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At the extremes of exclusion: Deportation, detention and dispersal Alice Bloch; Liza Schuster
Online Publication Date: 01 May 2005
To cite this Article Bloch, Alice and Schuster, Liza(2005)'At the extremes of exclusion: Deportation, detention and dispersal',Ethnic and
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At the extremes of exclusion: Deportation, detention and dispersal
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Alice Bloch and Liza Schuster
Abstract Deportation, detention and dispersal have formed an occasional part of Britain’s migration regime throughout the twentieth century, though they tended to be used in response to particular events or ‘‘crises’’. By the end of the twentieth century, however, deportation, detention and, most recently, dispersal have become ‘‘normalized’’, ‘‘essential’’ instruments in the ongoing attempt to control or manage immigration to Britain. This article outlines the use of detention, deportation and dispersal in the twentieth century exploring how they have evolved and then become an integral part of the migration regime into the twenty-first century. Where appropriate, British practices are compared with those of its European neighbours, where to differing degrees, deportation, detention and dispersal have also become everyday practices. In examining these practices in Britain, we consider the rationale and stated aims of their employment, as well as describing some of the consequences, where known, of detention, deportation and dispersal.
Keywords: Deportation; detention; dispersal; refugees; asylum-seekers.
Deportation, detention and dispersal have formed an occasional part of Britain’s migration regime throughout the twentieth century, though they tended to be used in response to particular events or ‘crises’ such as wartime concerns over alien ‘spies’ or the arrival of a significant number of refugees fleeing conflict or political upheavals, such as the Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s. By the end of the twentieth century, however, deportation, detention and, most recently, dispersal have become ‘normalized’, ‘essential’ instruments in the ongoing attempt to control or manage immigration to Britain. The global upheavals that began in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, the collapse of the Soviet Union and, crucially for Europe, the outbreak of war in
# 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd ISSN 0141-9870 print/1466-4356 online DOI: 10.1080/0141987042000337858
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Yugoslavia caused and facilitated the movement of many people who had previously been unable to travel. The numbers of asylum-seekers fleeing north and west against a background of collapsing certainties contributed to a sense of crisis. In the intervening years, this has been translated into a crisis of control of borders, welfare states, national identities and societies and of security in the wake of 11 September bombing. Since government had made control an essential task of the state, the increasing difficulty facing states wanting to prevent or channel the mobility of strangers across their borders was presented as a danger to society and to the state itself. In 1992, in order to push through the Bundestag limitations on the constitutional right to asylum, the German Chancellor Helmut Kohl threatened to declare a state of emergency. Although the German situation was exceptional in terms of numbers and the domestic political context of reunification, other European states also reacted strongly. In seeking to assert control over borders, whose openness had only recently been celebrated, governments put in place a regime that once would only have been possible in wartime, but which today is considered ‘normal’, part of the everyday experience of hundreds of thousands of people across Europe. Although the numbers of asylum-seekers entering Europe fell sharply after 1992, rising during the Kosovo conflict, but falling again during the last three years (Figure 1), and although the numbers have never reached the levels of the early 1990s, the measures introduced are not eased, but are added to indicating that the ‘crisis’ itself has little to do with numbers. As Agamben suggests the crisis situation, or ‘state of exception . . . thus ceases to be referred to as an external and provisional state of factual danger and comes to be confused with juridical rule itself’ (Agamben, cited in Noll 2003).1 This article traces the use of deportation, detention and dispersal historically and in the current context demonstrates the way in which
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Figure 1. Total number of asylum applications received in EU 1992 /2003 800000 700000 600000 500000 400000 300000 200000 100000 0 92
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Source: Adapted from Home Office Statistical Bulletins
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these measures have become an integral part of the migration regime in the course of a decade. While deportation is an explicit form of exclusion from the territory of the state, detention is both ‘enclosure’ within a camp or prison, and exclusion from the receiving society. Dispersal, perhaps counter-intuitively, is also a form of exclusion, one that at the moment applies only to asylum-seekers, though in the past there have been attempts to disperse non-white people away from particular areas (Grosvenor 1997). Dispersal takes away asylumseekers’ freedom to choose where they settle in Britain and so doing it removes them from kinship and other social networks as well as community organizations that are known to be crucial in the early stages of settlement (Carey Wood et al. 1995; Bloch 2002; Robinson et al. 2003). As a result, it can leave asylum-seekers marginalized and socially excluded. Though the focus is largely on British practices, they are compared with those of its European neighbours, where to differing degrees, deportation, detention and dispersal have also become everyday migration practices. Deportation: Physical exclusion from the territory of the state Mass deportations from one country to another have been relatively rare in Europe, and historically the targets have frequently been Jewish people. For example, following pogroms in Russia and what is now Moldova at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, East European Jews began arriving in Britain in greater numbers. Forced by poverty to live in squalid conditions, in particular in the east end of London, they became the targets of hostility from various quarters. Edward Troup, the then permanent under-secretary of state at the Home Office asserted that eastern Europeans ‘lowered the wages in some of the unorganised trades to starvation point and their habits had a demoralising effect in the crowded areas in which they settled (Troup 1925 cited in Cohen 1994, p. 42). Jews were portrayed as a social, economic and political threat. Holmes notes that responses to this group were ‘closely related to specific tensions located in the economic, social and political context in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’ (1988, p. 66). A consequence of the hostility directed at Jewish migrants was the increasingly loud calls for restrictions on their entry and settlement and for their deportation, though this did not, in fact, occur. Under the 1905 Aliens Act, immigration officers were given the power to exclude ‘undesirables’ (steerage passengers who were previous deportees, fugitive offenders, and the mentally ill or destitute (Cohen 1994)), though those ‘fleeing religious persecution’ were to be allowed to land. The Act was significant because it provided a mechanism for control for the first time since the reign of Elizabeth 1 (Schuster and
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Solomos 1999). Nonetheless, these controls were not particularly stringent and few were deported or denied entry following its entry into force (Schuster 2003). During the early part of the twentieth century the Home Office was also involved in the occasional enforced repatriation and expulsion of indigent sailors from Africa and Asia (Panayi 1994) and of other minorities deemed to be undesirable, most notably German gypsies (Holmes 1991; Cohen 1994). The 1914 Aliens Restriction Act was passed in one day amid the anti-alien hysteria generated by World War I (WWI) (Schuster and Solomos 1999) and was much more effective than the 1905 Act. It suspended the exemption for religious persecutees, and placed controls over the registration, movement and deportation of all aliens, though the main target was enemy aliens, i.e. Germans (Cohen 1994). Importantly, then as now, the Home Secretary and immigration officers were given considerable power to control entry, employment and deportation (Holmes 1991). Between 1914 and 1919, 28,744 aliens were repatriated (some voluntarily others not) of which 23,571 were Germans (Holmes 1988). At the end of the war, the enemy alien presence was still a key political issue and their removal became an election pledge by Lloyd George in 1918. By April 1919, 19,000 more Germans had been repatriated along with eighty Russians who were expelled for sympathizing with the Bolsheviks (Cohen 1994). In 1919 the Aliens Restrictions (Amendment) Act retained much of the wartime control over aliens. The Act was passed as a temporary measure but was renewed every year until 1971. Under the Aliens Order of 1920, immigration officers were given increased power to deal with those who had evaded immigration control while the Home Secretary was given the power to deport anyone who was not thought to be ‘conducive to the public good’ (Solomos 2003). However, although the Home Office retained its powers, deportation was still rarely used, not least because outside of wartime, the state was not able technically to monitor and control the movement of large numbers of foreign residents and resources tended to be concentrated on those who were considered a threat to the state. The next large-scale deportation took place during World War II (WWII). Far fewer were deported during this war although, as with WWI, the use of internment was widespread. During WWII deportation was used mainly to ease the strain caused by the lack of capacity for holding all those who were interned. To this end, the government decided to deport 8,000 Germans, Austrians and Italians to Canada and Australia. However, the bombing and sinking of the Andorra Star in July 1940, a ship carrying German and Italian prisoners of war, resulted in around 700 deaths and shifted public opinion against these restrictive policies. As a result, policies became more liberal
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with a dwindling of deportation and the release of most internees (Panayi 1994). Under the 1948 Act, British subjects, who were those born within the territories of the Crown, had the right to enter, work and settle with their families in Britain. These rights, which protected people from deportation, were eroded by exclusionary measures in the 1960s and 1970s. The state’s powers to deport people were incrementally strengthened by the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, the 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, the 1969 Immigration Appeals Act and the 1971 British Nationality Act. These Acts were passed in response to perceived crises of control the arrival of Asians from East Africa, in particular Kenya and Uganda. They increased the categories of those who could be denied entry to and expelled from Britain to include black and Asian Commonwealth citizens, differentiating for the first time in law the rights of British subjects whose passports were issued in Britain and British subjects whose passports were issued by other Commonwealth countries (Spencer 1997). The 1971 British Nationality Act had effectively changed the status of Commonwealth citizens to aliens by introducing the concept of patriality that