Undocumented Migrants in the
United Kingdom
1. Introductory background: on the need for this study
3. Methodology employed in the survey
a) How the initial methodology was conceived
b) Methodology literature and the role of theory
c) How the methodology evolved in the course of field research
a) Legal background
b) Concern of JRS
c) Categories
5. Introduction of the Interviewees
a) Basic biographical data & 'push and pull factors'
6. Description of aspects of undocumented migrants' lives
7. Factors influencing migration decision
a) Main factors
b) Individual examples of push and pull
and the role of refugee communitie
c) Interpretative factors which emerged
in background interviews
d) Retrospective change in subjective
view of the migration process
8. Arrival in the UK, function of ethnic networks
a) Undocumented entrants
b) A note on the trade in false documentation
c) Those entering the country legally
who lose their right to remain
d) Ethnic networks and the reception of the unauthorised
a) The Asylum and Immigration Act, housing provision
and the increased burden on refugee communities
b) Internal controls in the housing sphere
c) The housing situation of the undocumented -
vulnerability and support
d) The housing situation of the undocumented -
solidarity at local level
e) Accommodation 'underground'
10. Employment and Income - Making a living
a) The pressure to go underground
b) Jobs of the undocumented
c) The irregular and involvement in crime
d) Exploitative conditions
e) Employers Sanctions Section 8, A&I Act
f) The agricultural sector
g) The undocumented worker's view - another perspective?
h) Work and specific ethnic communities
a) Increased difficulty in accessing health
care for the refugee communities
b) Healt problems and how the undocumented
try and get treatment
c) Mental health problems faced by
the undocumented
d) A special case: HIV patients without papers
e) Attitudes of the undocumented to the health issue
a) Restriction of access to higher education
b) Better qualification as the goal
when coming to the UK
c) On varying attitudes to education within
the different ethnic communities
d) On the children of the undocumented and schooling
e) Conclusion: education opens doors which
immigration control perforce closes
13. Personal relationships / leisure and voluntary activities
a) Social isolation and integration
b) Social relationships and leisure activities
c) Loss of social identity
d) Voluntary activities
a) The socio-economic importance of ethnic networks
b) The ambiguity of ethnic networks toward
the undocumented
c) Structural differences in ethnic community
attitude to the undocumented
d) Ethnic network views of asylum -
"the community of resistance"
e) Anglo-Saxon kinship
a) Life planing for asylum seekers
and the undocumented
b) Irregular status and life planning
c) No planning, no future - detention and
the situation of domestic workers
I Basic data relating to undocumented migrants
a) Single and not alone
b) The question of numbers
c) Papers
d) The UK and freedom of movement
e) The undocumented and their sense of self-worth
II Hypotheses on different aspects of the lives of the undocumented
a) Work and earning a living
b) Ethnic networks, housing, health care and rights
III Broader analysis and conclusions
a) Asylum and immigration law - recent changes
have failed to address the real issues
b) On the human resources of the undocumented
c) From a European perspective: on the need to
integrate professional competence
of NGOs; adversarial thinking
d) "Shifting the goal-posts" Who sets the agenda?
e) On kith and kin
f) Detention centres as counter-productive
g) Central and local government attitudes
Conclusion
Foreword
I would like to thank all those who have made this study possible.
The idea for the initial research was developed by JRS-Europe. Eddy
Jadot SJ and Ward Kennes showed great foresight and not a little
courage in persistently driving a project forward that arouses great
controversy not only in the wider official immigration and asylum
world but also among one's natural allies in the NGO community,
too.
Father Jörg Alt SJ provided invaluable support in the drafting
of the concept for the field phase of the study and our discussions
helped to develop the required balance of theory and practice in the
approach. Special thanks are due to the ZUMA research institute,
Mannheim for their pragmatic support and feedback at that stage.
In London it would not have been possible to conduct the research
without the information, guidance, network of contacts and, above
all, sympathy and astute encouragement (when required) provided by
the stalwarts of JRS in the Brixton office, Chris Boles SJ, Bernard
Elliot SJ and Ms Sou Huoy Lam. Academic supervision in the UK was
given by Maryanne Loughry RSM of the Refugee Studies Programme at the
University of Oxford. Thanks are also due to the many organisations
which were prepared to speak and provide the wherewithal to conduct a
study on the undocumented, people who want to remain invisible.
Brother Michael Hainz SJ at the Institute of Social Studies at the
Faculty for Philosophy SJ in Munich was an invaluable mentor, guide
and critic from beginning to end of this project. I have profited
greatly from his clear and rigorous but sensitive academic
supervision. Any mistakes and weaknesses remaining in the text are,
of course, exclusively my own.
This study is dedicated to my undocumented
interviewees themselves. I hope it may contribute
in some small way to helping them emerge with
dignity from the twilight zone.
Introductory background:
on the need for this study
"There is no sorrow above the loss of a native land"
(Euripides, Medea, 431 B.C.)
"a person who... owing to well-founded fear of persecution for
reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular
social group or political opinion is outside the country of his
nationality and is unable or owing to such fear, is unwilling to
avail himself of the protection of that country; who not having a
nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual
residence, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to
return." (1951 United Nations Convention and 1970 Protocol
relating to the status of Refugees: Article 1.A.2)
In the course of its work worldwide the Jesuit Refugee Service
(JRS) has come to realise the scope of the problems faced by migrants
without documents, also called sans papiers. The focus of this
study, part of a European project encompassing field study in the UK,
Germany and Spain, is on how undocumented people cope with the
social, legal and political everyday problems in their lives. The aim
is to provide insight into the specific experience of the
undocumented at the "local" level of the countries studied and
provide the material for a comparative European approach. On the
basis of the analysis of the information gathered, it is intended to
draw up guidelines for a constructive lobby policy in support of the
human rights of migrants without legal status.
The broad background to a study of this kind is the worldwide
development of refugee and migration movement in the last twenty
years. Primary migration from the Majority World to the rich nations
has become difficult, if not impossible, except for a tiny minority
of highly qualified professionals with desirable skills. This is not
the place to examine the moves toward "fortress Europe" in
detail 1
Suffice to say the development of internal freedom of movement within
the EU, for example, and external restrictions of entry are two sides
of the same coin.
At the same time global migration pressures have been increasing.
There are now nearly twice as many refugees as there were in 1984.
The budget of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) of $1.28 billion is intended to cover an
estimated 27.5 million "people of concern". While around 80% of the
world's refugees still flee from one poor country to another, the
number of those applying for asylum in the rich world has risen
dramatically since the early Eighties. In Western Europe the number
of applications for asylum rose from ca. 170,000 in 1985 to more than
690,000 in 1992, the trend was however reversed through more
restrictive policies causing the figure to fall to around 250,000 in
1996. In the UK some 80% were either given refugee status or
Exceptional Leave to Remain in 1987, this level of recognition had
fallen to around 20% by 1996 1a.
Parallel to this more restrictive asylum regime in the
post-industrial countries there is the additional pressure
encouraging illicit migration of internal displacement. This group of
the uprooted has no protection under international law. The numbers
of internally displaced persons are said to be twice as high as that
of refugees, some estimates put the number of the uprooted worldwide
as approaching 100 million. Very many migrants from the Majority
World do not leave their homes willingly. Main reasons are
war, internal or external conflict making life impossible for
civilians; environmental, floods, earthquakes or "man-made"
catastrophes deprive people of their livelihoods; political
reasons include repression by the state against opposition groups,
ethnic minorities and trade unions; persecution is repression
directed against the individual on account of race, religion, gender
or sexuality. The final reason is economic, people leave their
homes because of poverty and the need to look for a better
life2.
It is now widely acknowledged that large numbers of the uprooted,
those who have left their home areas more-or-less unwillingly, cannot
easily be fitted into the categories of international law allowing
for definition as a refugee. If people leave their homes because
economic, social or environmental conditions have so worsened as to
endanger their lives, there is no international framework of
assistance and support available for them. It is, moreover, virtually
impossible to measure these changing conditions of daily life as a
basis for international standards in order to set up supportive
mechanisms.
This is the background against which increasing irregular migration
from the poorer to the richer world must be viewed. The channels
through which legitimate labour migration to the richer North was
possible have increasingly been narrowed. People, however, as in all
ages continue to want to move to where they might be able to make a
new start. In addition to this in the modern age of revolutionised
transport and communication technology the enticing image of the
dream world in the "advanced" countries is all-pervading (visual
electronic and print media, advertising, stories of those who have
"made it" in the rich world). The means to get there somehow is also
available – provided you have the resourcefulness, determination
and can scrape together the money to do it.
According to draft studies by the International Organisation for
Migration in Geneva at least 500,000 and perhaps as many as a
million people are being trafficked into Europe each year at present.
This kind of smuggling has become illicit big business comparable in
many respects to drug trafficking and the illegal arms trade. Only a
small percentage of the numbers coming to Europe actually get into
Britain, not least because of the island situation. Customs and
Immigration officials detained some 10,000 people classified as
illegal immigrants3.
This is the customary approach to irregular migration at the
macro-political level, according to which it is viewed as a problem
of security and international border control, which has to be
mastered. The aim of this study, however, is to adopt the perspective
of the undocumented themselves, those who migrate to try and start a
new life. These people are going to be viewed here as subjects rather
than objects. One point that should be noted from the start is that
the unauthorised include other groups than those who have been
smuggled into the country illicitly: the 10,000 "illegal immigrants"
mentioned above will for example include long-term overstayers who
have been apprehended after many years residence in the country. As
will be indicated in the Literature Review there are grave
problems of statistical definition about the unauthorised in the UK.
In this study the concern will not only be with the apprehension of
illegal entrants in the macro-political sense above, but with the
lives of the undocumented in the UK over years or even decades.
Not only is the subject of undocumented people one on which there has
been very little serious research to date, particularly in the UK
(see Literature Review), but also it is one presenting thorny
problems in terms of method and approach. It begins with the
definition: who are the undocumented ?4
At this point some of the reasons why this subject has largely
remained something of a research taboo, especially in the British
context, can be examined.
There are important reasons why the subject of irregular migration
has been treated with such "studied neglect". The British migration
tradition is a colourful one influenced by the Empire legacy on one
hand,5
and laissez faire administrative practice and constitutional
accretion through common law / civil liberties awareness on the
other. Britons are often thoroughly suspicious of any regulation of
their behaviour that is not generally accepted as necessary,
nevertheless the consensus is that transgressions merit firm but fair
punishment. It is precisely this evolutionary character of case law
and regulation, which in the politically sensitive area of
immigration policy (set up and applied by the Home Office and
Immigration Service and subject to very little external control) can
lead to wilful and arbitrary administrative practice.
The lack of compulsory registration in the UK together with the fact
that there are no identity cards – often a source of puzzlement
and disbelief to many external observers – is a reflection of
the attitude of zealous defence of civil liberties based on a
tradition of harnessing the state's invasion of the private
sphere.6
This coupled with the fact that
immigration controls are rigorous on those entering the country but
unsystematic on those leaving is essential background information to
be borne in mind when approaching the largely taboo subject of
irregular immigration into the UK.
It might be argued that various institutions within the Body Politic
have shared an interest not to examine the issue of undocumented
migrants too closely. First the Home Office. As cogently
described by David Coleman7
and confirmed in discussion with Home Office statisticians, the
premises on which statistics of entries and removals are based and
means by which they are compiled take no account of the changes of
status of aliens once they are in the country. Categories of people
disappear from the statistics, such as those entrants who switch
immigration categories and asylum seekers who have been finally
rejected but are not actually removed. Even the Home Office
acknowledges that it has no reliable figures on levels of irregular
migration (as opposed to figures on the apprehending of those
classified as illegal entrants). Very likely there is an official
desire not to be any more precise on the matter. For one thing no
government can have an interest in trumpeting the ineffectiveness of
its own de facto immigration control. For another there may be
more of a spirit of (un)official tolerance at work here than one
might suspect. There are advantages in not knowing too much about
what one cannot control (a nightmare for the official mind). Perhaps,
as one civil servant put it in conversation, it is better to let
sleeping dogs lie on this one, „illegal immigration" being the
emotive issue it is.
Then there is the attitude of the academic world. The
difficulty involved in establishing respectable data on a thoroughly
unreliable statistical basis is self-evident. This is an area where
so little is verifiable and much is suspect; which instruments can
you reliably use and which interpretative methods? This seems to
leave the solitary remaining option of a methodologically imprecise,
„impressionistic" or „tendentious" analysis of a subject
that is politically explosive. Whose interests would be served in
opening a can of worms named illegal immigration in what has
long been a less-than-open-minded general political climate on
minority issues? Certainly not those of the undocumented themselves,
it may cogently be argued. They are the most vulnerable and have an
existential interest in keeping the spotlight away from their
twilight world. Besides which, this kind of research is the stuff of
which prematurely-terminated academic careers and „inexplicable"
cuts in research funding are made, as one interviewee with a
migrants' lobby organisation put it.
The quandary must equally be acknowledged in which those
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working with ethnic
minorities and asylum seekers find themselves. If they take up the
cause of the undocumented they may put their „legitimate"
clientele (i.e. those with a recognised legal right to be in the
country) at risk. The refugee support organisations are obliged to
argue the „genuineness" of the persecution suffered by the
asylum seeker in contrast to the mass of „bogus" claimants,
accepting increasingly rigid and inappropriate official definitions
as governmental policy has gradually closed the asylum door in the
process. Immigrant support groups providing advice to irregular
migrants can find themselves the subject of front-page tabloid
denunciations for abetting unlawful activity and abusing the
taxpayers' (i.e.'funder's) confidence8.
There is a lot of bad conscience among the employees of more high
profile NGOs about having to ignore the plight of the undocumented,
but it must remain essentially a private matter – „for the
good of the cause". Thus the topic of research into the lives of
irregular migrants in the UK is not a welcome one on many levels.
So why do it? There is a broader humanitarian background, of which
church organisations and communities involved in anti-deportation
campaigns in particular have long been aware. The undocumented, as is
well known from anecdotal and literary evidence (see for example T.
Coraghessan Boyle's The Tortilla Curtain) from other
countries, are people in search of another life, a law-abiding normal
life elsewhere. Often they are people who have drifted into their
predicament more or less by chance. The interviewees in this project
gave an indication of the range of circumstances involved: whether
they are overstayers who came many years ago and have built new lives
for themselves in the UK, rejected asylum seekers who face the
prospect of removal with despair, having adjusted to the uncertainty
of life as a sans papiers - or illegal entrants who have
reconstructed their identity in the UK context, fundamental questions
of the rights of the individual versus the sovereignty of the
state arise. In the course of her argument when discussing the
importance for the undocumented of the International Migrant
Workers Convention Linda Bosniak puts the dilemma of individual
rights versus national sovereignty in a nutshell:
"How can states' interests in immigration control and undocumented
migrants' interests in fair treatment be accommodated? What is the
actual relationship between states' immigration-regulatory powers and
their general human rights obligations to undocumented aliens, and
what should it be?"9
This study attempts to throw light on how the undocumented live their
lives and to examine the problems arising for the people concerned
and to suggest possible solutions. The aim is to provide information,
an analysis and arguments both for JRS's work internally and in
social and political lobby work with other grass-roots organisations.
This should go beyond "advocacy" alone, however. Information and a
rational critique can help to challenge the manipulative political
use that is made of illegal status and to influence broader public
opinion.
Literature
Review
This will be a short review of the literature available on the
undocumented. Source texts that were important for the development of
the methodology design employed in this study will be looked at in
that chapter. Very little has been written specifically on the theme
of migrants without documentation in Great Britain, despite the
growth in academic importance of both migration studies and the
related field of race relations. Reasons for the „unpopularity"
of the theme as an area of academic research have been put forward in
the introductory chapter. Nonetheless the internationalist
perspective of some research on migration touching the lives of the
irregular throws light on themes which are of importance in the
British context. The following is a brief survey of the relevant
literature from areas of migration studies contingent on irregular
migrants' lives internationally as well as more empirical studies in
the British context (e.g. on the detainee situation or problems faced
by asylum seekers). The International Migrants' Convention of
1990 will also be reviewed regarding its relevance for the situation
of the irregular.
a) The international context
Changing patterns of migration world-wide in the course of the
last 15 years have led to wider ranging analysis of the intermeshing
of „push" and „pull" factors in the decision to migrate.
Sarah Collinson in her volume Beyond Borders looks at
the perception of migration from the Majority world to the rich
post-industrial centres as a „threat" on the part of policy
makers in the North, leading to the need for an increasing control of
cross-border movements. She concludes there is a continuing and
anachronistic view of migrant communities as a temporary phenomenon.
Security concerns are seen in the industrialised world as a greater
priority than the eligibility of minorities for civil rights.
As Collinson points out, the ambiguity of the European states becomes
evident on closer examination: while strict control of migration is
official policy, movement of professional, managerial and technical
staff is welcomed and there is de facto a tacit
acknowledgement of irregular migration (some two million across
Europe according to the European Commission) as a reservoir of
„totally flexible labour".
In Sarah Spencer's volume Strangers and Citizens themes
defining the economic and humanitarian context of migration are
addressed in a number of wide-ranging articles which bear to some
extent on the lives of the undocumented. (e.g. article by Chris
Randall). Spencer makes clear that in contrast to the UK other
countries tend to take a more constructive view of migrants per se
and are not so strict about the definition of status. The need to
acknowledge the broad contribution of the undocumented to their host
society is a further salient point made by Spencer in her
introduction.
Anne Ower's study of the development of internal controls in
the UK in Strangers and Citizens emphasises the deterrent role
played by checks on migration status. She indicates the distinctions
made between entrants on the basis of skin colour and looks at the
employment sectors reliant on irregular migrant labour. The
administrative and political problems of a more comprehensive
controls regime sketched by Owers have been underlined following
their increased application in the last years of the Conservative
government under John Major. Whether at the workplace or in the
health, housing or education sectors they are highly problematic.
Because of the lack of compulsory registration and a system of
identity cards controls cannot on the one hand be made effective on
an up to date basis without the introduction of massive and costly
bureaucratic structures; on the other they carry a dangerous
discriminatory potential for ethnic minorities. Owers argues that
better consultation with NGOs, grass roots groupings and others in
the field would improve both the quality of decision-making and
levels of public acceptability. Several of these themes will be taken
up in the course of this study.
The last point on the need for better consultation is treated by
Ronald Kaye in his article British Refugee Policy &
1992, breakdown of a policy community10.
Just as Andrew Shacknove has argued the case for the benefits
of government-NGO co-operation to make the best use of professional
expertise for all concerned in the migration process with reference
to the Danish model11, so by
contrast Kaye indicates the special British problem of the
adversarial cast of mind between government and establishment on the
one hand and NGOs, lobbyists, the churches and a large body of
critical and academic opinion on the other. In the course of the
Eighties: consensus was unachievable in an increasingly polarised
ideological dispute characterised by the search for the moral high
ground. This allowed less and less room for collectively agreed
solutions sought by variously qualified professionals. This theme has
proved to be a constant, too, in the course of this survey.
Moving on to the existing literature on the lives of the irregular,
the ongoing project at the University of Utrecht under Professor
Engbersen on the undocumented in Rotterdam gave a clear insight
into the problems of access to the clientele and of methodology in
the research. The present study took the broad range of social policy
areas covered by Prof. Engbersen's team as the basis for the
interviews to be carried out with irregular migrants, from housing to
education, health care to social and ethnic network relations.
Richard Staring's case studies give a good insight into the
ambivalent role played by ethnic networks within the migrant
communities.
Konrad Hofer's impressionistic description of the lives of
irregular female migrants from Poland surviving on the social and
economic margins in Vienna gives some flavour of the material
dependence and anguish of daily uncertainty about the future
characterising the lives of many of the undocumented.
Sarah Mahler's comprehensive and sensitive,
ethnologically-based study of central and South American irregular
migrants in a district of New York American Dreaming (1995)
provides a good comparative framework for a number of issues and
arguments in the British context. Varying forms of social interaction
and economic dependence within ethnic networks, the role of social
class among migrants and categories of marginalised employment are
key themes that this study shares with Mahler's. One important
difference however must be noted: in the United States there are far
more established patterns of immigration for the undocumented. Not
only the Mexican border as „traditional" point of access, but
also the pioneer tradition of the migrants' search for a new life
mean that there are tried and trusted – if dangerous, and
exploitative – channels and networks by which many attempt to
reach and attempt to settle in the USA. As shall be seen, the
patterns in the UK are very different.
One of Mahler's important conclusions – that uprooting at home
(i.e. primacy of the „push" factor) is a main motivation for
migration to North America – leads her to carry out a
comprehensive analysis of the role of networks within the home
communities. The undocumented are often trapped for years by the need
to produce a surplus to repay their debts incurred by illegal passage
and entry. This in turn means dependence on one's countrymen and
women (who provided the passage back home and may be employers or
landlords in the United States), under exploitative circumstances in
a marginalised economy and society cut off from the mainstream.
By contrast Daniel James's view of the migration threat to the
USA from south of the border is of the "Armageddon" school of
migration theory12. The sense of
impending disaster conveyed by the prospect of continuing high levels
of irregular immigration from and through Mexico is couched in
doom-laden terms. In his concluding chapter constructive policy
suggestions are made to discourage irregular flows. At the level of
macro-economic policy it may be argued that President Clinton's
promotion of NAFTA is a "pragmatic" response to these border
pressures, in their turn giving rise to a complex of human rights
issues.
A broader view of migration control policy developments worldwide is
instructive for our purposes. Cornelius, Martin and Hollifield
(Controlling Immigration – a global perspective") present
their „convergence „ and „gap" hypotheses on patterns
of migration policies in the post-industrial societies. They observe
an increasing harmonisation („convergence") on policy between
the labour-importing countries on a) policy instruments for
controlling irregular flows, b) results and effectiveness of
immigration control measures, c) social, economic and political
integration of migrant communities and d) public reaction to
immigration flows and the views of government on control of
immigration.
On the other hand they see an increasing distance („gap")
between the goals of policy and their actual outcomes. This in turn
leads to greater public hostility to migrants and the perceived
failure of migration policies giving rise to pressure for yet more
restrictive policies. One further common factor of importance for
this study observed by the authors of articles on migration policy in
different countries is the increasing stability of migration networks
independent of the economic cycle. Enough evidence has now been
adduced to be able to conclude that sanctions don't impede irregular
immigration13. They also draw
attention to the developments of human rights activism and policy in
the last thirty years, without which a study like the present one
would be unthinkable.
Specifically tackling the challenges faced by European Union
migration policy in the coming years, an important article by
Werner Weidenfeld and Olaf Hillenbrand from 1994 pleads for a
more rational and co-ordinated „culture of information and
integration" on immigration14.
They point out that the taboo approach to illegal immigration has led
to a confusing and contradictory jungle of national legislation and
regulation across Europe on immigration, residence, permission to
work, family unity and granting of asylum. Migration law in the
European Union should, so they argue, be based on three
principles:
They see a clear division between immigration law and asylum law as
the best way to improve the efficiency of both, and in arguing for
immigration quotas suggest criteria for preferred groups like those
facing situations comparable to persecution, members of family and
labour migrants etc. The important thing is for the criteria to be
transparent and explicit. Legislatively harmonised standards across
the EU would be an important signal of earnest and responsible
immigration policy, which could make legal entry more attractive than
the illegal option. A necessary adjunct to this is more information
within the host communities, consistent anti-racist policy,
integration and raising of migrants' legal status to enable life
planning.
They see the present emphasis on border controls as a substitute for
genuine policy making. Like Sarah Spencer they take the pragmatic
view that illegal immigration cannot be stopped, only restricted; is
it therefore not time to take a more relaxed approach and aim for
broadly-controlled rather than uncontrolled immigration, they
ask.
The „numbers game" in the area of irregular migration is a
particularly tortuous one. David Coleman's article is a
convincing presentation on the specious quality of British
immigration statistics15. Not
only has official policy failed to take account of the real migratory
quality of the asylum procedure since the 1980s, but – of key
importance - no statistical account is taken of the failure to remove
those rejected asylum seekers who have no further right to remain.
Add to this the number of migrants coming from the New Commonwealth
and remaining on account of such reasons as arranged marriages (who
thus disappear from immigration statistics), or who are
„switchers" (i.e. moving from one category of entrant to another
between student, asylum seeker or spouse, and who are equally lost to
the statisticians), then the claim that primary immigration to the UK
has ended in the last twenty years appears less tenable.
b) Studies in the UK
A number of studies dealing with specific problems or local
experiences in the UK have been useful for this study. Christine
Pourgourides' study of the mental health problems faced by
detainees is a model of its kind, interlocking with the studies of a
sample of prisoners in detention by Amnesty International16.
Many of the problems looked at by the Pourgourides team can be
applied in adapted form to the lives of the undocumented. Here the
focus shall be on the related stresses of living an undocumented
existence: uncertainty about the present and future, not knowing whom
one can trust, inability to plan one's life. In short a number of the
pressures which undermine migrants' mental well-being and sense of
identity are as much a part of the lives of the undocumented as of
the detained.
Studies on the everyday problems faced by asylum seekers which were
of particular use at local level included the study by the
University of East London on the awareness of GPs in Newham of
the mental health background and needs of refugees (Refugees,
torture and the health services). Newham is a borough with a
particularly high concentration of asylum seekers. The survey of
problems faced by asylum seekers deprived of income support and
housing benefit as a result of the Asylum & Immigration Act
(1996) and attendant Social Security measures published early in 1997
by the Refugee Council, Just Existence, provided concrete
evidence of the mental and physical struggle for survival with which
thousands of asylum seekers were confronted by these measures
introduced by the Major government. This was essential background to
the treatment of difficulties faced by those with "insecure status"
which is one of the focal points of this study.
c) The International Migrant Workers Convention
The article by Linda Bosniak Human Rights, State
Sovereignty and the Protection of Undocumented Migrants Under the
International Migrant Workers Convention17
takes up a number of arguments addressing the urgent need for
human rights norms for migrants without papers. Tracing the
history of increasing awareness of undocumented migration over the
last two decades, she describes how the Convention attempts to
reconcile individual human rights with the interest of states in
maintaining their territorial sovereignty. She shows how the
Convention is weighted in favour of the norms and structures of
sovereign statehood rather than substantive improvement of irregular
migrants' rights.
The range of rights guaranteed to the unauthorised as well as the
authorised in this document would mean a transformation in both the
status and everyday lives of irregular migrants, were the Convention
to be ratified by nation states. Bosniak summarises:
„Thus, under the Convention, states parties are to afford to
undocumented as well as documented migrants a range of civil, social
and labour rights as against the state of employment, employers, and
other individuals within the state. These include, but are not
limited to, rights to due process of law in criminal proceedings,
free expression and religious observance, domestic privacy, equality
with nationals before the courts, emergency medical care, education
for children, respect for cultural identity, and process rights in
the detention and deportation context. They also include the rights
to enforce employment contracts against employers, to participate in
trade unions, and to enjoy the protection of wage, hour and health
regulations in the work place. (Part III of Convention, Articles
8-35)18."
It is evident how the Convention touches many of the elementary areas
of human life undermined and endangered for the undocumented by their
lack of legal status, these are the themes which will be examined in
the course of this study. She also cites arguments from the
international discussion that forms commonly recurring themes in the
British context. For example on employment sectors with large numbers
of undocumented workers: to what extent would the guarantee of
minimal rights reduce the attractiveness of irregular migrants for
employers in these branches and thus improve the position of
indigenous workers while raising the status of the irregular?
Arguments of this kind were just as controversial in the
international arena thrashing out the Convention's provisions as they
are in the nation-state fora.
And what about the de facto status of long term resident
irregular migrants?
„Rights supporters argue that irregular migrant workers are
in certain respects de facto members of the national community by
virtue of their economic and cultural contributions and that the
community should keep its end of the unwritten compact by extending
the undocumented legal recognition and certain basic
rights19."
This is a central argument that will be viewed from various angles in
the course of this report. At least in the trans national research
and policy discussion context the Convention has, despite its
ratification by only nine countries, contributed to an increasing
readiness to address the issue of irregular migrant flows in terms of
fundamental individual rights based on normative regulation. This
means that a gradual shift in the perception of so-called
„criteria of international legitimacy" of migrant status may be
taking place (Bosniak, p.765), to which it is hoped that the results
of this JRS research project may contribute.
Methodology
employed in the survey
a) How the initial methodology was conceived
In devising the methodology for this study on undocumented migrants
in the United Kingdom reference was made to the project under the
direction of Prof. Engbersen at the University of Utrecht. This
project has been a pioneering work in Europe in the field of research
on the lives of the undocumented. Members of the team were especially
helpful in setting the terms of reference for this study with focus
on the social realities of life for the undocumented and the
attendant human rights deficits they experience. The interview
guidelines devised by the Utrecht team covering the areas of
importance to be researched were adapted to fit the German, English
and subsequently the Spanish contexts.
Discussions with the Utrecht project study team under Prof. Engbersen
in the preliminary phase were essential in putting together the
initial concept for the JRS study. This was further developed with
the help of qualitative research specialists at ZUMA (Zentrum
für Umfragen, Meinungsforschung und Analysen) in Mannheim
and used by Jörg Alt for his study on Leipzig in Eastern
Germany.
This conceptual base had to be adapted to the specific background in
the United Kingdom and to the working conditions of a solitary
researcher in the field in London for six months starting in terms of
setting up networks virtually from scratch. The essential
prerequisite for a project of this kind – which at the outset
appeared to be a minefield of imponderables, variables and the
non-measurable in methodological terms - was the creation of a
network of trusted contacts who could provide information on the
lives, contingent circumstances and milieus of the
undocumented as well as the basis for further contact with the people
themselves. It was of course evident that the primary interest of the
irregular per se is not to be detected, not to have to reveal
information about themselves and to treat any person asking questions
with justifiable suspicion. They have a legitimate need for great
discretion, if not secrecy, which must be respected as far as the
individual is concerned. The methodology had to take account of this
priority need for discretion.
It was equally clear that the data given would have to be treated as
confidential, biographical studies made anonymous. Attention would
have to be given to the description of circumstances (family
situation, accommodation, employment, ethnic networks etc.) so that
"decoding" would not be possible. There would also be the question of
how to treat hitherto practices or structures that protect
non-documented people. One of the thorniest questions in the
supervision discussion was how best to deal with such structural
elements of illegality and the need for protection when publishing
the results of the study.
It was agreed that there should be three distinct circles of
interviewees from whom information would be sought. First, there are
the offices and institutions which are involved with immigration and
migrants, (e.g. the immigration office, detention centres, prisons,
legal practices, social services). Then there are migrant support and
counselling groups, advocacy organisations of various kinds, church
initiatives and autonomous groupings within the migrant/ethnic
communities themselves. The third, most significant, but also most
difficult, circle to gain access to would be that of the
non-documented people themselves and trusted informants close to
them.
It was evident that much would depend on the degree of trust which
could be established through the agency of third persons
(intermediaries and trusted contacts from support groups, ethnic
community organisation workers, lawyers with a respected status in
the ethnic communities, etc.) for these contacts to materialise at
all.
b) Methodology literature and its role in the study
Qualitative research literature which was particularly useful in
adopting and adapting a method approach suited to the circumstances
of this study were the following:
Garz & Kraimer (Hrsg.):"Qualitativ-empirische Sozialforschung"
Opladen, 1991:
Introduction and selected articles20
Maxwell, Joseph: "Qualitative Research Design - an Interactive
Approach", London 1996
Orna, Elizabeth & Stevens, Graham: „Managing Information for
Research." Bristol 1995
Strauss, Anselm & Corbin, Juliet: „Basics of Qualitative
Research – Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques." London
1990
The Garz & Kraimer anthology is a useful survey of the current
state of empirically-orientated qualitative social research. In their
introduction Garz and Kraimer set biographical and life-planning
research in the context of the evolving post-war
quantitative-qualitative research debate. A number of articles were
especially useful as preparation for the specific difficulties of
field research with widely varying clientele and milieus.
Worthy of special mention is the paper by Michael Meuser and Ulrike
Nagel looking into the whys and wherefores of expert interviews which
concludes that the conceptual background and specific role of this
category of research instrument have long been undervalued. One of
their main hypotheses: there is often too little clarity on the
precise dividing line between the „expertise" which the
researcher wishes to draw on and the private life of the individual
one is interviewing. This lack of clarity gives rise to analytical
and interpretative problems.
Maxwell's Qualitative Research Design was adapted for use in
this study and is based on the following scheme:
PURPOSES--------------------------------(RESEARCH QUESTIONS)-----------------------CONCEPTUAL CONTEXT
METHODS---------------------------------(RESEARCH QUESTIONS)-----------------------------------------VALIDITY
Viewing the interactive nature of these constituent elements as the
basis for putting the research design together, terms can be briefly
defined as follows:
Purposes being those of a personal, practical and research
nature. It is necessary to be clear about why the qualitative study
is of interest. Personal desires always play a part, in Maxwell's
view, in forming one's research impulses. The research purpose is to
understand the meaning of the participants' lives, get a grasp of the
context of interaction and to place this in the surroundings and
circumstances of events occurring. On this basis we can begin to
develop causal explanations for these events.
Conceptual context: the background context before which one
develops the research animus; experience memos are a vital
part of this process. Maxwell indicates the importance of grounded
theory21 developed
from the actual data collected in combination with existing theory on
the subject. He indicates how concept maps can help to clarify
one's thinking.
Research questions: they often get clarified and adjusted in
the course of initial research. The questions (and their reiteration
at regular intervals) serve both to focus the study and to guide its
conduct (this is the determining relationship of questions to methods
and to validity). One vital part of this approach is that
hypotheses formed should not be tablets of stone, but subject to
review and alteration.
Methods: Maxwell discerns four main elements in qualitative
methods:
a) The research relationship with those to be studied;
b) Sampling: what times, settings or individuals are to be observed
or interviewed? What are the other sources of information?
c) How is the data to be gathered?
d) Analysis – how is the information to be made intelligible for
interpretation?
He makes the point on d) that data can often be best analysed during
the process, memos and hypotheses being formulated parallel to
collation of material. It is better not to allow data to pile up.
This proved to be a particularly useful guideline.
Validity: How do the results match with the real world? The
methods must expose validity threats through evidence gathered and
confront them, not conceal them. Two particular problems have to be
borne in mind: researcher bias – one must try to make one's own
dispositions explicit through reflexivity, for the validity of
conclusions is based upon integrity. The second problem is that of
reactivity, i.e. how do I affect the environment by my presence? It
is important to understand how one influences the situation. These
considerations were of particular importance in interaction with the
subjects of this study.
The validity tests put forward by Maxwell constitute a useful
checklist in the course of day-to-day field research:
- One should look for discrepant and negative cases diverging
from one's theory.
- Triangulation of information frrom various sources and
settings together with a variety of methods, examining the biases in
each.
- Feedback from participants and outsiders.
- Member checks –how do thosse involved see the phenomena
and interpretation? What is valid in their view?
- „Rich data" – a plethhora of information can be
used as a constant test of theories as well as a source.
- Quasi-statistics – cautiouus statements can be made
based on amounts of internal statements and other evidence
gathered.
- Comparison of data as check botth internally and with other
fields.
These research design guidelines provided the framework for the field
study. When it came to the management of the data collated and
evaluation of the material, Orna gave a lot of practical advice on
procedural steps while Strauss, as the acknowledged authority on
grounded theory, offered suitable techniques for sorting and coding
of the interview and other materials.
c) How the methodology evolved in the course of field
research
Field research took place from January till early July 1997. It was
concluded in discussion with the academic supervisors that as the
main focus of this study is on both interviews with experts and with
the subjects of the study, it would be sensible to work with a
variant of grounded theory, taking in all the sources of
information available. This was because the aim of the study was not
to test the application of a preconceived theory but to evolve
hypotheses in the course of field work and data evaluation,
developing the analysis out of the material. A variant of the
grounded theory approach was deemed appropriate for the further
reason that an exact linguistic content analysis would not be
possible on account of the lack of transcripts of tape recorded
interviews.
It became very clear early on in the field research phase that tape
recordings of interviews would be virtually impossible. It was to
prove extremely difficult to establish relationships of trust with
potential interviewees for a number of reasons:
Nonetheless it was possible to win over potential interviewees. But
the decision was taken to refrain from use of the tape recorder, once
it became clear how nerve-racking and fraught with uncertainty the
interview situation was bound to be for the subjects. The fact that
the interviewer just took notes in conversation rather than having
the machine running proved to be the acceptable form as it enabled a
basis of trust with one another to be established. There seemed to be
a comforting sense of „anonymity" for some interviewees in this
method approach (i.e. unburdening oneself to an interviewer one would
never see again). It was also agreed with the interviewees or the
trusted contacts who had arranged the interview that the written
minutes would be made available as a check on the information being
revealed. Correspondingly, the method of detailed written minutes was
adopted, too, for the background interviews to provide a congruent
data basis.
