‘Inappropriate and incongruous’: opposition to asylum centres in the English countryside

Rural Europe and the world: Globalization and rural development (Editorial)

“…Globalization is portrayed as a domineering, homogenizing force imposed from above, that threatens the traditions and distinctiveness of rural regions in Europe and elsewhere. This interpretation has motivated antiglobalization protests from both the xenophobic right and the anti-capitalist left, finding articulation in campaigns against refugees, migrant workers and foreign home-owners perceived as threatening settled rural cultures (see for example Hubbard, 2005), as well as in progressive movements such as José Bové's celebrated revolt against McDonalds in rural France (Williams, 2008). Globalization is hence positioned as something to struggle against, but such is the unevenness of the perceived power balance that the future for rural regions imagined in this narrative is overwhelmingly bleak.…”

Protest Movements in Asylum and Deportation

“…Contrary to political assertions and some academic studies (for instance Hubbard 2004Hubbard , 2005Lubbers et al 2005Lubbers et al , 2006, the share of asylum seekers per capita on the local level is not decisive for triggering protest. Figure 12.1 demonstrates that protest most frequently takes place in municipalities where the proposed rate of asylum seekers in relation to the local population is comparatively low.…”

“…Phil Hubbard (2004Hubbard ( , 2005 examined protest discourses and attitudes of the local population towards asylum seekers and their reception in the English countryside. He traced the justifications of protestors and demonstrated how processes of othering and the construction of whiteness are central to anti-asylum resistance.…”

What (Else) Matters? Policy Contexts, Emotional Geographies

“…For example, first, social and cultural geographers have begun to map ways in which iterations of local, regional and national policy-making -the closure of a coalmine, the renewal of facilities for asylum-seekers, the rationalisation of civic welfare provision, for example -invariably have quotidian, human and emotional costs and consequences, for better or worse (Anderson and Smith, 2001;Hubbard, 2005;Horton and Kraftl, forthcoming). Or, second, social-scientific accounts of activism and protest have increasingly explored the role of emotions in sparking and sustaining politicised dispositions and consciousness (Brown and Pickerill, forthcoming).…”