only allowed those who were born in the UK or who had close ancestral links to the UK, the right to entry and abode. This meant effectively that black people from certain parts of the Commonwealth South Asia, Africa and the Caribbean could more easily be deported. This period saw the racialization of immigration control by targeting black and Asian immigration (Solomos 2003). Nonetheless, deportations were still the exception rather than the rule due to the difficulties associated with tracking people outside of wartime. Cohen (1994) noted the increased use of removals by the Conservative Thatcher government in 1979 arguing that removals were used to keep the Euro-sceptics and the Powellites happy. The next legislation to have a substantial effect on deportation was the 1988 Immigration Act, introduced by the then Conservative government. The Act gave additional powers with regard to deportation by limiting the scope of appeals for those without UK citizenship and the right to appeal against deportation for asylum-seekers. Under the Act, immigration officers were given the power to make deportation orders and offer the alleged offender a fast track exit. What the Act did, in effect, was to withdraw the right to challenge expulsion before an independent body (Dummett and Nicol 1990). It was followed by a significant increase in deportations at the end of the 1980s, which also coincides with an increase in the number of asylum-seekers arriving in the UK. Figure 2 shows the numbers removed and deported between 1979 and 2002. /
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Figure 2. Persons removed from the UK as a result of enforcement actions, 1979 /2002 16000 14000 12000 10000 8000
4000 2000
96 19 97 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02
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Source: Adapted from Cohen (1994), p. 61, and Home Office Statistical Bulletins (HOSB)2
Deportation: Part of the ‘normal’ asylum regime The increase in deportations from the early 1980s onwards is due, in part, to the reduction in MPs’ powers to intervene to delay deportations, introduced to facilitate the removal of Sri Lankans who had been arriving in larger numbers. From 1992, the number of rejected asylum applicants formed an increasingly significant proportion of those removed. Figure 2 shows that the pattern of all removals correlates with the number of asylum-seekers who are deported. In spite of the increases that can be seen in Figure 2, only a minority of those to whom removal notices are issued are actually deported (Home Office 2002). This can be due to legal safeguards, the ill health of the deportee, an inability to identify the country of origin, lack of cooperation from the country of origin, because of campaigns by the community in which the individual or family has become embedded or because people cannot be traced. Of those that are removed, some are deported to ‘safe third countries’ and others to their country of origin. Deportation can be both expensive to governments and distressing for those who are removed, and sometimes for others who are involved often by chance such as airline passengers. Moreover, the conditions under which people are deported are inhumane and degrading and have led directly to a number of deaths in recent years, including two in France in January 2003 (Fekete 2003). There is no convention that specifies freedom from deportation, but Art. 33 of the 1951 Convention provides that:
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No contracting state shall expel or return (refouler) a refugee . . . to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. Deportation is undertaken against illegal entrants, overstayers and those who have had their asylum claim rejected. EU governments would argue that, in the latter case, deportation only occurs after the courts have satisfied themselves that the life or freedom of the rejected applicant is not in fact in danger. Though the evidence is limited due to the difficulties of maintaining contact with deportees, one organization, Pro Asyl, found that Turkish Kurds had been detained and tortured after being deported from Germany to Turkey (Pro Asyl 2000a, 2000b). Gibney and Hansen have argued that ‘deportation is, from the state’s point of view, both ineffectual and essential (2003, p. 2). They suggest that the ‘noble lie’ (that states can remove from their territory those without any right to remain) is necessary to ‘assuage public opinion, which would not view the state’s incapacity in this area with equanimity’; that deportation acts as a disincentive to other potential migrants; and that it allows the state to apply pressure on people to return ‘voluntarily’ (2003, p. 17). However, in reality it is not possible to measure the effect and the outcomes of deportation in terms either of public opinion or in terms of its role as a deterrent to migrants. Certainly, this seems to be the logic at work behind the British government’s highly visible deportation of twenty-one people to Afghanistan in April 2003. The government does not usually publicly announce such deportations, and such a small number will not significantly improve the government’s deportation record instead it would seem that it was intended as a signal to Britons that ‘something is being done’ and to others who might try to come to Britain that they will be deported if they try. /
Detention and internment: Physical exclusion within the territory of the state Detention: The twentieth century Detention differs from imprisonment in that the primary purpose of incarceration is not punishment for a crime committed and it differs from holding someone on remand, in that the detainee is not being held awaiting trial. Detention, or internment, has a history almost as long as that of the state, but is prohibited in international law except in certain carefully prescribed cases, including facilitating the control and removal of aliens (European Convention on Human Rights and