First Phase. The initial contacts were with organisations
working with migrants and asylum seekers. These preliminary
interviews and discussions served to define the up-to-date themes,
particularly in relation to the crisis for asylum seekers caused by
the changes under the Major government attendant on the Asylum and
Immigration Act 1996. These measures, which indirectly have
increased the pressure on all entrants whose status is not secure,
were to have direct relevance for an examination of the situation of
the undocumented. The range of institutions and groupings included
church organisations, NGOs, community organisations, trusted
informants, immigration lawyers and representatives of solidarity
groups.
It soon became apparent that it would be difficult to talk to both
official immigration bodies and some of the larger, high profile NGOs
because of an unwillingness to tackle the subject of the
undocumented. Reasons for this taboo have been suggested in the
introduction. This reluctance was compounded by the especially
negative atmosphere of relations in the last years of Conservative
power between the government and a large variety of institutions and
socially and politically active groupings, movements and
organisations. In this little-remarked sense the government has thus
been able to „set the agenda" in declaring the area of irregular
immigration taboo for the majority of migrant and asylum seeker
organisations as an area of legitimate, growing human rights
concern.
Second Phase. From this initial series of interviews it was
nonetheless possible to establish contact with various organisations
with their connections or roots in the migrant and refugee
communities. Alongside church organisations working with the uprooted
and anti-deportation campaigns at local level the ethnic community
organisations were the most important avenues of access to
undocumented people themselves. It was, however, one thing to gain
the confidence of workers at community level as regards the aims of
this project, who were then prepared to ask candidates if they would
talk. It was quite another to actually get as far as conducting an
interview with the irregular themselves.
Here it is sufficient to note that the thematic areas covered were
not greatly altered in the course of the interviewing, though the
breadth and depth of subjects covered varied considerably according
to circumstances of the interview, reflective background of the
interviewee, specific subjects being covered etc. Some interviews
were structured more tightly in accordance with the interview
guidelines, others were more narrative in structure. This was
primarily determined by the personality and educational/social
background of the interviewee concerned. As far as possible
information from intermediaries, trusted third persons and experts
were used to test validity. Those interviews conducted in detention
centres presented a special problem: as no writing materials were
allowed they had to remain summary in character and were conducted
without notes. They were reconstructed from memory, additional
background information on the detention situation from experienced
support group visitors proving to be invaluable.
Third Phase. It became apparent in the course of the field
phase that it would be most fruitful to include information,
statements and assessments given by the range of experts in the
background and context interviews in the evaluation alongside the
material from the undocumented interviewees. This would be a way to
check statements and hypotheses, would aid the development of theory
and provide a framework for validity tests. Beyond this, interim
assessments of the progress of the research after the first three to
four months led to the drafting of working hypotheses on the
situation of the irregular. On this basis it was decided in the final
phase of field work to concentrate increasingly on a series of
interviews with politicians, administrators and lobbyists to:
a) examine hypotheses developed in the course of interviewing and
collating material.
b) test practicability of potential recommendations to improve the
human rights position of the undocumented in the UK.One of the
changes in concept that did develop in the course of the initial
interviews in London was in the definition of the target group. The
reasons for this will be explained under the definition of
terms.
Definition
of terms
Before looking at the categories of undocumented migrant of concern
in the British context a brief sketch of legislative development on
immigration control in the course of this century will be drawn. This
is the background against which attitudes to, and policy on
„illegal immigration" as they have evolved in the last thirty
years has to be seen.
a) Legal background
The first of the modern laws regulating the conditions under which
aliens could come to and remain in the UK was the Aliens Act
1905. This was passed as a (delimiting) response to the influx
into the United Kingdom of Jews trying to escape the pogroms of
Russia and Eastern and central Europe. Subsequent Aliens Acts and
Orders controlled refugee entrance, with varying degrees of
strictness, until after the Second World War.
Immigrants from the New Commonwealth (i.e. the former colonies which
were not the „white" Dominions: Canada, Australia, New Zealand
and - until exclusion from the Commonwealth in 1961 because of its
Apartheid policies - South Africa) began arriving in the UK from the
early 1950s as a response to British recruitment drives for the
understaffed public sector (especially transport and the Health
Service). It was as a response to increasing public concern at the
effects of this labour immigration that the Commonwealth and
Immigrants Act 1962 was introduced. Screening of dependants of
those already settled was brought in under this legislation and
levels of entry declined in the next few years22.
This Act made Commonwealth citizens subject to immigration control
for the first time.
The Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 was a reaction to the
arrival of increasing numbers of East African Asians following their
expulsion from newly-independent African countries. This Act deprived
a British passport holder of the automatic right of entry to the UK;
either a parent or grandparent had to have been born there. The
political context of this legislation passed under a Labour
government was the intense and controversial public debate stirred up
by the emotive public speeches of the former Conservative public
health minister Enoch Powell who prophesied „rivers of blood" in
the streets of Britain, were immigration to continue at contemporary
levels. Powell had himself been the minister responsible for the
recruitment campaigns in the Caribbean in the 1950s.
Irrational fears of high levels of „illegal immigration" were to
become a constant of British public debate, and a subject for
sensationalist media treatment, hereafter. The Immigration Act
1971 moved beyond the existing legislation by ending the old
distinction between „aliens" and Commonwealth citizens. The
difference was now emphasised between patrials (those born,
adopted, naturalised or registered in the UK, or born either of a
parent or grandparent with UK citizenship) and non-patrials
(who did not meet these criteria). Patrials had the right to enter
and settle while non-patrials would have to apply for permission. The
British Nationality Act 1981 sought to bring immigration law and
nationality in line so that British citizens or those with the right
of abode under immigration law. In fact, the principal effect of the
Act was to remove the automatic acquisition of British citizenship by
birth in the UK.
The Immigration Act 1988 has speeded up procedures dealing
with those in breach of Immigration rules. Previously deportation had
to go through the Home Office and was subject to appeal (within 14
days). Thereafter, any immigration officer of the rank of inspector
or above can authorise „supervised departure" immediately. Those
who have been in the UK for less than seven years no longer have the
right to appeal through the courts based on a full review of their
case and can only attempt to overturn the deportation order after
return to their country of origin.
It is evident that „public concern" on immigration has been
infused with blatant racism. Accordingly, governments have developed
race relations legislation to combat discrimination against ethnic
minorities in parallel to immigration control. The Race Relations
Act 1965 was thus a response to the first restrictive immigration
legislation; the Community Relations Commission (CRC) was
introduced in 1968 as part of the Immigration legislation of that
year. The Race Relations Act 1976 which united the CRC with
the Race Relations Board to form the Commission for Racial
Equality (CRE) can be placed in tandem with the Immigration
Act 1971.
As indicated elsewhere the Asylum legislation of the 1990s has
imposed this restrictive view of eligibility to enter the UK on
asylum seekers. The „deterrent effect" was especially evident
after the provisions of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996
came into effect in the summer of 1996. There was to be no more
granting of welfare benefits to those who applied in country rather
than at the port of entry; the short procedure was increasingly
extended to various nationalities, and has drastically reduced the
number of applicants receiving full individual consideration of their
case. The third country rule, too, has had a restrictive and –
so it is presumed in official circles - deterrent effect on potential
asylum seekers.
b) Concerns of Jesuit Refugee Service
This is the historical setting in the UK in which definitions of the
undocumented have to be placed. What are the precise limits of
concern for JRS as an organisation working with asylum seekers and
refugees worldwide? To what extent is the plight of the undocumented
part of its brief? There is no question that the numbers of the
undocumented in Europe have risen considerably since the mid-eighties
(corresponding to the dramatic increase in migratory movement
worldwide) for the reasons discussed in the introduction. As a result
there is much debate about the politically-sensitive step of taking
up the cause of „good" and „bad" migrants as defined by
asylum-granting criteria. It had to be acknowledged from the outset
that there is bound to be criticism of an organisation of this kind
looking at the situation of those lacking legal residence status and
who may in addition be involved in criminal activity - some would
regard this as beyond the JRS brief. JRS' primary concern and point
of access would have to be with rejected asylum seekers. However, as
this is a basic human rights issue other people would be included as
far as they might be accessible, i.e. there was a deliberate decision
not to restrict the analysis to rejected asylum seekers only.
c) Categories
In the context of the UK this meant that the following clear
categories would also be under consideration: illegal entrants,
overstayers, domestic workers, as well as rejected asylum
seekers.
The surprising development, which became apparent in discussion with
immigration lawyers and community organisations in particular, was
the acute need to look at the situation of those with insecure
status, i.e. those in the asylum process who have problems because of
a lack of appropriate documentation. These people can face
difficulties for a variety of reasons: there may be delays in the
issue, or re-issue, of their permission to work papers (not to
be confused with work permits, which are only issued to
entrants from the Professional/Managerial/Technical sector earning
boardroom salaries, or for jobs which cannot be filled by a UK or
European Community national); moreover, for those in the asylum
process there is the problem that their papers may not be accepted by
employers or indeed local authorities, banks etc. as bona fide
evidence of secure status.
There is a further difficulty reported by a number of agencies and
interviewees. Following the introduction of the Asylum and
Immigration Act 1996 asylum seekers who receive a rejection
before the six months have elapsed after which they can apply for
permission to work now find themselves unable to get one, even if
they lodge an appeal against the refusal (confirmed at seminar given
by the Hackney refugee training consortium, Hartrac, in June
1997; participants also stated that those who had received permission
to work before their initial refusal – more than six months
having elapsed before the initial asylum decision – often found
that the Home Office did not re-issue the document giving
permission to work after the appeal against refusal had been
lodged).
It became evident that the brief for the study would thus, in the
British context, have to be broadened to include migrants with
„insecure status", unsatisfactory as this vague description
often proved to be in discussion with experts used to dealing with
more legally exact (and exacting) definitions. This is a research
field in which a certain amount of „messiness" of design and
definition is sometimes required to do justice to the
„disordered" nature of the lives being discussed.
So, to briefly summarise the categories of undocumented person whose
lives, situations and circumstances are to be examined in this
study:
b) the individual who has come through immigration control and
obtained leave to enter but such leave has been attained by
deception. This is the most common category of illegal entrant, no
doubt because of the wide meaning given to the term deception. The
most obvious example of deception is the presenting of false travel
documents. However, deception is also practised where a person makes
a misrepresentation (which may even be by silence) and that
misrepresentation is effective in obtaining leave.
- overstayers are those who came into the country legally in
the first instance as visitors, students or within the family unity
regulations and have remained longer than allowed, that is violated
the terms of their right to remain. There are a number of well known
anti-deportation campaigns centred on individuals and families in
which the injustice of removal has been perceived by many in their
own and the broader community as incompatible with their basic human
rights and dignity.
- rejected asylum seekers are claimaants who have reached the end
of the line of appeals procedures, have no further right to remain
and are facing removal. They may attempt to campaign against this
with the support of their community or they may go underground. The
course of action they choose will depend to some extent on the
strength of the supportive network within their ethnic community
– a theme to which there will be frequent reference.
- Domestic workers frequently come from the Filipino community
or the Indian sub-continent. There has been increasing public
awareness in the UK and at the European court level over the last few
years of the physical and sexual abuse to which domestic workers in
well-to-do households can be subjected. This is a special category of
migrants - mostly women and frequently highly-qualified - who have
gone in particular to the Saudi Arabian peninsular from their
homeland to seek employment in rich households and have then come
across to the UK with their employers. They are not accorded
independent migration status as entrants, but are „waved
through" by Immigration as members of the family, although it is
apparent that they are employed as domestics22a.
This means that should they run away from an abusive employer, they
automatically become illegal immigrants. It was not possible to
interview a domestic worker in the course of the study, so
information on their plight comes primarily from the community
support organisations.
The manifest injustice experienced by domestic workers has been
highlighted effectively by the Filipino community organisation the
Commission for Filipino Migrant Workers, which provides
well-organised ethnic network support, programmes for the abused to
restore their self-esteem as well as co-operating with a wide range
of other community organisations.
The Commission also works in tandem with the political campaign group
Kalayaan to lobby at the political level for their cause. They
have succeeded in getting a number of Early Day motions with broad
cross-party support tabled in the House of Commons to address the
injustice suffered by domestic workers. They have also helped abused
household servants to successfully prosecute their former employers.
This is not the place to document the plight of domestic workers in
further detail, because this has already been done elsewhere in the
study by Bridget Anderson23. The
question of redressing the injustices experienced by this group will
be taken up when discussing the options available for improving the
position of the undocumented.
- Asylum seekers with „insecure status" as defined above
who face problems on account of documentation deemed inappropriate,
or documentation with which they have difficulty in getting
recognition (by employers, banks, social services etc.).
Introduction
of the interviewees
„They take on new identities as debtors, passive chickens in
the clutch of coyotes, beguiling chameleons who assume new personae
to test wits with seasoned predators, and finally illegals, wet
backs, or merely outlaws in the Promised Land" (Mahler on the
undocumented crossing the US-Mexican border, p. 81)
In this introduction to the interviewees the subjects themselves will
be introduced in the form of tabular summaries of their
socio-structural characteristics. Interviewees are in the following
categories: overstayers (underground, detainees and
anti-deportation campaigns); rejected asylum seekers
(anti-deportation campaigns); illegal entrants; those with
insecure status (single themes).
a) Basic biographical data & "push & pull factors"
determining migration decision
Categories recorded are: nationality, sex, age group, marital status,
children, main reasons for migration, immigration status, and
push/pull factors. The table is arranged chronologically: candidate A
was the first interviewed etc.
|
|
Country of Origin |
Sex |
Age |
Marital Status |
Child |
Reason for Migration |
Migration Status |
Push/Pull Factors |
|
A |
Nigeria |
M |
36-40 |
Married |
6 |
economic motive & training |
Overstayer facing deportation |
Pull factors |
|
B |
Pakistan |
M |
31-35 |
Single |
1 |
Political persecution |
Asylum seeker, rejected |
Push factors |
|
C |
Nigeria |
M |
36-40 |
Married |
3 |
Came as student for MSc |
Overstayer in sanctuary |
Pull factors |
|
D |
Turkish Kurd |
M |
26-30 |
Married |
2 |
State of war |
Asylum seeker rejected |
Push factors |
|
E |
Nigeria |
M |
36-40 |
Married |
3 |
Entry as trader, change to student visa |
Overstayer facing deportation |
Pull factors |
|
F |
Ethiopia |
M |
36-40 |
Married |
1 |
Political persecution |
Asylum seeker in appeal stage |
Push factors |
|
G |
Sierra Leone |
M |
26-30 |
Married |
1 |
Political persecution & instability |
Asylum seeker in appeal stage |
Push and pull factors |
|
H |
Cameroon |
F |
26-30 |
Single |
- |
Political persecution |
Asylum seeker & papers problem |
Push factors |
|
I |
Zaire |
F |
36-40 |
Married/ single parent |
7 |
Fear of persecution & search for lost husband |
Asylum seeker rejected |
Push factors |
|
J |
Morocco |
M |
31-35 |
Married |
1 |
Economic motive & desire to study |
Overstayer, now in detention |
Pull factors |
|
K |
West-Africa |
M |
26-30 |
Single |
- |
Economic motive & political involvement |
Undocumented with false papers |
Pull factors |
|
L |
Nigeria |
M |
26-30 |
Married |
2 |
Came as teenager |
Overstayer facing deportation |
Pull factors |
|
M |
Peru |
M |
36-40 |
Single |
- |
Economic motive |
Undocumented with false papers |
Pull factors |
|
N |
Chechen |
M |
36-40 |
Single |
- |
Political persecution |
Asylum seeker with papers problems |
Push factors |
|
O |
Somalia |
M |
26-30 |
Single |
- |
State of war |
ELR, papers problem |
Push factors |
|
P |
Eritrea |
F |
31-35 |
Married, single parent |
6 |
Political persecution |
ELR, family unity problem |
Push factors |
Factors Influencing the Migration Decision
In this first chapter the
factors which prompted the decision of the undocumented to migrate in
the first place will be examined. There are enormous variations
depending on the background to an individual's decision to come. A
study of the factors precipitating the migration decision reveals
that very few actually intended to be or become irregular migrants.
Broad distinctions between categories of push or pull motives can be
made.
a) Main factors
Push (driving the individual from the home country):
- direct persecution (religious, politiccal, social,
gender-related)
- war, social chaos, destabilisation; "eethnic cleansing";
- environmental catastrophe
- economic deprivation;
- need for education and training opporttunities not found at
home;
- mass communications & easier traveel24
Pull (attracting the individual to a particular destination):
- attraction of economic options: work, making a living.
- existence of previous migration patterrn (family, relatives and
friends) and ethnic networks.
- desire for qualifications, training orr study.
- factors specific to the target countryy (e.g. attraction of learning
the language to improve one's job chances on the domestic job
market).
This short listing of factors shows how the distinction between push
and pull can easily be a blurred one. In order to establish greater
clarity on the nature of migration motives, the following questions
will be examined as part of the description of push and pull factors
influencing migration as an undocumented person:
1) What led the interviewees in the sample to take the migration step
in the first place, push or pull factors?
2) Are there broader factors pointed out in the background
interviews, e.g. distinctions in motivation between members of
different ethnic communities?
After examination of these two questions the special position of
domestic workers will be briefly described and the chapter will end
with a reflection on the retrospective view interviewees take of the
migration process.
b) Individual examples of push and pull and the role of refugee
communities
Beginning with the first question the following statistical points
about the interviewees in the sample can be made:
In the majority of cases (nine) the interviewees came to the UK for
reasons which in the main could be classified as push factors.
In all of these cases political persecution or general political
instability or indeed a state of war making normal life virtually
impossible were the main determinants in the decision to leave their
home. For the remaining seven interviewees training, job
opportunities, family commitments and study were the attractions
which caused them to come to the UK. However, the UK may not have
been the initial intended destination: in the case of Interviewee
M for example (a long term undocumented from Peru) the first
port-of-call was Spain. It proved difficult for him to get a job
there so he came on to the UK.
Closer study of the motivation for the interviewees to migrate
indicates that a straightforward categorisation of factors of this
kind scarcely does justice to the complexity of the process entailed.
One feature that emerged both in the individual interviews and which
was corroborated by the background and informant testimony was the
often chance nature of how people became undocumented. For the
majority - while push and pull factors are plainly important in
prompting an individual to move away from their home – the
intention may not have been migration: a life without papers often
"comes about", it was not a planned intention. Broadly speaking, as
far as the category of overstayers is concerned, the initial
intention was to come to the UK and stay for a time – as a
visitor or tourist, training, studying, earning a living for a while
or simply joining a member of the family. These are, of course,
people who entered the country legally. Equally, the asylum seekers
in the sample came with the intent of getting legal status as
applicants for asylum and ultimately as refugees (or at least
Exceptional Leave to Remain); either on account of rejection
of their claim or because of failing to be in possession of the right
papers in the course of procedure they have since found themselves
without secure status or irregular.
Individual cases may serve to illustrate how legal entrants can
become undocumented migrants. Taking the example of an individual for
whom the compulsion to leave a situation of persecution was
predominant (push factors) one can discern the way in which
change of circumstances led to the person's undocumented status. In
the case of Interviewee B, who came as an asylum seeker, there
has been a radical change in his personal circumstances since his
arrival in the UK (he had a brief, unhappy relationship with a woman
from Pakistan, but her parents rejected him as a potential husband;
circumstances have led to him becoming the single parent responsible
for their son), so that the case for his right to remain in the UK is
now primarily based on his status as a single parent and the complex
circumstances of his life within his ethnic community. Initially push
factors of political activity at home in Pakistan leading to the
experience of persecution were the determining element forcing him to
leave home and to seek asylum. His application for asylum has been
rejected at the appeal stage and he is facing deportation. However,
the UK has become the focus of his private family commitment and it
is impossible for him to imagine returning to his country of origin.
The humanitarian case for him to be allowed to remain is based on his
changed private circumstances.
Interviewee D is a clear case of someone being driven by
political persecution to leave his home Kurdistan (push
factors). He had been politically active and suffered torture (as
confirmed by the Medical Foundation, although contested by the
Home Office), and ultimately ended up in the UK after an initial
application in France. As a rejected asylum seeker he is in constant
fear of being deported together with his family. He is also subject
to the constant sense of needing to seek refuge and mourning the loss
of a home.
Looking next at cases in which pull factors were pre-eminent
in the decision to come to the UK, Interviewee C is an
overstayer in sanctuary who came to the UK in the 1980s to study for
his Master of Science degree (pull factor). For the first
phase he was a student with the expectation that his stay would be
for the duration of his course. It was not until he married and he
and his partner started a family that the position changed. The UK
became the centre of family life in a way that the candidate could
not have anticipated – even though from the sociological
perspective such developments are a normal part of migration
experience. Thus the couple's desire to remain is a logical
development in accordance with their changed circumstances and
accounts for the broad support for their anti-deportation campaign.
The position of Interviewee A shows many similarities. He, too
came hoping to improve his qualification profile (pull
factor), in his case vocationally in his profession as a printer.
He is now also an overstayer with a family whose campaign has
received much support from church and local migrant support groups.
Change in personal circumstances has made the humanitarian case a
powerful one in the eyes of many from what might be termed a natural
justice perspective.
Theoretically one might assume at first sight that the asylum
seeker's motivation is much more clear-cut from the beginning, a
self-evident case of push. The motive for emigration is to
escape from persecution and economic and social disintegration and
there is a corresponding desire to find refuge and a new life "in
exile". Despite the hardship and dislocation associated with life as
an asylum seeker in the host country (and this fact was confirmed and
underlined by the whole range of interviewees' experience), the main
aim was indeed to escape danger, torture or persecution and be able
to remain in the UK, ideally with full refugee status. Does this mean
one can clearly discern push factors as the important ones
motivating migration? Interviews and background discussions revealed
that this is only partially true in that the receiving refugee
community is also a vital, often forgotten, part of the equation.
Asylum seekers know that those host countries with relatively active
and established ethnic refugee communities offer the best chance of
survival through contacts with family and friends as well as the
broader network required for life in a strange country and culture.
"Established" in this context implies not that the refugee
communities have been settled in their host countries for a long
time, but that they have built up their own functioning
infrastructure to take care of their people, regardless of the length
of time a substantial community may have been present in the country.
In the UK the Tamils, the Eritreans, the Kurds and, increasingly, the
Algerians are good examples of this.
The common background of refugee experience is also an essential
pre-requisite within the host ethnic minority community because of
the resultant individual readiness to go out of one's way to support
the newly-arrived (a place to stay, helping with the preparation of
the asylum claim, finding one's way round the social security and
benefit maze etc.). This implies that the important question for the
receiving community is not his or her legal status but the experience
the individual has gone through. Thus, as is confirmed in the section
on arrival in the UK, existing ethnic networks are of vital
importance as a pull factor attracting migrants to the UK.
The Kurdish community in North London provides ample illustration of
this. It is a relatively recent, largely refugee community (having
become numerous from the late Eighties) and a range of community and
self-help groups provide for the newly arrived fleeing from
Kurdistan. Interviewee D, the rejected asylum seeker from
Kurdish Turkey mentioned above, was well aware of the network of
support that could be provided when he came to the UK to claim
asylum. Community organisations have provided him and his family with
information and support during the course of application procedure
and remain the key element in his campaign to remain in the country
despite rejection. For the individual asylum seeker the decision to
go to a particular country will take into account - as far as time
and circumstances allow - the receptive community contacts and
options for survival. This begins with the fact of a relative or
friend or fellow political activist having found refuge in that
country. This relationship shows how push and pull factors can
be mutually dependent.
c) Interpretative factors which emerged in background
interviews
But, in the context of the second question posed above, a number of
factors were indicated in expert interviews with community
organisations, support groups and immigration lawyers which reflect
different nuances prompting the decision to migrate on the part of
the undocumented, as viewed by a third person. These sources of
information were important inasmuch as migrants themselves may not
always themselves be fully aware of the range of factors influencing
their decision, or willing to talk about them. Factors mentioned
included the following:
1) there is the fact that some ethnic/national groups are under
much greater pressure to move than others. The Colombians for
example are under acute migratory pressure, because of the
instability and violence caused by the "drug war" in their country.
People try to gain access to European countries and sometimes resort
to ingenious methods to do so. A priest with the Latin American
community described in an interview how he had recently been
contacted by an Immigration official from Heathrow and asked whether
he knew a Father Ignatius who had picked up a family of six from
Colombia from the airport for whom he was able to vouch just three
days earlier. He had given the name of his East London parish as
assurance of his bona fides. In retrospect the official had
begun to wonder whether the prelate was all that he had claimed to
be. The community priest was obliged to tell the official that he
knew of no Father Ignatius and that the aforementioned parish was
fictitious.
As compared with this, some interviewees drew attention to a
sensitive point regarding internal ethnic community attitudes to
motivation for the migration of the undocumented where there is less
internal consensus on uprooting factors in the country of origin.
Some of the more established migrant communities, particularly
members of the older generation, will adopt the view widespread in
"majority society" that the more recent arrivals are "economic
migrants". The term is meant disparagingly, i.e. the pull
factor of the good life in the West is more important than any
"genuine" persecution they may have experienced. Regardless of
whether the individual may have experienced persecution, torture or
trauma this is subsumed in the generalisation that "they are living
here at our expense". This point will be explored in detail in the
section on ethnic networks.
2) For other ethnic-national groupings the key factor is that of
economic opportunity and job qualification in the informal
sector as a motivation for certain groups of migrants who enter on
visitors' visas and may then seek employment in the informal sector.
They then easily become overstayers. This is often the case with
entrants from Eastern Europe, who are frequently in violation of
their entry conditions as soon as they accept paid employment. They
have far better earning opportunities in the UK than back home, once
they can find some kind of work. Their legal position is better than
that of non-Europeans on account of the Association Agreements
with the EU (e.g. they are allowed to set up as self-employed
people). The chance to learn English is another big incentive to take
the risk of remaining without papers and seeking employment in the
informal sector. English as a second language is a big advantage on
the domestic labour market when they return. In the section on
earning a living this will be examined in more detail. These groups
can be described as primarily motivated by the pull factor of
economic incentive.
3) Then there is the different situation of domestic workers. Those
domestic employees who enter the UK with a foreign employer are in a
distinct category of their own, because of the specific
dependency in which they find themselves. Let us take the example
of a Filipino female graduate who has taken the decision to emigrate
to Saudi Arabia to work for Arab employers in their household. Should
the family decide to come to the UK the maid is faced with the
decision either to quit her job or to accompany them and come in on
their passport, thus having no independent immigration status. She
may very well be in debt because of the expense of getting to the
Middle East. Such women thus do not enter the country of their own
volition. They were subject to the push factor of leaving the
home country in search of better-paid employment than they were able
to find at home (a step encouraged by Filipino government policy for
many years until quite recently because of the attraction of foreign
remittances)25. Their immigration status
problem arises, as already indicated in the introductory interview
section, when they are forced by bad treatment or abuse to run away
from their employers26.
d) Retrospective change in subjective view of the migration
process
An analysis of individual cases shows that often the push and pull
factors cannot be easily disentangled. Interviews indicated
further that perhaps the retrospective view of motivation changes
with time. In the case of overstayers who are fighting for the right
to remain, the temptation is great to take a "determinist" view of
how everything moved with compelling logic to the present situation.
Chance and accident are increasingly left out of the account, because
they diminish the significance of one's decisions. If a case for
consideration on humanitarian grounds is being put to the Home
Office, then coherent life planning is deemed to underline the
seriousness of one's case. Apart from this presentational factor it
is also a natural human need to impose an order and meaning in our
lives beyond the mere chronological succession of events.
The case of Interviewee M (a long-term overstayer who is
undocumented ) may serve to illustrate this. When he first came to
the UK some thirteen years ago he did so, as mentioned above, via
Spain. Questioned about his motive he describes himself now as
an "economic migrant". Yet he came on a visitor's visa, he never
actually intended to come to the UK, but this is where he landed up.
Showing great resourcefulness and flexibility he has been able to
survive doing various jobs, from dishwasher to language teacher and
translator. He is a trained economist. Yet, had one asked him at
various points during his sojourn in England how he regarded his
status, he might have conceded his economic motivation, but would he
have regarded himself as a migrant? In the interviews he gave
the impression of only recently having accepted this degree of
permanent migration27, specifically
following the death of his father some three years ago. He was deeply
upset by the fact that his lack of legal status prevented him from
leaving the country to attend the funeral back in Peru. He is quite
adamant now about wanting to remain in the UK. For a long time,
however, the nature of his twilight existence led him to regard it as
a transitory phase; it was the emotional dimension relating to his
personal grief that caused him to recognise what had become a
long-term migration process.
One may compare this with the case of Interviewee L from
Nigeria. He came to the UK as a teenager with an adult relative, but
was abandoned to look after himself soon after arrival. It is his
later marriage and young family that has given focus to his life and
his desire to remain in the UK. His family provides the core of his
determination to keep up the struggle through the anti-deportation
campaign. Yet, the original impulse to come to the UK was through
obligation to an adult relative while still a minor, and the visit
was, apparently, to have been temporary. It would be difficult to
decide whether push or pull factors were the more important,
migration was also not the original intention. In the course of time,
however, the candidate has become an undocumented migrant the centre
of whose life is the UK. Much chance has been involved in this
particular migration process, it could easily have happened very
differently. The interviewee's comments can be construed as follows:
it is the retrospective slant on developments which makes sense of
his migration experience.
Finally, asylum seekers are under special pressure to tell the
"story" which best fits the criteria for recognition as procedures
become increasingly restrictive, if not arbitrary. This point was
made repeatedly by interviewees, informants and experts. The asylum
seeker with papers problems, Interviewee H, expressed this
somewhat resignedly:
"You have to tell lies, but it does no good."28
Thus a mockery can be made of the true determination of factors (push
and pull) leading the uprooted to leave. There is, moreover, the
implicit pressure to manipulate people's genuine biographical
experience to match official models of persecution, which seem
increasingly out of touch with what those suffering actually endure.
How far removed this can be from the key issue of granting asylum to
those in need was put succinctly by a campaigner for Interviewee
I, a rejected asylum seeker, to remain in the country:
''It wouldn't be easy to sustain an argument of ‚fear of
persecution' with some families. But I'm aware that people don't
leave their homes, perhaps with their families to go to another
country or maybe continent and culture unless they have good reasons.
It must be more than ‚mere' economic motives."29
Arrival in the UK, function of ethnic
networks
In this chapter ways and means by which the irregular attempt to
enter the country will be presented. First there will be a review of
entry options for the undocumented . A note on the trade in false
documentation leads into an examination of the specific problem of
entrants wanting to change their migration status (background to the
overstayer problem). Finally, there will be a summary of the role
played by ethnic networks for the newly arrived.
The greater part of the information in this section will be culled
from the context and background interviews and illustrated by
specific experiences from interviewees. The majority of undocumented
interviewees were not lacking legal status from the outset in the UK
(Interviewee K is one exception). Immigration lawyers and the
community organisations in particular were able to furnish
information both on methods of entry and on the role of ethnic
networks in receiving the undocumented. The latter play a key
role in determining how far those without documentation are accepted,
especially in those communities with a high proportion of refugees.
In this section however, they will be viewed only in relation to
arrival of the undocumented. Their wider function and significance
will be treated under the chapter Ethnic networks.
Initially the groups of the unauthorised who enter the country
clandestinely (whether in the sense of being physically hidden or
through using false documentation) will be examined, subsequently the
arrival circumstances of those who begin by having legal status and
at some point infringe the immigration rules governing their right to
remain. The latter applies for example to overstayers, because
they entered the country legally (even though they may much later be
legally classified as „illegal entrants", because of their
infringement of the immigration rules under which they were allowed
to enter).
a) Undocumented entrants
Looking first at the undocumented entrants the initial question to be
answered is: how do people get in? The United Kingdom is an island
nation, so the first problem that presents itself for the person
wishing to enter the country without the appropriate documentation is
getting across the water to the British Isles. This is per se
more difficult than with mainland European countries with land
borders. The following basic options are available to potential
undocumented entrants to the UK: „smuggling" over the long
distance (plane or boat and overland) or the short distance (over the
Channel) with the help of traffickers; and coming in as an
individual, by the same variety of methods or, say, via the Channel
tunnel. In each case false documentation of one kind or another is
certain to play a role, as will be illustrated by the following
examples.
„Smuggling" It is evident that in the last few years a
veritable industry has developed to enable people lacking the right
documentation to get into the country. The long-distance smugglers
operate with false documentation transporting a person „first
class" by plane from the home town to the destination. All services
are provided in a comprehensive „package" for the right fee.
The following case (from a documentary) of long-distance smuggling
illustrates the dependency of the clients on their agents. A young
man from Bangladesh, university-educated, wants to come to Europe by
any means - with the full support of his mother - so that he can send
back remittances to pay for the education of his younger brothers and
sisters. Although they are a middle-class family resident in Dacca,
they have to sell off the family jewellery in order to pay for the
false documentation (visa, passport and tickets) provided by the
agent. His route will take him via Moscow and Madrid and it will cost
him 5,000 pounds.
He is briefed by the agent, who maintains contacts with Western
lawyers and civil rights groups in order to help people to get in, to
claim „political shelter" if he is challenged. The young man
states: „I know this is a crime, but I'm doing it to stand on my
own two feet, to get a job."
In the event he only set off on his journey after long delays and his
false documentation was discovered by an airport official in Moscow;
whence he was returned home30.
There are, too, the „second class" land routes, but the most
dangerous are probably those across the sea, at best „third
class" and dangerous. The route across the Mediterranean has become
particularly notorious after the death of 280 Asian migrants who
drowned in the Peloponnese en route for Sicily on Christmas Day 1996,
while being transferred from a freighter under Honduran flag, the
Yiohan, in heavy seas. Most of them were bound for the UK.
Some 500 migrants were crammed onto the boat in foul conditions and
were paying up to $8,000 per head. Thus the traffickers could expect
to earn $2 million from this operation alone. The suspected ship's
crew was subsequently apprehended by the Italian coastguard31.
Smuggling can be a much more amateur operation. It includes
unsophisticated methods such as concealment in the back of container
lorries or indeed in the boots of cars which come across the English
Channel on ferries. One lawyer described an unfortunate British
couple she was representing: they claimed not to have known that they
were breaking the law in bringing over a person who had persuaded
them to allow him to try and get in undeclared in their caravan
– they had felt sorry for him, a sympathy which the immigration
authorities did not share.
There is also the special documents system employed by the smugglers
which was described by a number of interviewees relating to the
cross-channel ferries. Documentation is valuable and so smugglers
want to re-use it. The smuggler accompanies his client over the
Channel and shortly before disembarkation takes back the false
documents which have brought the migrant thus far. The smuggler
returns to the continental mainland while the migrant disembarks and
attempts to claim asylum, as this is the only option which may allow
him or her to remain. Immigration officers are well aware of the
practice and so all asylum seekers entering the country without
documentation, which may have been lost or destroyed for any number
of reasons, face considerable scepticism. This „recycling
system" which the smugglers force their clients to accept is
comparable to that employed by many coyotes on the USA-
Mexican border32.
Turning to individuals coming in alone, it must also be
emphasised, as immigration lawyers pointed out frequently, that
refugees with a very strong case based on the merits of the matter
frequently have to resort to methods of entry like this, enlisting
the help of smugglers, using false papers and destroying or
„losing" them if circumstances require. As an illustration of
this fact let us look at the case of Interviewee D, a Kurd
from Turkey, who came across to the United Kingdom from France and is
a rejected asylum seeker facing removal.
He left Kurdistan following persecution in the late 80s and applied
for asylum in France. He remained there for four-and-a-half years and
his application was not granted. He then came to England. He was one
of 50 asylum seekers in France involved in a hunger strike, 28
succeeded in getting recognition; he was identified as one of the
ringleaders and he was told he could stay, but without benefits, and
he would have no right to work or freedom of movement.
So he decided to come to England and paid cash for false passports as
Greek citizens for himself and his wife obtained through a Kurd,
because „changing his identity" in this way was his only chance
to get from the one EU country to the other. Coming through passport
control at the airport, he wanted to get rid of the documents, but
the police approached him in possession of the facts, having
apparently been informed by a Turkish passenger, who had probably
heard the couple speaking in transit. They requested asylum. Because
of his wife's advanced pregnancy they couldn't be repatriated to
France.
A victim of torture, this asylum seeker has a strong case and has
received much support from his community and the Medical
Foundation for the Victims of Torture. His experience shows;
however, how genuine asylum seekers can be forced to „play the
papers game".
Since the opening of the Channel Tunnel, taking the Eurostar
train to London has become another method of entry.
