ‘integrated’? It made me think that perhaps we should investigate other terms that are used to describe similar processes for different populations. For example, one of the ways to counter the exclusions faced by disabled people is to facilitate ‘accessibility’. Could it be helpful for us to learn from the struggles of disabled people and to look for parallels between integration and accessibility? Answers on a postcard please….

Blog co-authored by:

Bridget Anderson, Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship, University of Bristol.

David Jepson, Director and Policy Advisor, ACH/Himilo

 

This blog has also been posted in the ACH blog feed 

Brexit and migration: our new research highlights fact-free news coverage

Posted on by Emma

By Denny Pencheva

Immigration anxieties played a significant role in British people’s decision in June 2016 to vote to leave the EU. This has fuelled a debate over the quality of media reporting on migration issues.
In order to get a better idea of the role the media played, we examined nearly 1,000 news items, feature articles and editorials from six UK newspapers: the Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, the Sun, the Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian, published in 2006 and in 2013.

These were politically important years: 2006 was the year before Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU and the time when it was becoming clear that migration forecasts for the countries that joined the EU in 2004 had been way off. In 2013 David Cameron, delivered his Bloomberg speech in which he promised the EU referendum.

One thing that quickly became apparent was that media coverage contained a selective mixture of statistics, reported comments from politicians and other public figures, academic studies, think-tank reports, and emotive polemics backed with no evidence at all. The practice of mentioning evidence in passing and then dismissing or overriding it was also present.

Bolt the door

The most prominent theme was that mobility within the EU damages British sovereignty. Newspapers from across the political spectrum suggested that intra-EU mobility was impossible to control and that the free movement principle overrides British sovereignty. The theme was also marked by growing scepticism towards migration data and evidence.

The language used to describe EU migration tended to emphasise quantity and scale (“mass”, “vast”, “large scale”). There were lots of “floods” and “waves” and extensive use of military metaphors (“army”, “war”, “battle”, “siege” or “hordes”) in the tabloid press.

When covering migration from Bulgaria and Romania, the press regularly trotted out the figure of 29m migrants – which, in fact, is the combined population of the two countries. Rather than reporting on actual migration of Bulgarians and Romanians, papers preferred hypothetical scenarios where they would migrate en masse simply because they could.

An opinion piece from the Sun, dated September 22 2006, claimed that “any Bulgarian or Romanian will be free to come here as they please – and come they will, because their own countries are very poor and there is no work”.

Daily Mail, 2006. Gideon via Flickr, CC BY-SA

Overall, the Guardian did a better job than the other papers when it came to using evidence. An article from 2013 used statistics form the Department of Work and Pensions to reveal that immigration to Britain from southern European member states had increased by 50% while using national insurance registrations to show that “data shows little evidence of any surge in Romanians or Bulgarians arriving”.

One article in the Sun covered the story from a different angle, arguing that because of the negative impact of the financial crisis on the building trade in Italy and Spain, migrant workers were bound to be laid off and flood into Britain. The article was centred on an interview with “jobless William Razval, 24” – who, it said, “is desperate to lead the exodus”.

Benefits scroungers

The topic of EU nationals abusing the welfare system was the second most popular theme. Despite official figures, newspapers often chose to ignore evidence and play on public fears that welfare abuse was all but inevitable.

The press trotted out crude decontextualised comparisons between living standards in Britain and eastern Europe. Once again, newspapers focused on the hypothetical possibility of welfare abuse, rather than on specific instances where it has actually taking place. In 2006, Tony Parsons, then a columnist with the Daily Mirror, asked: “At what point does mass immigration, even if it’s good for the economy, push our social services to breaking point?”

Nothing much had changed by March 2013, when a news article from the Times quoted Iain Duncan Smith, who claimed that it was “too easy for EU migrants to claim access to social housing, health care and tax credits” without providing any evidence as to show how many were actually doing so. In June of the same year, the Daily Mail sounded a familiar dog whistle, claiming: “It is easy to imagine how a public fed up with abuses of the welfare state would react.”

In light of recent arguments that journalists become increasing proactive in framing and reshaping migration debates instead of being content with reporting them, it is important to assess the relationship between news coverage and evidence. After all, anti-immigration, eurosceptic reporting did much of the grunt work for the Leave camp and put immigration anxieties in the centre of Brexit discussions and negotiations.

Now we are faced with the danger of race-to-the-bottom post-Brexit immigration policies where EU citizens could be downgraded to migrants overnight on the basis of unsupported anxieties and wild speculations.

Author: Denny Pencheva – Associate Teacher, UK and EU migration policies; Assistant Teacher, Comparative Politics, University of Bristol

Disclosure statement: Denny Pencheva does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

This article was previously published in The Conversation on 1st March 2019.

Welcome to the MMB Blog!

Posted on by Emma

And welcome to Migration Mobilities Bristol! For those of you who do not know us yet we are a Specialist Research Institute at the University of Bristol. We comprise a network of academics, practitioners and others who are interested in human movement and who want to expand and challenge understandings of mobility in order to contribute to a more just world. You can find out more about us here.

There’s been a longstanding interest in migration at Bristol, nurtured by colleagues like Katharine Charsley and Jon Fox for years before I came here, and later Julia O’Connell Davidson and Chris Bertram.  It’s been very exciting working with people to think about our next steps. This has been a genuinely interdisciplinary effort, with lots of different faculties contributing, and our fantastic advisory board includes people from History, English, Geography, Philosophy, Social Sciences, Film and Television Studies and Law.

How to research migration?

We’ve developed a set of four research challenges with a view to helping us to enrich the study of migration through making unexpected connections, and to demonstrate to non-migration scholars and policymakers just how important migration is. This is critical work because while we have seen a massive increase in research on migration the movement of some people continues to be scapegoated and demonised, their journeys becoming ever more dangerous and their attempts to successfully claim asylum ever more difficult. For academics this means we must grapple with how to research ‘migration’ without contributing to the construction of the strongly imagined problem ‘migrant’? I’ll do a quick plug here for the MSc Migration and Mobility Studies which is a fantastic course for people who want to think critically and about migration and migration policies, and learn new research skills.

New thinking

This blog contributes to our ambition to promote new thinking on people and movement. We hope that it will showcase research and good practice and be a space where you can make unexpected connections and try out ideas.

We don’t only need good news stories so let’s be unafraid to share our learning from mistakes and wrong turns. We want to challenge the boundaries between theory and practice, between the university and practitioners, between citizens and non-citizens, so please, feel free to join in the conversations and contribute to this blog series.

Get in touch – mmb-sri@bris.ac.uk

 

By Bridget Anderson

Bridget is Director of Migration, Mobilities Bristol (MMB) and Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship. Her post is split between the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law and the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies