Kate Callow is a recent First Class BA Geography graduate from Durham University. She is the winner of the 2024 prize for Best Undergraduate Dissertation for her project entitled Navigating the Hostile Environment: Exploring the Impact of Rising State hostility on Asylum seekers in UK ‘Quasi Detention’ Accommodation. Her interest lies in forced migration and international refugee protection. Other work involves a ‘field trip’ to Jerusalem, where she focused on the political processes of normalising the dispossession of Palestinians from their territories under settler colonialism. She also studied the Political Geographies of Population, where she analysed a map of migrant deaths in the English Channel through a necropolitical and postcolonial lens. She hopes to continue her interest in this field by participating in the Oxford University School in Forced Migration 2024, in the pursuit of a career in International Human Rights and Development.
Research Overview
This research contributes to the present and lively debate on the unfair treatment of irregular migrants by the UK government, manifested through punitive policies and the allocation of unsuitable accommodation. Researching the accommodation site of Napier Barracks, Kent (since 2020), this dissertation sheds light on the issues with the state’s shift towards camp-like spaces of asylum accommodation, in the novel and unconventional use of military barracks.
First, it delves into the construction of a hostile attitude and policy environment towards asylum seekers through the discourse of the UK government. Second, it builds on the growing trend of repurposing military barracks for camp-like asylum accommodation, by drawing upon secondary reports and semi-structured interviews. Through this exploration, this dissertation uncovers the repercussions of the UK’s hostile environment on the lived experience of asylum seekers housed in military barracks. Finally, by analysing both discursive and material acts of resistance to hostility and spaces of hospitality, this dissertation advocates for a complete overhaul of the UK state’s approach to accommodation and asylum seekers more broadly.
In my research I pose the following questions:
1. How has the UK state created an increasingly hostile environment for asylum seekers through discourse? 2. What are the lived experiences of this hostile environment in UK asylum accommodation? 3. How has this hostile environment been resisted to facilitate hospitality in UK asylum accommodation?
While hostility refers to a general sense of nastiness towards a person or idea (Griffiths and Yeo, 2021), hospitality involves a host making a guest feel welcome (Derrida, 1999). An asylum seeker is an individual who has fled an ‘unbearably inhospitable’ (Bauman, 1998, 92) nation to exercise their legal right to protection, who is yet to have their claims assessed (Ziersch et al., 2017). Under Art 14, UNHDR (1948), the state is obliged to welcome and accommodate asylum seekers during this waiting process. However, despite their duty of hospitality, the state creates a hostile environment for asylum seekers (Blackledge, 2005).
The notion of accommodation centres around a hospitable relationship between the guest and host, who never questions their arrival (Derrida, 1999). Under Art 14, UNHDR (1948), the UK state is legally obliged to accommodate asylum seekers awaiting refugee decision (Webber, 2019). Yet UK asylum accommodation can be seen as a physical materialisation of the UK state’s hostile attitude and policies towards asylum seekers (Malloch and Stanley, 2005). The UK’s current approach to asylum accommodation entails a system of dispersal, detention and deportation (Darling, 2022).
Recently, given the rising numbers of asylum seekers coming to the UK (Gov.uk, 2023a), there has been a shortage of dispersal accommodation, urging the state to look for contingency spaces to fulfil its obligations (Cassidy, 2018). Under the New Plan for Immigration 2021, the state turned to using institutional settings such as military barracks and reception centres to provide ‘basic accommodation’ (Cartwright, 2022). The Nationality and Borders Act 2022 grants provisions for the use of sites such as Napier and Penally Barracks (Darling, 2022) as a form of ‘quasi-detention’ to ‘penalise people seeking asylum’ in the UK (Gov.uk, 2023a). While asylum seekers are not ‘formally detained’ (ibid) in these sites, the ambiguity of the term has led these spaces to mirror forms of hostile ‘detention’ (Cartwright, 2022).
These accommodation spaces are undergoing a process of ‘campization’ according to Kreichauf (2018), in which changes to state policy are facilitating increasingly ‘camp-like’ (Pieper, 2008) configurations of accommodation. The camp represents a space between ‘formality and informality, mobility and immobility’ (Grbac, 2013) where the hostile logics of the state can materialise (Maestri & Hughes, 2017). Kreichauf’s (2018) campization theory adopts an Agambenian (1998) view of the camp as a ‘space of exception’, a means of discipline and security (Pasquetti, 2015) for those who ‘disturb national order’ (Turner 2016). In the camp, inhabitants become governed by an alternative framework than those applying to citizens, where sovereign states can exclude humankind’s bare life (homo sacer) (Agamben, 1998; Darling 2009).
The growing presence of a ‘hostile environment’ in camp-like asylum accommodation in the UK has received little empirical research given its novel nature. To expand Kreichauf’s (2018) campization lens to a UK context, I followed a multi-method approach of discourse and report analysis and semi-structured interviews.
Findings
State Discourse
First, by underscoring the power of discourse to shape activity (Foucault, 1972), I observed how the ‘elite discourse’ (Thurlow and Jaworski, 2017) adopted by actors in parliamentary discussions and policy announcements on irregular migration in the past three years (2021- 2023) constructed a ‘discursively hostile environment’. This ‘nasty attitude’ created a general atmosphere, and specific shift towards hostile policies of deterrence via accommodation.
Initially, I found how the Home Office, primarily former Home Secretary, Suella Braverman mobilised the power of discourse (Foucault, 1972) to frame a narrative of the migrant ‘other’ (Pitsoe & Letseka, 2013) as ‘illegal’, in order to justify not being “too welcoming” (Pugliese, 2002, 21) towards them. Analysis of parliamentary discussions on the Illegal Migration Bill 2023 revealed how Braverman consistently criminalises the actions of those “coming across the English Channel on small boats making an illegal journey” (Hansard, 2022).
My analysis also found how the discursive ‘othering’ of asylum seekers as an ‘exception’ to UK society provided justification to blindside the human rights of this population in policy (De Genova, 2002). In the changes to the Hostile Environment, the Home Office states that those seeking asylum are “not analogous” to UK citizens (UK Parliament, 2020), therefore exempt from the same protection, symbolising Agamben’s (1998) notion of homo sacer.
By revealing the Home Office’s hostile attitude towards migrants as ‘illegal’ and ‘exceptional’, I found how this narrative was mobilised to justify the rising deterrence of this unwelcome population away from ‘our’ hospitality (Darling, 2009) through more punitive accommodation policies (Cassidy, 2018).
Lived Experience
From report analysis, testimonies and semi-structured interviews (2023) I undermined the ‘second-hand lived experience’ of the hostile environment in accommodation to answer my second research question. I discovered how the state’s ‘discursively hostile environment’ materialised within the experiences of the ‘uncontrollable’ military nature and ‘controllable’ living conditions at Napier.
The most prominent lived experience of a ‘physically hostile environment’ stemmed from the ‘uncontrollable’ military nature of the barracks, noted by testimonies and interviews. I consistently found how the punitive architecture of military barracks was a prominent factor in creating a hostile experience of the space, as it compounded feelings of punishment and exclusion of a ‘criminal’ (JRS, 2023; APPG, 2021). I noticed testimonies from DOTW (2021) and Participant 2 (2023) claimed that Napier “felt like a prison”, due to its spatially penal infrastructure.
Furthermore, my analysis revealed how the ‘carceral spectacle’ (Pugliese, 2008) created by the architecture of military barracks exacerbated an externally hostile environment within the surrounding community (JRS, 2023). Participants confirmed Witteborn’s (2011) notion of the camp as a ‘heterotopia’ (Foucault, 1984), which they distanced themselves from through ‘anger and disgust’ (Tyler, 2006: 191).
Lastly, from an affective lens, I discovered how the punitive organisation of camp (Figure 3) and military atmosphere was highly inappropriate, as it was re-traumatising for those who had flown persecution in military camps in their ‘inhospitable’ home nations (Bauman 1998). These findings matched with Blair et al (2022)’s research on prison-like sites inflicting trauma in accommodation and compounded the Home Office’s apparent disregard for the emotions and wellbeing of inhabitants, by reducing them to abject beings (Agamben, 1998).
Beyond Napier’s ‘uncontrollable’ military nature, the Home Office’s discursive framing of asylum seekers as ‘exempt’ from state protection was exemplified in the ‘controllable’ living conditions at the camp, which were unsuitable regardless of the site’s architecture.
First, Napier’s living conditions proved to be symbolic of the Home Office’s perception of asylum seekers as undeserving of anything above the “minimum standard” (Sigona, 2014). While a High Court Judgment (2021) claimed that conditions were “unsafe in terms of fire safety, security and mental wellbeing, whether for armed forces or asylum seekers” (APPG, 2021), the Home Office reiterated that the “accommodation (at Napier) is fit for purpose and correctly equipped in line with existing asylum accommodation standards” (Hansard 2021).
Yet through analysis of interviews and reports, it was evident that living conditions at Napier were not “fit for purpose” (Home Office, 2021), undermining a strong contrast in the deservingness of adequate living conditions between the central state and wider society. Participants 11 and 12 (2023) contradicted the claims made by another council member (Participant 10) by expressing that, “My main concern with it then and now is the deeply unsatisfactory conditions of accommodation.”
Beyond the hostile living conditions of the ‘camp’ space at Napier, my analysis found how service users lacked agency, as Participant 6 claimed that “they can’t even clean their own toilets” (2023). This reinforced an unequal power dynamic between asylum seekers and the state, further epitomising Agamben’s (1998) notion of homo sacer, who is subject to the control of sovereign power yet unprotected by it. This experience of heteronomy confirmed how camp inhabitants live under different forms of control than UK citizens, as their ‘rights of man’ are eroded (Arendt, 1973).
Lastly, the extreme mental and physical impact of the hostile living conditions at Napier was frequently mentioned by Participant 1 (2023), “Pretty much everyone absolutely hates it, it’s very harsh, the beds are rubbish you’re in this communal environment. For the shy ones sleeping in a dorm of 25 men with no ability to lock a door, no ability to shout, make any noise phone calls. We receive texts when they first arrive being like, this is really scary”.
Resistance and Hospitality
Beyond the lived experience of punishment and exception foregrounded by Napier’s military nature and living conditions, my analysis confirmed Ramadan’s (2013) claim of the camp space becoming a site agency and resistance to answer my third research question.
First, inhabitants sought to not be reduced to rightless, illegal beings through physical acts of resistance. News reports from Kent Online (2021) and Participant 2 (2023) revealed how residents went on hunger strike, slept outside and protested. Kent Online (2021) evidenced that guests could be heard chanting “freedom” and asking a police officer to “do something please”.
Furthermore, my analysis of interviews and reports confirmed that resistance premised on a consistent theme vulnerability, mirroring the necessity of ethical consideration (Darling, 2009). By adopting an affective lens, acts of resistance beyond the camp space sought to write an alternative discourse to the Home Office’s which foregrounded the equal treatment of humanity.
These acts of physical and discursive resistance to the environment at Napier and a wider hostile state narrative birthed a shift towards notions of a hospitable environment, refining my third research question and extending Darling (2009). Through a hospitable lens, defined by Derrida (1999), participants and external actors proposed that asylum seekers need to be welcomed in society by community inclusion and equal treatment in accommodation, by expanding on Kreichauf’s (2018) calls to research spaces of support beyond the camp.
Through observing alternative hospitable environments for asylum seekers fostered through resistance to the ‘porous institution’ (Kreichauf, 2018), I observed how acts of welcoming, based on a guest/host relation who never questions their arrival (Derrida, 1999) should be foregrounded in the treatment and accommodating of this vulnerable population through an ethical and affective lens. By the mutual recognition of humanity, my analysis broke down the Home Office’s distinction between ‘us’ and ‘other’ to see how the ‘other’ is part of ‘us’.
I propose three ways to counteract the contradiction between hostility and hospitality within asylum accommodation. First, instead of punishment and marginalisation, an environment must focus on care and compassion. Second, beyond exclusion, accommodation should premise on inclusion. Last, inhabitants should not be an ‘exception’ but ‘accepted’, as equal citizens, with the same human rights. However, these localised actions require translation to national governance, as the hostile environment will persist unless change comes from the top-down. The avenues through which this occurs are complex and multi-faceted, and call for a complete overhaul of the asylum system, by processing asylum claims at a much faster rate, and providing safe and legal routes vulnerable populations can travel through. Through structural change, both the discursive and material hostile environment should be eliminated completely.
Looking to future research, I call for investigation into novel forms of asylum accommodation such as barges and cruise ships, to explore a recent progression of the Hostile Environment in the UK. Furthermore, through realising the role of affect in space throughout my research, I call for wider exploration into the psychological studies of asylum accommodation.
Acknowledgement
I credit my success in receiving this award largely to my dissertation supervisor, Jonathan Darling. His expert knowledge and critical insight proved highly beneficial throughout this project. Most importantly, I will always appreciate his genuine words of encouragement and reminders to trust in my own abilities.
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