Interviewee K, an undocumented entrant from the outset,
is an example of someone who used this method to enter the country.
He has been travelling around the world for a number of years on a
false French passport and has as yet not been seriously challenged on
account of it. After some four years in the United States in the
early Nineties he returned to Europe and was in the Netherlands for
just under a year. For a mixture of private and political reasons he
decided to come over to the United Kingdom and simply booked his
ticket on the Eurostar. While nervous when coming through
Customs, he nonetheless experienced no problems despite being a black
West African from a country that would automatically arouse the
suspicions of Immigration officials. He has good quality false
documentation.
b) A note on the trade in false documentation
At this point some of the broader aspects of the market in false
documentation, as they relate to getting to the UK, can be discussed.
Interviews indicated that if the social and economic destabilisation
(through war, civil war, ethnic conflict etc.) in a country of origin
is acute then a market for documentation develops because of the
straightforward law of supply and demand. This was evident for
example in the case of central Africa; those fleeing disturbances or
indeed chaos in countries such as Rwanda or Zaire (Congo) would get
hold of the documentation required to get out, not only as a matter
of individual survival, but also because they are often the main
breadwinners for their family. They need to provide for a number of
dependants. Migration is under these circumstances very likely the
only option available to find a way to make a living providing
remittances one can send home. In ethical terms the procuring of
false documentation is a price people are prepared to pay (if the
material cost is affordable), when the main issue is one of
survival33.
The Colombian community is under particular pressure because of
political and socio-economic instability at home. Large numbers of
people are fleeing from the countryside (prompting the British
government to introduce entrance visas for Colombians in June 1997).
The consensus view of a number of witnesses from Latin American
support organisations was that these people are often not
particularly sophisticated (especially the poor from the countryside)
and can be outwitted by sharp papers dealers34.
One interviewee with one such organisation indicated how a papers
„trap" had developed for migrants trying to get to the UK. A
businessman from one area of Colombia had been selling the
wherewithal for asylum applications at 4,000 pounds a time. The
Immigration authorities at Heathrow eventually noticed the similarity
in documentation and story, but decided to remain „discreet"
about their discovery. It takes time for information to „get
back down the grapevine" (i.e. the information network) to potential
victims, so at present refugees are still purchasing the
documentation from the dealer back home – possibly having to
sell up everything in order to do so - and flying into the arms of
well-informed Customs and Immigration officials in the UK.
There is also the case of a Colombian woman who purchased a visa for
4,000 pounds sterling and managed to get into the country
successfully. Subsequent travellers were caught at Heathrow with this
documentation. This means the technique has been discovered, so she
now feels unable to leave the country because she will in turn be
caught. This lady was one of those too afraid to give a full
interview. A Latin American support organisation made the point that
there is a significant market for passports and European Union
identity cards (Spanish in particular); people pay thousands and then
get caught because the products are of poor quality. A well-placed
witness working with newly-arrived asylum seekers went further and
indicated that the restrictive visa regime, as in the case of
countries like Colombia, was resulting directly in a boom in the
false visas market.
An investigative programme on Channel 4 in November 1996 discovered a
number of examples of how the trade in providing migration status via
false papers and other methods works both inside and outside the UK.
The following cases were shown:
- a flourishing market for false visas aand passports and visas to
European countries in Beirut.
- a solicitor in the UK was filmed secreetly providing clients with
false asylum stories.
- a medical doctor was shown providing ooverstayers with false medical
files diagnosing maladies which under certain conditions would enable
them to remain in the UK.
- a former Foreign Office employee who hhad retired from the
Immigration Service was filmed clandestinely while devising a
solution for a client from Kenya unable to enter the UK. A Somali
passport would be provided which would be valid as a British
Overseas passport. The person's story was to be that she was born
in Mombassa in 1947 of Somali parents (therefore not a Kenyan citizen
and entitled to a British Overseas passport). The client would
receive the document within 6 weeks, a birth certificate could be
provided if necessary. The ex-FO employee described himself as
„a gamekeeper turned poacher", thus earning a little extra
pocket-money alongside his senior civil servant's pension.
- a Home Office employee with a big operation was exposed. The
reporter posed as an entrant wanting to change temporary leave to
remain to permanent stay. She was offered three options: extension of
visa (not particularly sure), an application for asylum (with a good
chance after 18 months) and the „first class" offer which was a
passport with Indefinite Leave to Remain which would cost
3,000 pounds, but would be a „100% guarantee". This
„businessman's" most important document source was, it was
revealed, the store of old files of deceased clients in the Home
Office which could be re-used to provide his customers with new
identities35.
c) Those entering the country legally who lose their right to
remain: overstayers
When migrants arrive in the UK the great majority of them have some
valid form of document which at least entitles them to legally enter
the country and reside for a time. They come as visitors, with work
permits for a particular employment, within the framework of family
reunion, as students or under special options such as working
holidays36. If they infringe the
conditions of entry, for example as a visitor accepting paid work or
seeking to enrol for study, they rapidly find themselves beyond the
bounds of the law, possibly unknowingly. Such a person will then be
classified by the Immigration authorities retrospectively as an
illegal entrant, because they have – in the view of the
immigration authorities - lied about their intentions on entry. One
of the basic difficulties about the immigration rules, and this point
was reiterated by many interviewees, is the difficulty about
changing your status once you have entered the country. This is
the background for many individuals who have broken the immigration
rules by becoming overstayers: they were not legally able to
change their status.
This can create special problems which particularly affect certain
nationalities. Entry procedures to the UK can reflect the fact that
certain nationalities are to be treated with suspicion, because they
are seen as unlikely to state their true intention to stay longer
than permitted and to take up paid work, or to change their
immigration status from that declared on entry. This perceived
likelihood is, however, a reflection of the restrictive conditions of
entry imposed on nationals of certain nation-states. It would be
possible to take any number of examples of non-white nationals to
illustrate discriminatory practice of this kind on the part of
Immigration, but here the experience of East Europeans will be
reviewed37.
Visitors from Poland are subject to the Association Agreements
between the EU countries and the ex-Eastern bloc states which allow
certain privileges not accorded to other non-EU migrants (such as the
right to set up one's own business), but do not allow entrants to
take up paid permanent employment without the usual conditions
attaching to a work permit. Nonetheless, there are large
numbers of Poles entering the UK every year to do seasonal work,
especially in the building and agricultural sectors.
This is a generally-known fact (and this question will be taken up in
the section on Employment and earning a living), but the
procedure at the ports of entry is, in the words of one Polish
informant, like a kind of theatrical „Battle of
Britain"38. All of the actors have their
assigned parts and must play up accordingly: a large number of the
entrants will indeed try to find work and to learn the English
language, but they must pretend that nothing could be further from
their minds. Immigration officials must be seen to distinguish
between the „good" (tourists) and the „bad" entrants (those
looking for work). There is particular resentment about this in the
Polish community, because by comparison the Czech government has
managed to secure straightforward work and study permits for its
citizens. Their nationals can, by contrast, enter declaring their
purpose honestly.
From May to October each year as many as 80 coaches arrive every day
at Dover with „tourists" from Poland. The entrants are subjected
to intense and intimate questioning by Immigration officials. A young
Polish woman describes her experience at Dover:
„When one begins to apply for an entry visa into Britain, one
feels as though there is some kind of criminality attached to Polish
citizenship. On arrival at Dover last summer, Polish citizens were
herded into non-EEC queues. After an eternity, when my case came, I
was asked pointed questions by the immigration officer about my stay
in England. With whom was I staying? Where was I staying and why?
...To my reply that I was visiting Britain on my own, the immigration
officer looked at me as though I were going to live on immoral
earnings. (And, yes, I am a pretty girl!) When I spoke briefly to a
passenger behind me, the official rounded on me saying, ‚I
thought you were visiting on your own.' I could have replied that I
was thinking of visiting two members of my family in the Polish war
cemetery near Newark, but by this time I'd had enough and only wanted
to get the whole sordid business over with. Perhaps I was thinking of
the 4,000 Poles who served with the Allied navies39."
Those caught by the authorities in infringement of the rules of
entry, e.g. by pursuing gainful employment as a farm labourer
fruit-picking in Norfolk, will be removed. Were it to be easier from
the beginning for Polish entrants to get limited period work visas,
the situation described above might be eased considerably. The key
point, though, for our purposes at this stage of the discussion is
the fact that those entering the country cannot declare their true
intention to work, for they will not be admitted; nor can they change
their status without great difficulty when in the country. The degree
of difficulty faced is directly related to nationality.
d) Ethnic networks and the reception of the unauthorised
Among communities with a high ratio of refugees, whether recognised
or not, it was often stated by representatives of community
organisations or trusted contacts that questions are not asked about
a person's legal status. Various factors can be binding beyond the
immigration status question, such as family obligation or political
solidarity. Yet there is also ambivalence about such commitments.
These themes will be explored in more detail under Ethnic
networks. For our purposes here it is the attitude to the newly
arrived irregular which is at issue.
The point was made that it is the network of family or local village
and regional obligation binding those already resident in the UK and
a new arrival from the homeland, which can be of decisive
importance40. If someone has gone to
such lengths to get to the UK they will have good reason for doing so
in the eyes of their compatriots, the legal niceties of the matter
are not uppermost in their minds. Very many people from ethnic
minorities do not have unimpeachable records in terms of their
document history in any case and so there may be a degree of silent
understanding about the questions you do not ask.
An interviewee representing a migrant support NGO had herself entered
the country in the mid-1980s on false documentation as an asylum
seeker. She had been very involved in democratic and human rights
campaigns under a repressive regime, and had had support through an
Amnesty International campaign. She emphasised the point that
political solidarity with new arrivals is important and
determines how they are received by their communities, regardless of
the precise nature of their immigration status. This can serve to
reinforce the effect of loyalties from back home which remain
binding.
If a migrant arrives with some kind of „reference" from back
home, then not only will no questions be asked, often it will be
expected that people co-operate to help others get in. One local
council employee of West African origin from south London described
such a situation:
„I've been asked to „lend" someone my passport back home
so that they could get in. You white people say we all look alike
anyway."
He declined the request, though he was offered 500 pounds. Had he
agreed, he would have sent his passport back to the country of origin
by post and the photo was to be exchanged. It was too risky for him;
but he knew of one neighbour who made his passport available to a
countryman trying to get in to the country. The borrower was found
out at Immigration, was refused entry and the witness's neighbour
ended up in prison41.
An interviewee of Sri Lankan origin made a similar point: loyalty to
one's local community back home is expected. Not only does this mean
a readiness to co-operate in playing the „papers game", but also
to provide accommodation as the first port of call. The interviewee
described a house in a suburb of London of about a dozen compatriots;
some were in the asylum process, some were without valid papers as
illegal entrants and they were all living under similar conditions.
No distinction was made between the dwellers on account of
immigration status: for the practical purposes of day-to-day living
they were all in the same boat42.
The situation of the newly arrived undocumented as described by
representatives of the Latin American community indicated that ethnic
networks do not always function as structures of solidarity. It was
reiterated that false papers play an important role so that people
can get in, that being the priority. Often there is for example an
arbitrary choice of a European country in which to apply for asylum.
The implication was that the important thing is to get to Europe. For
linguistic and cultural reasons Spain would be a preferred goal for
many as the initial port of call, but ethnic networks exist elsewhere
in Europe, too, and it would be possible to move on43.
The view was expressed by a Colombian observer who has worked with
community organisations for many years that the ethnic networks are
not supportive (and therefore not necessarily a decisive influence in
deciding for a particular country). The following features were noted
by different witnesses:
- compatriots abuse the ignorance of thee newly-arrived by charging
exorbitant fees for "services" such as putting them in touch with
community organisations, lawyers and social security offices.
- sometimes the undocumented are at greaat pains to conceal their
status from compatriots more than anyone else for fear of betrayal
(with the exception of those they are certain they can trust).
These views were endorsed by a number of witnesses from the Latin
American community44.
Accommodation
situation
Shelter is one of the most elementary needs with which the
undocumented are confronted. It is a theme that reveals the
ambivalence inherent in ethnic bonds. On the one hand there is
loyalty, on the other potential for exploitation of one's fellow
nationals, i.e. one is obliged to provide kinsmen with a place to
stay, and that obligation can be turned into a source of income by
subletting rooms in one's flat or house. The complexity of patterns
of dependency within the ethnic communities become particularly
apparent when it comes to accommodation, a basic human need.
The chapter is structured as follows: first there will be an
examination of the effects of the increasingly restrictive asylum
legislation regarding accommodation on the refugee communities. This
will be followed by a review of experiences of the undocumented in
their local communities and the contrasting nature of central
government and local authority behaviour toward the unauthorised on
this issue. Finally, examples from the sample will illustrate the
broader range of accommodation problems that the undocumented face,
and the strategies they develop to cope.
a) The Asylum and Immigration Act 1996, housing provision and
the increased burden on refugee communities
In background interviews the point was frequently made that for the
minority communities the burden of providing a place for their people
to stay can lead to great strain. A newly-arrived person, regardless
of their status, can be put up for a week or two, but thereafter the
strain becomes intense for those already settled who are themselves
normally living in cramped conditions. Even if the individual is
within the asylum process it is implicitly assumed by the authorities
that they will "get lost for six months"45,
after which they will be entitled to work. Therefore family, friends
and community are expected to provide the necessary life-maintaining
support for some time. With the advent of the Asylum and
Immigration Act 1996 this assumption was made into an explicit
shift of the burden of material support on the part of the state away
from the public to the private and charitable sector; one which as a
result deprived thousands of asylum seekers of the existential
minimum required to survive. Sections 10 and 11 of the Act (which
were the subject of intense debate in both houses of parliament)
deprived asylum seekers of income support, housing benefit and
council tax benefit.
The position for newly arrived asylum seekers thus changed
drastically with the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 because
of the removal of entitlement to council accommodation for in-country
applicants. Asylum seekers in toto lost almost all access to social
housing: the only remaining entitlement is to local
authority-arranged temporary accommodation for "on arrival" asylum
applicants who fall within the ambit of the homelessness provisions.
This has led to considerable hardship that has been eloquently
described elsewhere46.
The immediate effect of the Act was to oblige local authorities to
deny provision of any kind of housing to the majority of asylum
seekers. Beyond this the non-public subsidised housing sector (such
as that provided by the charities, the housing associations and
housing trusts) became increasingly wary of accepting those applying
for asylum for fear of them being unable to pay for their
accommodation for lack of any means of support47.
Following the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 large numbers of units
of emergency housing had to be found for destitute asylum seekers,
leading to special provision by such institutions as the YMCA.
Frequently shelter was only made available following documentation of
the suffering by ethnic grass roots organisations, charities,
churches and NGOs.
The important issue for our purposes is the "knock on" effect within
ethnic communities with large numbers of refugees and uprooted
people. As already noted in the section on factors affecting the
migration decision, an increasingly restrictive asylum regime in the
receiver countries may have effects which make life in the
underground seem more attractive. Accommodation is a theme that
provides evidence to substantiate this view. If asylum seekers are no
longer entitled to housing benefit, or indeed income support, then
they are even more of a burden than they would otherwise be on the
individuals or families who are giving them a place to stay. The
pressure very quickly becomes great for them to pay their way by
seeking work in the informal economy. From there it can be a small
step to going underground entirely.
Interviewees from the ethnic community organisations also confirmed
that social tension within households is accordingly greater because
networks of obligation arising from family and blood ties or derived
from home community loyalties are undermined. New arrivals whom one
is expected to support and accommodate as a matter of honour and
traditional hospitality have to be asked to move on after a short
time because scarce resources cannot be further divided
indefinitely48.
The situation on the London streets, at the day centres and in the
night shelters for destitute asylum seekers in the course of 1996
showed how desperate the plight of thousands without financial
support had become. The individual misery this entailed has been well
documented in the media and in studies and was ultimately countered
by high court decisions invoking state responsibility through the
National Assistance Act 194849. The
broader implication for the ethnic minority (especially primarily
refugee) communities of experiencing the humiliation of not being
able to support their own has been less appreciated.
A representative of a West African community with large numbers of
refugees whose chances of recognition or indeed of Exceptional Leave
to Remain (ELR) are slim gave an insight into attitudes among his
people. Regardless of their status they are constantly afraid of
checks and the extent of police powers. They associate police action
with what they know from back home. This means that those in the UK
are afraid to offer newcomers from back home lodgings, unless they
are friends or relatives. Someone can stay for a week, but then they
must move on. Their group has therefore now set up a network of
places around London where people can stay for a maximum of two or
three weeks before moving on, until they are able to find cheap
accommodation. This might be with families with one room to rent in a
three- or four- bedroom house (British families or otherwise) and
everyone hopes they will not ask too many questions. Equally, those
renting space might be single parents who are happy to have a
contribution to their rent. The fortunate lodgers end up paying an
inexpensive 25 to 45 pounds per week50.
There is a further dimension to the accommodation aspect of asylum
procedures, mentioned by a number of witnesses, which increases the
attractiveness of the underground option. If asylum seekers are
forced to live in low-grade accommodation then their sense of
self-worth may make them feel that the risk of illegality and the
private market is more appealing. The day before being interviewed a
representative from a Kurdish support agency said he had visited a
hostel for asylum seekers, "which was like an open-door
prison." It had been dark, cramped and dirty, enough to induce
depression in his clients. A worker with a Latin American support
group spoke of feeling ashamed when she had to accompany some asylum
seekers to their assigned hostel because of the filth of some units
or because the social, alcoholic or psychiatric problems of other
residents would impose a great strain on the newcomer. She pointed
out the significance of social isolation. Those new arrivals who do
receive accommodation may find themselves alone in Bed and Breakfast
places which are making a considerable profit from letting to asylum
seekers, while the individual tenants themselves have scarcely enough
to survive on. A single man under 25 in Tower Hamlets will receive 14
pounds per week in benefit51.
One may thus sum up the development in the housing situation for
asylum seekers and their ethnic communities over the last two years
as follows. Networks of kith and kin, ethnic community and
solidarity, regional origin and social tradition entail obligations
binding together large numbers of people beyond those in the asylum
machinery. As public housing provision has become more restrictive so
dependency on the private sector has been increased, and with it a
vulnerability to unscrupulous practice (whether within the ethnic
groupings or from outside) on the housing market. The combined effect
of the legislative and administrative measures depriving large number
of those entering the UK as asylum seekers of access to social
housing – whether or not they are acknowledged as such and
allowed into the determination process – has been to create a
downward spiral on the accommodation market affecting a large section
of the ethnic minority population. The process of marginalisation of
minority communities on the housing market has thus been
reinforced.
b) Internal controls in the housing sphere
In the housing sphere there is the additional issue of internal
controls at local authority level. Following the Housing Act 1996
councils are expected to ascertain the immigration status of new
tenants (though it was pointed out that some local authority housing
departments had introduced controls some time before)52.
Interviews with immigration lawyers and talks off-the-record with
employees in local housing departments confirmed that this meant in
practice that new applicants for council housing were being asked to
provide documentation on their immigration status. This targets
overstayers who have been in the UK for many years, but have remained
undetected, and who are thus coming under pressure. Either they must
avoid social housing altogether or – if they are already in
council property – give up ideas of moving from one property to
another for fear of having their documentation checked. Cases were
mentioned of people moving out of their homes as a precautionary
measure for fear of being checked, feeling a need to "disappear."
Thus a life which had been built up over a number of years, with all
of its attendant social and economic bonds and commitments had to be
renounced overnight53. The specific
discriminatory character of this has been confirmed by the
observation (mentioned by many expert interviewees) that black people
are particularly subject to these kinds of checks54.
Much however may still depend on the political attitude of boroughs
(especially those with large refugee communities) or indeed of
individual housing officers, who may choose to use discretionary
power in the client's favour (e.g. not insisting on seeing valid
documentation in the sense meant by the immigration authorities, but
accepting, for example, a rent book or driving licence as evidence of
identity). The importance of local authority attitude to the
undocumented becomes especially evident in the case of rejected
asylum seekers or overstayers facing deportation who become the
subject of well co-ordinated anti-deportation campaigns, a point
which will be discussed shortly.
Again, however, a little-noticed effect of the propagation of the
controls regime in tandem with increasingly restrictive asylum law is
that within the ethnic communities themselves. Ethnic grass roots
organisations, especially minority housing action groups have been
obliged to adopt the policy of immigration status checks by virtue of
the fact that they will be breaking the law in supporting an
undocumented person's search for accommodation. It was noticeable in
the course of research that housing groups representing refugee
communities were particularly circumspect when discussing the whole
issue of the undocumented. The policy of mandatory immigration
controls in the housing area drives a wedge into the self-help
community organisations themselves. This in turn gives rise to
divided loyalties and to resentment against the external legislating
authority pursuing what is perceived – certainly by the
politically minded - as a divisive policy within ethnic minority
groupings.
c) The housing situation of the undocumented –
vulnerability and support
Moving on to individual cases cited in interviews which illustrate
the range of accommodation problems faced by the undocumented, the
most important theme to emerge was their vulnerability to
exploitation by unscrupulous landlords. They are dependent on the
most dubious sector of the private accommodation market and are in no
position to negotiate housing contract conditions, inasmuch as they
have written agreements for tenancy at all. They have to accept what
they are offered on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Numerous cases were
described of tenants paying exorbitant prices for poor quality
accommodation. The following is an extreme case of what can result
from the vulnerability of the irregular on the housing market.
An undocumented family from Colombia has been living in the UK since
1995 in private accommodation: 13 people inhabit a four-bedroom flat
in Newham, the conditions were described as appalling, cramped and
there is a hole in the roof. They pay 250 pounds sterling in rent per
week and have no central heating. In winter the flat is desperately
cold and damp. Members of the family became ill and they then had
problems getting medical treatment because the doctor enquired about
asylum status. The father is a rejected asylum seeker, the mother has
immigration status, some of the children do and some don't. The
strain caused by constant fear of a police raid to remove the father
is immense55.
Interviewee E is unable to live with his family and the strain
for all concerned is equally hard to bear. As an overstayer facing
deportation he must reckon with being picked up by the immigration
authorities at virtually any time. He therefore spends much of his
time on the move, not living with the family but visiting wife and
children intermittently. For their part they are officially obliged
to have no knowledge of his whereabouts.
Interviewee H, an asylum seeker with documentation problems,
has experienced vulnerability as a tenant which the lack of secure
immigration status can entail. Firstly, her housing benefit had been
stopped at the time of being interviewed, which meant she could no
longer afford the rent in her private accommodation and at the time
of the interview was being threatened with eviction. Her landlord was
well aware of her insecure status and had made no attempt to have the
hole in her roof repaired of which she had been complaining for
months. The undocumented have no means of redress, if their
contractual partner, in this case the landlord, refuses to meet his
obligation. She also described having lived in "digs" in London in
the past which were "totally unacceptable", she would never have had
to endure such conditions back home in Africa, she stated56.
Yet there can be examples in which dependency leads to compassion and
sympathetic support of a person's fight to stay. One case of a
domestic worker illustrates how the fact of living in close proximity
to her employers came to be decisive. She is a Colombian woman who
came as a tourist and overstayed. She was together with an asylum
seeker and they had a child. She worked for various families. Her
partner subsequently left her for another woman, whom he hopes to
marry in order to get the right to remain. The client is thus a
single mother and is now lacking legal status which she had enjoyed
while together with her partner as she is now no longer the dependent
of an asylum seeker. She accidentally placed her passport in the
washing machine so the stamps indicating date and right of entry as a
tourist are now unclear, adding to her problems. However, her present
employer is prepared to stand surety for her to remain and provide
accommodation in a garden flat. The case is with a solicitor who
hopes to present a strong argument to the Home Office on
compassionate grounds57.
This appears to confirm the general observation that while domestic
workers are more dependent than other casual wage workers on the one
hand (immigration status, employment and accommodation depending on
their employer's goodwill) and thus especially vulnerable to abuse,
they may also incur a greater sympathy and sense of responsibility in
their employers because of the personal nature of the working
relationship and the emotional bond which may grow with the children
in the family.
d) The housing situation of the undocumented –
solidarity at local level
Let us now return to the question of local authority conduct towards
the undocumented and accommodation as regards political attitude.
Just as local authority housing employees seem to vary in the
strictness with which they apply the regulations on checking
immigration status, so too attitudes at local authority level to
rejected asylum seekers are often greatly influenced by perceived
injustice concerning their treatment. The views of individual
officers or local government employees on a specific case may have
been determined by effective anti-deportation campaigns. Equally, a
local authority may have (not necessarily openly declared) political
reasons for a stance in favour of an individual (e.g. opposition to
government legislation on asylum and immigration, which is perceived
as unnecessarily draconian). This sample provides various
illustrations of what this means in practice.
Interviewee C, who had been with his family in church
sanctuary for over three years, had to contend with an immensely
stressful situation because of the uncertainties of his position. But
his campaign and the resultant solidarity of the parish and broader
local community have made the family's sojourn in the church
bearable. There is no doubt he would have been deported long ago
without the protecting hand of church asylum in the original,
mediaeval sense reinforced by the support of many parishioners
together with effective publicity and solid professional legal and
medical back-up for their case. As reported of an MP, if the family
were to be forcibly removed from the church, there would be rioting
in the streets58. The local school has
been voluble in support of the family's right to remain. The local
authority appears to have shown at least passive sympathy for the
case. In this conflict the Home Office and the Immigration
authorities are perceived by many at local level as the enemy.
Moving on to Interviewee B, the support he has experienced has
left him in a better position on account of the strong stance taken
by his MP who has for example intervened to restore his benefits
entitlement. It is significant that Social Services responded to a
politician's intervention, despite the fact the interviewee is
undocumented (a rejected asylum seeker) and facing deportation.
Equally, once he had got his local council accommodation he was left
in peace by the local authority, there was no threat to remove him
from his flat. He has had constant support from the local authority
social worker. Central and local government thus once again fail to
act in harmony.
Interviewee D underlined what appears to be a common trend of
contradictory attitudes between local government and central
policy-making authority. In his case (also a rejected asylum seeker)
central government, in the form of the Home Office, has an interest
in carrying out the letter of immigration law, meaning deportation.
On the other hand local government appears to be more sensitive to
the local citizens' views and the potential deportee's standing in
the local ethnic or broader community. The interviewee stated,
namely, that he had experienced explicit support from the housing
department and the Social Services – they had been "really
excellent". Not only had the borough been very helpful in
providing good housing for him and his family of four persons as
promptly as possible, but there was also no question of eviction or
removal of benefits despite lack of legal status following rejection
of his appeal. There was, moreover, the clear impression of
co-operation between his solicitors and bodies such as the Medical
Foundation on the one hand and the local authority on the
other59. This is another of the many
illustrations of the contradictory, adversarial cast of policy
implementation in the UK, a point to be discussed in the analytical
section.
The point to be noted concerning accommodation is that undocumented
people are usually in a better position if they have the support of
their community (local and/or ethnic), or at least if there is
widespread local knowledge of their plight, because the authorities
will feel more reluctant to be seen as depriving them of their homes.
This is heightened by the fact that local government responsibility
for putting housing and social welfare policy into practice is always
bound to be a potential minefield of conflict between the centre and
the regions. It must be emphasised, however, that this leeway for
compassion at local level is only shown to those undocumented people
with children; single people facing deportation as irregular migrants
are likely to be removed or placed in detention centres without
ceremony. For obvious reasons the immigration authorities have a
vested interest in moving fast to remove the irregular in order to
prevent local communities (and their politically-sensitive local
authorities) becoming aware of the plight of what may be long-settled
or locally-respected people. This is obviously easier in the case of
individuals rather than families.
e) Accommodation "underground"
At the other end of the spectrum of "public visibilty" to those who
are the focus of anti-deportation campaigns there are the illegal
immigrants who learn to survive on the private accommodation market.
As a matter of course they will avoid public provision and use
private information networks to find out what is available.
Interviewee M is someone who has become conversant with the
rules in the course of many years in the UK as an illegal entrant. He
currently lives in North London as a lodger with two elderly sisters
in a respectable middle class neighbourhood. His description would
suggest that they regard him as a charming young man working at home
who causes no trouble. He is skilled in avoiding any situation that
would entail his immigration status being questioned60.
The shared need for accommodation under difficult social and economic
conditions can encourage the blurring of legal distinctions of
immigration status for the members of minority communities. An
example was cited of a house in East London known to a representative
of an NGO, herself of Tamil origin. It is a small building inhabited
by some twelve male Tamils who are crammed together in limited space.
Some have some form of immigration status, but most are undocumented.
The question of status is, however, of secondary concern –
because of their mutual need to work in the "black economy" and thus
shared evasion of national insurance and taxation dues they face
similar consequences if discovered: some form of detention at Her
Majesty's pleasure and possible removal from the country. People back
home know through the grapevine that this house is a good first
port-of-call to find a place to stay and establish first contacts.
New arrivals at the house are fed into the informal sector employment
network61.
Other interviewees confirmed that mobility is a main characteristic
for the housing situation of the undocumented. Friends and family,
lovers and partners provide a place to stay and one is always ready
to move at short notice – news of immigration raids in the
community, word of better opportunities elsewhere may be the
incentive; or the strain of cramped, shared living under
circumstances of uncertainty may be the reasons. His possessions
thrown together in a holdall the undocumented young man is constantly
ready to move on62.
Alternatively, the vulnerability of the newly arrived and their need
for a place to stay can be exploited within the ethnic communities. A
representative of the Poles in the UK described how newcomers doing
building work in the private sector are provided with lodgings by
their compatriots who have been in the country longer – the
generation which arrived in the Seventies - who make a considerable
profit through subletting limited space for a profit. This "service"
was characterised as exploitative. Yet, the dividing line between
"solidarity" with and "exploitation" of one's countryman may indeed
be a fine one63.
Even those who seem to establish themselves more independently and
build up a degree of economic security can find their lives
devastated overnight. The case of a Pakistani who had overstayed and
remained in the UK for 14 years, building up his own business with
his own house before his lack of immigration status was discovered by
chance in connection with a business transaction, pointed up what
this means in stark terms. He was placed in detention before being
removed from the UK within a matter of days. He had employed five
people who suddenly found themselves out of a job. Had he had the
opportunity he would have been able to put a strong case to remain to
the Home Office on compassionate grounds64.
Another reported case gave some insight into the hardship which can
be caused to families by sudden discovery that the breadwinner is an
irregular migrant. After the immigration authorities had removed an
undocumented man living in council accommodation, his wife and child
felt too afraid to stay in their house and had immediately gone
underground, dependent on friends and relatives to give them a place
to stay65.
The examples given in this section should give a flavour of what the
accommodation problem is like for most of the undocumented – a
life on the move, characterised by constant unease and uncertainty,
prey to unscrupulous landlords. The changes in UK asylum legislation
excluding most asylum seekers from social housing and the increase in
internal controls at local authority level when assigning
accommodation have led to greater pressure on the undocumented to
accept increasingly sub-standard provision at inflated prices in the
private sector. The pressure has also increased on ethnic housing
support organisations to check people's immigration status, there
being greater risks if they do not.
Accommodation can moreover often be dependent on employment, making
the undocumented especially vulnerable to exploitation. The hotel and
catering industries and agriculture and market gardening provide
clear examples of how this dependency can be used to manipulate the
irregular, as will be documented in the next section on employment
and making a living.
Employment and income
– making a living
In the course of this chapter various means of surviving without
papers, from the range of employment options available to social
security fraud, will be examined. Studies of the lives of the
undocumented in the post-industrialised countries to date have shown
that it is possible for them to survive in certain sectors of
employment66. It is necessary to
look at the structures of employment followed by the irregular and go
one step beyond this. One hypothesis which will be examined in the
course of this survey is whether the results show that specific
employment sectors depend on employees who lack immigration status to
be able to function profitably.
First, the factors pushing people underground will be considered.
This will be followed by an examination of the employment sectors
where the undocumented are most frequently to be found. The specific
themes of crime, working conditions, the effects of Section 8 of the
Asylum and Immigration Act and the special case of the agricultural
sector will be treated, culminating in a presentation of the specific
view of two undocumented interviewees.
One obvious point concerning the irregular and work should be
underlined at the outset. The unauthorised have, as a rule, no option
but to take paid employment because they cannot apply for benefits
from the state; they automatically form a part of the labour reserve
employed almost exclusively in the informal sector. In this sense
they are in a different position from asylum seekers who are entitled
to social security benefits, however meagre; at least they were until
the Conservative government introduced the changes in 1996 depriving
asylum seekers of social security who applied in-country. The misery
caused by these measures has been well documented elsewhere67,
but there was one result which is of critical importance as regards
the lives of the unauthorised.
a) The pressure to go underground
One main argument put by the Tory government in defence of the
removal of benefits for those asylum seekers applying in-country or
at the appeal stage of proceedings was that these were evidently the
„bogus" candidates coming to live off the British social
security system. Removing their eligibility to benefits would end an
„incentive" for them to come. Interviewees across the spectrum
(immigration lawyers, church activists, NGOs, community
organisations, political lobby groups, trusted contacts in the
communities, those from anti-deportation campaigns; above all
undocumented interviewees themselves) confirmed one point which
showed the flaw in this logic: that the effect of the measures has
indeed been to make the asylum procedure less attractive, but this
does not stop people coming, if the pressure is great enough.
If the communities provide the necessary support, they will find
other ways of surviving. To begin with, therefore, testimony will be
cited from an ethnic community with large numbers of refugees on the
primary need to get to a country of refuge indicating the importance
of the „push" of migration pressure.
A discussion with a representative of the Algerian community, himself
an asylum seeker and a highly qualified professional, was revealing
on the attractions of being undocumented and so having to provide for
oneself. Those trying to leave his country are well aware that the
chances of being recognised as a refugee are low. The important thing
is to get the documentation and the means to get out and gain access
to a country where the chances of survival are considerably better.
The UK has a particular attraction because the news through the
„grapevine" is that there are jobs to be had. This may be
related to the high level of deregulation of the economy providing
the kind of jobs on the margins taken by the undocumented.
He also made quite clear why, alternately, applying for asylum is not
an attractive option. For one thing many asylum seekers are highly
qualified people:
"If you look at the National Health Service (NHS) you see that
qualified people are desperately needed, instead those coming in and
surviving are doing humiliating jobs, suffering frustration which
leads to psychological problems."
As the interviewee pointed out, a life on benefit is not only
demeaning in itself. He described the pain of losing his children's
respect. He had recently urged his child to get on with his homework.
The youngster replied:
„Why should I go to school? Look where it got you?"
He continued the argument by pointing out that asylum seekers are not
seen as contributors, rather people are „being destroyed" by the
waste of their abilities and not being allowed to use their skills.
Waiting for a decision is an immense strain. One can end up waiting
for six years. Thus: people draw their own conclusions, they prefer
to go underground rather than face the Home Office's asylum
procedure.
They come on false papers through Italy or Germany and they are
supported by their own community. Documents are organised on a large
scale by the Mafia. He asked: How are people coming from Algeria to
get a genuine visa in Tunisia , the step required to be
„legitimate"? After arrival people go to the DSS with false
papers which are professionally produced and enable them to get a
National Insurance number. This may be difficult, „but it is
better than the Algerian nightmare" he commented. While we were
talking in a café he indicated a middle-aged Algerian who had
just entered the UK recently with his family. For false papers and
travel documents he had paid the smuggler a total of 3,000 pounds
sterling68.
b) Jobs of the undocumented
Interviewees located a number of sectors that to a greater or lesser
extent make use of undocumented workers. As one would expect they
are, broadly speaking, the sectors in which „black" employment
(i.e. avoidance of tax and social insurance contributions) is
endemic. These are the textile industry (small workshops and
factories, particularly in the East End around Whitechapel, in North
London in the Stoke Newington area, and in Hackney), hotels and
catering (washing up, portering and waiting in fast food and other
restaurants, cafes and snack bars throughout London), the building
industry, mini-cab and courier services, small enterprise trades
(garages, workshops and trades with from one to five employees),
household jobs and cleaning (in private homes or in companies, shops
etc.)69. In addition to these city-based
employment possibilities there is the special case of the
agricultural sector.
These are the main areas in which the undocumented in the
post-industrialised countries are employed, as reflected in the
statements of the informants, experts and interviewees. It may be
added that in this age of constantly diversifying tertiary sector
employment, however, the opportunities for marginal occupation in
the service industries continue to broaden. Parallel to what is today
described as the globalisation of economic activity there is an
increase in breadth of service demand at the margins of wealthier
societies. As an illustration of this at street level, see the box
Wailing Wall for the range of employment being offered and
taken up as well as for an indication of how the ethnic information
network functions.