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Fundamental Freedoms, Art. 5). Until the 1990s there were no permanent detention centres in Britain, because detention was an exceptional measure. When implemented for large groups of people, barracks or similar buildings or camps would usually be commandeered, as happened during the two world wars. Otherwise individuals would be detained in prisons or in the case of asylum-seekers mostly from Sri Lanka in 1987, on a ferry the Earl William. Cohen (1994) specifies three categories of detention: detentions from terrorist threat, wartime internments and detentions that arise from the enforcement of immigration act detainees [IAD] who either violated their conditions of entry or entered illegally or are asylumseekers who are detained pending a decision on their case. Detention on suspicion of terrorist activities has a long history in Britain, but has usually only been used against British citizens - most famously against suspected IRA terrorists who were detained in the Maze prison, for example. Although IRA attacks offered a justification for the suspension of Habeus Corpus in the case of British citizens, the practice was still exceptional and used against an ethnic group that had a problematic relationship with Britain. The recent introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (2002) as part of the ‘war on terror’, whereby foreign nationals can be detained indefinitely if suspected of terrorist activities, may also be seen as part of this same process through which the infringement of civil liberties becomes the norm, driven by similar concerns about ‘strangers’, and a sense of vulnerability that has been heightened since 11 September. Nonetheless, we do not consider this further since, however worrying the development, the numbers involved are relatively small and the practice remains highly contentious, rather than part of ‘normality’. Internment was used extensively during WWI and WWII as a way of controlling alien enemies. Initially Troup and others agreed to intern only those aliens regarded as dangerous or likely to become dangerous, but within a month of the outbreak of war in 1914 an order was given to intern all Germans of military age (17 55). Cohen observed that ‘the rate of imprisonment fluctuated according to the fortunes of war, the level of public panic and the amount of available detention space’ (1994, p. 100). The lack of space for internees resulted in the construction of a camp, Knockaloe, on the Isle of Man and the conversion of Olympia and Alexandra Palace into internment camps. A total of 30,000 people were interned at some point during the war (Panayi 1994), but by the end of the war they had been released and the camps were no longer used. During WWII, internment was utilized again. There was a great deal of pressure placed on the government to use internment, including pressure from those known to be sympathetic to the British Union of Fascists in previous years (Holmes 1991). In the early months of the /
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war, 73,000 enemy aliens were assessed by tribunals and categorized from aliens to be interned, to those who were to remain at liberty. At this first assessment, less than 1 per cent were interned though by the spring of 1940 pubic opinion and the press turned against aliens and by June 1940 it was decided by the Home Defence Committee of the Cabinet to adopt a policy of internment (Panayi 1994). A total of 22,000 Germans and Austrians were interned (Holmes 1988). Once Italy entered the war, the 19,000 Italians in the UK were assessed by M15 and 4,300 were interned while 629 were deported (Cohen 1994). With the sinking of the Arandora Star and the public scrutiny that resulted there was pressure to release prisoners and by April 1941, 17,745 prisoners had been released and by August 1941 only 1,300 people remained interned (Panayi 1994) These two forms of detention of suspected terrorists and enemy aliens are predicated on an immediate and present threat to the security of the state. Detention of these groups has been used as a form of containment until the threat passes, or as a precursor for expulsion. Until the 1990s and outside of wartime, detention was an administrative measure to prevent absconding, to facilitate identification and the issuing of identity documents pursuant to removal. It is on this latter form of detention that we will now focus. The detention of persons subject to migration control in the UK was first codified under the 1920 Aliens Act, and then elaborated further under the 1971 Immigration Act. This Act empowered immigration officers to detain, among others, persons arriving in the UK while a decision is being made whether to grant leave to enter; those refused leave to enter or who are suspected of having been refused leave to enter pending directions for their removal; illegal entrants and those reasonably suspected of being illegal entrants, pending directions to remove and actual removal; and those found to be in breach of conditions attached to their leave to enter (including overstaying). Powers to detain are very wide and there is no automatic or independent scrutiny of the lawfulness, appropriateness or length of detention. Until the 1990s people under the Immigration Act (1971) were held in prisons as there were no purpose built facilities at the time. They were usually over-stayers, frequently brought to the attention of the immigration authorities through denunciations, traffic accidents or crimes (as victims or perpetrators). As we showed earlier, people are also stopped and refused permission to enter, some of whom are then detained awaiting removal. Prior to the 1988 Act, asylum-seekers averaged approximately 4,000 each year and were rarely deported or detained. Those granted the status of refugee tended to come as part of a resettlement programme (see below) or were readily granted /
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asylum if they came from a country to which the government of the day were politically sympathetic.
