The Permission to be Cruel: Street-Level Bureaucrats and Harms Against People Seeking Asylum

Bhatia, Monish

doi:10.1007/s10612-020-09515-3

Cited by 50 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Although the landmark FGC cases of Fauziya Kassindja in the U.S. and Zainab Esther Fornah in the UK have facilitated scholarship problematising FGC as grounds for asylum (Middelburg and Balta 2016;Oxford 2005;Zeigler and Stewart 2009), little is known about how the risk of FGC is constructed by different parties during the asylum determination process (see Kea and Roberts-Holmes 2013 as an exception). It has been argued that examining immigration control from the 'bottom up' can illuminate how the practices of institutional actors both enact and contribute to state power (Armenta 2017, 83;Bhatia 2020). This article exemplifies how the so-called 'culture of disbelief' manifests in asylum interviews in cases where women have applied asylum to protect their daughters from FGC.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Strategies of denial: women’s experiences of culture of disbelief and discreditation in the treatment of asylum claims on the grounds of female genital cutting (FGC)

Käkelä

2021

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

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Drawing from qualitative research with female asylum seekers in Scotland who had claimed asylum to protect their daughters from female genital cutting (FGC), this article examines the workings of the culture of disbelief during asylum interviews. In this article I illustrate how the treatment of FGC-related asylum claims is informed by the convergence of hostile environment, gender and refugee stereotypes and the dominant representations of FGC. I argue that at the collision of antiimmigration and anti-FGC discourses, asylum seeking women are confronted with conflicting expectations whereby they are simultaneously expected to reinforce the constructions of themselves as victims of 'backward' cultural practices, and to narrate their vulnerability beyond cultural terms in order to meet the criteria for asylum outlined in the Refugee Convention. This paper illuminates the multiple strategies asylum interviewers employ to undermine women's lived experiences of persecution, revealing the contradictions in how interviewers simultaneously question the threat of FGC, women's inability to resist these practices and women's own experiences of being subject to FGC. Through this, I problematise the assumptions that FGC as an 'extreme' form of gender-based violence would offer an exception to refugee women's persistent struggles in being recognised as victims of persecution.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Strategies of denial: women’s experiences of culture of disbelief and discreditation in the treatment of asylum claims on the grounds of female genital cutting (FGC)

Käkelä

2021

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

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“…27 Also, the suicide and self-harm rates in detention (including those on suicide watch) remain significantly high. 28 Internationally, in particular the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the United States (US) have deployed EM as an alternative to detention. however, this is largely due to its perceived cost effectiveness.…”

Section: (Interview With Gracie)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since the focus is on enforcement and controls, the racialised bodies whose suffering is not 'visible' or 'serious enough' often gets ignored by the bureaucrats -who have already been granted the permission to be cruel by the British state. 71 The impact of being placed under constant watch those tagged often felt their privacy and space had been invaded, and their homes and every living moment became subjected to the gaze of surveillance. Ali explained that he served time in prison and was consequently released, and therefore should be treated as a former offender and not a 'criminal for life'.…”

Section: Mmentioning

confidence: 99%

Racial surveillance and the mental health impacts of electronic monitoring on migrants

Bhatia¹

2021

Race & Class

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Since the late 1990s, the government has used outsourced electronic monitoring (also known as tagging) in England and Wales for criminal sentencing and punishment. Under the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants) Act 2004, s36, the use of this technology extended to immigration controls, and individuals deemed as ‘high risk’ of harm, reoffending or absconding can be fitted with an ankle device and subjected to curfew. The tagging of migrants is not authorised by the criminal court and therefore not considered a punitive sanction. It is managed by the immigration system and treated as an administrative matter. Nevertheless, people who are tagged experience it as imprisonment and punishment. Drawing on data from an eighteen-month ethnographic research project, this article examines the impact of electronic monitoring on people seeking asylum, who completed their sentences for immigration offences. It uncovers the psychological effects and mental health impacts of such technologies of control. The article sheds light on how tagging is experienced by racialised minorities, and adds to the literature on migration, surveillance studies, state racism and violence.

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“…Social isolation and trauma are exacerbated as people are sent to live in areas in which they do not know anybody and there aren't appropriate services to meet their needs. Researchers have also documented how forced migrants have been exposed to racist harassment, crime and violence, but are unable to relocate (Bhatia 2020;Cassidy 2020). This situation is not only caused by poor bureaucracy, overburdened and ill-equipped local councils and a broader housing crisis-all important contributing factors (Cassidy 2020;Darling 2016;Georgiou et al 2020)-but should be read as an infrastructure that animates and materialises the government's antipathy towards forced migrants.…”

Section: Contested Housing Infrastructuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cities of Sanctuary in Environments of Hostility: Competing and Contrasting Migration Infrastructures

Mosselson

2021

Antipode

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This paper analyses the tensions, contradictions and overlaps between supportive migration infrastructures and the generalised anti-migrant atmosphere created by the UK government. It utilises infrastructural perspectives to show how the hostile environment has become an everyday reality that forced migrants have to constantly endure and navigate. As an everyday reality, the hostile environment inheres and comes to life in various settings, spaces, infrastructures and affects. Specifically, this paper documents how government buildings, urban landscapes and houses provided to forced migrants are all conduits through which anti-migrant hostility is encountered and reproduced. It also demonstrates how the hostile environment permeates infrastructures designed to provide support to forced migrants, creating divisions between those providing care and those being cared for, thus recreating affective and interpersonal borders. At the same time, the paper shows how anti-migrant infrastructures are contested and repurposed by activists, demonstrating the processual and always in-the-making nature of infrastructures.

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The Permission to be Cruel: Street-Level Bureaucrats and Harms Against People Seeking Asylum

Cited by 50 publications

References 39 publications

Strategies of denial: women’s experiences of culture of disbelief and discreditation in the treatment of asylum claims on the grounds of female genital cutting (FGC)

Strategies of denial: women’s experiences of culture of disbelief and discreditation in the treatment of asylum claims on the grounds of female genital cutting (FGC)

Racial surveillance and the mental health impacts of electronic monitoring on migrants

Cities of Sanctuary in Environments of Hostility: Competing and Contrasting Migration Infrastructures

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