Wailing Wall
On the corner of a busy street in West London there is a newsagents
well known far beyond this locality. The whole of the shop window
down the side street is filled with hand-written cards advertising
accommodation, requests for lifts and a wide range of jobs. A large
number of the texts are written in a foreign language. Around eight
to ten people, almost all men, are scrutinising the cards closely,
making notes on the information, telephone numbers and addresses. One
or two carry large suitcases, they may be new arrivals. Back in their
home country this place is known with some irony as the Wailing
Wall. This is an information, accommodation and job exchange
operating on the purest basis of supply and demand. People meet in
surrounding cafes and come to agreements. The authorities have tried
to stop this „service", but nothing ostensibly illegal is going
on, no more than elsewhere at a hundred other meeting places
sustaining the informal sector. This is a selection noted of the jobs
on offer:
Waiter/waitress, massage parlour, photo models (girls), kitchen
porter, receptionist, cleaning („obedient girl wanted"), clothes
shop assistant, chambermaid in hotel, painting and interior
decoration, plasterer and tiler, ironing and cleaning (private), van
driver, envelope re-mailing, care worker (disabled and elderly),
service call administrator (telephoning)70.
Another form of information bursary is the medium of sport and
leisure time activity. A number of informants from the Latin American
community described the importance of the Latin American football
League as a meeting place and source of information. People meet on
Sunday mornings for a game and find out all about the market in jobs
and services as well as accommodation. The undocumented can glean
precious data on jobs without having to reveal too much about
themselves before and after the game, though this discretion cannot
be guaranteed71.
c) The irregular and involvement in crime; social security
fraud
Most of the communities report some involvement on the part of a
small minority in petty crime. This can be small-scale drug dealing,
prostitution or social security fraud. This is the kind of crime
practised by those surviving on the margins. Informants pointed out,
however, that it is virtually impossible for the undocumented to
become involved in „organised" crime, except by providing low
grade, expendable services, e.g. as drug couriers. They are far too
dependent in power terms for anything else and, moreover, too busy
trying to find their way around the „system" in a strange
country. They do not have the necessary capacity to be large-scale
criminals
Over the last few years there have been occasional reports of asylum
seekers from central and West Africa being involved in social
security fraud and brought to court for the embezzlement of
considerable sums from the DSS on the basis of false identity. Once
asylum applicants have received their Standard Acknowedgement
Letters (SAL) or IS 96 (asylum claim forms) they can
submit their application without photograph. There have been cases of
individuals changing details to submit 2 or 3 different
applications72. On this basis they can
then apply for benefits with two or three identities. This is one of
the reasons why it is impossible to quantify the number of asylum
seekers (along with the procedural backlog, changes of status and
numbers of asylum seekers who have subsequently left the country).
The popular press have been able to make great play of
„spectacular abuse" of the social security system by asylum
seekers, implying large numbers are „bogus" and out to live off
the British state by deceit.
An interview with an informant who has known Central African
communities at home and in the UK for many years set these stories in
perspective. To begin with the great majority of asylum seekers in
the UK are struggling to get by honestly on the little money they
receive from the state (though the increased incentive to „go
underground" on account of the sheer material need caused by
restrictive asylum procedures since the summer of 1996 has been
indicated above). They are often living in real poverty. But it is
necessary, too, to see the broader background of people's experience:
not only are members of these migrant communities survivors of
colonialism, civil war and repression who may have suffered
traumatically, but they also have had to forge documents themselves
or purchase them just to get to Europe. These are the people who have
no chance of going through „official channels", because that may
mean existential danger. Trips may have been planned for a long time,
smugglers contracted to get one out, documents organised on which
one's life will depend. They may have needed to travel with two or
three documents with different identities that are
interchangeable.
There is another important factor on the road to survival for those
who take flight which is often forgotten. They are more often than
not the breadwinners and they are well aware of their family
responsibility. There may be a number of dependants at home for whom
the money „earned" in exile is vital. The interviewee pointed
out that there are tried and trusted courier routes to get
remittances back to the homeland, banks cannot be relied upon. The
only danger about entrusting the money to a courier is „that it
might get eaten" en route, but good faith in making the transaction
is always assumed73.
d) Exploitative conditions
In objective terms the undocumented are lacking protection against
the most brutal forms of exploitation in areas of marginal, often
informal sector employment. Examples giving an idea of conditions
will be given later. But first, an important finding on the
interviewees' thoughts about the work they do: attitudes of the
undocumented to their employment can be different to what one might
expect. The perception of a job as lowly or exploitative at the
objective level may not be felt by an undocumented person in the same
way subjectively. Interviewee B (rejected asylum seeker)
worked for some time in a bakery. He regards this time in retrospect
as a very positive phase when he was able to look after himself and
assert his independence, despite the unsocial hours, hard conditions
and – by some standards - modest pay. This view was shared by
Interviewee O („insecure status") who also works shifts
in a bakery. He was grateful to have the job, and desperately unhappy
when he lost his employment for six months because he lacked valid
papers. The attitude tended to be: I vastly prefer this kind of work
to no work at all.
Equally the candidate in detention, Interviewee J,
regarded the work he did before his arrest, driving a mini-cab, as
having been satisfactory, although he had in fact trained in the UK
during his time as an undocumented migrant and got his diploma as an
electrician (and before that had considered studying maths) and was
thus working below qualification74. He
also recalled having enjoyed his first work on coming to England for
some months in the fruit fields in Norfolk: the people had been
friendly, it had been a good opportunity to learn the language, he
had enjoyed working in the open air and the countryside. It may,
however, be the case that any form of employment appears attractive
from the perspective of detention, back breaking work on the Norfolk
fields appearing in retrospect as the golden age. (See below for the
agricultural employment situation of the irregular.)
A brief survey of overstayers in the sample shows how the spirit of
survival was a main determining factor in people's attitudes and that
they often tended not to complain about the lowly or exploitative
character of the work they might be doing. Interviewee L's
„career" as an overstayer is illustrative of this. He had done
various casual jobs while living more or less on the streets of
London for a number of years. He knew the manager at a fast food
restaurant and would go there after hours to be given hamburgers that
would otherwise have been thrown away. Donations of this kind kept
him alive. When after a series of casual jobs he managed to get
regular work in a kitchen and establish himself as the pasta chef in
the restaurant before the Immigration Service caught up with him, he
had reached an occupational position of which he was understandably
proud. It brought better pay, greater security and the attendant rise
in self-esteem (despite his lack of immigration status).
This is evident when the interviewee talks about that phase in his
life. It is again the retrospective view that appears to be decisive,
causing him to see this as the best time in his life. He is now
caught in limbo as an overstayer with a family, the UK authorities
are determined to deport him, his country of origin refuses to
acknowledge his citizenship. He is a man with nowhere to stay and
nowhere to go, he would give a great deal to be able to return to the
life he had as a pasta chef. Like many of the interviewees whose
lives are characterised by uncertainty his central statement was:
just give me a chance.
Interviewee E is a long-term overstayer whose personal
circumstances have also led to an anti-deportation campaign based on
strong compassionate grounds for leave for him and his family to
remain. He entered the country as a trader. Again the sheer
psychological pressure of the uncertainty of the future is the main
problem. He is obliged to keep in hiding in case the police arrive to
effect the deportation order that has been served repeatedly on him.
His family lives on social security and he resents the fact that he
is being prevented from providing for them – this is a matter of
pride. Like other interviewees he says he would be happy to do any
work, no matter how menial or dirty, if only he is allowed to remain.
The most recent news was that in spite of his lack of immigration
status he was attempting to start his own business, showing the kind
of entrepreneur initiative which British governments usually feel
inclined to reward.
The kinds of employment which the unauthorised have to take up
nonetheless show that they are typically the ones who are exploited
and in no position to protest against injustice because of their lack
of power and status. Take the following example that may be seen as
symptomatic for the experience of many. There is a hotel in
Camberwell in south London notorious for those in the know for
employing people of different nationalities without immigration
status. The employees sleep on mattresses in a back room. They are
employed on a temporary basis generally after having arrived recently
in the UK. They work long hours and cannot be sure of receiving pay
due to them. If they protest, the manager threatens to report them to
Immigration. He has been able to run his business by exploiting the
unauthorised in this way for a number of years. There have been raids
there by the police leading to the removal of irregular migrants from
the country (the police station is 100 metres down the road), but the
manager remains in business75.
Having looked at these individual examples it is now time to examine
structural factors in the situation of the undocumented as
unprotected members of the workforce subject to abuse by the
employer. Notwithstanding the positive view that irregular migrants
may have of their employment under certain circumstances, one of the
most important themes mentioned by interviewees and informants was
the vulnerability of the undocumented in their employment. They pay
no tax and no social insurance (many of those spoken to said they
would prefer to be able to do both and have secure status with
rights), that means they have no rights and do not exist officially.
Because they are not on the employer's books there is no restraint
upon him hiring and firing at will. They can be forced to tolerate
bad or even dangerous conditions, work long and unsocial hours and
accept low, even derisory pay. They have, as a rule, no form of
redress. Examples of their abuse by unscrupulous employers are
legion. Here are some:
- it is not uncommon for employers in thhe building trade to
take on irregular workers, let them work for 4-5 weeks and then to
sack them without pay. Some employers may even claim to have only
just realised they are infringing the law in employing migrants
without papers76.
- Similarly among cleaning brigaddes which are employed by
large companies to clean their offices and which are mainly staffed
by members of ethnic minorities the practice has been developing of
taking people on for up to a month and then sacking them
(„You're unhappy? Well go to the police!"). The practice has
been reported increasingly since the 27.1.1997 (See below). Pay can
be as low as one to two pounds per hour77.
- There are examples of people working iin the garments trade
for as little as a pound an hour. The work is always badly paid if
the workforce have no trade union recognition. It is still regarded
primarily as women's work (even if the workshop supervisors are
almost invariably men). Conditions in this industry are traditionally
harsh: long hours with short breaks; working in small, cramped
workshops with poor lighting and bad ventilation. Undocumented
workers are in no position to organise themselves or to agitate for
improvements, let alone withdraw their labour. In a number of senses
they are the ideal „captive" workforce for industries of this
kind78.
- A group of workers of one nationality,, some of whom will be
undocumented, may be employed through a „ganger" (who will have
papers) by a supermarket manager to stock the shelves during
the night. He will agree a „pay package" for, say, ten people
for an eight hour shift. The „ganger" will then take on eight
people whom he pays for a six hour shift and pockets the
difference79.
- Domestic workers are sometimes subjected to physical and
sexual abuse by employers unconstrained by any kind of public
supervision. A lawyer cited the following current case: This
household worker has been in the UK for more than 10 years and came
over with her employers when very young. After years of mistreatment
she ran away with the help of a neighbour and is now waiting to sue
her former employers for false imprisonment with the help of
Kalayaan while living with another family. It took some time
to build up a relationship of trust between lawyer and client,
because she assumed as a matter of course that co-operation between
the legal practice and the Home Office would lead to her
deportation80.
e) Employers Sanctions Section 8 Asylum and Immigration Act
1996
In one vital respect the situation of the undocumented has worsened
since the end of January 1997 with the effects of Section 8 of
the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996. This introduced employer
sanctions for the first time against those knowingly giving a job to
sans papiers. In its dying months the Major administration put
a lot of money and publicity into promoting this measure which in
other countries has been a proven failure in combating employment of
the unauthorised, to say nothing of the larger goal of diminishing
the incentive behind illicit migrant flow81.
It is essential to look at this legislation and its enforcement,
because it has had a direct and powerful effect on the working lives
of the undocumented.
Two major criticisms were made of this legislation in interviews.
First it turns employers into an extended arm of internal control of
migrant status, a task for which they are neither prepared nor
trained. Immigration law is at the best of times a highly complex
field, even for the experts82. As the
consensus is that this particular legislation was hurried and badly
drafted into the bargain this is bound to lead to confusion and
maladroit if not unjust application of controls. Second, and leading
on from this, there is enormous potential in employer sanctions for
discrimination against members of ethnic minorities, particularly
those who may be union or political activists, at the place of
employment. Witness statements on effects of the law in the early
months of 1997 will be looked at after taking up the first point, the
over-complicated nature of the employer sanctions approach.
The government applies a mixture of the carrot and the stick in
urging employers to check the documentation of all job applicants at
some stage of their procedures:
„...as an employer you could be guilty of a criminal offence
if you employ someone who does not have permission to be in – or
to work in – the United Kingdom. You can protect yourself by
making certain basic checks before taking on new employees...The
checks which you need to make to claim this defence will in most
cases be straightforward. They could be built into your normal
recruitment procedures. The checks are not compulsory. But they are
advisable. If you do not make them you will not have the statutory
defence which they provide83."
This may sound perfectly reasonable; it is, moreover, made clear that
the Immigration Service remains ultimately responsible for
immigration control. But employers transgressing can expect to pay a
fine of up to 5,000 pounds. This assumes thoroughgoing competence on
the part of a complete amateur in judging the genuineness of
documents in an age of highly professional forgeries. Appendix A of
the brochure quoted above lists the 13 types of document which the
job applicant may produce to prove they have legitimate immigration
status with entitlement to work. Here are some examples:
- a document issued by a previous employyer, the Inland Revenue, the
Benefits Agency, the Contributions Agency or the Employment Service
(or their Northern Ireland equivalents) which state the National
Insurance number of the person named.
- a passport describing the holder as a British citizen or as having
the right of abode in – or an entitlement to readmission to -
the United Kingdom.
- a passport containing a Certificate off Entitlement issued by or on
behalf of the Government of the United Kingdom certifying that the
holder has the right of abode in the United Kingdom.
- a certificate of registration or naturralisation as a British
citizen.
- a passport or other travel document enndorsed to show that the
person named is exempt from immigration control, has indefinite leave
to enter, or remain in, the United Kingdom or has no time limit on
his or her stay; or a letter issued by the Home Office confirming
that the person named has such status.
-a passport or other travel document endorsed to show that the
person named has current leave to enter or remain in the United
Kingdom and is not precluded from taking the employment in question;
or a letter issued by the Home Office confirming that this is the
case.
- a letter issued by the Immigration andd Nationality Directorate of
the Home office indicating that the person named in the letter is a
British citizen or has permission to take employment.
It may be doubted whether the telephone help-line introduced by the
government to deal with any queries or problems employers might have
in applying Section 8 is adequate support84.
Moving on to the second criticism of Section 8: there were frequent
reports from interviewees and informants of the discriminatory
effects of the legislation. Despite the express prohibition of checks
on employees already in employment there was clear evidence of
„trawling" (i.e. employers going through their books to check
the immigration status of their workers). This has increased fear and
tension at the workplace and led in some cases to people deciding to
leave their jobs85. One informant, a
part-time minister with an African Pentecostal church, talked of
members of his congregation with secure immigration status
experiencing increasing controls by their employers86.
Specifically for the unauthorised, of course, the pressure has
increased immensely (as the government intended). There is the case
of a Peruvian reported by a Latin American support agency who
came over to the UK some 7 years ago on a visitor's visa and
overstayed. Hitherto he has always been able to find cleaning work,
now he finds things are tightening up, employers are asking him for
his papers and he has to move on. He had come to the agency to talk
about his increasing desperation. His girlfriend (with residential
status) is afraid to marry him because they are confused over the
exact position in law – a frequent problem. At the agency they
recommended he get in touch with a solicitor87.
There is another case of a Colombian family. The man applied
for asylum and was rejected and the family ( there are three
children) remains here underground. Immediately before Immigration
arrived at their flat to remove them they had moved into a friend's
place and the officers were more or less persuaded to accept the
story that they had left the country voluntarily. Under the pressure
of the situation the husband has become violent and started abusing
his wife which has led to a separation. He remains in touch and is
doing washing up work; but earning a living has become the big
problem for her. Of late she has found a job as a household domestic
but it is a hand-to-mouth existence, while she struggles to keep the
children at school. She is afraid to try to find anything else and to
submit an application for asylum in her own right (though the
informant, a knowledgeable observer of asylum procedure, considered
she has a strong case) because of the possible repercussions88.
The conclusion reached by a wide range of observers and interviewees
is that the main effect of Section 8 for the unauthorised has been to
exert a clear downward spiral of pressure in terms of conditions, pay
and vulnerability to exploitation. Employers can either refuse to
employ those without papers altogether or use their lack of status
and invisibility as an explicit form of blackmail to make them accept
conditions unthinkable for others. The undocumented remain there and
must eat, the employment sectors, equally, remain which profit from
this dependence; the rules of the game have simply become more
narrowly circumscribed for those on the margins without the power and
resources to be able to say no.
f) The agricultural sector
Information has emerged over the last year or two on organised forms
of exploitation of agricultural workers being imported from Eastern
Europe to work on the fields mainly in East Anglia on the fruit and
vegetable harvest89. Workers from Poland
or Lithuania are encouraged to come over on „working holidays"
by agents from the British agricultural sector travelling through the
Eastern European countries. They are promised accommodation and
reasonable pay for healthy work in the countryside and fresh air with
the spin-off of being able to learn a bit of English. The reality
turns out to be more sobering. Workers are indeed provided with
accommodation, but it is cramped (a number of workers in one room),
the migrants are isolated from the local community and board and
lodging is deducted from their pay at source, rain or shine. This
means that if the weather is bad the workers cannot work, thus
earning far less, but they still lose their deductions. In the worst
of cases a fruit/vegetable picker can end up in minus despite having
worked for days or even weeks. In addition the work rate expected
from the supervisors which dictates the piece rates paid is very hard
for new workers to attain – the standard being set by the local
field workers who have years, if not decades, of experience in this
back-breaking work.
The unauthorised migrant worker is at the (weakest) end of the chain
of supply and demand. Operating according to the laws of what the
market of demand will bear the major supermarkets conclude agreements
with the farm producers that allow only for the narrowest of profit
margins. Pressure of financial overheads leads the producer to
squeeze the most flexible factor, manual, casual labour to retain
that profit. An unemployed low skills worker with a family living on
benefit from the local area may enquire about work from the farmer
and when he learns the rate of pay will rightly conclude that he is
better off as he is on social security. Thus the market gardeners
will have difficulty putting together a hard-working, „flexible"
(in this case meaning work when the farm requires) and reliable
workforce at minimal wage cost.
The „imported" migrant worker without immigration status brings
a number of advantages: he (the great majority are men) is dependent
in terms of work orientation (i.e. not knowing the area and the
language he can scarcely go elsewhere); coming from an Eastern
European economy without papers he will be „happy" with a very
low rate of pay and scarcely able to check the doubtful justice of
the piece work system. The accommodation and transport levy (the
workers must pay for being driven to the fields) recoups a part of
the business's outlay for wages. Should there be any accidents at
work undocumented workers can easily be disposed of (told to leave or
simply ejected) and will have no right to compensation. As is always
the case with the unauthorised, in the event of any rebelliousness a
phone call to Immigration will settle the matter. The most notorious
employers are – so it has been implied by some observers - known
to the Immigration Service as „regulars". This would seem to do
their business standing and commercial effectiveness no harm.
The supermarkets impose the tight framework of overheads through
their contracts; and we, the consumers, attach great importance to
„affordable" (low, non-production cost related) prices for our
fruit and vegetables.
g) The undocumented workers' view – another
perspective?
In this section another aspect of the unauthorised perspective on
work will be looked into. Above there was a clear indication on the
part of overstayer interviewees that they looked back on their
employment, despite harshness of conditions, low pay and the
attendant uncertainties more positively than one would expect. Two
(currently) undocumented interviewees show how the perception of
comparative advantage of one's position as an irregular with
employment options may be more complex than one would assume.
Interviewee K from a West African community has a clearly
political perspective on his economic situation. One main reason for
him coming to the UK was that he knew of the difficulties faced by
friends and political associates from home in the asylum process
„through the grapevine". He knew equally well that the chances
of him being able to survive as a musician on the London scene –
once he had got into the country on his false papers – were
good. Having decided to come he is well able to make a living by
playing in clubs and doing occasional casual work in kitchens of
restaurants and hotels. He had previously spent eleven months in the
Netherlands and said that while „they give you less bother with
your papers" over there, there is also less work than in the UK.
Being underground he does not have to worry about the restrictions
his "brothers" face who are asylum seekers. But through his political
group he is able to provide solidarity and support for those facing
problems. This means being careful. He is shy of general contacts
with members of his ethnic community unless he knows who they are and
he implied there is good reason to be scared – not so much for
what could happen to him, but because of consequences of information
which can be relayed back home and affect one's dependants. There are
some 20 or so active people in his political group and they do not
mix much with others or frequent pubs and cafes where they might bump
into the wrong people from back home.
It was evident from this interview and a background talk with another
member of this group who has been active in the UK for some years
that there is a shared perception of the continuation of a political
struggle from back home under changed circumstances. At home they
were fighting for reforms under a repressive regime and under
life-threatening circumstances. In the UK their experience is that
they are under police surveillance, those found to be active may
suddenly be arrested and deported, their asylum applications have
little chance of being viewed favourably. Members of their community
are put in detention and experience great anguish and suffering
through the isolation and uncertainty this entails. They come to view
the British authorities as a persecuting instance in many cases. This
view can be reinforced by what are regarded as neo-colonial British
economic and political ties with repressive regimes in Africa.
So the group puts a great deal of energy into helping preparation of
the asylum applications, consulting with lawyers and solicitors,
visiting detainees and helping their dependants who may face
destitution, co-ordinating anti-deportation campaigns, lobbying those
few MPs who may have an open ear for their cause as well as providing
accommodation and all manner of information and support through their
ethnic network. The skills they have honed as members of an
„underground" political opposition back home are applied to the
changed circumstances of an immigration regime experienced as
repressive.
Interviewee K's view of his role in all this is an interesting one.
He talked in detail of the need for reform in his country: this would
not necessarily mean democracy, but „2000 calories and the
basics for all the people." He himself wants to continue to travel,
live his life and to work for freedom back home, and one effective
way of doing this to his mind is as an undocumented migrant providing
support for others through the group. He claimed not to be afraid of
arrest and detention himself, because he could rely on an effective
campaign on the part of his brothers and sisters to help him; he
would not be left alone to fend for himself90.
One sees that in the candidate's view there are real advantages in
unauthorised status as compared with being an asylum seeker: he does
not have to suffer the indignities and uncertainties of his
countrymen in that process; he can earn a reasonable income; he has
relative freedom of movement, which is very valuable to him. He is
able to continue what he views as a worthwhile political struggle,
which the authorities in the UK give him every reason to believe is a
deadly earnest struggle for freedom and survival for him and his
countrymen. In his view he is thus pursuing ‚gainful
employment'; in the fullest sense. There may be an aspect of the
individual's personality involved here; he is more the „gambler"
type, trying to keep the balls in the air as one of life's jugglers,
though the game may indeed be highly risky. But in playing it this
way he is able to retain his independence and (perhaps most
important) his dignity.
Interviewee M is the very different case of a person who came
to the UK many years ago for clearly defined economic motives pure
and simple. The candidate was a qualified business studies graduate
when he came from his Peruvian homeland in 1984, on a one-month
tourist visa initially, and has in a sense been able to make
„career progress" as an undocumented . In his first years he
went through the usual gamut of casual jobs for the irregular, shelf
filling in supermarkets, working in cafes and restaurants etc. His
first employer in a restaurant organised a false name and National
Insurance number for him with which he was able to work for a number
of years. In the mid-1980s he worked for a time in a handicraft
shop.
Because of his evident competence and reliability he was able some
time later to get a job doing the purchasing in a bookshop, work
which he enjoyed very much. At about this time he also strove to
improve his qualifications by doing a further training course in
business studies at a North London college. Although all the material
was familiar to him, he was happy to do the course because it gave
him the requisite paper qualification and re-activated his mental
skills.
It was when he was informed that the DSS were doing checks at his
place of work that he felt the time had come to quit and
„disappear" from the National Insurance records. He had already
begun to do occasional Spanish teaching and translations and in the
course of the last few years he has since been able to build up his
own (informal sector) freelance basis of teaching and translating
work. This enables him to live reasonably comfortably without papers.
He now does work much more closely corresponding to his professional
background than at the beginning and has built up a network of
occupational and social contacts, as well as being an active member
of the Latin American church community. (the specific psychological
stress of his situation will be discussed in the section on health).
What the candidate lacks is regularised status, and this he views as
an acute problem; but he is quite definite about wanting to remain in
the UK – while keeping up lively contact with his family back
home – where he feels he has put down roots.
In socio-economic terms the candidate has shown tenacity in surviving
and an entrepreneur spirit which under different immigration status
circumstances would bring him kudos. As it is he must live in
constant fear of arrest, detention and deportation – all of
which he has already experienced, having been discovered as an
overstayer in 1990 and removed (he returned to the country some
months later under a false identity)#91.
The various cases cited above indicate that there are different
classes of employment and employee among the unauthorised as
elsewhere in the working world. This gives the lie to the assumption
that undocumented people are always the lowest of the low and
employed below qualification (though this is undoubtedly the norm, as
the experience of many interviewees showed). Perhaps the cautious
hypothesis may be ventured that some undocumented people have a
better chance than some other migrant groups such as asylum seekers
of finding better employment and better socio-economic conditions in
which to live – though this will be dependent on a number of
variables, as well as old-fashioned good luck. Certainly the
interviewees show how life as a undocumented can be an option
determined by choice or compulsion in varying degrees. This theme
will be taken up in the analysis section.
h) Work and specific ethnic communities
To conclude this section there will be tentative examination of the
extent to which there is evidence of certain sectors being reserved
to certain ethnic groups and (related to this) whether there seem to
be special structures of dependence within certain ethnic
communities.
A point that came up frequently in discussion was the extent to which
double standards are applied in the world of work as regards the
undocumented, depending on the ethnic origin of the sans
papiers concerned. Anne Owers puts this point most
succinctly:
„There are no recorded instances of police/immigration raids
on wine bars in Kensington employing large numbers of young Americans
and Australians" 92
It is not apposite to our argument to try to estimate the numbers
of white undocumented entrants (in the main overstayers as students
and visitors) from the USA and the former white dominions in the UK.
However, witnesses – particularly immigration lawyers –
indicated that while their numbers are assumed to be high, it is
exceedingly rare for them to be faced with immigration status
problems – with the exception of gay couples, though this
anomaly was addressed by the Home Office in the autumn of 1997.
As regards ethnically specific employment areas the textile industry
tends to be the preserve of the Bangladeshi community in the East
End, in North London the Turks have become increasingly predominant
in this small scale manufacturing sector. Catering tends to be
specific to districts of settlement. In Stoke Newington for instance
large numbers of Turkish and Kurdish restaurants reflect the large
numbers of these refugee nationals in the area who employ their
countrymen once they have set up a small business. Structures can be
analogous to those of „classically" self-reliant, established
entrepreneur migrant communities like that of the Chinese in Soho.
Even if conditions may be hard and hours long there is, from the
point of view of the unauthorised, the advantage of familiarity and
(perhaps ambiguous) protection of one's own ethnic network: language,
family, clan and social and political contacts imply bonds of
responsibility and support in an otherwise unfamiliar or hostile
environment. This is a double-sided coin that can equally mean the
exploitation of dependency, a theme to be looked at more closely
under ethnic networks.
Health care
The problem of health provision for the undocumented is one of the
key issues because it entails the human right to the highest
attainable level of health care and medical facilities for both
adults and children93. In a
number of countries there has been vigorous debate on the extent of
life-preserving provision to which irregular migrants ought to be
entitled94. As with the issues of
accommodation and earning a living the situation has worsened in the
UK with the increase in internal controls since the mid-Nineties
which have also affected the health sector.
Migrants who came to the UK from the Seventies onwards and were able
to remain as overstayers without being discovered were usually able
to find their way into the National Health system without too much
difficulty. They would register with a General Practitioner (GP or
family doctor) and would not as a rule be questioned on their
immigration status. If documentation was asked for, one could go away
promising to return with it and then go elsewhere. The British
aversion to "asking to see a person's papers" as being redolent of
the police state generally helped the undocumented to get by without
being discovered for a long time. Immigration lawyers and trusted
informants confirmed that subsequent waves of legislation (including
the Criminal Justice Act) and changes in the immigration rules
since the early Nineties have changed the position.
Nonetheless, illness - or worse an accident – is and always has
been one of the great fears of the unauthorised, because it makes the
vulnerability of their situation evident. The majority of the
undocumented try to steer clear of doctors and the health service
knowing that contact could lead to discovery. Also a belief in one's
pioneer ability to cope is an absolute psychological must for the
irregular (not least because they are dependent in so many ways).
This perception is based on mentally and physically robust
health.
The interviewees in the sample reflected various aspects of what this
assumption means for their situation. The first section of this
chapter looks briefly at how restriction of access to health care for
asylum seekers has affected refugee communities. Next, health
problems and the ways the undocumented try to get treatment will be
described, to be followed by an examination of the special themes of
mental health problems and HIV. The final section will then look at
varying attitudes to health issues and how they interact with
irregular immigration status.
a) Increased difficulty in accessing health care for the
refugee communities
Asylum seekers may have high-quality specialist medical support
organised through legal representatives, NGOs working in the asylum
field, community health organisations among the ethnic minorities
with large numbers of refugees or via the Medical Foundation.
However, often they have real difficulty in being able to register
with GPs in the restrictive climate toward those seeking asylum in
the nineties for two reasons. GPs are increasingly likely to ask
about immigration status, because of a) internal controls of
patients' immigration status being expected of them as a result of
Asylum and Immigration legislation and b) needing to know if an
asylum seeker is officially registered and receiving benefit
(following the exclusion of large numbers of asylum seekers from
benefit entitlement in 1996). Legitimate asylum seekers may, in what
has increasingly become a "culture of disbelief", find that their
documentation is not accepted.
Interviewee G (an asylum seeker at the appeal stage with
documentation problems) found himself in this position when he moved
house and wanted to register with a new GP. When he first registered
they had not asked for identification. His documentation confirming
that he was lodging an appeal against an initial rejection of his
asylum claim was not accepted by the new doctor's surgery, so he
remained with the old GP much further from his present home95.
Expert interviewees elaborated on this, saying that it is
increasingly difficult for non-specialists to be able to be sure of
the bona fides of documentation; thus some GPs take the easier
option and refuse to risk accepting applicants for asylum on their
register96.
This attitude was apparently reinforced with the introduction of the
1996 Asylum and Immigration Act. Support organisations reported that
GPs were increasingly likely to tell asylum seekers that their books
were full and they were unable to take on new patients. This is a
reflection of their fear that treatment would not be covered by
national insurance. This development is yet one more reason why
irregular status may become a more attractive option for asylum
seekers who hear through the network that being in the determination
process diminishes one's chances of getting National Health Service
(NHS) treatment.
b) Health problems and how the undocumented try and get
treatment
It is the common strategy for undocumented migrants to ignore or deny
the importance of the health issue. Minor ailments thus tend to be
pushed aside and remedies for sickness sought within one's immediate
social network as far as possible. Treatment from a professional will
only be sought if unavoidable, patients will try to evade giving
their own identity and be most reluctant to go for treatment more
than once. This increases the danger of serious illness or
complication entailing much more expensive emergency treatment at a
later stage.
Three main categories of problem were identifiable from interviews:
accidents, which of course are by their nature unpredictable. The
undocumented migrant may suddenly find him- or herself admitted to
hospital, their fear of discovery may often being greater than
acknowledgement of the need for hospitalisation. Patients may
therefore disappear as soon as they are able to move and long before
they are fit enough to be discharged. The second and third categories
of problem which will be considered separately are those of mental
health, by virtue of the fact that the undocumented live with the
constant pressure of concealing their identity and fearing the
consequences of discovery; and HIV, which brings special problems for
those with irregular status.
Interviewees described various strategies that are applied to try and
get medical treatment. For the initial phase after arrival in the UK
there is no problem about getting treatment as a visitor. Sometimes
relatives or friends will take along the undocumented requiring
treatment and claim they are temporary visitors staying with them.
This means they can stay with this GP for up to six months then they
must look for another97. Another option
is to try and get hold of a false National Insurance number
(Interviewee M described how this was provided by his first
employer back in the mid-Eighties; this is much more difficult
today). Members of African communities described "lending" their
numbers to undocumented countrymen going to their GP, hoping the
medical practitioner would not remember what the documented patient
really looked like98.
This may work successfully for minor ailments, but as soon as
longer-term treatment is required or the patient must go to hospital
the problems become much more serious. The undocumented are afraid of
discovery if they are taken to hospital (say, following an accident
at work) and this can lead to them prematurely discharging themselves
as soon as they are capable of moving. Many of the ethnic support
organisations are well aware of these problems and have developed
strategies to help provide their people with the minimum of adequate
health care. They know of the existence of doctors who will treat for
a fee, and may have an arrangement by which undocumented people are
informally referred to such medical practitioners.
Equally, representatives of the grass roots organisations know that
there are unscrupulous doctors who exploit dependency e.g. on the
part of women for sexual favours (a Latin American support
organisation found out that their "regular" GP had sexually
propositioned two unauthorised women separately). As a rule
patients will pay straight away - one example cited was of
consultations for 70 pounds a time, no questions asked; one GP in the
Tottenham Court road charging on the spot was well-known in the Latin
American community. Ethnic communities may have hospitals where
treatment for a fee is possible without questions being asked (e.g. a
hospital known to be "trustworthy" among the Francophone African
communities).
A special kind of vulnerability may be involved here. The point was
made in discussion regarding South Americans that there is a
difference in attitude to the state health system: Latin Americans
generally expect free services to be bad and don't see that they have
certain basic rights; the newly-arrived unauthorised don't know about
the NHS and find it hard to assess what its role is. The brusque,
unfriendly manner of some GPs compounds this. There are boroughs
which as a matter of declared policy do not check immigration status.
Representatives from community groups may therefore accompany their
clients when they go to clinics to register and intervene if there is
"inappropriate questioning" concerning immigration status. This
support is especially important because there have been cases
reported of the newly-arrived being exploited by countrymen who
charge a "fee" for showing them the ropes in the new country,
registering with a GP, helping with accommodation etc. for a lump sum
of 500 pounds – "services" which are provided by the community
organisations themselves at no cost. Newcomers are especially
gullible because they expect to have to pay for a "good"
service99.
Women without papers who have an unwanted pregnancy face special
problems. This is a situation in which the ethnic community grass
roots groups again play a key supportive role. A female
representative may accompany the woman, who may well have been
abandoned by the prospective father, when she seeks advice on what to
do from the appropriate agency. As a general rule there is no
querying of immigration status once the hurdle of initial
consultation has been cleared.
There may be other options available in case of illness. A
representative of a West African community described how solidarity
with the sick may be expressed. He stated that if in-patient
treatment was required West Africans would generally go to a certain
private hospital, if they could afford it. He knew of someone though
who got very sick and lacking the money for private treatment
couldn't get any in the UK. Eventually, after his condition had
worsened, a friend took him to France where he was able to get
treatment under someone else's identity.
He spoke of another case which showed how psychological pressure as a
vulnerable irregular migrant and sickness can be closely related. A
young compatriot without papers who was staying in his flat took
early morning cleaning work for an agreed sum. Payment was postponed
for weeks and he finally, after much argument, got half his due. He
then took sick. As he had no money members of the community group all
paid into a fund to get some traditional African medicine for him
sent over from home by special courier service. The interviewee
stated about his friend's condition: "After his argument with the
boss everything on him was broken." The entire experience had
been a humiliating one for him, revealing the powerlessness inherent
in his situation as an undocumented migrant. The employers had said
to him: "if you're not happy, go to the police." He subsequently
recovered from his illness100.
c) Mental health problems faced by the undocumented
One important finding that emerged in the course of the research was
that the undocumented can face the mental health problems directly
comparable to those faced by asylum seekers. The two groups are
subject to similar social and economic conditions.
From the mid-Nineties the refugee communities in London have come to
pay increased attention to the whole issue of mental health among
their residents. The special problems faced by refugee communities
regarding medical provision at local level have been clearly
highlighted in the in the survey of Newham carried out by the
University of East London (See note 4 above). A key finding was the
fact that GPs and the local medical services are frequently lacking
in specialist training needed to deal with the special problems faced
by asylum seekers.
Ethnic community health organisations are playing an increasingly
active role identifying the needs of people most at risk, drawing
attention to the high levels of psychiatric problem and suicide and
highlighting GP's lack of awareness of the refugee situation and the
specific forms of trauma and post-traumatic stress syndrome which
many refugees suffer from. Arising from this they have identified the
need for advocacy, language support and cross-cultural counselling in
the framework of treatment for those with experience of persecution,
torture and flight. These community organisations are well aware from
their day-to-day counselling work that the distinction between those
legitimately in the asylum process and the undocumented in this area
is little more than academic. Thus they have special knowledge of the
mental health problems of the undocumented. These are issues that are
being actively addressed by the Ethiopian, the Algerian, the Tamil
and the Kurdish communities among others. It is important to note
that at present there is a great deal of under-utilised, highly
qualified medical expertise in the migrant and refugee communities
themselves.
