Being a Refugee: Learning and Identity

Being a Refugee offers moving insights into the lives of refugees before and after they arrive in the UK. All those featured are professionals with high qualifications and, like all refugees, their personal stories are shaped by their unique biographical, cultural and social backgrounds. Yet each narrative is lived within the broad social template of what it means to be a refugee in contemporary Britain. And together they have significant implications for policy and practice.

Combining rich empirical data drawn from their life histories with theoretical insights into learning and identity processes, Linda morrice explores how and what the refugees learn, and the strategies they adopt in the process of building viable and respected identities for themselves in a new social and cultural space. Through life history and logitudinal study, she powerfully challenges the stereotyped images of refugees. On a theoretical, she questions and disrupts our understanding of learning and identity as continuous or constructive processes and argues instead for a conception of learning which acknowledges ‘unlearning’ and identity deconstruction.

The book provides an overview of policy in relation to asylum and immigration issues and reveals the often unintended and contradictory impact of policy on refugees’ lives. It is essential reading for policy makers, professionals and everyone concerned with refugee welfare, it is also invaluable for academic researchers with an interest in lifelong learning, higher education, life history, identity and migration studies.

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The story of a young Afghan’s 7,150 miles journey

TEENAGER Gulwali Passarlay has told of his astonishing journey as he fled from war-torn Afghanistan to safety in the UK—travelling alone 7,150 miles, through 10 countries, aged just 12.

Gulwali risked his life and left his family on the harrowing year-long ordeal, which saw him hiding in an engine compartment of a lorry, and crammed into a dangerously overcrowded boat.

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Source: The Bolton News

Research and Statistics: ICAR

Stateless By Any Other Name: Refused Asylum-Seekers in the United Kingdom B K. Blitz; M Otero-Iglesias – Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies is an article which maintains that there are certain aspects of the UK asylum system which may lead to statelessness-like situations and it calls into question the application of key principles of human rights as they relate to refused asylum-seekers, especially the tenets of dignity and non-discrimination, and the right to family life.

Doing Research With Refugees: Issues and Guidelines by B Temple, R Moran – Policy Press. This updated book explores methodological issues relating to the involvement of refugees in both service evaluation and development and research.

From Dutch Dispersal to Ethnic Enclaves in the UK: The Relationship between Segregation and Integration Examined through the Eyes of Somalis by S Van Liempt – Urban Studies. Since 2000, a considerable number of Somalis with Dutch passports have started to move from cities and small towns in the Netherlands, which were relatively mixed, to residential environments in the UK with much higher concentrations of Somalis and other immigrants. This paper examines experiences of integration and segregation in the Netherlands and the UK by interviewing some of these Somalis.

Forced Marriage and Refugee Status by C Dauvergne and J Millbank. This study analyses 120 refugee decisions involving a claim of forced marriage as persecution from 1994-2008 from the courts and tribunals of United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. It shows a deep and on-going resistance to forced marriage as the basis for refugee claims in the UK in comparison with Canada and Australia.

Immigration detention in Northern Ireland by R Wilson -  Criminal Justice Matters. Robin Wilson reports on the lack of due process for asylum seekers and highlights how when it comes to those seeking asylum in the UK, a system of shadow law has developed in recent years, to which normal rules of natural justice do not apply.

The Dispersal and Social Exclusion of Asylum Seekers: Between Liminality and Belonging by P Hynes – Policy Press. This book establishes asylum seekers as a socially excluded group, investigating the policy of dispersing asylum seekers across the UK and providing an overview of historic and contemporary dispersal systems.

Refugee Council briefing on Home Office asylum statistics for 2010 Details of applications and decisions made under the asylum process. This briefing pulls out the asylum statistics for the fourth quarter of 2010 and collates the figures from the four bulletins into annual totals.

The Relationship Between Trauma, Post-Migration Problems and the Psychological Well-Being of Refugees and Asylum Seekers by  K Carswell, C Barker, P Blackburn – Int J Soc Psychiatry is a study investigating the relationship between trauma, post-migration problems, social support and the mental health of refugees and asylum seekers.

I feel human again, but I miss my children so much

Jaffa Mokonen keeps a framed photograph of her kids on a coffee table in her living room. Her two children smile at the camera. Jaffa hasn’t seen them in 13 long years. Until a few months ago she didn’t even know if they were still alive.

Full story

Source: Manchester Evening News

‘My Refuge’ Competition – where is your refuge?

So what do you do when you’ve had a bad week, when things aren’t going to plan or are getting on top of you, when you need some time to yourself or to recharge your batteries?

Do you physically go somewhere, or just in your mind?  Do you look for distraction, or a friendly face?

Take a walk in the countryside?  Meet a friend for a chat over coffee?  Lose yourself in a good book?  Revisit the scene of a childhood holiday?  Sit in a quiet corner of your garden?  Visit the gym?  Browse through old photos?  Call your Mum?  Play a round of golf?

We want to know what the word ‘refuge’ means for you – where is your refuge, your sanctuary, your retreat, your bolt-hole, your haven?

You can tell us – in a sentence, a poem, an audio clip ….
You can show us – in a photograph, a painting, a film clip, a drawing ….