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Detention: Part of the ‘normal’ asylum regime Since the 1990s, the detention of asylum-seekers and other migrants has increased and is now widespread across Europe. Though conditions vary a great deal, there are some common concerns including the rationale of detention. It has been argued by the British government that detention only occurs at the end of the appeal process and all of those detained are subject to removal and/or are liable to abscond, and therefore detention is not arbitrary (BID 2002). However, the majority of those held in detention centres (or removal centres as they have been renamed in Britain) are eventually released, either because they cannot be removed because of conditions in the country of origin, because travel documents for the persons to be removed cannot be issued, because they are allowed to appeal, because they are released on bail (only in the UK), because they are granted leave to remain on compassionate grounds or because their claim for asylum is eventually allowed. In Britain, France, Germany and Italy some individuals are detained on arrival and some after an initial rejection of their claim and before their appeal has been heard, and not always as claimed at the end of the process. Other common concerns relate to the length of time for which people are detained, access to legal representation, and the welfare and rights of children who are detained. In most European countries there is a limit to the length of time someone can be detained. Italy and France have some of the strictest limits on detention. In Italy, the maximum period for which a person may be detained was recently extended from thirty to sixty days, at the end of which the detainee must be released. In France, however, a foreigner may initially be held for forty-eight hours, and must immediately be informed of his/her rights in a language s/he understands. Once this period has elapsed, the detainee may be held for a further five days, which can be renewed again ‘in cases of absolute urgency or a threat of particular gravity to public order’, or where it is impossible to execute the removal order as a result of the loss or destruction of travel documents, the dissimulation of identity, or resistance to deportation. These decisions can be appealed against, but the appeals are not suspensive. In 1998 a supplementary increase of two days was added, though this has not yet been proofed by the court. Recently, a new law extended the total period to thirty days. At the other end of the spectrum are Germany and Britain. Detention in a closed centre for six months is not unusual in Germany and there are cases where people have been held for up to eighteen
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months. This is the absolute maximum period a person may be held. Dieter Mu¨ller, a chaplain visiting Ko¨pernick detention centre in Berlin noted that those who were held longest were the African detainees, in part because of difficulties in establishing identity.3 Uniquely, however, and contrary to the recommendations of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which visited the UK in 1998, there is no legal limit in Britain to the time a person may be held in detention. According to Home Office data (Heath and Hill 2002) which excludes those detained at Oakington, 23 per cent of people had been in detention for more than four months. Barbed Wire Britain and the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns have documented cases of people who have spent three years in detention. These and other British NGOs working with detainees are concerned, among other things, with detainees accessing adequate legal representation and bail. It is extremely difficult to pursue an application or an appeal without adequate legal representation, but lawyers are frequently reluctant to take on the cases of detainees, because it is difficult to speak to people in some centres where incoming calls are not permitted, and it is difficult to phone out. Visiting detention centres, which are usually difficult to access, is extremely time-consuming, and lawyers and solicitors know that it is virtually impossible for detainees to gather evidence relevant to the case while locked up (BID 2002). In the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act, the British government promised to introduce the right to automatic bail hearings, vital given the length of time individuals may be detained. This provision was, however, never implemented and was withdrawn in the 2002 Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act without any reason or justification being offered. Detainees now have to request a bail hearing and many are unaware of this possibility. Furthermore, as people are now often detained on or shortly after arrival, it is difficult for them to find sureties (BID 2002). The 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act in the UK had stepped up the practice of detention, necessitating a massive increase in the number of places. Since the Act came into force, three new purposebuilt detention centres have opened (at Oakington March 2000, Harmondsworth October 2001 and Yarl’s Wood November 2001), Lindholme RAF base has been redesignated a removal centre, Dungavel prison has become a detention centre and a closed induction centre has opened at Dover. There are also holding centres at Waterloo, Heathrow and Manchester Airport (see http://www. barbedwirebritain.org.uk and http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk). Figure 3 shows that in spite of this expansion in the detention estate 15 per cent of asylum-seekers were held in prison establishments. This is in spite of the then Home Secretary David Blunkett’s, statement to
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Figure 3. Type of establishment where asylum-seeker detainees held, December 2002 5%
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Oakingham Reception Centre Prison Establishments Immigration Service Removal Centres
80%
Source: Adapted from Heath et al. (2003), Table 9