The following example of how mental health problems are being tackled
within the ethnic communities with large refugee populations may
serve to show growing perception of the issue's importance. A centre
providing for Turks and Kurds in North London has acknowledged the
need to address the issue. They have engaged a mental health worker
from 1996 funded by Hackney council liasing with social services. A
problem of cultural distance means that clients do not take advantage
of the services. The worker accompanies clients, interprets to social
and health workers, helps with intercultural communication. Raising
awareness in the ethnic community of health problems of a
psychological and psychosomatic nature is a priority, beginning with
depression and anxiety. Refugee communities with experience of being
traumatised are especially prone to these problems101.
Awareness is growing, but treatments are culturally strange for a
clan/community-oriented mountain/agrarian people like the Kurds.
People talk about physical symptoms (e.g. back problems), but not the
mental. There is also a good deal of fear of acknowledging mental
instability or illness, meaning that obvious symptoms will be ignored
long beyond the point at which specialist counselling and treatment
would be advisable. The centre hopes to break down these cultural
taboos to ensure that effective support is given sooner rather than
too late. This example shows how local community organisations are
trying to provide an essential culturally interpretative link between
the local health services and refugee communities seriously overtaxed
by such burdens102.
The essential point for our purposes is that the ethnic communities
cannot draw the fine dividing line between those with immigration
status and the undocumented. Those living underground will very often
have similar trauma and persecution experiences with which they must
try to cope. Rejected asylum seekers will probably continue to have
access to specialist medical support, by virtue of having an
established position in the official medical scheme of things. Those
who are undocumented or who leave the asylum process to go
underground soon after arrival may be completely isolated and have to
deal with their serious mental problems alone. Case studies in the
Refugee Council's Just Existence gave an idea of how desperate
the plight of refugees in the UK without infrastructural support
is103. The basic fact of solidarity
among the refugee communities remains a binding one, however. The
ethnic communities and their organisations will probably do their
best to look after own, though they must observe the same division of
humanitarian provision between the deserving (asylum seekers) and the
undeserving (undocumented) for official purposes: thus the one form
of provision exists officially, the other does not.
In comparison with asylum seekers the undocumented may feel they can
decide more for themselves, that they have more control over their
lives, but this can be an illusion. They are subject to similar
degrees of stress for different reasons to those in the asylum
determination process: they must live with fear of discovery and the
pressure of change and undermining of identity. Both groups have the
shared psychological burden of uncertainty about the future. The
irregular in particular are vulnerable to all manner of exploitation.
In summary one can conclude that for the community organisations as
regards mental health problems of their clientele there are no
significant distinctions on account of immigration/asylum status.
d) A special case: HIV patients without papers
A solidarity group working with HIV positive migrants described the
specific problems faced by those without immigration status. The
first category of HIV migrants they see are entrants coming in for
treatment who are already positive primarily from Latin American
countries. They come on a visitors' permit and may overstay while
working in the catering and service sectors. Having registered with
the NHS for free treatment they may then move on to Spain, especially
if their English is poor. They will then return for treatment and if
this is within their visitor's visa period they can then get a six
month stamp (Immigration is tightening up on this). The availability
of drugs for treatment is the key element in this. An example was
cited of a young man from Chile who was treated in Santiago with
toxic drugs in high dosage and had medical problems. He decided to
come to the UK because of the limited service infrastructure back
home combined with social prejudices and a repressive attitude to
male gays finding expression in a public order law enabling arrest
for "conspiracy to corrupt". This young man followed the aforesaid
pattern, working in Spain and returning for treatment.
As regards immigration policy there is no explicit bar against HIV
victims, but the Immigration service have the discretionary power to
bar those who may prove a burden to the health service. Those
entering who are obviously sick may therefore face problems. HIV
positives have been protected by special confidentiality rules within
the NHS making it a criminal offence to disclose the name of an HIV
patient to the Home Office. It is an "open access" system, meaning
patients can get treatment without registration or giving a National
Insurance number. The necessary therapy and drugs would then be
available. Increasing health service market sophistication is however
gradually closing this down as new arrivals are effectively excluded
from this expensive treatment costing a minimum of 7 to 12,000 pounds
for the drugs alone. This inequality through economics could,
however, end with the dismantling of the open market in the health
service that is a declared intention of the Labour government.
Then there is the second category of HIV positive clients, those who
get infected while in the UK. They may be there on a student's or a
visitor's visa and are faced with the dilemma of starting a long term
therapy in the UK or returning home where adequate treatment and
drugs are generally not available. The Home Office has the
discretionary power to grant Exceptional Leave to Remain (ELR) if a
person has a life-threatening disease, but that person must be very
ill. AIDS is however a peak and trough illness. Therapies aim to
improve the quality of life to keep other debilitating illnesses at
bay, and this puts HIV positive patients in a no-win situation. If
the victims become healthy they become vulnerable to the threat of
removal and this fear can then undermine their immune system possibly
allowing the illness to break out. The question also remains for
those irregulars who are HIV positive if they declare themselves,
will they be sent back? African communities in particular face this
problem, those on ELR being especially vulnerable. An Amnesty
International report highlighting the pressures on homosexual
people causing them to migrate also treats the subject of HIV-related
human rights abuses104.
e) Attitudes of the undocumented to the health issue
Individual cases in the sample showed the range of attitudes that
the undocumented may develop toward the health issue. Three examples
will serve to indicate different aspects of the health situation. In
the first case, an overstayer, the connection between the health
issue and campaigning to remain in the UK will be examined; then the
attitude of the individual "going it alone"; finally a case of a
long-term undocumented migrant who has come to see how threatening it
is for the undocumented to be outside the scope of statutory health
provision.
Interviewee C had been in church asylum with his family at the
time of interview for over two years. As overstayers facing potential
deportation he and his wife have lived with constant uncertainty all
this time. The candidate is prone to depressive phases. The two elder
of their three children have long term health problems requiring
sophisticated medical care. The contact they have with both local GP
and hospital medical services is good and they have received
comprehensive written specialist medical opinions supporting their
right to remain as a family for reasons of necessary medical care
which would be impossible in the country of repatriation, Nigeria.
High standard medical treatment has remained available in sanctuary
and has been necessary as the health problems have increased during
this time. The church building is a dour Victorian pile, dark and
unsuited for private accommodation, the family of five are crammed
together in one room, share kitchen, shower and toilet facilities
with all other users of the building.
While the children are at least able to attend the local school, the
candidate's outings have been rare for fear of immediate arrest.
Unsurprisingly he sees persecution in his situation, which is
sometimes interpreted in quasi-religious terms of "demonic attacks
upon him and his family" (he and his wife are devout Christians
in an African Pentecostal church). The dividing line between what may
be a form of paranoia and a justified fear of what is persecution and
pursuit by an all-powerful enemy in reality is hard to draw105.
As observed in the review of the accommodation situation, the fact of
being the centre of an active and effective anti-deportation campaign
is crucial to the health issue for the undocumented. Without
community support in this form the family would have been deported
long ago, children and parents would have been abandoned to cope with
their ailments as best they could. Conversely, the support of expert
medical opinion confirming the genuineness of their case is an
essential element of the intellectual and moral seriousness of their
struggle to remain in the United Kingdom.
From the data collected in the survey the following conclusion can be
drawn: health problems (often as a result of torture in the case of
rejected asylum seekers, as in the case of Interviewee D) are
an essential element in the humanitarian argument of many of the
irregular struggling to remain. If interviewees were the subject of a
high-profile anti-deportation campaign they had (often highly
necessary) access to high quality medical care providing essential
support to their case.
As indicated earlier in this chapter, there is a psychological
necessity for the irregular to believe in their own sturdy
self-sufficiency: they are the ones who will not get ill and they
will ride their luck to make sure they have no accidents. The
"typical" non-documented person is single male and in the prime of
life, why should he worry about illness, he can look after himself?
Moving on to our second example one can see how Interviewee K
reflected this point of view. Having lived the life of an
undocumented migrant for many years and in a number of countries he
dismissed the health question as of little importance. He had
scarcely ever been ill: "I've only ever had 'flu, and I took a
paracetemol." He would be better next day. Otherwise he would try
to organise traditional African remedies through his ethnic network.
Besides which he is in his late twenties and fit. Yet at the same
time it was evident during interviewing that the candidate is
constantly under tension, he is always aware of the need to avoid all
contact with officialdom, whether the police, social or health
services.
The interviewee's apparently relaxed attitude may be interpreted as a
psychological denial of what are sometimes real fears, but equally
the candidate (who is something of a player character) may be well
capable of surviving by taking his chances. Possibly there is no
deeper-seated anger, this man can get by in this way, at least for
the moment. He is still quite young106.
By contrast Interviewee M, also a long-term undocumented
migrant, has come to fear his vulnerable situation as regards health
provision. He transcends the cliché of the resilient
undocumented survivor – or he is that same character further
down the line. For many years he had no health problems and gave
little thought to the health issue. In the first few years after his
arrival in the UK in 1984 he never became ill, except for a minor
head wound that was treated in casualty, so he never registered with
a GP. In 1994 he had a problem with his feet, a sort of fungus, he
went to a medical centre and was referred to a GP and he gave his old
NI number (which had become invalid), taking the risk that no one
would take the trouble to check. No one did. He only went for
treatment once.
The transforming experience for him was the fear that developed from
the autumn of 1996 that he might be HIV positive. He was now in his
late thirties. Previously he had ignored ill health. By early 1997 he
had become very afraid that he could have the HIV virus. He had tests
that proved negative, but he has since been subject to psychosomatic
problems (tiredness, anxiety, pains in his limbs) for a number of
months. While the HIV test was confidential, he was painfully aware
of what a positive result would mean: either returning to Peru
knowing that the standard of hygiene and treatment would be such that
he could not live for very long once the illness broke out; or
remaining in the UK and knowing that treatment might be denied him
(information which he had received from the Terence Higgins Trust).
At the time of speaking he was still taking sedatives and felt he was
only gradually recovering psychologically.
The candidate remarked that for some time before the HIV scare he had
become accustomed to forgetting (or repressing) his lack of
immigration status. It was the shock of perhaps having a
life-threatening illness that brought his vulnerability home to him
with a vengeance. The fears he has experienced around HIV have
focused his mind on the immigration problems he faces and clarified
his desire to remain in the UK. This entails consulting immigration
lawyers about the options open to him107.
One final point must be emphasised as a general observation repeated
time and again across the range of interviews with the irregular,
trusted informants and experts. The health issue exposes the cruel
vulnerability of the undocumented in the UK and this is nowhere more
clear than in the world of work. Unscrupulous employers are able to
make the undocumented work not only for low pay but under dangerous
conditions which make a mockery of health and safety at work minimum
standards. What will happen to the irregular building worker who
falls from scaffolding and breaks a limb or is more seriously
injured? Will he be brought to a hospital for treatment, or left to
fend for himself? If he is hospitalised, will his fear of discovery
allow him to remain for the necessary treatment? How do hospital
staff who suspect or know the background deal with the situation,
knowing that they are expected to check a person's immigration
status?
This example could be taken from other branches that employ those
lacking immigration status extensively, for example the cleaning or
textile industries or agriculture. There is not only the immediate
existential question of treatment, but also the fact that there is no
way of obtaining compensation or other redress for those injured at
work. Should an undocumented worker want to push claims, the employer
simply threatens to report him or her to the immigration authorities.
That is the end of the matter.
If the individual is fortunate, then it is once again the ethnic
community that will provide the safety net in some form, at legal
risk to itself. Otherwise the undocumented migrant who becomes sick
or is injured is left, at the moment of maximum helplessness and
vulnerability, completely alone.
Education and
training
This chapter is concerned with the educational background of the
undocumented and how they approach education and further training
when in the UK. In this context training and education is understood
to be the broad ambition to improve one' skills, qualifications and
attractiveness on the job market as well as the quest for formal
(either higher or adult) educational certificates. The position of
children of the undocumented regarding their access to education will
also be looked at.
One broad conclusion can be stated at the outset, that there are
sans papiers representing the whole spectrum of educational
background, from elementary to higher educational qualification. The
quest for improvement in qualification emerges as an important
motivation for migrants coming to the UK, many of whom may at some
point become undocumented. In the course of the chapter specific
differences in educational background which can be observed between
ethnic communities and the reasons for them will be examined. But the
first theme to be considered is that of the situation of
international students in the UK and difficulties they face in
attaining immigration status during and after their courses.
a) Restriction of access to higher education
Problems arise for international students entering the country on the
wrong visas for their purposes (e.g. tourist visas), following a
change to the immigration rules in 1989. For visa nationals (i.e.
those requiring a visa before leaving their home country) already in
the UK it is virtually impossible to change this status in order to
study. There is the option of entry as a prospective student,
which is the usual preliminary immigration documentation before
getting student status in the UK for which they can apply at
embassies or High Commissions in the home country108.
As interviews with expert witnesses confirmed, this usually means
these entrants will have to return home and re-apply, with all of the
attendant expense and bureaucratic complication that involves.
There are also problems for those who have been in the country for
some time and are nearing the end of their studies. For many the
perspective of their lives may have changed, relationships and
possibly family commitments have increased their bonds to the UK. Yet
they will have undertaken at the outset to return to their country of
origin after completion of their studies. Whereas in the past changes
of status at ten years' residence might have been an option this is
becoming increasingly restrictive in practice. Those applying for
renewal of their annual permission after eight or nine years are
increasingly being refused109. Marriage
to a British resident or applying for asylum may seem to be the only
remaining options110.
At this point it can be stated that the situation has become more
difficult for many with simply inappropriate documentation – as
well as for the undocumented – in the last few years. Once again
the reason is increasingly pervasive internal controls. The
impression was confirmed by background interviews that while the
undocumented may be highly motivated to try and improve their
training skills and qualifications there are a lot of barriers to
actually realising their ambitions. There have been important primary
and secondary legislative changes in the last few years. In April
1996 the Department of Education and Employment announced that those
enrolling for courses in higher education must now give proof of
having indefinite leave to remain in the UK to qualify for home fees.
This is to take effect from 1998-1999. This will seriously affect
many asylum seekers who are already doing courses at colleges and
universities and who may not be able to complete them. In addition to
this the changes in benefit provision for asylum seekers have
suddenly left students deprived of means. Poverty and abandonment of
studies have resulted111. Moreover,
there is now a condition of three years' residence in the UK before
they are eligible for a grant. This effectively excludes most asylum
seekers from access to higher education. Undocumented migrants who
had previously been able to enrol for courses in further education
(like Interviewee J mentioned below) will likewise be
frightened off enrolment.
Thus it becomes apparent that it is increasingly difficult for the
undocumented to even consider applying for places on courses. As so
often there is no absolutely clear dividing line between those with
secure status and the undocumented, but many shades of grey. Whether
the irregular are trying to register in higher education or to join
an adult education course the likelihood that they will be asked
about their immigration status has increased considerably. An
interview with an expert witness at a London university confirmed how
much fear and insecurity is thus being spread among minority
communities in total, especially those with large refugee
populations, that they will be denied access to courses, or be unable
to complete courses they are on by virtue of being in the asylum
process112. It may be questioned
whether this was the intention of the legislation.
b) Better qualifications as the goal when coming to the UK
Getting better education or some form of training is a frequent
priority for migrants coming to the UK. In this sense it may be
regarded as an important pull factor. Their experience is,
however, that it is hard to actually get the appropriate training as
a migrant without documentation. The biggest problem that most new
entrants face is that they do not speak English well enough to be
able to pursue any kinds of courses (including training on the job);
learning the language has to be the first priority. Yet their first
contacts are very likely to be with members of their ethnic
community. Whether they are documented are not at the outset they
will lack the confidence and often the opportunity to meet
English-speaking people and learn the language. This dilemma is
heightened by the fact that employment will, at least initially, be
found as a rule through or within their ethnic network enforcing
social and economic dependency. The chances of increasing one's
marketable skills in the eyes of the host culture are thus minimised
from the beginning113.
Looking at examples from the sample, a number of interviewees entered
the UK with the specific purpose of attaining a qualification or
entering higher education. Interviewee A, a long-term
overstayer from Nigeria facing deportation, is a trained printer and
did his Master of Science (MSc) at a London college. He was able to
complete his studies in the Eighties without his immigration status
becoming an issue. He subsequently started a theology course as an
extension of his work as a minister with an African church.
Interviewee C (a long-term overstayer, also from Nigeria) had
completed his first degree back home and came to the UK to do his MSc
in the Eighties, though he had to abandon his studies for economic
reasons. Interviewee J, an overstayer from Morocco who landed
in detention very definitely had the goal of self-improvement from
the beginning. He had done a number of English language courses since
entering the country and had wanted to do a Maths degree. It turned
out that the fees were prohibitive, so he ended up completing a
Higher National Diploma as an electrician instead. It proved to be
difficult for him to work in this area and before arrest he had been
working as a mini-car driver.
Interviewee H has shown herself tenacious in the pursuit of
further qualifications, too. She had been forced to abandon her
university studies back home in Cameroon and flee the country on
account of political persecution. While her existence is an insecure
one in the UK – she has scarcely enough to live on and is in
constant fear of a raid by the police and Immigration because of her
inadequate papers – she values the fact she can do her MA in
Business Studies at a London college immensely. In the down times it
has been her main reason for staying on in the UK (for example when
her partner left her). The college had also been " just
perfect" in providing the appropriate supervision and guidance
when required.
Equally Interviewee M, who has lived in the UK for many years
as a long-term undocumented migrant, was able to enrol on a business
studies course at a London college in the Eighties to improve his
qualification position. The material was not new to him as he had
done a degree back in Peru, but the certificate was worth getting as
it improved his employment prospects.
c) On varying attitudes to education and training within the
different ethnic communities
One hypothesis which developed in the course of research was in
regard to the differences in attitude of various ethnic communities
to improving one's qualifications and skills Of course in making the
following broad generalisations it is accepted that individual cases
will always run contrary to these trends – basic tendencies
within the different ethnic communities are being described which are
not absolute in character. Attitudes were found to be related to the
general educational profile of groups of migrants entering the
country. This cannot necessarily be reduced to the statement that
there is a special awareness of importance of education among the
refugee communities.
As a first instance the Kurds are a community with a huge range of
social and educational backgrounds because of the persecution they
have experienced as a people, attitudes to education varying with
people's respective social backgrounds and schooling. Many refuges
have enjoyed only the most elementary education, having grown up in
inaccessible mountain areas. Others will be urban professionals
forced into exile as politically active intellectuals. Generally the
priority for new arrivals – as far as the individual's mental
state will allow – is learning English114.
By way of comparison the Colombians entering the UK since the
mid-Nineties are fleeing a country dissolving into social and
economic chaos. There are large numbers of peasants from the
countryside without formal qualifications among those attempting to
get out. These are people with little chance of getting asylum and
who may go underground quite soon after entry. They also have little
"human capital" to sell on the undocumented market for employment
– survival is the main aim, an improvement in skill or
qualification profile will therefore be a distant dream. As yet there
is scarcely any ethnic self-help infrastructure tailored to their
specific needs. They are condemned to work in the lowest paid jobs
under the worst conditions and are per se the most vulnerable to
economic exploitation.
There is a large degree of social distinction, one might say class
prejudice, among the established Colombian community and the newly
arrived are frequently viewed by the former as an economic (under)
class of entrant115. This is a point
akin to that made by observers of other Latin American communities,
e.g. the Chileans, that there is no love lost between the long
established "politicals" and the more recent arrivals who are
regarded as economic migrants without proof of political
persecution116. This means that the
all-important ethnic network support required to get a place to live,
work and to develop the wherewithal to establish oneself and improve
one's skills and marketability in the new country is at best
profoundly ambivalent or may not even be available.
The Algerians are a different case again. Because of the specific
nature of the religious and political persecution which they have
faced since 1992 a large proportion of the Algerian entrants coming
to the UK are professionally and academically qualified people
(comparable in some ways to the Ethiopians, who have been settled
longer in the UK, and to Iranians who came in the Eighties). They
know the importance of education and training to establish oneself in
the host country. As already noted in the section on employment,
however, they are also well aware that within the asylum process they
will have to wait some time before they can begin to work in anything
approximating to their own professional sphere. The diminution of
chances of further education for asylum seekers until they have
secure status mentioned above may condemn them to years of what is
seen as unproductive idleness. The frustration this entails may be an
additional incentive for Algerian asylum seekers to try their luck
underground. There at least they may find employ and acquire useful
training and skills – whether formal or not, constituting "human
capital" – without too many prying questions being asked. That
at least may be their illusory hope.
One point that may undermine the search for improvement in one's
skills and job marketability is distrust of one's countrymen. This
distrust and fear of denunciation as an irregular migrant has already
been mentioned concerning the Latin American community. This factor
was also mentioned in particular by those communities that have
experienced recent chronic destabilisation and civil war in their
home countries, for instance the Algerians, Tamils and Zairian. New
arrivals particularly must establish their networks with great care
to avoid spies and denunciators with contacts back home. This climate
of suspicion may lead people to take one of two very different paths.
Either the individual is particularly dependent on his or her closed
ethnic network of immediate contacts and unlikely to move beyond the
most exploited forms of employment with little chance of skills
betterment, a dependency enhanced by poor knowledge of English.
Alternatively an undocumented migrant may decide to steer clear of
his or her own ethnic community specifically in search of new
training and job opportunities. This was described as a strategy
among Zairian exiles and is true of the Latin American long-term
undocumented migrant Interviewee M.
d) On the children of the undocumented and schooling
The person who has taken a more-or-less conscious decision to try
his/her luck underground (e.g. Interviewee K, Interviewee
M), and lives a clandestine existence, whether or not they
entered the country legally, will generally be single and childless.
But the generalisation that the irregular are single and childless
applies less to the other groups which may "drift" into undocumented
status: long-term overstayers whose personal circumstances have
frequently changed considerably over the years, rejected asylum
seekers or those in the asylum process with papers problems are all
groups which may often have their own children or dependent minors of
relatives whom they must provide for117.
The important issue in human rights terms as far as these groups are
concerned is: to what extent are the children of the undocumented who
are living with them in the UK excluded from formal education because
of their parents' status? The attitude of the state to the children
of irregular migrants has become an important theme in a number of
those countries prepared to acknowledge the existence of the problem
(e.g. the Netherlands, France). It is also a theme on which public
awareness is increasing by virtue of the growing recognition of
children's rights.
As part of the UK's increasingly rigorous policy on internal controls
there have been Department of Education directives to schools in the
course of the mid-Nineties urging the checking of immigration status
of new pupils, but schools have as a rule been reluctant to enforce
them118. As remarked in other chapters
in this survey there is often a marked reluctance at local level to
apply such controls, education being seen as a particularly sensitive
area. First, children can be subject to harassment and bullying from
their peers when they are singled out by their teachers in this way.
Second, there is dangerous discriminatory potential in this in that
pupils will almost always be questioned on the basis of skin colour
(as one witness put it, how many white US children are subject to
checks?). Finally, teachers understandably have ethical reservations
about being forced to become an extended arm of the immigration
network, a function which could conflict seriously with their
position as pedagogic role model and undermine the process of racial
and social integration at local community level.
One specific result of this is that schools as institutions have
frequently come out in support of families whose parents may face
deportation or removal. In the present sample it was evident that
those undocumented people enjoying powerful public support for their
cause (e.g. through an anti-deportation campaign mobilising the local
community) were able to continue to attend school and often enjoy the
tacit or explicit support of the school authorities. Again
Interviewee C's family is a good example of this. The children
have been able to go to school daily from their church asylum and the
school authorities have chosen to give their right to education
priority over the precarious legal position in which the family finds
itself. In allowing this they have established a feature of everyday
normality which has played a key role in maintaining some kind of
balance in family life – without this routine the psychological
pressures might have become unbearable for all.
Interviewee I's campaign as a rejected asylum seeker fighting
to remain in the UK with her family has enjoyed vital support from
the local school attended by some of her children. Teachers joined a
deputation to the Home Office which handed in a petition with over
2000 signatures calling for a grant of leave to remain to the family
on compassionate grounds. School friends of the Interviewee's
children were given time off to join the protest. Again the local
school has treated the question of legal status as secondary to the
humanitarian case to stay in the UK which a large body of local
opinion (including the local Conservative MP before the May 1997
election) has come to regard as compelling. The children's right to a
decent education is an integral part of this argument119.
The presence of children of the undocumented in school, as in the
cases of Interviewee C or I, is a sensitive point of social
interaction at which the "normality" of the irregular migrant can be
demonstrated. It is important to bear in mind that many overstayer
families will otherwise have been law-abiding and respected people in
their local areas. The sense of criminal "otherness" of sans
papiers which is the bulwark of effective restrictive immigration
policy in civil society can be revealed as a hollow cliché at
this point. Their children are pupils at nursery or school like all
the rest with all of the interests, foibles and problems of children
of their age. They cannot plausibly be made responsible for their
parents' transgressions. Sympathy for the family's plight is at its
most poignant when teachers and parents realise that "impersonal"
immigration law decrees that a family perceived as decent, settled
and "belonging" to their local community may be forced to leave the
country or divided, one or both parents being compelled to leave
their children behind in the UK. These sympathies are a substantive
expression of the common sense perception that the children have a
basic human right to their education in what has become their stable
home environment. Thus schools can become a crystallisation point of
solid local support for an anti-deportation campaign.
e) Conclusion: education opens doors which immigration
controls close
Education and training is a theme in the lives of the undocumented
which shows how migrants' lives evolve and change in a way for which
immigration rules, by their very nature, takes no account.
Bureaucratic regulations assume a clearly-definable stasis about the
lives of men and women and so cannot begin to grasp the innate
untidiness – and contradictory emotional vitality – of our
inner lives. Many of the long term overstayers in the sample never
came to the UK with the intention of settling. Particularly those
people who study or go through further training nonetheless
experience a variety of socially, economically and culturally
integrative processes which make it increasingly hard to imagine
re-adjusting to life back in their countries of origin.
Then there is the additional factor of personal relationships
accompanying this development. Changes in personal circumstances
reinforce the broadening of a person's intellectual and social
horizon made possible by education and further training (especially
in a foreign country and culture), making a return to what are
perceived as the old ways and the old life increasingly unattractive.
Economic opportunity in the adoptive society is an essential element
in this that it would be naive to deny. Some may soberly decide to
take their chance and stay on in the UK without immigration status,
knowing it is virtually impossible to change their status after
completion of their studies. Just as an inspiring education may open
vistas of new opportunity, so the migrant's determination to make the
most of her abilities underground may well culminate in the door of
detention slamming shut behind her.
The central problem that remains for the undocumented is lack of
recognition of the qualifications and skills they have. They will
therefore find themselves working below their qualification level in
poorly paid jobs in which they are open to unscrupulous exploitation.
This can be especially painful for the highly-qualified because
working long hours under tiring conditions in manual jobs for
miserable pay will leave them little energy for the pursuit of other
"intellectual" interests. They see that they are losing the skills
that it has taken long years of hard study to acquire and with it the
basis for their sense of self-worth:
"This is one of my biggest worries – that I am losing my
willingness to study, the will to analyse. I am losing my desire to
write... When I am doing these jobs I feel strange. It's not that the
things are difficult, they are just strange. They aren't
undignified120."
A general point about the educational and training ethos of the
irregular needs to be made in conclusion. Regardless of their
previous educational background, they have often overcome
considerable odds to acquire the skills, if not – for reasons
outlined above – the formal qualifications they possess. They
provide model examples of adaptability in the sense of being prepared
for life long learning.
Personal relationships /
leisure and voluntary activities
This chapter will be about the personal lives and leisure activities
of the undocumented. First there will be an examination of both
social isolation of the undocumented and the importance of community
support through campaigns to remain, to be followed by a look at the
kind of social relationships the irregular have together with their
leisure activities. It may be noted that in the sample most of the
interviewees with insecure status or lacking papers were single
people, overstayers tended to be people with families. This has a
crucial bearing on social relationships, as will be seen. One point
had not been anticipated in the original conception for the
interview guidelines, that of the current social or political
commitment of the undocumented. It transpired in the course of the
interviews that voluntary social and political activity played a
significant part in the lives of many of the irregular. This will
therefore be the theme at the end of this chapter.
a) Social isolation and the role of political support
The first point, though, is to look at prevalent family and other
social networks. Distinctions can be drawn between the different type
of undocumented person. Interviews with trusted informants and
community organisations with intimate knowledge of social structures
in their communities confirmed that the great majority of
undocumented migrants are single people, mostly men, at least
initially. As one witness put it, most people making an active choice
to live as an irregular do so for themselves alone. For those with a
family (say, asylum seekers who see the option of going underground),
the risks for their children are perceived as simply too great. A
single person usually feels, at least at the outset, that they will
be able to survive somehow121.
But humans do not simply subsist at an elementary level, they are
social and emotional animals. People live – with definite
ambivalence - in their communities and get to know one another. As
the various cases of overstayer show, whatever the initial intentions
may have been relationships develop, partnerships are built up and
children born. This means that life becomes more complicated; but the
network of belonging and potential community support is thereby
strengthened. It is possible to compare and contrast individual
examples revealing varying degrees of social isolation or
involvement. First, an individual who experiences her lack of secure
immigration status in relative isolation.
Interviewee H is a single person who came into the country
some four years ago as an asylum seeker but must – for our
purposes - be classified as of insecure status because of problems
she has experienced with the Immigration authorities. Her papers were
checked by police and immigration officers who arrived unannounced at
her home and declared false. She was subsequently arrested and held
for 24 hours at the local police station. She lives in constant fear
of re-arrest or detention, despite the active support of her
solicitor. The psychological pressure is acute as is the sense of
social isolation. She does not feel at ease with members of her own
ethnic community („most people keep themselves to
themselves"). She had a boyfriend, but the relationship came to
an end and he has since left the country. She has a trusted friend
who is a case worker at a local refugee centre, herself of migrant
origin and she also gets on well with a colleague at a local youth
home where she works part time. The latter she regards as a sort of
mother figure (also from an ethnic minority). The candidate does not
know how she would have managed without these two people. She
experiences a loneliness that has become a constant in her life.
After the interview (of about two hours) she talked of feeling
relieved at being able to speak to someone at last about things.
One feature was common to all the interviewees: that it is extremely
difficult living without a sense of perspective; living with constant
uncertainty about what tomorrow may bring is not conducive to
building up stable relationships. Interviewee N is perhaps an
extreme example of this, an asylum seeker who has had papers
problems, a man who is paralysed by the uncertainty and lack of
perspective in his life (among other problems). Without the
instinctive sympathy of his interpreter this man's social contacts
might well not be sufficient to sustain him. This sequence extracted
from minutes of the interview may serve to illustrate this sense of
spiritual desolation, at least comparable to that experienced by many
asylum seekers left to fend for themselves:
„He began by saying, "I'm very tired today." I explained who
I was and the object of my research.
He said he had come without a train ticket. "I don't want to talk."
Nonetheless we agreed I could put some questions.
On accommodation: he lives in a room of his own in a hostel. On the
furnishings, "normal". His food is provided by Social Services in the
form of a food parcel for the week. He therefore gets no money, this
has been the state of affairs since April of this year.
He stated that he had virtually no friends. He affirmed that he had
taken a language course. How was it? "the usual course." Did he want
to take another? „In September."
He has some contact with Russians with whom he drinks. He said he had
virtually no friends and spent most of his time alone...
He is facing a court appearance for having damaged a car. He then
stated that he received a summons on Saturday for a second appearance
arising from an incident on a London bus when he was drunk and swore
at a conductor.
On whether he has any contacts at home, he said no. Any plans for the
future? No, no plans...
On his interests: he likes table tennis, but they have no table where
he lives.
Asked what he saw as the main problem(s) he stated: "My life is my
main problem. I'm broken, you know. What's happened in my life has
broken me122."
By comparison the situation of Interviewee L, an overstayer
who for his part lives in constant fear of removal, is one also
determined by the pressure of uncertainty. Yet, because his case has
come out into the open he is able to live relatively openly and
enjoys the support of family, parts of the (not specifically ethnic)
community and an active anti-deportation campaign. Life with his wife
(who is a British citizen whom he met some five years ago after
having been in the UK for six years) and two small children have
become the focus for him to remain in the UK. „Constructive
deportation" to the overstayer's homeland, by which the whole family
would have to emigrate to a country they do not know – as
suggested by the Home Office – is not an option from the point
of view of the interviewee and his family. The UK is where they live
and have their roots. That is why they have mobilised the support of
church and local campaigning groups, petitions signed by neighbours
and activity on the part of their MP to promote their case.
In the last year or so the campaign has become Interviewee L's
central activity, because removal from the UK would effectively mean
separation from his family. So they are fighting for the human right
of the integrity of family life. In so doing the candidate has been
able to establish a network of social contacts with neighbours and
activists in their local community and thus break down the isolation
experienced by many of the undocumented. In common with a number of
anti-deportation campaigns across the country123
they have been able to gain wide-ranging support for their cause as a
humanitarian issue on which government policy is seen by many as
unnecessarily harsh. Community solidarity for the undocumented thus
mobilised by an individual case can transcend ethnic and social
boundaries, as the following case shows.
Candidate I is a rejected asylum seeker from Zaire. As a
mother of seven children in search of her husband who disappeared on
account of political persecution she arrived in the UK in October
1994 and submitted her application for asylum. This was rejected at
the appeal stage in November 1996. Faced with imminent removal the
family has been able to attract a lot of support for their right to
remain in the country. The particularly interesting aspect is the
involvement of local people in the campaign. As a witness closely
involved in the campaign with his local church-based group pointed
out, it is the strong personality and obvious integrity of the woman
in question which has impressed so many local people and forced them
to think beyond the usual clichés on asylum seekers enjoying
the good life on benefits. Public pressure, including a demonstration
of support for the family outside the Home Office where a petition
with 2,400 signatures was handed over by a delegation including the
children's teachers from the local school, led the local Conservative
MP to make representations to the Home Office minister in the final
days of the Major government. Minister Kirkhope gave the assurance
that there would be no removal.
These two cases show that unexpected social relationships can develop
between established host communities and individuals who do not have
immigration status. The breadth of public disquiet and indeed protest
at the effects of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 and the
attendant social security measures depriving most asylum seekers of
the most basic social security benefits are the context in which this
sense of compassion can be located. Many people who might consider
themselves staunchly „middle England" felt offended by a
violation of the basic rules of hospitality or human decency toward
the stranger. There was a broad coalition of protest across the
social spectrum encompassing political, church, charity and trade
union organisations124. Equally, many
did not accept the government view of the „threat" posed by
numbers of asylum seekers the measures were designed to cut (the
total of 44,000 asylum applicants for 1995 would constitute a
medium-sized Saturday football crowd).
b) Social relationships and leisure activities
The personal situation of Interviewee B, a rejected asylum
seeker facing removal at any time, reveals the immense psychological
pressure caused by uncertainty about the future and the way lack of
immigration status puts a strain on social relations. He is a
personable and sensitive man whose energies have been drained by the
pain and uncertainty and the social isolation of his circumstances.
He is absorbed by the care of his small son as a single parent,
living on minimal social security payments that force him to
concentrate on the bare necessities. He has very few friends and is
wary of contacts with members of his ethnic community for two
reasons: for one he expects social condemnation because of his
rejection on the part of the family of his child's mother from whom
he is separated (it would not be going too far to say that he views
himself as a social outcast, because he feels an outsider in both his
ethnic and the broader British community); second, he feels unable to
go out with friends because he cannot pay his way. He avoids
ex-colleagues because he is afraid of being viewed as a
„scrounger", never being able to invite the others round. Apart
from one or two trusted contacts the greater part of his social and
leisure time is concentrated on his (low profile) anti-deportation
campaign and the support of others in similar situations. He was able
to articulate his loneliness and desire for a loving relationship in
moving terms, a yearning for a partner and mother for his child. As
it is, all of his emotional energy must be concentrated on providing
for his son, ensuring that they survive together. The Home Office
have assured him he need not worry on this score: if he agrees to
return to his home country leaving his son in the UK, the authorities
will see to it that the boy is satisfactorily provided for.
Even for those with more private social contacts than some of the
candidates mentioned above the burden of their situation is one the
irregular are never entirely free of. Either they are together with
people who know of their position and there is a shared fear of
discovery, or they interact with the many from whom they must keep
their lack of status a secret. There was frequent reference in
interviews to the details of everyday unease: jumping on a bus when a
policeman appears on the street; avoiding giving personal details in
conversation; black people from Africa trying to pass themselves off
as of Caribbean origin to avoid awkward questions; meeting people
from one's church congregation (Latin American, African
Pentecostal...) and knowing by unspoken consent which questions not
to ask125. The undocumented thus
quickly adjust to the British taste for circumspect conversation,
concentrating on the weather and sport.