And we will include your submission as part of an exhibition to be held during Refugee Week, with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd prize-winners chosen for various age categories!

The deadline for submissions is Wednesday 31st May 2011

Please contact Gill Buttery (Development Worker) on 0116 2616222 / 07716 073403

www.cityofsanctuary.org/leicester

Asylum decision-making in the UK: disbelief or denial?

Having identified a culture of disbelief at the heart of the British Home Office, campaigners for refugee rights must also address its culture of denial, says James Souter

Full article

As the world looks to Libya, a refugee crisis unfolds

Night after night they huddle together in groups, desperately trying to stay warm. The lucky ones scavenge blankets and plastic sheeting, or gather around sputtering fires. Others sleep on the hillsides, waiting for help to arrive.

Full story

Residence rights removal overturned

Source: Institute of Race Relations

By Frances Webber

The Court of Appeal has upheld the right of a Tunisian refugee to appeal in the UK against cancellation of his residence rights.

We have become used to dodgy manoeuvres on the part of the Home Office and the UK Border Agency (UKBA) in their war on asylum seekers, terror suspects and other ‘undesirables’. Campaigns have been fought and limited victories secured against the unbridled use of secret evidence and secret allegations in the context of control orders. A fairly new development is the attempt to hobble appeal rights of those deemed undesirable by curtailing their leave to enter while they are out of the country, and then arguing that they have no right to come back in to prosecute their appeal. The case of MK, which was decided on 23 March 2011, provides a window on these new tactics.

MK is a Tunisian refugee, granted asylum in 2001, who lived in Manchester with his wife and daughters until 2007, when the Italian authorities demanded his extradition. He was arrested on a European Arrest Warrant and extradited to Italy in November 2008, where he was put on trial for terrorism-related offences and an offence relating to false documents. In July 2010 he was acquitted of all the terrorism-related offences. The Italian authorities then tried to send him to Tunisia, but were prevented from doing so by the European Court of Human Rights. In the meantime, however, in April 2010, the Home Office served him with a notice saying it intended to revoke his refugee status, on the basis that there were ‘reasonable grounds for believing him to be a danger to national security’. And on 16 July, the UK authorities cancelled his indefinite leave to enter in the UK.

Naturally, MK sought to appeal against the decision of the UK authorities – but he had been told by UKBA – wrongly – that he had no right to return to the UK for his appeal. When he was released from custody in Italy in August 2010, he was given five days to leave the country. But where could he go? He went to Zurich, but was arrested trying to check in on a flight to Dublin. Unbeknownst to him, UKBA had even cancelled his refugee travel document. He was sent to London City Airport, where he was arrested on arrival. The immigration authorities tried to send him back to Zurich, but his lawyers got an injunction to prevent that, and a ruling from the High Court that the law gave MK a right of appeal in the UK and that the cancellation of his leave did not take effect while he exercised that right of appeal. The judge, Mr Justice Collins, accepted that appellants should not be deprived of the right to attend their own appeal unless that was the clear intention of parliament.

The Home Office refused to accept that ruling and appealed. It argued that the sort of appeal appellants were entitled to – in-country or outside the country – depended on where they were at the time of the decision to cancel their leave or exclude them from the country. The purpose of exclusion would be defeated, its lawyers argued, if appellants who had left the UK could come back for an appeal. As MK’s lawyers pointed out, the argument raised the spectre of someone settled in the UK for decades going abroad on a short holiday and finding themselves suddenly and shockingly banished from the country for ever – a prospect which was evidently what the Home Office intended. The judges agreed that this would give rise to ‘potential injustice’ – a description that feels like something of an understatement. Had the judges not intervened, the Home Office would once more have got away with a sleight-of-hand erosion of appeal rights in the name of national security.

Amanda Weston, a barrister who represented MK, has expressed profound concern at UKBA practice apparently aimed at subverting appeal rights and skewing procedures against appellants. She is speaking at an IRR lunchtime seminar on 18 April, on Deprivation of citizenship – by stealth (http://www.irr.org.uk/2011/april/ha000001.html).

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FOOTNOTE

Secretary of State for the Home Department v MK (Tunisia) [2011] EWCA Civ 333, 25 March 2011 (http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2011/333.html).

Children and Youth

• Landing in Kent: The experience of unaccompanied children arriving in the UK is a new report from the Children’s Commissioner. See also Refugee Council press statement and Children and Young People Now
• The experiences of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in and leaving the out-of-home care system in the UK and Australia: A critical review of the literature by Larissa Barrie and Philip Mendes in International Social Work 54.
• Understanding the experiences and emotional needs of unaccompanied asylum-seeking adolescents in the UK by Claire Groark and Irene Sclare in Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
• Lives in the Balance: The Quality of Immigration Legal Advice Given to Separated Children Seeking Asylum – Refugee Council report by Laura Brownlees and Terry Smith.
• Something to smile about: Promoting and supporting the educational and recreational needs of refugee children – Refugee Council report on its SMILE project for refugee children. See also Children and Young People Now
• Families New to the UK: Confident families in cohesive communities – new report by 4Children.

Education system failing refugee children

Article first published 10 February 2011 (Children & Young People Now)

Refugee children are struggling to access education because of discrimination, poor practice and a lack of guidance according to a new report.

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