Parliament in 2001 that, ‘asylum-seekers will no longer be held in mainstream prison places; I can confirm that from January next year that practice will cease’ (Hansard, October 29th 2001, col. 629). When all those being detained under Immigration Act powers are included, the total detained in prison establishments increases to one-fifth (Heath et al. 2003) Detention as part of the regular migration regime was introduced by the Conservative government but was expanded and normalized under New Labour. One aspect, however, remains contentious, that is the detention of children for indefinite periods of time. Paragraph 16 of schedule 2 of the Immigration Act 1971 provides for the power to detain people, including families with children, but at that stage it was as part of an immediate process of removal and was specifically for the very short term. There was nothing in the 1999 Act that extended these powers. The first dedicated detention centre for families opened at Oakington in Cambridge in March 2000, without new legislation coming before Parliament. Until October 2001, families were detained as a matter of policy, rather than law and usually for a number of days in Oakington prior to removal. As Beverley Hughes, the then Minister for Immigration and Citizenship explained: . . . in October 2001, it was decided to remove this qualification [limiting the detention of children to days] and to allow the detention of families under the same detention criteria as others. That was done in recognition of the fact that families or the adults in families, anyway can give rise to the same concerns as single adults, in terms of absconding or frustrating removal . . .. The effect of the change in policy was to allow the detention of families in appropriate and selected cases, at times other than just prior to /
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removal or at Oakington. That decision was confirmed in the White Paper in 2002 (Hansard 23 May 2003). There are children at detention centres even though families with children are extremely unlikely to abscond (BID 2002). Opposition to detaining families with children comes from church leaders, NGOs, trade unionists, children’s charities and protection agencies. Anne Owers, Her Majesty’s Inspector of Prisons, in a recent report recommended that children should not be detained for more than seven days (HMIP 2003), but the Minister said in April, that while she was ‘deeply sympathetic’ to concerns about the detention of children, imposing a time limit would be ‘completely impractical’ and ‘would enable people to evade removal by lodging last-minute and timewasting appeals’ (http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk). The government may find that it can only continue to detain children if limits are accepted. However, it is unlikely, now that the practice is in place that it will be abandoned altogether, anymore than the detention of adults. Dispersal: Social and psychological exclusion Dispersal: The twentieth century Dispersal is the most recent strategy for trying to control the entry of forced migrants to Britain. In the past dispersal was used in exceptional circumstances such as when programme refugees, being refugees who arrive in a group and have refugee status or more recently temporary protection on arrival to Britain. However, dispersal also has a history as part of the racialized social policy interventions that occurred in response to the black post-war settlement in Britain. In the post-war period, the spatial concentration of migrant families in major industrial cities and the resultant clustering of black communities in particular localities led to some white parents complaining about ‘black-majority’ schools. Local Education Authorities [LEAs], with the sanction of a Department for Education and Science Circular in 1965 (Circular 7/65) that advised LEAs to restrict the number of immigrant children in any school to 30 per cent instigated a system of removing black children from their local school and bussing them to other schools in the same LEA (Grosvenor 1997). It was argued that bussing black children to predominantly white schools would facilitate assimilation and enhance education. However, as Troyna and Williams note, ‘dispersal was neither a legitimate nor a logical response to perceived educational needs. It was a policy of surrender to racism’ (1986, p. 20), and was ultimately abandoned. The policy of dispersal, in the context of refugees, was concerned with place of settlement and was used as a means of trying to prevent
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the spatial concentration of refugees. The Ugandan Asians and the Vietnamese boat people are the main examples of cohorts of refugees where dispersal was used in the 1970s and 1980s, a period that used dispersal and relied on the voluntary sector for much of the resettlement work of programme refugees (Joly 1996). The Ugandan Resettlement Board [URB] was set up to direct resettlement and tried to disperse these refugees by delineating areas into red ‘no-go’ areas and green ‘go’ areas. The URB tried to discourage refugees from settling in areas that were declared red as the Home Office were keen to discourage the refugees from settling in areas where services were under pressure as it was thought it might aggravate local inter-ethnic tensions (Kushner and Knox 1999). However, dispersal was not compulsory and many of the newly arrived refugees chose to settle in areas where there were already established Asian communities, and secondary migration to the Midlands and London characterized settlement patterns (Kushner and Knox 1999). In fact, the government’s attempts to disperse these refugees resulted in a more concentrated spatial distribution of East African Asians than had occurred naturally among other South Asian groups (Robinson 1986). Between 1975 and 1990, 19,000 Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians came to Britain as programme refugees. Like the Ugandan Asians, the Vietnamese formed part of a resettlement strategy that included dispersal. Groups of between four and ten families were dispersed from reception centres to locations around the country where there was available housing. The resettlement programme concentrated on the early reception and once refugees left the centres there was an assumption that they would access mainstream services (Robinson and Hale 1989). The policy of front end loading resources was not appropriate because it assumed that the Vietnamese would be able to adapt quickly to British life. In fact, the Vietnamese refugees faced difficulties in terms of language learning, employment and social relations with British people due to cultural differences (Jones 1983). According to Kushner and Knox, The policy of dispersing the Vietnamese for long-term settlement was out of touch with both their needs and new notions of cultural pluralism, which favoured ethnic concentration to provide community support and help the refugees’ reorientation (1999, p. 313). The policy of dispersal was not successful for a number of reasons including the isolation experienced by refugees, the lack of employment opportunities in some of the dispersal areas and the inability of local authorities to provide appropriate services for the new arrivals
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(Duke et al. 1999). As with Ugandan Asians, Vietnamese also moved to areas where communities already existed (Robinson and Hale 1989).