The strain is perhaps greatest at the level of intimate relationship:
there was for example the Peruvian couple mentioned in the
employment section for whom the strains became too much once they
were forced to go underground following the rejection of the asylum
application. The husband had left his wife, meaning she had to
support herself and their three children alone. The case of
Interviewee C, who has been living with his family in church
sanctuary for over three years, is eloquent testimony to the immense
strain on social relationships faced by those living with the long
term fear of deportation. Their lives have become an exotic
curiosity, subjects of supportive solidarity from the local community
(especially their church congregation), political groupings and
committed lobbyists, lawyers and MPs on the one hand. On the other
they are deprived of intimacy, the focus of media attention. Each
private detail can be the subject of a local feature, a campaign
statement or of an expert opinion on the declining mental or physical
state of these ‚suitable cases for treatment'. It is scarcely
surprising that the man has shown increasing signs of depression;
without the protecting hand of the perceptive church pastor,
available as private counsellor and intermediary with a prying
outside world, the family would not have been able to bear it.
The social situation of an undocumented migrant as viewed from the
inside is revealed by comments made by Interviewee M. He has
lived for many years in the UK and has extensive social contacts
through his church and sporting activities (he plays football and
tennis). He describes the problem of limits of trust. When he is with
friends, who tend not to be from the Latin American community, he
avoids all talk of his immigration status. If the subject comes up he
tries, by deliberate vagueness, to give the impression that he is a
political refugee. At the more personal level his private
relationships have been overshadowed by his predicament. He was
involved with a woman who would have been prepared to marry him to
help achieve regularisation, but the emotions were not there for him:
„it wouldn't have been right."
They split up soon after. His present partner (a British citizen) is
someone he would like to remain with. They both feel the pressure of
their situation. He has got to know her family, and feels accepted,
yet guilty of deceit, for only his partner knows of his status
problem. They have been debating whether it would be easier for them
to go to Peru together, but this would entail her giving up her
secure job as a teacher. This prospect makes the interviewee feel
very uneasy. He also feels more at home in the UK, has adjusted to
the way of life, is doing work he enjoys and has a circle of friends.
He talks with fondness of the British countryside and British
reserve, which appeals to him much more than to many fellow Latin
Americans, who consider the British cool and distant. Yet the options
in terms of regularising his immigration status are few126.
Some general points can be made about leisure activities of the
undocumented. One aspect of leisure time is keeping up one's contacts
in the wider community. This can be in the form of visiting friends
and doing the usual free time activities together or just sitting and
talking. People meet and talk about home, the family or the present
situation. In this informal way the irregular pick up information on
jobs, accommodation, what to do in case of illness etc. The community
organisations are particularly important here as centres where the
cultural and atmospheric connection with back home can be maintained,
whether in the form of folk music and dance, satellite television or
political discussion. Those ethnic communities with a high proportion
of refugees have to cater for especially pressing needs of the newly
arrived. They have found such spaces as large disused warehouses and
workshops in back streets where people meet and a variety of
facilities are on offer from language courses to counselling of
torture victims or support for the presentation of an asylum
application.
Connections can be established with specialists such as immigration
lawyers, the Medical Foundation, or local services such as the
benefits office or housing department. Some of these services and the
all-important informal contacts over a cup of tea and a game of cards
will also be available to the undocumented, whether as undocumented s
or rejected asylum seekers. Because these are communities whose
awareness is shaped by the reality of persecution back home, the
irregular will not be excluded because of lack of immigration status.
Nonetheless, it was evident in the course of the survey that
attitudes toward the undocumented varied between the ethnic
communities and their organisations, something to be looked at in
depth in the ethnic networks chapter.
As mentioned in the chapter on arrival in the country sports fora
like the Sunday morning Latin American League have a similar
function. The irregular can go along and find out about jobs and
places to live while chatting with the longer-established players.
Generally speaking interviewees confirmed that the amount of time
available for genuine leisure for the undocumented is not abundant.
Those who have managed to enter the country clandestinely are usually
faced with debts to pay for their passage. Alternatively they want to
send home what remittances they can, as was indicated for example by
speakers for central African communities and for Sri Lankans127.
They do menial jobs which entail working long hours to be able to
earn a living (whether in the building trade, driving a mini-cab, in
restaurant kitchens or in hotels, housekeeping or cleaning), let
alone make a surplus. So free time is in short supply. As indicated
above, spending time with other people is also shot through with
ambiguity for the undocumented, because of the fear that they can
find one out and inform the authorities. This, combined with the fact
that their work is tiring and time-consuming, means that free time is
largely devoted to recovering one's energies128.
c) Loss of social identity
There is a deeper socio-psychological aspect to the clandestine life
which some interviewees touched on, that is, the „reinvention of
one's self". There is a sense in which people who have assumed a new
identity, changed papers or who are constantly on the move to avoid
detection become personalities without a past. At least it becomes
difficult even for them to define in the course of time that they
really are. This renunciation of one's identity, as it might be
called was particularly evident in the case of one practice mentioned
to try to establish a (borrowed) British identity.
There have been isolated cases of people of African descent trying to
get status who comb cemeteries till they find the gravestone of a
person approximately their age. They set about trying to find out
whether the person was born in a different parish than the one in
which they died. Should this be the case, then - because of the lack
of central national registration - the chances of the correlation of
birth and death data are low and they can apply for the re-issue of
the deceased's birth certificate to the appropriate office with some
chance of success. Bearing in mind the notion of omnipresence of the
spirits and reverence for one's ancestors which are integral to many
African cultures, this practice constitutes a clear break with
tradition indicating how great the depth of despair must be driving
some individuals to resort to this kind of measure129.
A Baptist minister spoke of the experience of talking to a female
migrant who had lived for years under an assumed identity. She had
completely renounced her previous life. The implication was that
there was a loss of genuine sense of self, and that this was a heavy
burden to bear. Where could the individual continue to feel at home,
where might she put down roots without really knowing who she was?
Rather a feeling of being uprooted may come to characterise this
person's life, a constant search for that other, true self become a
compelling force allowing the wanderer no rest. And this is
compounded by an inner loneliness, because this burden cannot be
shared with anyone else.
d) Voluntary activities
To conclude this chapter there will be a brief look at the range of
socially-committed activities that those without papers become
involved in, as revealed by a number of interviews, and a short
reflection on their ethnic community context. It might be expected
that the undocumented would concentrate exclusively on their own
well-being, the sample of interviewees showed this assumption to be
only partially true.
A number of the interviewees in the survey were involved in voluntary
activities of different kinds. This can partly be explained by the
fact that for many social and political commitment of some kind
played an important part in their lives before coming to the United
Kingdom. In part it is connected to the fact that their experiences
since entering the UK have motivated them to assume voluntary or
community responsibility as part of their activity. The example of
Interviewee K was described at length in the employment
section, being an instance of someone taking the political view of
his undocumented status among a community of asylum seekers and
involving himself accordingly in their political campaign.
Candidate C and his family who are living in sanctuary as long
term overstayers have become highly-respected figures in their
African Pentecostal church community. He and his wife are often
sought out by members of the congregation for the counselling and
spiritual advice they can give. Not only because they are deeply
devout, but also on account of their experience and endurance of
sanctuary for what is perceived as unjust cause they are viewed as
figures of moral authority. In their turn giving counsel to others is
a welcome relief for them from constant reflection on what has almost
become a form of imprisonment with no end in sight.
For Interviewee G, an asylum seeker with documentation
problems, involvement with the church is an essential part of his
life. The experience of war back in his home country which led to
flight has made him aware of the trauma this induces, leading him to
become active in a war victims support group. He states that it is
his faith which has enabled him to bear the frustrations and
uncertainties of his situation and it is a church refugee action
group which provided him with the most important material and
emotional support when he first arrived (e.g. organising furniture
for his family's flat). This was an enormous help in enabling him to
find his feet. It is only natural for him as a Christian to
reciprocate now by helping those who are more in need than himself.
He provides immigration advice for others on a voluntary basis. In
addition he is involved in a group devising youth activities for the
millennium.
Finally, Interviewee M, after going through the HIV-related
personal crisis described in the Health section is in the
process of becoming a volunteer with the Terence Higgins
Trust, which provides counselling and long-term support for AIDS
victims.
There are other members of the sample who are very involved in their
church or in voluntary activity of some kind. These examples may
indicate one possible reaction to the experience the gamut of
uncertainties and fears associated with undocumented migration, or
what Mahler calls the trip as personal transformation (see
Note 8). They may be more inclined than others to be aware of
their social responsibility, dependency on the humanity of others and
on the need to show solidarity.
One must beware of idealisation, however. Many migrants (with or
without legal status) yearn for what they perceive as communal
solidarity lost compared with back home: some individuals are active
because so many are simply concentrating on their own survival needs.
An Ethiopian case worker with a refugee centre, himself in the UK
with the status of Exceptional Leave to Remain, described the
lessons of insecurity and fear about the future he had been taught by
the years of waiting for secure status clearly. He has seen 18
suicides in his (predominantly refugee) community in the last few
years. Several people are in psychiatric hospitals, young single
people are especially at risk. "People" do try to help, but it is
nothing like the community closeness at home, he felt. He described
the emotional tenor of exile underlying this for himself: being in
the UK is a physical presence for him, mentally he is back in
Ethiopia; there remains „a lack of fullness130."
Ethnic networks
This is a theme on which it is difficult to get direct information
from the ethnic communities or interviewees themselves. Much had to
be put together from hints and implications gradually assembling a
picture-puzzle of the complex and ambivalent functions of ethnic
networks receiving undocumented migrants in the UK. This topic is
nonetheless, for reasons that will become clear, one of the most
important in helping us to understand how the irregular survive. In
this chapter the specific functions of ethnic networks for the
undocumented will be described and differences between community
attitudes observed. Finally, an interpretation of the role of ethnic
networks in the lives of the undocumented will be presented.
a) The socio-economic importance of ethnic networks
In the later 20th century patterns of migration
beginning in the early Fifties from the Caribbean to the UK indicate
the importance of tried and trusted ethnic networks. The "pioneers"
were those who were hired on contract by London Transport and the NHS
to meet an acute shortage of personnel in these key service
industries131. Over the next twenty
years, as the word spread through the Caribbean islands of job
opportunities available in the United Kingdom, so networks of family,
kith and kin and village contact "back home" were the grapevine
through which information was conveyed on how to survive in the new
country and culture132. In this chapter
the question is how such networks function today in the UK under a
more restrictive immigration regime and in the context of increased
refugee movement.
Research has hitherto tended to concentrate on the economic function
of the established circle of first generation migrants for those who
follow. The pioneers have established niches, e.g. in the UK the
ascendance of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the textile trade in the
course of the last thirty years has led not only to their
entrepreneurial dominance of this sector but also to capital
accumulation allowing investments in new businesses set up by more
recent arrivals. Recent research has shown this capital movement may
even be transnational, between established businesses in the UK and
newly arrived kin setting up shop in the Netherlands133.
Migrants find the space for small and medium sized family enterprises
in those economic niches where the indigenous are less willing to
invest long hours over many years for low returns – often at the
expense of health, social and family life as well as broader
recognition from the host society for their hard graft and
sacrifice134. Newspaper businesses and
open-all-hours corner shops run by leaseholders or owners of south
Asian origin are an obvious example of this.
b) The ambiguity of ethnic networks toward the undocumented
Academic research has tended to concentrate on the importance of
ethnic community networks in creating economic niches in the host
society. This chapter will look at the sociological role of the
network for the individual, examining the range of attitudes toward
the undocumented within their communities. Firstly, the basic initial
functions of the community network for the irregular may be
summarised as follows: 1) They are essential in determining initial
attraction to the UK (family, friends, kith and kin, a potential
marital partner as well as regional traditions of migration)135.
2) They determine the first port of call providing accommodation and
work opportunities. 3). They provide the most trustworthy contacts in
social and economic terms. 4). They present the fewest cultural or
language problems for the newly arrived and are essential for the
initial phase of acclimatisation to conditions in the UK.
First, a general point about community ambiguity may be made. The
ambivalent attitude within the communities to the undocumented is
most evident in the way in which dependency can be taken as a basis
for solidarity or for abuse.
In the sections on accommodation, work and health in particular it
became evident how communities with large numbers of refugees will
react supportively to the plight of the newly arrived, including
those without documents. They provide them with a place to stay and
– as in the case of a West African community cited – pass
on their people every couple of weeks, if possible, knowing that the
strain of overcrowding for the host family is considerable. If the
undocumented are ill, they may be cared for by their own people,
medicine may be organised, usually there are GPs who are known within
the community to treat discreetly for a fee. As a general rule
contacts within the ethnic network lead to first job chances –
places of worship (Christian churches or mosques), leisure time
football leagues, shop windows with advertisements (e.g. the
Wailing Wall) or well-known cafes and bars were all examples
of meeting points which are informal job and information exchanges
mentioned by interviewees.
The undocumented are on the other hand at their most vulnerable to
exploitation from within their own community; whether working long
hours under bad conditions for low pay, paying above the market rate
for poor, crowded accommodation or paying a countryman for special
"services" (which are in fact available free of charge from the
appropriate agencies) – the same mechanism is at work. Community
loyalty and dependence mean that the undocumented individual will
endure exploitative treatment longer and be less likely to "blow the
whistle" (i.e. inform the authorities). The ethnic ranks will also be
closed to outside investigation or intervention. One consequence of
this is that the ethnic networks will thus frequently devalue their
own people's qualifications by trapping them in low skill jobs in
their ethnic communities because they lack English and immigration
status. The dependent can always be blackmailed by the unscrupulous,
if necessary ("If you go or refuse conditions, I
tell"). But of course the blame cannot be put solely with the
ethnic communities themselves: the undocumented could not be
exploited in this way if they were not trapped on the margins by
legal and socio-economic exclusion from the mainstream. They are also
aware, it must be stressed that outside their communities they would
be vulnerable to completely unambiguous exploitation unconstrained by
ethnic loyalties.
One or two examples from ethnic communities may serve to
illustrate how this works at an economic level. Trusted informants
confirmed that in the textile trade Turkish or Kurdish women may be
obliged to work in sweatshops in north London run by Turkish
businessmen for as little as one pound sterling an hour. They are
"grateful" to have the work, many others are in a similar position
and so awkward questions will not be asked. The employer has a
flexible reserve at the margins of his workforce that he can hire and
fire at will as demand requires136.
Other examples were described relating to accommodation, individuals
with immigration status subletting rooms (often two or three per
room) in their flats for a handsome price to undocumented countrymen
working in the informal sector137.
Within the Latin American community informants talked about the
prostitution trap which young undocumented women who have overstayed
can find themselves caught in. They need money to survive, they sell
their bodies. They will be "protected" by their countrymen organising
the business, but they must earn their keep138.
Richard Staring of the Utrecht project has written about how the
internal mechanisms of dependency come into play for the undocumented
on the marriage issue139. He describes
how in the Rotterdam Turkish community an undocumented male has let
it be known he is searching for a Turkish bride with status. Of
course the hand of a spouse who is a resident may be a medium term
path to immigration status, but for all parties concerned this type
of "arranged marriage" is a high risk business. The potential deal is
indeed called off at the last moment because the bride's family take
fright at the consequences of discovery. The episode illustrates once
again the mixture of community obligation to help one's own and
business acumen that can determine ethnic network relations.
Similarly, there are certain bars that are well known as
meeting-points in London for Latin Americans who are seeking
immigration status through marriage. Immigration lawyers made clear
in the course of this survey that it can sometimes be virtually
impossible to state with certainty how "genuine" some marriage cases
they are asked to deal with might be.
There is another dimension to the ambiguity in community
relationships which has been touched on elsewhere in this study, that
of political loyalty and betrayal. Individual interviewees
illustrated different aspects of this. There was for example
Interviewee N, an asylum seeker with status problems who has a
history of political and human betrayal, having been caught between
the fronts of the Russia-Chechen conflict and compelled to become a
spy. He has no clear sense of where he really belongs and avoids
contact with people from his ethnic community for fear of being
discovered to be a "traitor." His fears are probably justified, but
this leaves him in a position of acute isolation, scarcely able to
trust a soul.
A comparable dimension of the loyalty question was mentioned by
observers with close knowledge of the refugee community from former
Zaire. The repression and infiltration of opposition groups by
agents provocateurs of the Mobutu years have undermined
solidarity and trust among the exiles so that the fear of spies is
ever-present. Information culled might be a danger to one's friends
and relatives back home, so distrust characterises ethnic network
contact. The impression derived during research was that ex-Zairian
in the UK tend to be highly mobile, contacts within the community
circumspect and characterised by underlying suspicion140.
A third example of political ambivalence was that mentioned by
Interviewee M from Peru and confirmed by expert witnesses
working with Latin American support organisations. Within the broader
Latin American community there is considerable potential for conflict
and distrust. This can be for political and ideological reasons
relating to the situation in the home country; confrontations
maintained in exile can become increasingly anachronistic and reflect
a frustration at not being able to adjust to a new life in the UK
(the experience of some Chilean refugees who left after the Pinochet
coup was mentioned in this context). This is relevant in our context
because this frustration may be the background to resentment felt by
many within the community against Latin Americans entering in the
Nineties who are deemed "economic migrants" and to be abusing the
system. There have been examples of the "established politicals"
denouncing the undocumented to the immigration authorities.
Interviewee M as a long-term undocumented was quite clear about the
need to avoid Latin Americans; even with those he knows (for example
through his church congregation) there is a tacit "agreement" that
the question of immigration status is not mentioned.
Another individual case from the sample illustrates how rejection by
the ethnic network can affect the life of an undocumented person.
Interviewee B, described under Personal relationships,
considers himself an outcast from his ethnic community, having
fathered a child but proved unacceptable as a husband to the mother's
family. He fears possible attack from his would-be bride's male
relations and his parents have let it be known that they do not want
to see him again in Pakistan. He tends to avoid members of his
community anticipating condemnation of his behaviour and parental
status. The network which provides support for his anti-deportation
campaign (he is a rejected asylum seeker) is made up of the local,
politically active rather than his own ethnic community.
c) Structural differences in ethnic community attitude to the
undocumented
An attempt will be made to trace the distinctions and shadings in
attitude within and between various communities in the course of this
section. Key factors that determine attitude may be: whether or not
communities are long-established in the UK, and as a result patterns
of immigration have grown through the Commonwealth bond; differences
in attitude according to generation and qualification background; and
to what extent communities are made up of recent, large refugee
influxes. These factors tend to interrelate in a contradictory way,
meaning for instance that there are great variations in the
homogeneity of community attitude. Examples of different communities
will be cited to try and illustrate this.
Those interviewees who came originally from Nigeria (four), all of
whom are overstayers, indicated varying degrees of distance to their
ethnic community (as distinct from their immediate parish community,
which tended to be overwhelmingly supportive). In the case of
Interviewee A support from his ethnic community for his
anti-deportation campaign clearly stems to some degree (apart from
the humanitarian concern for a large family) from his position as a
respected minister in his African Pentecostal church. Interviewee
L by contrast was clearly uneasy when asked about support for his
campaign from his ethnic community. He stated that he had no social
contacts with fellow-nationals and that inter-ethnic rivalries in his
home country were a big problem.
One expert witness set these differences in attitude to the
undocumented within the Nigerian community in context. Older Nigerian
entrants who have put down roots in the UK tend to be more hostile
towards those without status. For migrants of the older generation
who came to the UK in the Sixties, when the entry of New Commonwealth
citizens was not only considerably easier but also for economic
reasons actively encouraged, it is hard to grasp the changed context
of later waves of immigration. The attitude tends to be "We came
here legally, why didn't they?141"
There is also an inclination to accept the popular
slogan-as-denigration that those coming in today "...are all
economic migrants." Those who settled in the UK thirty and more
years ago thus conveniently forget that this description would almost
certainly have applied to themselves. They are more established in
socio-economic terms and identify themselves closely with British
society and its perceived attitudes142.
This critical attitude was less evident among younger settled
migrants from the Nigerian community, who are more aware of the
restrictive effects of successive waves of immigration and asylum
legislation since the Seventies. They may also be better informed on
the social and political problems those returning to Nigeria might
face. Thus they might also be more actively involved in the struggle
for the undocumented to remain, if they see humanitarian justice in
their cause143.
By contrast those communities which are largely made up of refugees
who have entered the United Kingdom in recent years have been
conditioned by experience of persecution and the need for solidarity
(notwithstanding the example of the Zairian exiles mentioned above).
There tends to be more homogeneity of attitude – a broader
sympathy – toward those lacking immigration status. There is
awareness within the community that they must struggle to keep their
people from being removed, for it may be a matter of life and death
for the individual concerned. At the very least the rejected asylum
seeker may, because of international restrictions on refoulement
and the unwillingness of transit countries to accept the asylum
seeker back, otherwise be condemned to a life in orbit.
Interviewee D, a rejected Kurdish asylum seeker whom the UK
authorities would like to send back to France, is a good example of
this. The ethnic network has pulled together to mobilise an
anti-deportation campaign to increase public awareness of the
humanitarian issues involved, while well aware that at the diplomatic
level sensitive political considerations are involved. The Algerian
refugee community reveals a similar structural cohesion, although
they face problems of political betrayal from within, comparable to
those of the Zairians.
The Sri Lankan Tamils reveal an interesting and more complex picture,
as drawn by an expert witness from a community organisation who has
done academic research into the issue. There are elements here of
both the attitudes of a long-settled community and of refugee group
consciousness. It also reflects aspects of generational
differentiation:
The first major wave of Tamil immigration into the UK was in the
1960s, these people were in the main highly-educated and have since
become well established in the United Kingdom. Those who came in the
Seventies left home because they were facing discrimination in
education. They arrived with the specific purpose of doing courses in
higher education and many remained after completing their courses and
were able to settle down, possibly setting up their own businesses
and having a family. The third group which entered after the major
eruption of violence in 1983 were the first refugees facing
persecution as Tamils, the great majority attained international
recognition of their status or were at least able to get Exceptional
Leave to Remain (ELR). These people have been able to find their feet
over the years, though they too may have problems in the context of
family reunion144.
It is the last group, arriving in the Nineties, which faces real
difficulty because the more restrictive legislation means that they
are usually forced to break the law in order to get into the country
(e.g. using false documentation). They arrive with little knowledge
of how to use the expertise available on how to remain and with
little sense of who they can trust. The older generations have little
or no contact with the new arrivals, and tend to resent those they
view as "milking the benefits option." Only the Eighties
generation has some contact with the latest wave of entrants and is
prepared to acknowledge the importance of the "push factor" of chaos
back home145. As the Home Office has
tended to take a negative view of all applications from the Tamil
community in the Nineties146, the
isolation of these entrants – beyond the law, often lacking
support within their community and with virtually no chance of being
granted asylum – leaves them with little choice but to go
underground or to try and move on elsewhere147.
There is little homogeneity within the Tamil community and
differences are heightened by political conflict surrounding the role
of the resistance group, the Tamil Tigers. Differences in
attitude to the undocumented (as a rule those who have arrived in the
last few years) tend to vary with the generations. The decisive
factor, however, is the change in the legislative-administrative
framework which dictates that most of those fleeing social and
political destabilisation in Sri Lanka now have little chance of
being granted some kind of asylum status, in contrast to a few years
ago. Even those members of the community who are convinced of the
"legitimacy" of the individual's plight will run a grave risk in
supporting him or her as an irregular migrant because attitudes
within their own community are sharply divided. So ethnic networks
become undermined and communities may be compelled to turn against
their own.
d) Ethnic network views of asylum – the "community of
resistance"
Interviews with representatives of a West African community indicated
that the experience of persecution in the country of origin may
enhance the creation of well-developed structures to deal with the
challenges presented by life in the UK and specifically the asylum
procedures. The network is in this case well attuned to the awesome
difficulties compatriots face with rates of recognition and grants of
ELR close to zero. Indication has been given elsewhere of the
accommodation and health care aspects of how this particular network
functions. Support is also provided in presenting the asylum
application as effectively as possible (getting good lawyers,
ensuring appropriate documents are put together in time for hearings,
awareness of legal options available in appeal procedures) and
contact is maintained with those who are put in detention. This
machinery exists in an informal context: "offices" are corners of
living rooms in small flats; little is written down; members are
alert to reacting quickly and spontaneously. This may include moving
on fast themselves. The greatest circumspection is required at all
times on the part of active members because the police and the
immigration authorities keep a close eye on their activities.
There is equal awareness that under these circumstances at some point
the most attractive, or possibly the only, option for the individual
may be attempting to survive underground. Interviewee K, a
member of this network, was quite specific about his role as an
undocumented migrant able to support his community maintaining the
political resistance described above and said that the role was a
continuation of the struggle for freedom in his home country.
"I was born legally and I can live where I want. The UN says
everyone has freedom of movement, don't they? I'm not here to learn
or get fancy clothes, but there's no political freedom at home, they
kill you. That's the reason we are running for our lives148."
Ethnic communities of this kind are not only going to acknowledge the
pressing need to support the undocumented because there is little
effective difference in their social and political circumstances as
compared with those countrymen who remain within the asylum
procedures. Members of the ethnic network may also see a further
political dimension in the act of going underground which requires
their solidarity. These are, after all, communities conditioned by
political persecution in their home countries.
This attitude may be summarised as follows. For those with a
background of persecution coming to a well-organised ethnic network a
life "underground" may be a more attractive option because of
experience hitherto; very few entrants would delude themselves that
they are coming to a warm welcome as an asylum-seeker; news of
dependency, indignity and downright injustice and suffering through
the asylum regime will have gone back down the information channels.
The idea gains credence that asylum determination structures are a
variation of repressive structures one has been fighting against at
home. The struggle against unjust treatment (non-violent, it should
be emphasised) must therefore be continued under new conditions. In
socio-psychological terms the notion of a "community of
resistance" may thus be far more appealing for newcomers with
this sort of politicised background than the humiliating existence
which asylum seekers increasingly face. There are indications that
such communities exist in rudimentary form. It is important to note
that restrictive asylum regimes encourage and enhance these
structures.
A converse implication of this development is that other communities
with large numbers of refugees which know that their members have a
good chance of getting asylum status of some kind adopt a completely
different attitude to that of the group described above. Asylum
channels are to some extent tried and trusted (although official
recognition patterns can change rapidly). Representatives of a few
select community organisations know that their nationals can expect a
generally sympathetic hearing and they enjoy frequent contact with
the responsible Home Office officials. They are therefore able to
lobby effectively, knowing, too, that their cause may broadly be
favoured by UK diplomatic considerations. It would be madness (and
the very opposite of professionalism in the service of one's
clientele) on the part of these community organisations to adopt an
uncooperative attitude to the British authorities149.
Correspondingly these communities may have far fewer members who are
undocumented for the reasons stated. One may assume that for
political reasons it is essential for the undocumented bearing
passports from these communities (e.g. rejected asylum seekers who go
underground) to be invisible within as well as outside the network.
Certainly, representatives of some community organisations
interviewed on the theme of the undocumented gave the impression that
– as far as their people are concerned – this is a topic of
purely theoretical interest.
e) Anglo-Saxon kinship
In a television discussion in the Spring of 1997 on UK asylum and
immigration policy the Daily Mail journalist Bruce Anderson
attempted to justify distinctions in immigration policy on the basis
of skin colour by stating that privileged treatment for entrants of
Anglo-Saxon extraction was justified "because they are our kith
and kin." Mr. Anderson's argument should not be rejected out of
hand as racist. It remains the nation-state's prerogative to define
categories of ethnic-national belonging and derive access and
residence rights from them. But definitions of nationality must be in
accordance the multicultural and multi-ethic reality of Britishness
today. There are increasing numbers of ethnic minority groups which
have settled in the UK since the Second World War which can and
should insist on their rights of kith and kin. This entails
questioning the justice of immigration and asylum provisions that
place members of the extended family or clan of less-favoured
minority groups outside the law when trying to enter the UK.
Basing differentiation of immigration policy on ethnic distinctions
no longer in accordance with the composition of British society may
in time strike policy-makers as attempting to defend the
indefensible. In the concluding chapter the issue will be what this
might mean in terms of practicable reform of policy.
In conclusion the broad distinction in attitude to the irregular on
the part of different ethnic communities may be characterised as
follows. Well-established community and family networks in the UK may
be an attraction, but there is generally less political awareness
involved among established migrant Commonwealth communities of the
dilemma of those without papers. By contrast some refugee communities
– depending on their composition and experience – may take
a more politically supportive view of the priority for the
undocumented of remaining at all costs.
To some extent it is possible to view ethnic networks as providing
essential reception and settlement facilities for newly arrived
migrants. For legal and socio-economic reasons it has not hitherto
been germane for the host society to acknowledge the full extent of
this. As described in this chapter and elsewhere they assume a number
of functions in supporting the uprooted, whether documented or not,
and are liable to be closely scrutinised by the authorities or indeed
to suffer discrimination for doing so (organising housing, a job,
health care, providing information and humanitarian support for those
who are desperate, often including those without status). These
networks are bound together by obligation and interdependence which
mean the members cannot regard migration policy as a security matter,
but as a complex system dominating the lives and the human rights
position of their people.
Life planning
In this chapter the focus will be on the difficulty the undocumented
have in planning their lives in the longer term. This is one of the
few themes in the interviews which was regarded by all, without
exception, as a serious problem. All of the Interviewees commented on
the fact that life planning is well nigh impossible when leading an
undocumented existence. The circumstances varied according to the
status problem, from the uncertainty about the future faced by
overstayers and rejected asylum seekers – deportation or removal
being a perpetually imminent threat – to the stress of constant
fear of discovery faced by the undocumented .
At first the role of life planning for asylum seekers and for the
irregular will be compared; then the problems as such for those
lacking secure status as regards making decisions for the future,
whether families or single people, will be examined. The last section
will look briefly at the position of those with the least autonomy
over their own lives, the undocumented in detention and domestic
workers.
a) Life planning for asylum seekers and the undocumented
The representative for the Algerian community was one of many who
made the point that for asylum seekers uncertainty about the future
is one of the most debilitating aspects of the experience, together
with the constant sense of abilities being allowed to go to
waste.
Those in the asylum process feel they are vegetating, they have a
desire to fend for themselves and make use of their range of
experience, and instead they have to live in enforced dependency.
They are deprived of the right to plan their lives. This is thus a
factor within communities with large numbers of refugees making a
life underground as an undocumented migrant seem attractive. If one
lives underground one will not be subject to limitations on activity
set for asylum seekers by official procedures, there will be greater
freedom to take autonomous decisions for oneself in general. This at
least is the subjective view of many in the asylum process,
especially when it becomes clear that procedures can drag on for
years. As the Algerian informant put it:
"Some prefer to live underground rather than face the Home
Office's asylum procedure150."
There is also the additional factor that asylum seekers are often a
specific type of personality. It must be borne in mind that those
reaching the West to apply for asylum have usually had to show great
personal initiative and resilience – they react all the more
sensitively to narrow official proscribing of their lives and may be
more inclined than others to take greater risks to maintain their
independence.
As an example of the debilitating nature of the uncertainty faced by
asylum seekers Interviewee D, whose application has finally
been rejected at the appeal stage, cited his attitude to learning
English. Although he had attended a beginners' language course and
made good progress initially, he found himself losing all motivation
to seriously grapple with the new language. Why bother when there was
such uncertainty about where he and his family would ultimately end
up? This may be contrasted with the motivation of undocumented
migrants who, whatever may be the stresses of their situation, know
that their survival will depend – particularly in the
monolingual UK - on their learning to speak good English as soon as
possible. Interviewee K, an undocumented migrant from West
Africa who has been resident in the United States, Holland and the UK
in the space of the last two years, was a good example of this.
Though Francophone, he speaks good English and German.
For those asylum seekers whose applications have been refused
(whether through the initial decision or at the appeal stage) there
is, moreover, the additional factor of fear of imminent forced return
to the country of origin. Whether this fear is justified or not, it
was pointed out frequently, it is a factor strongly influencing
people's behaviour. For lack of any evident alternative, refusal of
one's asylum application can make a life underground seem the only
viable prospect. This point was made forcefully by representatives
and observers of the Zairian (Congo) community in particular, but it
is true of other nationalities fleeing chronically destabilised
countries. They have, as a rule, suffered traumatically before their
flight and then endure the uncertainties of the asylum procedure.
Piecing their lives back together in a foreign country and culture
where they usually do not speak the language is undermined by the
fact that they must be wary of countrymen and women who might be
spies with contacts back home. This emotionally and psychologically
stressful process is further characterised by constant uncertainty
about the future and not being able to make plans or decide things
for oneself. Hopes are concentrated on one day getting recognition as
a refugee or at least the right to remain. The great majority of
Zairians applying for asylum in the UK have however been rejected in
the 1990s151. When the application is
rejected the fragile thread keeping the uprooted individual in touch
with a sense of his or her own future may be broken. At this point
some simply disappear. If they have the residual emotional and mental
strength this will probably mean trying to survive as an undocumented
migrant152.
Some ethnic communities continue to show solidarity with those who go
underground. For those enjoying the broad support of their ethnic
network there are the following advantages (some have been briefly
indicated in other chapters) in going underground and leaving the
asylum process in the life planning context:
- greater autonomy in terms of seeking wwork and accommodation;
- less control by the administrative macchinery and police (if you are
undocumented you live with the fact of being vigilant all the time
and avoid all official contact);
- if risky, it can nonetheless be easierr as an undocumented person to
leave the country and move on to another to try one's luck with good
quality false documentation;
- as stated by the undocumented migrant from West Africa,
Interviewee K, it can be easier to support one's community
politically or even financially when „invisible".
b) Irregular status and life planning
The question arises of how far the undocumented are in fact able
to plan, despite the uncertainty and stress of their situation.
Interviewee G is an asylum seeker from Sierra Leone who has
experienced papers problems because of not receiving appropriate
documentation from the Home Office confirming he is at the appeal
stage. He said that the constant uncertainty is an underlying theme
of everyday life. Planning is difficult for him: "You just can't
focus on things." His contacts in the community and regular
prayer meetings are a great support in coping with this pressure as
is his family (his child is two years old and he is largely
responsible for the child care as his partner is in full time work).
This feeling was echoed by Interviewee F, an asylum seeker who
has also experienced problems with insecure status. He explained why
settling down in new surroundings is so difficult. He has very few
linguistic or cultural problems, having worked as an economist and
travelled widely before having to flee from his native Ethiopia and
having mastered English long before his flight. He misses the support
of a social network, but finds it especially hard not being able to
plan for a secure future:
"The key problem is that of uncertainty, of mental
unrest153."
For Interviewee H, an asylum seeker from Cameroon whose false
papers have created considerable problems for her throughout her
application procedure, the fact of not being able to plan her life
was a constant stress factor. Again social contacts were crucial in
helping her maintain a sense of balance but the most important thing,
she stated, was her course in business studies which she is pursuing
at a London college. This gives her a sense of purpose, that she is
working towards something worthwhile over and above the part-time job
she does which pays the bills. As indicated in the relevant chapter,
education and further training was a point mentioned often as a
stabilising factor by interviewees and experts as giving a
perspective for the future for those lacking secure status. There is
an element of comparison here with the situation of "exile" ethnic
communities (e.g. the Chinese in Malaya, Palestinian or Jewish exile
communities in various societies) asserting the primacy of education
as a method to combat disadvantage and succeed in the majority world
around them.
For those interviewees for whom the main focus of their lives has
become the right to remain, whether rejected asylum seekers or
overstayers who are at the centre of anti-deportation campaigns
(rather than having gone underground), it may be said that "the
struggle is their life". It was noticeable in interviews that they
frequently could not articulate broader aims beyond gaining the
legitimate right to remain in the UK. Planning had become entirely
dependent on their legal status, or the lack of it. For
Interviewee I, a rejected asylum seeker at the centre of a
high profile campaign to try and remain in the UK, her energy is
divided between keeping her campaign active (petitions, contacts with
school and campaigners, interviews with the press etc.) and caring
for her children. In addition she is concerned with the search for
her missing husband. Attaining secure status and reuniting her family
are her primary aims allowing little space for anything else. This
experience, indicating that there is often no room for planning
beyond the goal of attaining secure status, could be repeated with
minor variations for most of the interviewees in the sample who are
conducting a public struggle to remain.
Life planning for overstayers is closely related to life with their
children and so is bound up with one of the thorniest human rights
issues in UK Immigration practice. Children who have been born to the
undocumented in the UK and may very well themselves be British
citizens can either be faced with loss of one or both parents, or
indeed by virtue of constructive deportation (by which the
dependants are made to leave the country with the deportee lacking
legal status) be forced to emigrate themselves. Interviewee A,
an overstayer from Nigeria who has been facing constructive
deportation with his wife and children for some time made the point
that this constituted an impossible strain for the whole family but
especially for the children. Where were they to feel at home? How
could the Home Office do this to families, he asked rhetorically, for
the children – regardless of the citizenship issue in legal
terms – saw the UK as their home: "where you're born, that's
your place".
