The Colonised Self: The Politics of UK Asylum Practices, and the Embodiment of Colonial Power in Lived Experience
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Coloniality, the 1951 Geneva Convention and Wider Immigration Control
‘someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion’.
3. The UK Context, Racialised Immigration Controls, and Politicisation of Asylum
‘Waiting’ and the Practice of ‘Dispersal’ in the UK
4. Governmentality, Subjectification and the ‘Colonised Self’
5. Methods and the Project
6. Research Findings
6.1. Waiting, and Curtailed Agency and Self-Actualisation
Yonas: So, when my mum heard that we were going to the UK, she was really happy. Like, she was so happy.Interviewer: And what was her, what were her expectations for you all as a family?Yonas: So, she just said that when she was there, she was just praying to get out of that situation. […] She was saying anywhere other than that place was perfect for her, so she was just praying to get out from the refugee camp. She didn’t even know, like—she can’t even—she wasn’t even imagining this, but she just knew in her head, anywhere she went, it would be better than where she is now. So, she was just praying and hoping to get out of there.(Yonas, UN refugee)
I have been in jail for 48 h. For one day? Two days? Yes, I think 48 h I was in jail because I entered illegally in the UK. It’s a rule, I think 48 h. So, after that they send me in a taxi with Uber to [City] and I have to wait there until I get the shared room accommodation from the support. It’s about two months I think. Sixty days. Two months I stayed there, and then they sent me to [city].(Aaron, person seeking asylum, now refugee)
Here, Aaron describes how the apparent state suspension of his agency leads to internal conflict (Fanon [1952] 2008); as a person claiming asylum, he is eager to establish a secure and safe life, but the stasis of his waiting inhibits this with embodied impacts. Similarly, Liya recalls the distress of being made to wait for medical treatment—whilst also waiting to be housed after her initial ‘screening meeting’—and how this, in turn, impacted her mental wellbeing. At this time, she had a serious and painful skin complaint, and she described how, despite seeking medical attention, she was recurrently told to ‘wait’ for an undefined period of time. Here, Liya’s human right to have access to health care is overshadowed by this unquantified waiting of the asylum process, and her physical pain and the condition are subsequently prolonged:The whole year I was stressing on why I was here, and everything was out of control for my mind. Just out of control. There are external factors that I cannot stop or push […] So, I can’t even eat food. When I eat it I just take it out because of the stress. It was too much. Every day I was crying […] I mean the time that I spent waiting for the interview, and getting the response from the government it’s just wasted.(Aaron, person seeking asylum, now refugee)
When we went to [Town1] it was then when I told them that I am to go to hospital. They told me to wait. I showed them the thing that was happening. It was in my bottom, my hands and stuff. They told me to wait […] I’m suffering from it even now. At that time, if I could, if I got help or the right medicine at that time maybe I would have been better by now.(Liya, person seeking asylum)
There is no use going back to that walk in service again […] In my mind I was like there’s just no point, I will just keep suffering, and wait for a month.(Liya, person seeking asylum)
6.2. Dispersal: A Barrier to Freedom, Self-Determination and ‘Belonging’
I’ve never been to anywhere. So, that morning they came with a van, ‘we are moving you’. We said ‘OK’. So when I was going they said the accommodation, ‘we are taking you to [City 2] now, not [City 1] anymore’. ‘OK’. We Googled [City 2]. It’s far. We don’t have a choice; we just have to go. […] I said ‘as long as I can find a roof on our head’. So, when we got close to [City 2] they were like ‘we are sorry, the accommodation is not available, we are taking you to [City 3]’.(Honour, person seeking asylum, now refugee)
So, they took us to a hotel. We stayed in the hotel for, was it three days or something? So, I can remember after that they were like, ‘OK, next Monday’, and the bus came that we were going to [Town 2] on. So, I said ‘OK’, and I packed our bags and everything, which I did. It was a long journey though. I can’t even remember the hours. […] So we came to [City 1]. It was Home Office, like, hotel. I thought I was going to be long there. I didn’t, I spend just two weeks there because I can remember when I got there I was like, I wanted to cry. ‘Don’t worry’. I don’t like them saying that to me. ‘Don’t worry, you won’t stay long here’. I’m like OK, amen, amen.(Kemi, person seeking asylum)
I know this place. Almost 100 people in local support organisations […] but I know that some place, it doesn’t seem like, this is for us. It’s for the people who belong to the real UK citizens. We don’t have the confidence that all the parking areas, and everything, belong to us. I mean it doesn’t.(Aaron, person seeking asylum, now refugee)
There is a lot of home where as a refugee you can’t live in it, because like [where] you can live it is full of English people. They were not expecting you to come to there. Okay. Everybody knows that. They know this area, even the police would come to you saying, ‘no, this area where you go to, we do not like that’. So the response is ‘no’, because that’s not a good area. […] I am like I need to be, like, I’d prefer to be around people like me, not English people.(Faahim, person seeking asylum, now refugee)