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Dispersal: Part of the ‘normal’ asylum regime When spontaneous asylum-seekers arrived in the country of asylum prior to the introduction of dispersal, the majority settled in areas where they had family, friends or where there were pre-existing communities. A survey of 400 forced migrants in England found that the reason mentioned most often for living in a particular area was family (31 per cent). Sixteen per cent lived in their area because of friends and 10 per cent because there was already an established community. This shows the importance of social and community networks in cases where asylum-seekers have a choice. In the same study, 17 per cent were in a particular locality because they were either dispersed or placed there by a local authority (a strategy used after the 1996 Asylum and Immigration Act) (Bloch 2002a). The reason for secondary migration included the lack of kinship, social and community networks in the dispersal areas and the resultant isolation and marginalization of refugees. With the arrival first of refugees from Bosnia at the start of the 1990s and Kosovans at the end of the 1990s the government chose to use dispersal again. Both groups were given Temporary Protection on arrival in the UK. Temporary Protection was a status that was first used in response to the displacement of 500,000 Bosnians to the EU in 1992 1993 at the request of UNHCR and was used as a mechanism for ‘burden-sharing’ and harmonization (Koser and Black 1999). It was also politically expedient as public support could be obtained and maintained by stressing the temporary nature of the status (Bloch 2002). Dispersal, up to this point had been a strategy utilized in response to the arrival of relatively large groups of refugees from a specific situation rather than a policy that was integrated into the asylum system. The dispersal of Ugandans, Vietnamese, Bosnians and Kosovans could be justified because they arrived in large numbers in an emergency situation (Boswell 2001) and so there were clear accommodation needs that could be met through dispersing people to areas where there was housing capacity. However, dispersal was introduced as an integral, rather than exceptional, element of the asylum system by the New Labour government in the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act. Under the legislation, implemented in 2000, eligibility for support with accommodation costs for new asylumseekers arriving in Britain was linked to dispersal. Elsewhere in Europe, most notably Germany, dispersal has been established since 1982 with asylum-seekers allocated to different La¨nder based on a quota system (Boswell 2001). /
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The rationale behind dispersal is that it offers a means of sharing out the burden imposed by asylum-seekers, because left to their own devices asylum-seekers would concentrate together in particular localities, such as major cities or around ports, creating social problems and concentrating costs on a few local authorities (Boswell 2001). The New Labour government sought to relieve the pressure on local councils by shifting the financial costs to a central National Asylum Support System [NASS], by moving people away from areas of high concentration to areas in which there was less demand on housing (Home Office 1998, 8.22). There was also the assumption that dispersal would ease inter-ethnic tensions by avoiding too many asylum-seekers in any one area, a rationale that has been central to dispersal policies throughout the post-war period (Boswell 2001). Under the 1999 Act NASS was set up to co-ordinate dispersal and the new cashless voucher system that was brought in for asylumseekers but then abolished in 2002. Asylum-seekers were dispersed on a no-choice basis to consortia regions around the country regardless of whether they had family, friends or specialist support elsewhere (Mynott 2002). Asylum-seekers who either refused to go or absconded forfeited their right to accommodation. The UK was divided into regional consortia. The idea was to place asylum-seekers in cluster zones in areas where there were already established multi-ethnic communities. Table 1 shows the twelve UK regions where asylumseekers have been placed and the numbers in those regions receiving subsistence support only or NASS supported accommodation. Table 1. Asylum-seekers supported by NASS in regions as at the end of December 2002 (including dependants) Government Office Region
Subsistence only
NASS accommodation
North East North West Yorkshire and Humberside East Midlands West Midlands East of England Greater London South East South West Wales Scotland Northern Ireland
210 925 800 1170 1185 1405 28555 2445 590 180 335 20
6010 10325 10225 4540 10305 535 2605 1180 925 1585 5665 170
Total
37820
54070
Source: Home Office http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/asylumq402.pdf
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What Table 1 demonstrates clearly is large numbers of asylumseekers opted for subsistence only support in order to choose their place of residence and avoid compulsory dispersal. Forty-one per cent of asylum-seekers are receiving only subsistence support of which 76 per cent are based in London. Potentially such an arrangement can place a large burden on family and friends who often provide accommodation for these subsistence only asylum-seekers. This is compounded by the fact that asylum-seekers, since 2002, have not been allowed to apply for permission to work and cannot therefore work legally. Sales (2002) notes that women, especially those with children, are forced to stay in the system as they cannot afford to lose benefits. Within each of the consortia regions, asylum-seekers are meant to be dispersed in clusters and though this happens in some instances it does not routinely happen. Table 1 shows the South West region has fewer supported asylum-seekers than any other region. Where this is broken down into local authority areas, it is evident from Table 2 that numbers are very small in some localities. Moreover, in some dispersal areas there is also an absence of other minority ethnic groups or communities. An analysis of the 1991 Census showed that ethnic minorities made up only 1.4 per cent of the total population of the South West of England (Owen 1996) so clearly clustering is not occurring. More recently, the 2001 Census found that less than 4 per cent of Britain’s non-white population lived in the South West. In reality, therefore, and in line with the German experience, asylum-seekers have found themselves in areas outside urban centres where they lack support services and that are ethnically homogenous, where often they are the only visibly different foreigners and where they become targets for abuse and violence (Institute of Race Relations 1999; Scho¨nwa¨lder 1999; Schuster 2003). Table 2. Asylum-seekers supported by NASS in the South West region as at the end of December 2002 (including dependants), by local authority Local authority
Subsistence only
NASS accommodation
Bournemouth Bristol, City of Exeter Gloucester Plymouth South Gloucestershire Swindon Other
65 230 0 75 20 0 90 110
0 410 65 10 375 55 10 0
Total
590
925
Source: Home Office http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/asylumq402.pdf