For Interviewee C, living in church sanctuary with his
dependants, the situation is, if anything, even more acute for the
whole family. There is no room for any kind of planning of his own
life and the consequences for the entire family (which were explored
in greater detail in the section on health) have indeed been grave.
Life in sanctuary has become a form of virtual imprisonment. The
candidate could never go out for fear of arrest (nearly three-and-a
half years at the time of interviewing) and suffered from depression.
Two of the children have serious health problems. Constant fear of
deportation means life must be led from one day to the next and the
psychological pressure of uncertainty about the future is
immense.
Such cases attract a lot of publicity because the argument for
humanitarian compassion to allow an overstayer whose only
infringement is a lack of regular immigration status to remain
appears to be a compelling one in the eyes of many ordinary Britons.
Undocumented people who have otherwise lived for years as law-abiding
citizens, may be active in their civic community and church and be
good neighbours arouse a lot of local sympathy. Many perceive these
overstayers as having earned the right to remain in their local
community and take decisions for the future for themselves. The Home
Office case for separating or removing these families is thus seen to
collide with notions of natural justice or simple common sense.
Increasingly immigration lawyers are making full use of the gamut of
European legal options to prevent deportation in cases like this.
The situation is different for those who are leading a clandestine
existence as well as those who do not have family commitments.
Interviewee K laughed out loud when asked about life planning,
as if to indicate how ridiculous it would be in his situation to make
plans. He said he might move on tomorrow "I like travelling."
At the time of the interview he was living with his girl friend but
seemed to regard himself as a single person without family. He saw
the need to remain absolutely flexible; it is typical of the lives of
many undocumented migrants that they are often here today and gone
tomorrow. Rumours of potential controls at work, news that there have
been Immigration arrests in the ethnic community, or simply word of
better working opportunities elsewhere lead the undocumented to pack
up and leave.
This leads us on to consider whether there is a basic difference in
attitude to life planning between long term overstayers with families
and undocumented singles. It was frequently pointed out by
interviewees and experts that those living as clandestine
undocumented people are as a rule single, unattached young people as
a matter of course, because those with families cannot afford to risk
the uncertainties of irregular life. This is generally true of those
entering the country with the intention of living as an undocumented
migrant, but takes no account of the biographical development in the
lives of the undocumented, as illustrated by the overstayers in the
sample. They were all, formerly, undocumented single people who at
some point became involved in a longer term relationship and had
children, these developments changing their perspective on life. The
overstayer in detention, Interviewee J is an example of this.
For a number of years he led a clandestine life of flexibility in
search of the best work and accommodation available. It was after he
became involved with his present partner and they had their child in
1995 that living a regularised life in the UK became important to
him. Faced with the threat of deportation back to Morocco when
interviewed, he viewed removal as the destruction of what has become
central in his life, the right to remain with his family. One may
thus summarise this argument as follows: today's mobile, single
undocumented migrant can easily become tomorrow's overstayer who has
settled down with the focus of their life in the UK – as the
various anti-deportation campaigns in support of overstayers amply
illustrate.
c) No planning, no future - detention / the situation of domestic
workers
Those undocumented people coping with life in detention face the
specific stress of complete lack of autonomy in their lives and are
unable to make any plans. As plainly shown in the Amnesty
International studies on detention practice in the UK, they do
not even have the basic rights accorded to prisoners on remand or who
have been convicted (e.g. right to bail for the former)154.
The stresses to which they are subjected by a life in limbo and
without the chance to plan have been eloquently demonstrated in the
study on the mental health problems of asylum seekers in detention by
Christine Pourgourides and the North Birmingham Mental Health Trust
team. They describe the strain caused by uncertainty about the future
in detention as follows:
The unknown outcome of detention is also a major stress. Detainees
live in constant fear of deportation, constant threat of transfer to
another location and constant hope of release.
Release from detention can become the overriding goal, overtaking
broader considerations regarding a detainee's asylum claim, or any
other aspect of life. It dwarfs other concerns155.
Domestic workers per se do not have autonomy over their lives.
When they come into the UK their status is dependent on entry granted
to their employer, they have no legal residence right of their own.
They are thus not able to make any kinds of plans for their lives
independent of their employer's wishes. This can be used accordingly
by the unscrupulous to pressure or even to blackmail them into
enduring exploitative or abusive conditions. Should a domestic
servant run away, she is entirely dependent on the help of friends or
members of her ethnic community to find refuge, means of material
support and some kind of perspective for the future. As usual with
the undocumented, those providing help even as an act of human
charity or compassion take a considerable risk by placing themselves
outside the limits of the law. Domestic employees often have to
combat the problem of lack of self-esteem on account of humiliating
treatment or abuse they have suffered; this is heightened by the fact
that the women themselves are not infrequently highly-qualified
individuals and view their employment as servants as demeaning.
If they do run away, they are usually ignorant of the basic facts
enabling them to survive independently in the country in which they
find themselves, for they have often been kept in isolation by their
employers. This makes them particularly vulnerable to exploitation
among the group of the undocumented who by definition lack
protection, for instance regarding employment conditions. They must
live with the constant fear of discovery by the authorities, many are
terrified of being forcibly returned to their former bosses. Their
situation is one lacking the fundamentals of human dignity – it
would be a mockery of their plight to discuss the role of autonomous
life planning in their lives.
Analysis and
conclusions
"I could see now that my family had by necessity reconstructed
itself and its past for the life it would live in a new land. Cut off
from the previous century, from its own line of continuity with its
memory of itself, it made itself up. All the lies and evasions and
tall stories are what you must have when you are inventing
yourself156."
The themes which have been highlighted in the various specialist
sections on the lives of the undocumented will be drawn together in
this analysis section in the form of summary hypotheses and
conclusions. The first section looks at a number of structural
factors relating to irregular migration, such as the question of
numbers. The second part consists of a number of hypotheses which
relate to the various areas of the lives of the irregular migrants,
like employment or health care. In the third section wider-ranging
observations stimulated by the full range of interviews conducted as
well as reflection and discussion (supervision, memoranda etc.) on
the subject have been put together in the form of background analysis
and conclusions. These considerations have been derived from
overarching concerns which cannot be ascribed to any one special area
of migrant's lives and so have more general character.
I Basic data relating to
undocumented migrants
a) Single and not alone
The undocumented, as reflected in the sample and in background
interviews, are primarily single people. As a general rule they feel
able to cope with the dangers and exigencies of their situation for
themselves. They tend to be young, most are within the 20 to 40 age
group. They are more likely to be single because so little planning
is possible in their lives, families are regarded as an encumbrance
when you have to be constantly mobile – much is determined by
the motto here today, gone tomorrow.
One point that was made by some expert interviewees was that those
who are leading a clandestine existence as sans papiers will
almost always be without children. Interviews with representatives of
self-help organisations from the ethnic communities and trusted
contacts indicated that the apparently single person fending for him
or herself may, however, be endeavouring to save money to send back
home to partner and children dependent on his remittances, or to pay
for, say, the education of a young member of the extended family. For
each undocumented individual attempting to survive in the
industrialised world there may be a number of dependants elsewhere
who are being intermittently supported by his or her endeavours. This
of course is in the time-honoured tradition of migrant workers
worldwide.
b) The question of numbers
It is extremely difficult to arrive at reliable estimates of the
numbers of undocumented migrants in the UK. For one thing this is
because of the unsystematic nature of registration procedures, but
also on account of the specific position of the undocumented who will
do all they can to avoid detection157.
Overstayers can be in the country for a long time before being
detected; procedures to ensure removal of rejected asylum seekers are
exceedingly difficult to enforce for both legal and practical
reasons. Those who are undocumented from the beginning (excluding
those with false papers, probably the smallest group because of the
innate difficulty of getting into the UK undetected) must do their
best to be as invisible as possible. Estimates were given by various
expert interviewees varying from an official Home Office figure of
40,000 for all undocumented people in total to an estimate of
a quarter of a million Latin Americans alone in the UK without
status158. After discussions with a
wide range of experts on the total of irregular migrants of all
categories from all communities one can only state with certainty
that empirical data at present do not allow even an approximate
estimate of numbers, but they must exceed official figures
considerably.
c) Papers
In the course of the last decade the market in false documentation
enabling access to the UK and the EU has boomed in proportion to
increasingly restrictive immigration and asylum policy. People
desperate to leave their countries and gain access to the European
Union are prepared to pay thousands of dollars or pounds to pay for
themselves or members of their family to get good quality
documentation. False passports, documents with false residence permit
stamps (e.g. as an asylum seeker with leave to remain) and EU
identity cards are the documents most in demand. Smugglers and paper
forgers are engaged in a permanent game of cat-and-mouse with the
immigration authorities in which sophisticated information technology
is playing an increasingly important role. Those wanting to migrate
may pay for the immigration documents alone or for a "package"
including travel tickets and being accompanied en route. Laws of
supply and demand "regulate" this market and the customers are always
open to deceit. If the irregular are able to enter successfully they
are usually in debt to the paper forgers and have to work for some
time to try and repay the sums involved.
The more restrictive asylum and immigration policies become in the
rich world, the more the market in forged papers is sure to expand,
because those migrants under pressure to leave their country will do
all they can to raise the required money. It is perceived as the one
remaining channel for most entrants to try and get in. The constantly
increasing sophistication of information technology and
communications will enable the market in illicit documentation to
expand and diversify. To assume that increased security and
tightening of controls by national authorities can be an answer to
this challenge is to fail to grasp the full dimension of the issue.
Absurdly large sums of money may be spent on tightening security and
identification procedures but they will not in the long term prevent
numbers of people entering or remaining illegally: every new
restrictive measure (this point was emphasised time and again by
immigration and asylum lawyers and other experts) will produce an
equivalent opposite imaginative strategy of avoidance.
The undocumented are also vulnerable to exploitation. Cases were
cited by lawyers and reps from community organisations of
unscrupulous immigration lawyers taking fees from clients seeking
regularisation and deceiving them with false stratagems. The clients
were left without redress.
d) The UK and freedom of movement
One essential difference between UK and mainland Europe is that there
can be little in the way of "commuting" on the part of the
undocumented. Once they are in the country it is not easy for them to
move back and forth; most will in fact be trapped because if they
were to leave the UK the chances of discovery would be high. By
comparison the Polish in Germany for example have different options
because of the land border and the various agreements regulating
temporary employment between Poland and the EU and can move back and
forth regularly and circumvent the problem of irregular status in the
strict sense. It is possible for a Polish worker to find employment
legally for a limited period of three months (though he might work in
the informal sector) in Berlin, go back home afterwards for a short
period and return to look for work again159.
This problem of being unable to move out of the UK was mentioned by a
number of interviewees as particularly acute in cases of family
crisis or bereavement in their country of origin. It heightens the
sense of being cut off from one's previous life160.
e) The undocumented and their sense of self-worth
Before moving on to specific aspects of life without papers a
psychological dimension of irregular migrants' lives may be noted
which has been hinted at in the course of this study and which is
implicit in the quote from Linda Grant at the head of the chapter.
She describes the need for those who migrate to reinvent themselves.
Migration is always to some degree a result of compulsion. People
move because personal, cultural, social, economic or political
circumstances (or a combination of these) force them to, to a greater
or lesser extent. Those who take a course which leads them to become
undocumented migrants are obliged to change their identity in the
eyes of the world around them and to some extent of themselves. This
means a different name, another biography, possibly another country
of origin – while at the same time there will usually be limited
contact with the "old self" (family and friends from one's former
life).
A clear sense of one's own identity is, in psychological terms, a
pre-requisite for the assertion of one's position, worth and rights
in the world around one. The undocumented devote a large part of
their mental and emotional energy to concealing who they are. In this
sense the undocumented are at a serious psychological disadvantage in
their dealings with the world: their diminished sense of
self-awareness will not help them to gather together to campaign for
recognition of their plight, unless under fortuitous or desperate
circumstances which may bring them together with other groups who
take up their cause (see the example of the occupation of the St.
Bernard church in Paris in 1996). On the contrary: they will tend
to be isolated and mobile, evading potential confrontation with
authority or those who might denounce them. They must constantly
distrust all but those who are closest to them. The insecure nature
of their existence is not only stressful, but also leads them to
treat their lives as made up of long-lasting transitory phases. Their
lack of autonomy and independence contributes to an undermining of
their sense of identity and ultimately their sense of self-worth.
II Hypotheses on different
aspects of the lives of the undocumented
a) Work and earning a living
The undocumented will generally find employment in specific
low pay and low skill sectors in which it is difficult to find others
(indigenous or documented) to do the work under such conditions for
so little pay, such as cleaning (for a company as part of a
sub-contracting team or in private households), the building
industry, hotels and catering, domestic service, textile manufacture
and agriculture. There is a whole range of marginal, informal service
sector jobs requiring low skills from supermarket shelf-filling to
car park attendant as well as in production in small and medium-sized
enterprises. They are almost invariably employed on a casual basis,
i.e. hired weekly or even daily, they lack protection against
exploitation through long hours, low pay, dangerous working
conditions, abusive treatment, being cheated of payment, threat of
non-payment as blackmail or "punishment" by withholding of pay should
they protest against bad treatment, pay or conditions.
The undocumented themselves almost always find they are doing jobs
far below their actual level of qualification. Many may be highly
qualified people with academic training and professional experience,
very little of which can be brought to bear in their low skill jobs.
Alternatively there are irregular migrants who enter the country with
very little formal educational background161.
These people are likely to have the most problems with the language
and be most lacking in the social skills which could help them adapt
successfully to a new culture and a stressful and demanding
situation. They are likely to be least able to defend themselves from
brutal exploitation at work, and as a consequence are the most likely
to be exposed to dangerous and potentially life-threatening
conditions (for example through non-treatment following an accident
at work). They are on the very lowest rung of the ladder of economic
exploitation.
The undocumented are, of course, not organised in a trade union and
can always be used by employers to undermine collective agreements or
put pressure on the organised workforce (for example in the clothing
or the building industry). In using the undocumented as a flexible
labour reserve, the employer can always claim to be a victim of the
forces of globalisation which are constantly tightening the screw of
competitive unit costs of production. Anger may thus be directed at
the irregular themselves who are the mobile reserve, the "scabs"
undermining their indigenous and regularised colleagues' job security
and long term welfare.
Thus the undocumented are made the scapegoats for a deep structural
division in the employment market. There is a need for an end to
hypocrisy and acknowledgement of the economic facts. Human rights
considerations alone make the present use of the irregular as an
"informal labour reserve" in deregulated labour markets unacceptable.
Moreover, they can be used to undermine both trade union activity and
the general security of the workforce; those employers in such
sectors who abide by the law are put at a severe disadvantage because
their unscrupulous colleagues have lower costs and can undercut their
prices.
Overstayers may be in a slightly less vulnerable situation as
compared with other irregular migrants. They will often have been in
the UK for many years and may have been able to find work appropriate
to their skills and to establish themselves either in their own
business or with their employer without awkward questions being
asked. Nevertheless, they must live in constant fear of their lack of
status being exposed sooner or later.
The survey indicated that there may be undeclared recognition at
official level of the economic necessity for a flexible reserve made
up of the undocumented in certain of the labour-intensive sectors
with tight profit margins which have been mentioned. The exigencies
of unit cost production in a highly competitive market being what
they are, there may have been a tendency on the part of the
powers-that-be to leave certain sectors to their own devices (e.g.
the agricultural sector), with the exception of the occasional raid
on a particularly notorious employer or factory. Dynamic
entrepreneurial methods may be seen to be producing the goods and the
macro-economic view would be that the economy in general is
profiting; deregulation may be deemed to have liberated vigorous
economic energies to the benefit of all.
The approach of government to the informal sector in general
throughout the Western world is characterised by this sort of
"selective blindness", which probably reflects a profound ambivalence
in the official mind. Policy is of necessity a complex reflection of
the pressures (including those of powerful business lobby groups) to
which policy-makers are subject. In view of this wider economic
context it will be interesting to see how the controversial issues in
labour relations in the UK of trade union recognition at the
workplace and of the minimum wage are resolved in the course of the
present parliament.
The key question as regards the macro-economic meaning of the
undocumented may be: would certain, at least tacitly acknowledged
sectors of the productive economy be able to survive without the
irregular mobile reserve? The most embarrassing feature about the
undocumented for the political and economic establishment may not be
their presence, but the fact that they have, in certain sectors,
become indispensable.
The question of the undocumented and crime was an important issue in
some interviews and dovetails into the whole complex of earning a
living. Asylum seekers from certain communities have been involved in
social security scams. Women are vulnerable to being forced into
prostitution. Irregular migrants with very limited means may find the
only way to pay for their passage is by agreeing to smuggle drugs
into the UK as couriers. They take the risk and in each case they
alone are likely to pay the penalty if caught by the authorities. In
each criminal network there are of course professionals running
operations, but they live on a different plain from the undocumented,
who in this scheme of things are simply expendable material.
In this context a number of specific points were made on the criminal
activity of the irregular by ethnic community interviewees. First,
the great majority are not involved in crime, they are contributing
to the economy as workers and survivors, whether or not the fact is
officially acknowledged by macro-economic indicators of growth in
GDP. It may be countered that they are paying no taxes; equally they
receive none of the benefits of state provision. In the course of
interviews it emerged that for most paying taxes would be a
thoroughly acceptable price for regularised status.
Secondly, the undocumented are rarely criminally active unless they
are forced by circumstances, because in the overwhelming majority of
cases their prime interest is to try and get status and remain in the
country as law-abiding citizens. In this sense they are much
maligned. Thirdly, they are generally surviving under great material
and spiritual adversity. Their desperation to earn a living leads
some to stray outside the legal norms – by which they feel they
have by definition been outlawed. The types of petty crime they
become involved in reflect this fact: whether it is swindling the
meagre sums available through the social security system or
involvement in prostitution this is the illegal activity of the
marginalised, those without power bent on surviving somehow.
b) Ethnic networks, housing, health care and rights
Existing ethnic networks often play a key role in the initial
migration decision, through the fact of immediate family, relatives
and friends already living in the UK or of a broader migration
tradition from the country and region of origin to Britain. Once
individuals arrive these networks play an important role in providing
initial contacts, accommodation and job opportunities, though the
undocumented are locked into a relationship of dependence which means
either that they are a burden or they can be exploited. This may be
one reason (apart from all the more practical difficulties and
dangers explored elsewhere in this chapter) remain uncertain for a
long time about staying in the country.
Undocumented people's uncertainty in this sense hinders integration
and their dependent position within their community may be an
obstacle to them learning the language; alternatively those who have
established themselves may decide – on account of tension with
their countrymen or suspicion and fear of denunciation – to
shake the dust of the ethnic community from their feet and opt for an
isolated existence. They then face special problems associated with
loneliness and distrust. Whichever course undocumented people choose,
it is very difficult for them to sustain personal and ethnic
community relationships because of their situation. This is bound up
with the fact that they cannot reveal themselves fully and are unable
to make plans, their lives being characterised by constant
uncertainty about the present and the future. Further aspects of the
role of ethnic networks will be discussed below as extended
hypotheses.
The undocumented face acute problems as regards housing.
Inasmuch as they live within their ethnic communities the ambivalence
mentioned above may come into play. Either they are sharing already
cramped space with relatives or friends and thus subjecting ties of
loyalty on which they depend to immense strain, or they may be being
exploited by countrymen renting them limited space for a profit.
Outside their communities they are effectively dependent on the
private sector and usually find that only the landlords at the
poor-quality end of the rented market will be offering them
overpriced accommodation. They cannot demand written contracts or
security of tenure. If they have to accept sub-standard housing for
lack of an alternative or if they lose their homes for whatever
reason they have, as a rule, no form of redress.
Health care is a central problem area for irregular migrants.
If they suffer from minor ailments they will try to ignore them as
long as possible; if informal methods of treatment are available
within their communities these will be taken discreet advantage of.
Going to a GP is the last option, which the undocumented may attempt
under the assumed identity of a registered countryman or a false
National Insurance number (though these options are increasingly
unlikely because of the ubiquitous nature of internal controls).
Alternatively there are usually GPs known to the ethnic community who
are prepared to treat for a fee. There may also be access to selected
private hospitals. Patients without papers are liable to be charged
exorbitant prices, females may be put under pressure to grant sexual
favours162.
Reluctance to acknowledge ailments or have them treated means there
is a danger of neglect causing serious illness requiring expensive
treatment and perhaps hospitalisation. The undocumented are at their
most vulnerable in case of accidents, when they could find themselves
abandoned because of their lack of status or admitted to hospital
where they are likely to be discovered. Unauthorised migrants in this
situation may well be seized by a panic compounded of fear of the
extent of their injury, lacking the means to pay expensive medical
bills (regardless of whether this might be required or not) and the
ever-present terror of discovery. This may lead them to flee as soon
as they are physically able, with all of the attendant dangers for
the recovery process.
One basic point extends across all the areas of undocumented migrants
lives: their lack of rights when they are the victims of
unjust treatment or abuse. Whether it is in the spheres of health
care or housing, whether education and training or abuse at the
workplace, they cannot, in practice, assert basic minimal rights
which accord with human dignity. Certain simple examples demonstrate
this powerlessness and vulnerability clearly. If an undocumented
person is the victim of a racist attack, the option of seeking
justice from the law is effectively closed to them because they must
expect immediate arrest and detention or deportation. In certain
parts of London where the relations of many ethnic minorities with
the police are at best complicated this right may appear to be
largely theoretical, but nonetheless access to due process for
victims of injustice and crime is an indisputable basic right
effectively denied to irregular migrants.
Domestic workers, whose situation was described earlier in this
survey, provide a further example of this acute vulnerability. Expert
witnesses also mentioned the situation of women who marry British
residents and who have no status of their own if the marriage breaks
down within the first year (for asylum seekers who put in their claim
after having been in the country without status this period is four
years). It is now a well-known fact that there is an industry
entailing the "sale" of women from Majority World countries to
husbands in the rich countries. The humiliation and potential danger
inherent in these one-sided power relationships have become common
knowledge. The economically dependent nature of the arrangement can
put victims of physical or sexual abuse in a position comparable to
that of domestic servants who run away from an abusive employer and
find themselves automatically without status. Each of these groups of
women may find themselves exposed to possibly life-threatening danger
as an indirect result of the structural legal insecurity of their
position.
This is just a particularly pointed example illustrating the
insecurity that characterises the lives of irregular migrants. They
live in constant fear of discovery, they are always on the look-out
for officialdom, forever looking over their shoulders, the sight of a
police car prompting the undocumented person to disappear into the
nearest shop or underground station. It is a fear which extends into
every aspect of their lives. Each personal conversation contains the
potential threat of exposure or possible suspicion which could lead
to denunciation. The most intimate relations may be undermined by
ever-present distrust. It is a form of psychological stress akin to
that of living in a police state, and so for many may be a poignant
variation of the life-threatening persecution back home which they
have attempted to escape. This is the heart of the paradox for the
undocumented: lacking coherent identity they are the shadows of
themselves both hunting and hunted; in an unceasing quest for a safe
haven and security they cannot find, they perceive themselves to be
and objectively are the constant quarry of an unrelenting state
authority.
Before moving on to broader arguments relating to unauthorised
migration the following general hypothesis on the background
motivation for migrants to accept a life without legal status can be
stated: the irregular are impelled by existential motives to move;
the fact that they become overstayers, enter illegally, drop out of
the asylum process or attempt to live underground after ultimate
refusal reflects the restrictive regime and their desperation to find
somewhere where they can survive, live and work in peace, free of
basic threat. Recognising this central motivation is essential if we
are to grasp the conundrum of irregular migrants' lives.
III Broader analysis and
conclusions
The following analysis and conclusions examine wider issues
concerning the social and political context of undocumented status.
They are based on the accumulation of data from the full range of
interviews, literature and memoranda arising out of the research.
a) Asylum and immigration law – recent changes have failed to
address the real issues
One of the most important analytical points made by a variety of
expert witnesses concerned the policy failure which increasingly
restrictive asylum and immigration approaches across Europe embody.
Not only do they fail to address the fundamental issues created by
increasingly volatile and complex global migration movements, they
actively worsen the situation.
One worker with a refugee lobby NGO put this in a nutshell: the
"fortress Europe" approach represents a chronic failure of policy in
human rights terms. The UK has adopted this approach in a one-sided
way. It is necessary at the analytical level to recognise that
immigration and asylum are related issues requiring co-ordinated
regulation: asylum applications have rocketed because Europe has
applied tight immigration controls 163.
Other interviewees emphasised that the way asylum procedures
currently work is actually pushing migrants into illegality, many of
who might meet asylum or family reunion criteria. Changes in criteria
and the increasing complexity of legislation mean that many
applicants who would previously have gained recognition or
Exceptional Leave to Remain (ELR) fail to present their cases
adequately and fall through the net. The constant undermining of the
asylum claim & appeals system with its very low rates of
recognition make it seem meaningless, so people feel compelled to go
underground. Internal controls have the same effect. As noted above
one result of this is that the smuggling & false documentation
industries are thus booming. The present system forces people into
exploitation by the illicit documents market, getting into debt and
finding themselves trapped with false papers.
Quite apart from these points the inter-related character of asylum
and immigration is illustrated by the fact that the increasing
severity of legislation toward overstayers since 1988 has caused an
overburdening of the asylum system because many of those facing
deportation as overstayers "switch" to making an asylum claim in a
desperate attempt to try to remain in the UK. The counter-productive
effect of this restrictive approach has been well analysed in the
1997 Justice/ARC report entitled Providing Protection:
"...the 1988 Immigration Act's abolition of full deportation
appeal rights for those in the UK for less than seven years has been
counter-productive. With the passage of the 1988 Act such people lost
the right to appeal on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, such
as links with the UK and family ties. In the absence of the ability
to raise the real issue – that deportation was inhumane or
unnecessary – some applicants sought other means, such as asylum
applications and appeals, to seek to bring those matters to the
attention of the authorities, or indeed to remain for the seven years
necessary to acquire full deportation rights. Many adjudicators and
representatives discern a direct link between the steep rise in
asylum applications in 1991/92 and the inability properly to contest
deportation decisions.
As a result, multiple applications may be made, resulting in multiple
appeals, none of which is capable of addressing the real issue of
family and other links with the UK which may make deportation unfair.
This has a significant effect both on the efficiency of the system
and on individuals' ability to contest wrongly-made decisions. The
solution is not to curtail asylum appeal rights because of the
former; it is to restore deportation appeal rights to deal with the
latter164."
In the course of this research the statement was sometimes made that
the overstayer problem only applies to those who came many years ago.
The above quotation underlines the finding that this is broadly not
true because there continue to be large numbers of people coming in
on visitors visas, as students etc. who will find themselves facing
problems because of restrictive procedures and the difficulty in
changing status if they want to remain. This also means that if
asylum and immigration procedures remain as they are the problem of
the undocumented is not going to diminish, because a restrictive
approach to policy alone is inadequate.
Beyond these specific issues there is the deeper political dimension
of the restrictive asylum and immigration regime for British society.
It constitutes a slow but steady erosion of civil liberties through
increasing state controls and increased potential for discrimination
against minorities. Changes in asylum and immigration law since the
early Nineties and in the practical application of the Immigration
Rules have tended to increase the power and lessen the accountability
for their actions of those exercising state authority in their
dealings with minority communities, whether the police or the
immigration authorities. Furthermore, inasmuch as the restrictive
regime is not successful in its own terms (i.e. in improving
monitoring and control of irregular migration movements), it
undermines confidence in the efficacy of democratic procedures in
choosing (security-driven) methods to control immigration which may
be seen to have palpably failed. These issues must be addressed by
political initiatives that take account of all the factors
determining uprootedness and forced migration. Any other approach is
politically naive and ultimately liable to damage the liberties of
the democratic state.
b) On the human resources of the undocumented
Many of the following observations on the human resources of the
irregular might equally apply to asylum seekers in the UK. This
reflects the fact that their background is frequently similar in
socio-economic and in political terms; frequently the undocumented
are members of refugee communities. Changes in asylum legislation and
procedure have also contributed considerably to a blurring of the
distinctions. The simple fact is that – as explained in the
previous section – today's asylum seeker is increasingly likely
to become tomorrow's irregular migrant.
Undocumented or underground existence frequently means periods of
enforced idleness or working below qualification in marginalised poor
quality jobs. These are people who have often mastered language
problems and shown themselves to be flexible in taking significant
steps to change their lives. They are willing to adapt and to
learn.
They are often highly qualified. Some, such as medical professionals
and social, administrative and educational professionals have the
specialist expertise, language skills and intercultural competence
developed in the course of migration to provide highly skilled
service to their own and other communities. People who are in the UK
and may have been for a long time can, regardless of the fact that
they do not have legal status, be perceived as a resource rather than
as a threat and a drain.
This impression was confirmed in the course of research. Workers in
community organisations or immigration NGOs are often ex-refugees who
have had long periods of insecure status or were indeed undocumented
people themselves. They are living evidence of the fact that sans
papiers are skilled and resourceful people who have a lot to
offer, if they get the chance.
Conversely, The status quo as far as the strain on the ethnic
minority groupings is concerned has to be acknowledged. At present
local ethnic communities, particularly those with high numbers of
refugees, are having to cope unaided with the undocumented in their
midst. The more the balance shifts towards restrictive entry
procedures vis à vis communities under strong migration
pressure for political, social or economic reasons, the more they
will be compelled to combine the use of "legal" asylum procedures
with "illegal" methods (false papers and living underground etc.) to
help their people to get in and survive within their community
networks. This will be a priority in those politically active ethnic
communities which acknowledge the existential need of their
countrywomen and -men for access, shelter & survival. Compassion
and solidarity have higher priority for them than the strict
observation of asylum and immigration rules, if the latter are
perceived to be unjust.
What this means in practice is that in the areas sketched above,
accommodation, health care, employment and so on it is the ethnic
networks which are taking the strain. Ethnic minority communities
which themselves face a constant struggle to survive with scarce
resources find that they are having to shoulder increasing burdens
because of restrictive asylum and immigration practice. This gives
rise not only to greater tension within the communities, but also
– especially with the advent of internal controls – to the
feeling that the ethnic minorities are the target of official
discrimination. Large numbers of people are faced with increasing
poverty, the informal economy is being fed by a growing marginalised
clientele of persons without recognised or without any documentation.
This is a world in which growing labour supply drives the spiral of
pay and conditions ever further downward and the drift into criminal
activity to survive may become the inevitable final option for those
still able to hold body and soul together under desperate
circumstances for both the individuals and their communities. This is
the most important truth behind the tightening of the screw of asylum
procedures in the UK in the nineties.
From the ethnic minority point of view there is a further political
dimension to this development. To what extent is government policy
toward the undocumented a form of "privatisation" of burdens
arising from increased migration pressure? The ethnic and refugee
minority communities have to cope with the situation for their
people. As outlined above, in terms of rational use of human
resources this is mindless waste. Would it not be more humanitarian
and better economic sense to find ways of reversing the process of
marginalisation which can encompass whole communities and feed these
skills into the mainstream economy? There is considerable
justification for the view that co-ordinated European migration and
asylum policy constitutes an evasion of social and political
responsibility for the complex problems faced by settled migrant
communities living in the European Union.
It may be doubted, moreover, whether the ethnic minorities which
are facing these problems and being left alone to cope –
sometimes even treated as the scapegoats for the "flood of economic
migrants" – will continue to accept their assigned role with
docility. In other words, in the longer term this set of developments
may well create an explosive potential of resentment.
c) From a European perspective: on the need to integrate
professional competence of NGOs in asylum and immigration procedures;
overcoming adversarial thinking
The following hypothesis is based on the view that political culture
in the UK has become unusually adversarial in cast in the course of
the last two decades in comparison with most countries in the EU. It
is argued that this is a counter-productive development for the
broader good of British society in attempting to address the
sensitive problems which show the need for a coherent and fair
approach to immigration and asylum policy for all concerned. One
aspect of this is that adversarial culture has conditioned thinking
on undocumented people.
Interviews with numbers of expert witnesses with NGOs, lobby
organisations and lawyers working in the asylum and immigration field
indicated the depth of frustration felt at working in an area which
has long been determined, broadly-speaking, by one of three
inter-related government attitudes. Either a) as an area in which to
make cheap political points, or b) one in which concerns of control,
crime and security determine policy-making, ignoring issues of human
rights or broader responsibility for community relations and
long-term integration, or c) one in which incompetence and a lack of
clarity of thought have characterised over-hasty changes in
immigration rules and drafting of new asylum legislation aimed at
reducing levels of entry perceived as too high. This sense of
powerlessness on the part of many interviewees in the face of what is
seen as the one-sided, unjust direction of national policy is
heightened by the feeling that European harmonisation of immigration
and asylum policy under the (non-accountable) "third pillar" of
policy-making can only make things worse for one's minority
clientele.
Justified as this analysis of developments in view of British
experience since the late seventies may be there seem to be deeper
mechanisms of political culture at work here165.
The following example may serve as an illustration.
One expert witness highly regarded in the field referred in no
uncertain terms to the Home Office's incompetence, lack of will to
address the issues and to alter procedures, the tendency to get
bogged down in the bureaucracy etc. Moreover there was no willingness
on their part to co-operate with external agencies or NGOs
constructively, despite having dealt with one another de facto
for years. However to the point his criticisms may have been they
also showed the kind of hostility which develops when a form of
communication degenerates into something akin to a campaign of
attrition.
In viewing the powers-that-be as both arbitrary and incompetent we
express varied emotions in modified, "neutralised" form - there is
one's outrage at the injustice that these people "in the system" are
perpetrating; and one's frustration at a perceived relative
powerlessness to alter the way this machine works in its fundamentals
(however effective the lobbyist or lawyer might in fact be in helping
individuals).
Beyond this there can be a further aspect: resentment at not being
taken seriously as a professional, indeed as a person with
considerable expertise in the field of asylum and immigration. The
authorities, certainly in the UK, have chosen in the last two decades
to ignore this potential expertise in grappling with the complex and
ethically painful issues involved. The defects of asylum and
immigration policy reflect the heavy price of this omission.
There is a practical side to the frustrations of lobby work carried
on through the lean and hungry years by small groups of committed
individuals and groups, which became evident in the course of
research. The rooms of many such organisations are mostly situated in
run-down parts of town, the door or entrance obscure and shabby
(though there may sometimes be an element of "identification with
one's clientele" about this); the rooms are small and cramped,
computers perch on rickety tables alongside boxes of papers and heaps
of files. Shelves are heavy with caseload. One ventures up narrow
staircases, down badly lit corridors in search of the co-workers.
People are almost invariably friendly, polite and helpful, despite
limited time and being overworked. Space is found for the visitor
among the documents, the ice is broken with a cup of tea.
Why is this important? There is a universal sense of scarce to
non-existent resources. People can easily feel devalued in what they
do because of the straitened, if not poverty-stricken, circumstances
under which they have to do it, especially year after year. The
struggle against encroaching shabbiness can be heroic and enhancing,
but in the longer term it tends to discourage and wear one down.
In view of these circumstances NGOs, support and advocacy groups
themselves run the risk of hardening in the posture of "the insulted
and the injured" ("What can you expect from a government like
this?" "It's up to the authorities to take the first step...").
This thinking gives rise to a number of dangers:
- a spirit of resignation can come to unnderlie one's professional
attitude ("What's needed is radical change, but there's no chance
of that anyway...")
- a mind-set can develop which fails to acknowledge the
nuances in politics, to perceive those "chinks in the armour"
of policy-makers which have to be exploited via dialogue for the sake
of one's clientele
- it may become subjectively hard to bellieve in the good faith of
official actions (and official actors); one may forget that all human
behaviour is shot through with contradictions, even within the
official machinery. Thus a genuine spirit of change, a desire to
reform on the part of "them" may be neutralised by (objectively
understandable) cynicism and disbelief. NGOs could thus themselves
become prey to a "culture of suspicion" which leads them to ignore or
reject genuine opportunities to influence reform processes which
might come their way. In the present climate in the UK this would be
an understandable but tragic failure of the imagination, with the
most destructive long-term consequences for one's own clientele.
The other side of the coin of adversarial culture described above is
that officials must be constantly on the defensive, fearing that not
only their actions will be attacked but also their motives impugned.
Furthermore, a restrictive regime means they have precious little
room for manoeuvre to allow humanitarian and other considerations to
influence decision-making. Officials and adjudicators in the asylum
and immigration processes have a wealth of knowledge and experience
which ought to be applied within broader and more constructive
parameters.