6.3. The Embodiment of Power and the ‘Colonised Self’
There is a fear in general, a fear that we do not deserve. There is a fear that those people do not see us the way we see them […] So from that, if you have that fear you don’t put yourself in anything that’s the big thing.(Aaron, person seeking asylum, now refugee)
There’s Somalis, there’s Jamaicans, Pakistanis. Our next door neighbours are Pakistanis, the other next door is Jamaicans. So, it just feels diverse […] so I’m like, “OK, Yeah, there’s so many refugees, as well, here. Like, even though we don’t know them, they are refugees, as well. […] It doesn’t feel like you’re in a place where you are, you are, you are the only one there. It just feels like you blend in, like.(Yonas, UN refugee)
It was very good really but, you know, we have to stay all three of us in one room. It was Ok for us. It’s OK for us, and stay for the second interview. We feel we were doing ok, as I told you, you know. We were staying in one room with a bathroom inside. We go to one kitchen. All of us. More than 200 guys, or something like this.(Abu, person seeking asylum, now refugee)
By describing the overcrowded conditions of the hostel accommodation (Phillips 2006) as ‘OK’, and by not wanting ‘to mention’ his family’s negative interactions with the State, Abu seemingly avoids drawing attention to his family and being critical of the ‘rescuer’; he does not want to appear unthankful for the protection his family has since been granted. As such, the conflict revealed between Abu’s internal wellbeing and external presentation is similar to that of Algerian people in Fanon’s work; Black people in White-dominated contexts can self-identify with the socially constructed ideas that their oppressors create about them and modify their behaviours accordingly. Here, Abu’s desire to express gratitude, whilst genuine, coheres with White narratives that people granted asylum have been ‘freed’ from their previous lives (Fanon [1952] 2008). While acknowledging that previous studies document how bordering practices contribute to people claiming asylum in the UK resisting ‘slow violence’ (Mayblin et al. 2020) in varied forms (Saunders and Al-Om 2022), we show that the practices described also contribute to the creation of a ‘subject’—the colonised self—that we argue has a function to the UK government.I don’t want to mention that because it was, I’ve had so many good things. I don’t want to mention, you know, that small thing […] They find this flat for us, so I don’t mention that because it’s a teeny thing amongst so many good things.
7. Discussion
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
1 | Article 14 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: ‘Everyone has the right to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution’. |
2 | The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights’ (art. 1) and ‘everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status’ (art. 2). Additionally, ‘everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person’ (art. 3). |
3 | Article 1 of the 1986 Declaration on the Right to Development states: ‘The right to development is an inalienable human right by virtue of which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized.’ |
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Pseudonym | Area of Origin * | Age | Gender | Migration Status | Background |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Lyia | East Africa | 20s | Female | Person seeking asylum | Initially fled from persecution on her own. Living in shared Home Office accommodation, |
Aaron | East Africa | 20s | Male | Person Seeking Asylum, now Refugee | Fled from persecution with his family. Living in shared Home Office accommodation, |
Faahim | Middle East | 30s | Male | Person seeking asylum, now refugee | Fled from conflict on his own. Now lives with his wife and infant son |
Honour | West Africa | 30s | Female | Person seeking asylum, now refugee | Victim of trafficking. Lived in the UK 10 years before claiming asylum. Single mum with teenage daughter. |
Kemi | West Africa | 20s | Female | Person seeking asylum | Victim of trafficking. Lived in the UK 15 years before claiming asylum. Single mum with a pre-school daughter. |
Abu | Northeast Africa | 50s | Male | Person seeking asylum, now refugee | Fled from conflict with his family and lives with his daughter (in her 20s) and wife. |
Yonas | East Africa | 20s | Male | UN refugee | Fled from conflict with his family and lived in a refugee camp before coming to the UK as UN refugees. Lives with his mum and siblings. |
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Walsh, J.; Ferazzoli, M.T. The Colonised Self: The Politics of UK Asylum Practices, and the Embodiment of Colonial Power in Lived Experience. Soc. Sci. 2023, 12, 382. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12070382
Walsh J, Ferazzoli MT. The Colonised Self: The Politics of UK Asylum Practices, and the Embodiment of Colonial Power in Lived Experience. Social Sciences. 2023; 12(7):382. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12070382
Chicago/Turabian StyleWalsh, Julie, and Maria Teresa Ferazzoli. 2023. "The Colonised Self: The Politics of UK Asylum Practices, and the Embodiment of Colonial Power in Lived Experience" Social Sciences 12, no. 7: 382. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12070382