There are differences in the degree of adversarial culture in
comparison with mainland Europe. As is well-known, in certain
European countries there is some acknowledgement on the part of
government that NGO expertise is both a political factor and a
professional resource to be included in policy evolution and
evaluation (Denmark provides an interesting example, see Providing
protection for detail on this). The increase in NGO networking
and lobby co-ordination of recent years are encouraging signs that
mutual cross-border use of expertise and international perspective
are becoming much more self-evident in the British context, and seen
to be enriching. Europe of course remains a highly sensitive issue
for the island peoples, but perhaps in this sense European NGOs may
be seen as something of a model. That is to say, one high priority
aim for UK activists and professionals should be making the British
government acknowledge NGO professional expertise in immigration and
asylum policy-making as a factor which self-evidently cannot be
ignored.
d) "Shifting the goal-posts" - who sets the agenda?
This leads us on to the question of the general context of
policy-making. Who sets the agenda in immigration and asylum policy?
Polarisation between government policy-makers on the one hand and
NGO, lobby and grass roots community critique on the other would seem
to indicate two distinct fronts but the reality is more complex. This
is evident in the attitude towards the uprooted and undocumented as a
broader category transcending asylum procedure definitions. There is
an unspoken consensus regarding the irregular which is the basis for
negotiation and day-to-day business between (Home Office and
Immigration) officialdom on the one hand and the majority of NGOs
working in the asylum and immigration field and some refugee
organisations on the other.
An increasingly repressive asylum and immigration regime of ever-more
exclusive definitions and procedures which make a mockery of the
asylum idea as originally conceived (and as practised, until it was
deemed no longer politically opportune) have forced NGOs permanently
on to the defensive. Certain high-profile organisations providing
legal support and advocacy have thus, in practice if not in theory,
come to accept that there is a legitimate distinction between the
good migrants and the bad migrants, the former being those who
are seen to be genuine asylum seekers, the latter dismissed as
"economic migrants". The heart of the matter is that the basis for
definition is increasingly determined by diplomatic, foreign
policy-driven considerations. What makes this development so damaging
is that there is the parallel closing down of other immigration
channels for entrants from the Majority World, with the limited
exception of the Professional/Managerial/Technical class, at a time
of rising global migration pressure.
Advocacy organisations have thus found themselves boxed into a corner
that they share with the small elect of refugee organisations whose
clientele are among those tolerated and accepted. The result is that
that this mind-set demands that the undocumented be at best ignored
for the sake of one's own dwindling clientele of asylum seekers,
which have at least a chance of being regarded as "genuine" under the
procedures of a hostile asylum regime. This regime has been
conceived, albeit ineffectively, to meet the prime needs of exclusion
and control. This ultimately means that NGOs fighting for their
clients have to accept the framework of Home Office definitions
against their own better (political and humanitarian) judgement.
The consequence for those refugee communities which are among the
"privileged" in terms of diplomatic recognition is that they avoid
political activity which might upset their status in the eyes of Her
Majesty's Government and probably keep their distance to other
community groups less well positioned. This view also means staying
away from the irregular. Those asylum applicants who do not meet the
criteria may be viewed as "criminals", and the government in tandem
with the EU has thus set the agenda on asylum (and by proxy
immigration) practice.
An experienced lobbyist with a political campaigning organisation
set these observations in context. The increasing numbers of people
desperate to escape their domestic situation take illicit routes and
may face grave danger in the hands of unscrupulous smugglers, as the
tragic case of the Yiohan and its nearly three hundred dead
indicated. They are frequently people who might have met asylum or
family reunion criteria, but the deterrent effect of tightening
asylum procedures has meant many resort to desperate methods because
they see no legal option. The broader background is the problem of
uprootedness in the Majority World which, as the expert witness
stated, only the churches have as yet had the courage to really
address. The uprooted who do not fit the restrictive categories of
asylum definition nonetheless have human rights, and these are being
systematically ignored.
The strategy, she continued, which immigration and asylum NGOs should
be adopting is to shift the goal-posts of debate by promoting the
discussion of issues around uprooted people. This means looking at
the range of categories of migrants affected, appraisal of root
causes, including the complex role played by the rich world in
helping cause uprootedness (support of dictatorial regimes, the arms
trade, environmental destabilisation through mega-projects etc.), and
lobbying for change in domestic policy as the result of such
analysis. One concrete result of this re-thinking could be a campaign
for regularisation of overstayers and other families faced with
danger166.
There is a further aspect of this, which is that the present
conceptual framework of official thinking fails to address reality as
far as the motivation for migration is concerned. The indications are
that if asylum regimes are more restrictive in the receiving
countries then - should the "pushing factors" of terror, violence,
environmental destruction or simply deprivation of a livelihood, as
well as the "pulling" desire to realise or improve one's skills more
effectively etc. be sufficient - then people will go through the
toils of flight and migration without the prospect of legal status
regardless; possibly they will not apply for asylum if there is
little prospect of success or of receiving benefit as well as the
danger of detention. Under these circumstances living underground is
a more attractive option anyway.
This is because in a receiving country where there is a concentrated
and politically self-aware community then the likelihood of finding
support within the ethnic network is considerable, even if one is
underground. There were examples of this in the course of the survey
that provided case studies of how this works. Networks of opposition
are tried and trusted, possibly adapted from home. An awareness of
the genuine need to escape persecution or destabilisation reinforces
the readiness in the ethnic community to support those underground.
They in their turn may not even bother to apply for asylum formally
when the consequences are even more negative than an insecure
existence as an undocumented migrant. Experience within the community
has shown that they will not be treated as "genuine" anyway. There
may be more concrete appeal and certainly more human dignity in
becoming part of a "community of resistance", living a
semi-underground existence in opposition to what is perceived as a
repressive host regime. This community will comprehend those with
legal status and those without on equal terms.
Thus people are "deterred" from applying for asylum under certain
circumstances, but not from migrating in order to survive, or from
moving on elsewhere if circumstances dictate.
e) On kith and kin
White Britons are often perfectly happy talking about the special
status of "our kith and kin" when it concerns the immigration of
citizens of British extraction from New Zealand, Australia, Canada or
South Africa; but non-whites from New Commonwealth countries who may
have comparable ties of family and ancestry are far more likely to be
seen by these people and perhaps often by officialdom as aliens
seeking entry. Successive legislative measures since the Sixties have
deprived later generations of New Commonwealth citizens of the legal
migratory options still accorded to some degree to "kith and kin"
from the former colonies. Whatever may be the legislative basis,
however, it is the practical stringency of applied immigration
controls to non-white entrants which indicates the existence of two
sets of standards.
In the context of family reunion, in particular, the
discriminatory dimension of this is evident. For there are now
extensive Asian, Caribbean and African family networks in the UK and
extending back to the countries of origin. These connections lead to
established patterns of migration for the second and third
generation. Present restrictive procedures compel some communities to
consider the illegal option to reunite their families. For a long
time the notorious primary purpose rule exhibited the
discriminatory potential inherent in a Eurocentric view of marriage
when applied to the Immigration regulations. There was, moreover, the
case of the young Indian woman staying in the UK after a visit to
look after her ailing grandmother because it is part of family and
community obligation - partly culturally-determined; she had no
option but to overstay. Only after a long campaign which received
national media attention was the Home Office prepared to grant her
leave to remain167.
It seems self-evident from a rational point of view that Home Office
and immigration procedures have to adapt with time. Increasingly
obligations of kith and kin extend in an entirely legitimate legal
and humanitarian sense to the "New Commonwealth" and increasingly
established refugee communities transcending nation-state boundaries.
Migratory movements reflect these connections and implicit
obligations and restrictive immigration and asylum procedures, if
they do not adapt accordingly, are going to become increasingly
inappropriate to both multicultural norms and rapidly changing
communication and travel patterns.
In terms of rights, there is a strong argument supporting the
contention that settled minority communities - the vast majority of
whom are integrated, tax-paying, law-abiding and indeed in the course
of time British citizens - have a right to fair treatment by
immigration and asylum procedures which reflect their experience of
migration as well as family and community separation intermeshed with
continuing obligation and commitment across national boundaries. At
present it is manifestly the case that the structure and practice of
immigration and asylum law fail to match these moral and
democratic-political standards in a society that has become
multicultural.
f) Detention centres as counter-productive
This is not the place to explore the issue of detention in the UK.
This has been done most effectively elsewhere168.
For our purposes it is important to note that the threat of detention
for asylum seekers immediately after application is a step
which has increased the attractiveness a life underground.
Information through the ethnic networks will confirm that it may
therefore be a better option to try and enter as a clandestine on
false papers and go underground than to apply for asylum. The
detention strategy is thus not a deterrent to entry, but to remaining
legally "above ground" as an asylum seeker.
g) Central and local government attitudes
In the course of this study it became apparent that
perceptions of justice in the application of asylum and
immigration law at local level often differed radically from the
central government approach. This is reflected in two ways.
First, there may be a preparedness on the part of local citizens to
become involved in anti-deportation campaigns to support the right to
remain of rejected asylum seekers or overstayers of whom they have
personal knowledge. A central motivation appeared to be that those
undocumented interviewees with a family in particular who had
otherwise led law-abiding lives were seen to be facing unjust
treatment in facing deportation for lack of the right papers. The
case of a rejected asylum seeker facing potential persecution on
return or the break-up of the family through deportation might arouse
sympathy and solidarity for reasons of humanitarian compassion.
The overstayer on the other hand might enjoy support not only because
of the pain and upheaval a family might face, but also because of the
length of time involved. When people have lived for some years in the
UK and have put down roots, adapted their lives to a new country and
culture, possibly become known and respected as good neighbours
involved in local community and parish activity, then the sudden
discovery that lack of the right immigration status can lead to
deportation and an end of family life as they have known it can
provoke more than widespread sympathy. There may be outrage at what
is perceived as an inhumane or bureaucratic application of the letter
of the law. There is a high degree of identification with "people
like you and me" who appear to be the victims of arbitrary higher
power.
The second factor is the political dimension of the central-local
dichotomy which sometimes becomes apparent in the reaction of
institutions and agencies at local level. Solidarity with the
undocumented may arise from varying motivations. Local schools see
the rights of the children to education, personal development and
social integration as endangered by the parent or parents' lack of
status and thus may support a campaign for the family to remain.
Local authorities may give tacit support to individual
anti-deportation campaigns in one way or another (providing NHS
medical care and social housing; maintenance of benefit payments) to
both indicate a different political or ideological stance on asylum
and immigration policy from central government or simply as a
response to what is a contentious (and possibly a vote-winning) local
issue. The campaign in support of Interviewee I was one such
example. Similar considerations can apply for local MPs who may face
the tension of divided loyalties between their central and local
responsibility.
On the other hand it is quite possible that a local authority will
take the same line as central government if local sentiment is
perceived as favouring consistent application of asylum and
immigration policy. It will be argued that exceptions, however strong
the humanitarian issues might be, undermine the rule of law.
The essential point from an analytical point of view is that central
government ignores local feelings at its peril. Immigration and
asylum policy is one of the most politically-sensitive areas of
activity for the central legislative and administrative authority.
Disparity between the theoretical and practical application of the
law can have potentially highly-damaging consequences for government:
if the centre is seen to be acting out of synchronisation with local
people and community institutions and their sympathies and
perceptions, then the basis of its democratic legitimacy is
endangered. A government making this mistake may be seen as
increasingly arrogant, isolated and out of touch. One factor in
creating the tidal wave upon which the Conservative government was
swept from power in May 1997 was the pursuit of an asylum and
immigration regime widely perceived to be both increasingly unjust
and ultimately ineffective in its own, exclusively cost-reducing and
security-driven, terms.
Conclusion
More empirical information is necessary to help define the structures
and necessities of migrants' lives more realistically and fairly.
This research project is intended as a modest contribution to this
process. Within an immigration and asylum framework which is
perceived to be broadly fair to all communities there is the chance
of utilising the full range of professional expertise available in
government, the non-governmental sector and the minority communities
themselves on a more co-operative basis for the good of the whole of
British society.
Finally, a point that was made in discussion with a lobbyist working
frequently in co-operation with European campaigns concerns the nub
of the matter regarding how the undocumented are viewed in the UK. It
is a strange paradox that the British, a people notoriously sensitive
in the defence of traditional liberties and in warding off the
encroaching state in other areas, should be so strikingly prepared to
accept wide-ranging state powers regarding "illegal immigration"
– at least in the 20th century. The counter argument
which the lobbyist put was: while it must be conceded that illegal
communities are not good for society, can't we be more relaxed about
accepting the facts of migration?
Historically, it has always gone on and has never been completely
controllable. Indeed, (and this is the sacrilegious part) couldn't
the British be less intense about "solving the problem" and accept
that there will always be a degree of uncontrolled migration? Other
nation-states have been able to accommodate the truth of irregular
migration and adopt a pragmatic approach to it without the fabric of
their body politic disintegrating. The traditionally British
"uptight" attitude to this problem may, among other things, be yet
another aspect of a refusal to come to terms with the post-colonial
legacy. The time is surely ripe for mature and sober reappraisal.
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Footnotes
1. Cf. S. Collinson, Beyond Borders: West European Migration Policy towards the 21st. Century (London 1993), p.1-17. Cf. Spencer, Sarah (ed.): Strangers and Citizens, introduction (London 1994).
1a. State of the World's Refugees, UNHCR, 1993 and UNHCR by numbers 1995; UNHCR Zur Lage der Flüchtlinge in der Welt 1997-98 (Bonn 1997) S. 195-198.
2. for more detail on the macro-economic and social context of "uprootedness" see A Moment to choose: Risking to be with uprooted people. WCC Unit IV, Resource Book. Geneva 1996.
3. The Observer, 12/1/1997 "People-smugglers make a mint out of misery". Cf. the number of "passengers refused leave to enter and removed" for 1995, 18,954 persons (Control of Immigration statistics UK 1995 CM 3353 Table 3.1). Cf. For the European dimension Süddeutsche Zeitung, 5/8/1997 "Für 2000 Dollar in den goldenen Westen."
4. In this project the terms irregular, unauthorised and undocumented migrant as well as sans papiers have been deliberately chosen to denote the clientele being described. The term "illegal" is avoided because of the association with criminal activity which as a premise of this project is not given per se through a violation of Immigration law. Equally there was a conscious decision to talk of migrants rather than immigrants to emphasise the global character of mobility reflecting a complex interworking of push and pull factors influencing the decision to migrate. In other words our generic term should be broader than just viewing the undocumented as people trying to get in; they are also people with subtle individual histories and coming from somewhere else.
5. C. Holmes, A tolerant Country? (London, 1991) p.14-65, is concise on this.
7. D. Coleman, "UK Immigration Policy: Firm but Fair, and Failing?". In Policy Studies, Vol. 17, No. 3, 1996, p.195-214 )
8. See for example Daily Mail 30/6/1997 front page story "Scandal of the Illegal Immigrant Benefits Industry."
9. Linda Bosniak, Human Rights, State Sovereignty and the Protection of Undocumented Migrants Under the International Migrant Workers Convention , in The International Migration Review, Vol.25,Winter 1991,96, p.737-770, quote p.746.
10. Journal of Refugee Studies Vol.5 No 1 (1992) p.47-67.
11. Discussion Paper on Asylum Seekers in Affluent States for the UNHCR Centre for Documentation and Research meeting in Geneva, November 1996.
12. James, Daniel: "Illegal Immigration, an Unfolding Crisis" (Mexico-US Institute), Lanham USA 1991.
13. Cf. Mahler, and Mark Miller: „Towards Understanding State Capacity to prevent unwanted migration: Employer sanctions Enforcement in France, 1975-1990" in West European Politics Vol. 17, no. 2 (1994), p.140-167).
14. "EG-Einwanderungspolitik: Herausforderungen, Optionen, Folgen" in Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft Heft 1, 1994, S.31-39).
15. D. Coleman, "UK Immigration Policy: Firm but Fair, and Failing?". In Policy Studies, Vol. 17, No. 3, 1996, p.195-214 )
16. C.K. Pourgourides: "A Second Exile - the Mental Health Implications of Detention of Asylum-Seekers in the UK" (N. Birmingham Mental Health Trust, 1996) "Prisoners without a Voice - Asylum seekers detained in the UK" (Amnesty International, 1995); „Cell Culture - the Detention & Imprisonment of Asylum Seekers in theUnited Kingdom" (AI 1996).
17. Linda Bosniak, „Human Rights, State Sovereignty and the Protection of Undocumented Migrants Under the International Migrant Workers Convention" , in The International Migration Review, Vol.25,Winter 1991,96, p.737-770, quote p.740-741.
20. Garz, Detlef & Kraimer, Klaus: "Qualitativ-empirische Sozialforschung im Aufbruch" (S.1-35)
- Aufenanger, Stefan: "Qualitative Analyse semi-struktureller Interviews - Ein Werkstattsbericht" (S.35-61)
- Franke, Elk: "Fußballfans - eine Herausforderung an das sozialwisssenschaftliche Arbeiten" (S.177-213)
- Haupert, Bernard (A) "Vom narrativen Interview zur biographischen Typenbildung" (S.213-251)
- Meuser, Michael & Nagel, Ulrike: "ExpertInneninterviews - vielfach erprobt, wenig bedacht. Ein Beitrag zur qualitativen Methodendiskussion" (S.441-471).
21. "A grounded theory is one that is inductively derived from the study of the phenomenon it represents. That is, it is discovered, developed, and provisionally verified through systematic data collection and analysis of data pertaining to that phenomenon. Therefore, data collection, analysis and theory stand in reciprocal relationship with each other. One does not begin with a theory and then prove it. Rather, one begins with an area of study and what is relevant to that area is allowed to emerge." (Strauss, Anselm & Corbin, Juliet: "Basics of Qualitative Research - Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques." London 1990, p. 23)
22. for analytical background on the 1962 Act and subsequent legislation see Holmes: A Tolerant Country?, London 1991, p.54-64
22a. There are no clear guidelines on domestic workers' status in the Immigration Rules (it is a „concession" to wealthy employers coming in from abroad), meaning that the stamp domestic workers receive in their passports is often a matter of chance; in practice many get the stamp under Code 5N Leave to enter, employment prohibited. The effective result is that they are dependent on their employer for their immigration status and lose this if they run away on account of abuse. See B. Anderson, p.45-46.
23. Bridget Anderson: Britain's Secret Slaves (Leicester, 1995). See also Kalayaan 1995 Conference papers Slavery still alive.
24. Cf. S. Spencer: Strangers and Citizens (London 1994) on global migration pressures p.4-5; cf. S. Collinson: Beyond Borders: West European Migration Policy towards the 21st Century, London 1993, p. 1-17. See also UNHCR report 1997-1998 On the state of the World's refugees, introduction.
25. See Bridget Anderson, "Britain's Secret Slaves" (Leicester 1995), p.13-28.
26. (3) Ibid, introductory section.
27. Cf. Famous exiles who came to the UK in 19th. century UK, like Karl Marx who regarded his stay as both transient and undesirable. This is presumably one reason why he never really felt comfortable speaking English.
29. Interview with representative for Interviewee I, 3/4/1997.
30. Passport to Nowhere, documentary on Channel Four (reporter Julian Pettifer), 2/11/1996.
31. The Observer, 12/1/1997. See The Observer, 5/1/1997 for background feature on home village community of some of the deceased and the ethnic networks connecting them with the UK as the target of migration.
32. Cf. Mahler, chapter Trip as personal transformation, p.58-82.
33. Background interviews with a Methodist minister with contacts in the Zairean community and with a former missionary and interpreter with extensive knowledge of the Zairean and Congo communities in London, hereafter AW.
34. Background interviews with representatives of Carila, Praxis, Catholic Aids Link, Chilean Democratic Association and Casa Latino Americano.
35. Dispatches, Channel 4, November 1996.
36. In 1992 some 52,000 work permit holders and their dependants were admitted to the UK; 18,000 spouses, 3,000 children and 2,600 fiancés were admitted under the family reunion rules; in 1991 202,000 students from outside the EC were given leave to enter. In the same year there was a net immigration to the UK of 28,000.(Source: S. Spencer (ed.), Strangers and Citizens, London 1994, p.1)
37. Cf. Statement by Euro MPs Kumar Murshid and others at conference Labour in Europe on race policy that immigration practices would seem to vary according to the skin colour of entrants, 27/6/1997.
38. Representative of the Polish community in London, 30/5/997.
39. From Luk magazine, March 1997, published by the Polish community in London. Note that Polish girls are the only East European nationality not (at the time of writing) allowed the concession to work as au pairs; this is regarded as a form of discrimination by leaders of the Polish community which they are fighting to change - not least because this is one of the few socially acceptable (and economically viable) means for young Polish females to get to the UK to learn the English language, a vital skill on the East European job market.
40. Statement of interviewee from Sri Lankan community, 3/7/1997. Cf. Mahler for the contradictory way in which such loyalties can affect relationships between new arrivals and „old hands" in countries of migration.
43. Discussion with representatives of Chilean Democratic Association, cf. Interviewee M (a clandestine) who arrived in Europe initially in Spain to look for work before coming on to the UK.
44. Background interviews with representatives of Carila, Praxis, Catholic Aids Link, Chilean Democratic Association and Casa Latino Americano. (2)
45. Meaning immigration officials do not what to know how asylum seekers will survive in the next six months. Interviewee from the Kurdish Workers Association, 10/3/1997.
46. See "Just Existence - on the effects of withdrawl of benefits from asylum seekers" (British Refugee Council interim publication, Feb. 1997)
47. Halkevi Centre interviewee, 4/3/1997; confirmed by rep of Bridge House Estates Trust: support of asylum seekers' projects would depend on lawyers' definitions of who a Londoner is. Equally, the homeless organisation Shelter felt obliged to operate their emergency provision on a no benefit, no-go basis.
48. Cf. Mahler on the resentments caused when accommodation becomes a profit-oriented theme among marginalised minority communities, p.188-213.
49. The Court of Appeal confirmed in a judgement of 17th February 1997 (R v Westminster Council and Ors) that local authorities had to provide basic support for people in their area "...in need of care and attention" under s21(1)(a) of the National Assistance Act 1948.
50. Interview with West African community representative, 24/4/1997.
51. Kurdish Information Centre, 7/2/1997 & Carila (Latin American support organisation), 23/5/1997.
52. Interview with lawyer PM 17/4/1997, who further pointed out that some local authorities were checking the immigration status of couples marrying at borough registry offices.
53. Information from south London housing dept. employee, 30/1/1997; telephone information from Lambeth housing dept.; information from employee at Church Commission for Racial Justice, 23/1/1997.
55. Praxis, interview 28/2/1997. In addition to the accommodation problem they were swindled out of 4,000 pounds for false papers for the children by a confidence trickster. As they aren't married they are considering whether marriage would improve their position.
57. Praxis, interview 28/2/1997.
58. reported by a witness, 27/2/197.
61. Expert interviewee, 3/7/1997.
62. Based especially on testimony of Interviewee K, 28/4/1997.
63. Polish representative, 30/5/1997, Cf. Mahler, note 4 above, on accommodation and Latin American perceptions.
64. Information from detainees in Harmondsworth detention centre, 11/3/197.
65. Information from south London housing department. employee, 30/1/1997.
66. See Mahler, p.105-137; for Germany the popular work by Günther Walraff Ganz Unten is a highly revealing „grass roots" study of the employment sectors of illegal work and / or work for the unauthorised.
67. See Just Existence, published by the Refugee Council in February 1997, which documents the lives of a number of asylum seekers having to survive the physical and enhanced psychological stress of living without any material security following the withdrawal of benefits under the 1996 measures. For some it was a life - threatening experience. There is a concise summary of the range of entitlement cuts:
From 24 July 1996, asylum seekers who had either applied for asylum once inside the UK or who were appealing against a negative decision on their asylum claim had no entitlement to the three most basic benefits: income support, housing benefit and council tax benefit (only asylum seekers who applied for asylum ‚on arrival' in the UK retained entitlement). All asylum seekers lost their entitlement to the wider family of benefits - such as child benefit, disability living allowance, and family credit. Asylum seekers also lost almost all access to social housing: the only remaining entitlement is to local authority-arranged temporary accommodation for ‚on arrival' asylum applicants who fall within the ambit of the homelessness provisions. „(p.5)
68. Interview with representative of Algerian community 29/4/1997.
69. As one informant put it: „You want to talk to illegals? Go and work in a kitchen."
70. Based on information from two members of ethnic community and observation.
71. One worker with a Latin American support group reported how a passionate argument had developed between „politicals" among the football players on the one hand (i.e. recognised refugees) and irregular migrants on the other. The former group tends to look down on the latter. The argument spiralled out of control to the point where information was passed on to the Immigration authorities leading to the arrest of the undocumented people involved.
72. There was one notorious case of a man who accumulated 50 identities. As he had to claim his benefit at different outlets for each „person", he employed a cab driver every Tuesday to take him around the city to be able to meet his punishing schedule within the opening hours limit. The cab driver was thus earning 200 to 300 pounds a week for this one day's work. At some point he became so uneasy about his customer's routine of going to 50 different post offices every Tuesday (rather than doing his business at one) that he informed the police; thus the case came to light.(AW)
73. Interview with AW, 27/2/1997.
74. A number of background interviewees and informants confirmed that mini-cab driving is a favourite occupation with the undocumented. Should they be stopped by the police, the great fear is of the „second question" (i.e. after the driving licence they want to see the driver's immigration papers). Then the game is up. (Information from a W. African local council employee). One case was even reported of an irregular sending a friend with documents (immigration status & driving licence) to take the driving test in his name.
75. Data from an informant, 4/6/1997 and observation.
76. This was reported, among others by representatives of the Polish community. The employer will be British, the „ganger" may be a fellow countryman.
77. Information from Casa Latino Americano, 17/4/1997.
78. Information inter alia from the Halkevi Centre.
79. Information from case worker with prominent migrant lobby organisation, 3/7/1997.
80. Information from Immigration Law community practice, 26/2/1997.
81. Miller, Mark: "Towards Understanding State Capacity to Prevent Unwanted Migration: Employer Sanctions Enforcement in France, 1975-1990", p.140-167 in West European Politics Vol.17 No.2 (1994). See Mahler on IRCA (Immigration Regulation and Control Act in the USA) and regularisation, p.159-164.
82. One immigration lawyer pointed out that the liaison between the Home Office and departments such as the DSS is often confusing and contradictory on internal controls, leading to arbitrary decisions.
83. Prevention of illegal working, guidance for employers, (HO Immigration and Nationality Directorate) p.2.
85. JCWI representative, 2.4.1997.
86. Employee with campaigning organisation, 22.1.1997.
87. Praxis Latin American-Somali community support organisation, 28.2.1997.
89. The following section is based on the Channel 4 documentary Bitter Harvest and an interview with and view of a publication by the researcher Jennifer Francis of the Open University. Following the showing of the documentary in March 1997 investigations into the employment of the unauthorised in the agricultural industry were begun by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF).
90. Interviewee K, 28.4.1997. Background interview with leading member of community political support group, 24.4.1997.
91. Interviewee M, 12/6/1997, subsequently 3/7/1997.
92. Anne Owers, The Age of Internal Controls in Strangers and Citizens (ed.Spencer), London 1994, p.269.
93. See International Pact on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Article 12 (19/12/1966); Agreement on the Rights of the Child, Article 24 (20/11/1989); Declaration of Basic Rights and Liberties of the European Parliament, Article 15 (12/4/1989).
94. See discussion in the United States (Article 149 in California) on removing the right to health care for the undocumented. Cf. the Netherlands where the right to basic provision is not, as yet, contested.
96. See study "Refugees, torture and the health services - a study of GPs in the London Borough of Newham (Newham Refugee Centre with University of East London, July 1996).
97. Interview with representative of Chilean support group, 6/5/1997.
98. Interview with representative of West African community, 24/4/1997; confirmed by Interviewee K, 28/4/1997.
99. Carila, 23/5/1997.Cf. Mahler, Making money off the margins, p. 138-158.
100. Interview with representative of West African community, 24/4/1997.
101. Cf. East London University study mentioned in note 4 "Refugees, torture and the health services - a study of GPs in the London Borough of Newham."
102. Interview with representative of Halkevi Centre, 4/3/1997.
103. "Just existence report on the effects of withdrawal of benefits from asylum seekers" (Refugee Council 1997)
104. Breaking the Silence. Human Rights Violations based on Sexual Orientation, p.50-53. AI London 1997. See liberalisation of immigration law for gay couples under Jack Straw in November 1997.
105. Interviewee C, representatives, 4/2/1997, 27/2/1997.
106. Interviewee K, 28/4/1997.
107. Interviewee M, 12/6/1997, 3/7/1997.
108. This document will enable them to remain in the UK for six months while looking for a place on a course.
109. For more detail on this see JCWI Immigration, Nationality and Refugee Law Handbook 1997, p.159-179.
110. See appendix for table on change of immigration status. (JCWI, p.237)
111. Interview with a Welfare officer at a London university on 26/2/1998.
113. On the ramifications of this and the extent to which this is an intended mechanism within communities see ethnic networks.
114. Interviews with representatives of the Halkevi Centre and the Kurdish Workers Association. But note the importance of community educational, care and welfare and skills improvement programmes. The Kurds have developed an effective self-help network in London the space of ten years.
115. As elaborated in interviews with representatives from Latin American support organisations Praxis and Carila.
116. Background interviews with Carila, Chile Democratic Association and Casa Latina Americana.
117. It tends to be forgotten in the industrialised world of atomised relations that in many African and Asian societies bonds of kinship with one's cousins, nephews or nieces can be obligatory and transnational for economically-active male members of the family. Thus it will not be unusual for undocumented migrants to bear responsibility for paying for the education of minors within the extended family. Remittances from abroad are vitally necessary.
118. Information from British Refugee Council and immigration lawyer PM.
119. Information provided by Interviewee I representative, 3/4/1997.
120. Marco, a Peruvian academic and union organiser working as a blue collar undocumented migrant in New York, quoted in Mahler, p.105.
121. Background interview with representative of migrant lobby organisation, 3/7/1997.
122. Interviewee N, 30/6/1997.
123. Cf. Campaigns supported by Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit; also cases featured in Channel 4 documentary A house divided 12/9/1995: three women from Asian sub-continent fighting deportation.
124. See the breadth of criticism of the proposed legislation presented in The Glidewell report on the Asylum & Immigration Act 1996 (London 1996)
125. An interviewee in detention in Harmondsworth drew attention to another aspect of the religious community and social contact. He had been an overstayer from Algeria who came after „things exploded" in his home country. He had got his social contacts by going to the London Central Mosque in Regent's Park: talking to people in the cafe there was good, because religion was a good way to see who you could trust - better than pubs and casual contacts.<
126. Interviewee M, 12/6/1997, subsequently 3/7/1997.
127. Background interview with AW, 27/2/1997 and with member of Sri Lankan community , 3/7/1997.
128. Confirmed in interviews with community organisations Carila, Casa Latino Americano Praxis, Halkevi Centre. Cf. Mahler, p. 83-104.
129. Revealed by informant with knowledge of African communities. Cf. television documentary Despatches, November 1996 (Channel 4), in which an investigative reporter successfully applied for the birth certificate of a deceased person.
130. Interview with representative of Ethiopian community, 1/3/1997.
131. See Green, Jonathon: Them - Voices from the Immigrant Community in Contemporary Britain, London 1990) for first-hand testimony; also "Sun a-shine, Rain a-fall" London Transport's West Indian workforce (London Transport Museum oral history project 1994).
132. cf. Caryl Philips: The Middle Passage (London 1985) for powerful literary evocation of migration form the Caribbean to the UK in the 1950s.
133. Choenni, August: Veelsortig assortiment. Allochton ondernemerschap in Amsterdam als incorporatietraject 1965-1995. Dissertation University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1997 (with English summary).
134. See Sigrid Baringhorst's sensitive study of economic and social problems faced by small and medium sized enterprises run by migrants of south Asian origin in Bradford, Fremde in der Stadt, multikulturelle Minderheitenpolitik, dargestellt am Beispiel der nordenglischen Stadt Bradford (Baden 1991).
135. See for example biographical background of some of the 300 undocumented migrants on board the freighter the Yiohan. from South Asia who allegedly were drowned in the Mediterranean on Christmas Day 1996. The Observer, 12/1/1997. See The Observer, 5/1/1997 for background feature on home village community of some of the deceased and the ethnic networks connecting them with the UK as the target of migration.
136. Kurdish Workers' Association, 10/3/1997; Halkevi Centre interviewee, 4/3/1997. This form of ethnic minority dependency relationship in the textile trade may be compared to that of the Chinese community on the Lower East Side of New York where the textile sweatshops have moved from Hispanic to Taiwanese Chinese hands since the mid-1980s. It is extremely difficult for outsiders (including trade unionists) to get any information on pay and conditions.
137. Polish community interviewee, 30/5/1997.
138. Representatives of a Latin American support group, 17/4/1997.
139. Staring, Richard: Scenes from a fake marriage: Notes on the flip side of embeddedness (paper for international conference "New Migration in Europe: Social Constructions and Social Realities" in Utrecht, April 1996).
140. Interview with AW, 27/2/1997.
141. Representative for Interviewee C, 27/2/1997.
142. Cf. position adopted by the chairman of a regional Racial Equality Council, himself a member of the Sikh community, that the greatest current problem in immigration is the "waves of economic migrants swamping the UK" and worsening the position for those already settled in the country (June 1997).
143. Representative for Interviewee C, 27/2/1997 (2)
144. Interview with representative of Tamil Housing Association, 19/2/1997.
145. One expert interviewee described a similar difference in attitude between the generations within the Burmese community. The established Burmese community in the UK is on far better terms with the Burmese Embassy and is at pains to distance itself form political dissidents entering asylum procedures.
146. Although protest and parliamentary lobbying by community groups has led to a slight softening of the Home Office line inasmuch as detention and deportation policy have been relaxed toward Tamils (information from Tamil representative on 5/3/1997).
147. General analysis provided by representative of Tamil Refugees Action Group, 5/3/1997.
148. Interviewee K, 28/4/1997. Background interview with leading member of community political support group underlined this attitude, 24/4/1997.
149. Confirmed by certain community organisations.
150. Interview with representative of Algerian community 29/4/1997.
151. Home Office statistics 1995 of 935 decisions on applicants from Zaire 905 were refusals. (CM 2637 Table 4.3 "Decisions on applications received for asylum in the United Kingdom.")
152. Interview with Baptist minister 24/1/1997.
154. "Prisoners without a Voice - Asylum seekers detained in the UK" (Amnesty International, 1995); "Cell Culture -the Detention and Imprisonment of Asylum Seekers in the United Kingdom" (Amnesty International, Dec. 1996)
155. "A Second Exile - the Mental Health Implications of Detention of Asylum-Seekers in the UK" (C.K. Pourgourides, N. Birmingham Mental Health Trust, 1996), p.41.
156. from Linda Grant, "Are we Related?" in Granta 60, Winter1997 p.54, on her Jewish family which had emigrated from Poland to the UK at the turn of the century.
157. See Anne Owens compelling argument on the impracticality and ultimate pointlessness of introducing more systematic universal registration and internal controls (as opposed to more systematic ID for asylum seekers from the beginning of procedures), The Age of internal Controls in S. Spencer, "Strangers and Citizens" (London 1994), p.264-291.
158. Telephone conversation with Home Office statistician May 1997; interview with representatives of Latin American support group, 17/4/1997.
159. On the background to migrant "commuting" in Germany see N. Cyrus, Den Einwanderungskontrollen entgangen. In "Von Grenzen und Ausgrenzung: interdisziplinäre Beiträge zu den Themen Migration, Minderheiten und Fremdenfeindlichkeit" (Hrsg. C. Leppe/B. Danckwortt, Marburg 1997), S.35-56.
160. This does not apply with the same stringency to the East European countries with Association Agreements with the EU. Overstayers or other undocumented groups from these states are more easily able to return to their home countries. Their problem - as indicated in the chapter on employment - is getting in to the UK.
161. The special problems faced by irregular migrants with low skills were particularly emphasised by representatives of Latin American support and advocacy organisations.
162. Mentioned in particular by representatives of Latin American support organisations. See section on health care.
163. Legal specialist with a national advocacy organisation.
164. From ARC/Justice report "Providing Protection"(London 1997), p.52-53.
165. Kaye, Ronald: "British Refugee Policy & 1992, breakdown of a policy community" in Journal of Refugee Studies (JRS) Vol.5 No 1 (1992) p.47-67.
166. Lobbyist with a national political campaign organisation.
167. Atia Adrees was finally granted leave to remain shortly before the May 1997 election. See the film "A House divided" Ch.4 12.9.1995 and report in the Observer 25.1.1998.
168. See - C.K. Pourgourides, "A Second Exile - the mental health implications of detention of asylum-seekers in the UK" (N. Birmingham Mental Health Trust, 1996); also Amnesty International study "Cell Culture" (London 1996).