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In response to the 1998 White Paper, that had announced the government’s intention to place asylum-seekers in areas where accommodation costs would be low, NGOs and concerned others warned that this would mean dumping asylum-seekers in sink estates. These Cassandras were proved correct and Sighthill in Glasgow, the Landmark in Liverpool, the Caia estate in Wrexham have all seen outbreaks of violence. A number of reports have been published including one from the Audit Commission warning that the conditions in which asylum-seekers are being housed are unsafe, unfit for human habitation in some cases and expose them to attacks (Audit Commission 2000). Past failures in the UK as well as knowledge about the operation of dispersal in Germany (see Boswell 2001, 2003; Schuster 2001) should have provided policy-makers with a greater understanding of the problems associated with such a policy for both asylum-seekers and the local authorities engaged in resettlement work. As with the previous ad hoc attempts at dispersal, attempts to disperse asylumseekers under the 1999 Act had led to some refusals and therefore the loss of help with housing or secondary migration (Audit Commission 2000). What is significant about dispersal today, compared to its usage in the past, is that there are now sanctions attached to noncompliance. Conclusion and evaluation
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efficacy and expense
Deportation, detention and dispersal have always been part of the state’s arsenal of control. However, until recently, they were used occasionally in response to particular crises and would usually be discontinued once the ‘crisis’ had passed, though importantly the enabling legislation would be left in place. Currently there is no war in Europe, the numbers of asylum-seekers are falling across the continent and Britain, France, Germany and Italy all accept that further migration is needed for economic and demographic reasons, so ostensibly there is no asylum ‘crisis’ and it is contentious whether there is an undocumented migration crisis. However, the language of crisis continues to be deployed, and the restrictive measures introduced in response to the putative crisis become ever harsher. We suggest that the reasons lie less with those that move, and far more with the changed conditions in which policy-makers now operate. The global political context has changed enormously in the last fifteen years as a result of the fragmentation and disintegration that followed the end of the Cold War, when everything had seemed fixed. As Habermas argued:
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In the iron grip of systemic constraints, all possibilities seemed to have been exhausted, all alternatives frozen dead, and all the avenues still open to have become meaningless (Habermas 1992, p. 1). Within three years, all this had changed, the borders to the East had opened, one of the Superpowers had disintegrated and, inconceivably, war had broken out in Europe. Inevitably the dramatic changes led to confusion, and the search for certainty led to a retreat into the national. Not only have national identities been called into question, reforged and transformed, but the certainties that the post-war welfare state taught people to take for granted are also under threat. The notion that welfare is not a right but a finite resource to which one must prove entitlement, underpins some of the exclusionary logic which finds expression in the measures we have outlined above. Add to this the declining power of many national states in the face of globalization, and their clear and manifest powerlessness in the face of terrorist attacks, and it becomes easier to see why states seek to demonstrate their control of those who come unsolicited and remain without permission. Deportation, detention and dispersal are demonstrations of the capacity of the state to control the movement of noncitizens, but in promising more than they can deliver, they only exacerbate the sense of crisis, so that these extraordinary measures seem normal and justifiable. However, deportation, detention and dispersal are no longer seen as an adequate response to EU states’ ongoing crisis of control, largely because they are applied only to those who have already arrived in the territory. As a result, some EU states have turned their attention to ways of more effectively preventing spontaneous arrivals whether of asylum-seekers or undocumented migrants. The UK has been a leading proponent of changes to the asylum process that include the introduction of Regional Processing Areas and Transit Processing Centres. Noll notes that these new centres, ‘represent a deterrent for unwanted migration, and a serious challenge to the institution of asylum as we know it’ (2003). The new proposals have been supported, so far, by Denmark, Italy and The Netherlands though others, including Germany and Sweden have been more critical because of the possibility of being in breach of the Geneva Convention. These centres represent at one level a rational extension of the logic of exclusion, seeking to disperse ‘the problem’ away from the territory of the state, to detain asylum-seekers in camps in the region of origin, which would facilitate their speedy deportation to their countries of origin. Deportation, detention and dispersal are employed in spite of the vast expense involved and of their inefficacy in controlling entry. As Gibney and Hansen (2003) have argued, their function is primarily /
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symbolic. However, the symbols are open to different readings by receiving societies. Where this treatment is normalized it signifies that this group represents an extraordinary threat and is to be feared. This fear enables the distancing and alienation that reinforces the legitimacy of the measures used, strengthening the crisis spiral and offering governments’ post hoc justification for further extraordinary measures.
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Acknowledgements Thanks to Gail Lewis and Sarah Neal and the three anonymous referees for their helpful comments. Notes 1. Although we do not agree with all the arguments in Agamben’s essay on camps, his analysis of the shift from a state of exception to one of normality, juridical rule is thoughtprovoking (Agamben 2000) 2. These figures should be treated with caution / they apply only to those removed postentry and not to those refused entry at the port (though such people may be physically present in the territory for many months). Figures for asylum-seekers removed pre-1992 are insignificant and do not show. Furthermore the statistics have been compiled from a series of HOSB and they are revised from year to year. We have always chosen the latest figures available. 3. Personal interview: Schuster (October 2002)
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ALICE BLOCH is Lecturer in Sociology at the City University, London ADDRESS: Department of Sociology, City University, Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0HB. Email:
[email protected] /
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LIZA SCHUSTER is Senior Researcher at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford ADDRESS: Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford, 58 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6QS. Email: Bliza.schuster@ compas.ox.ac.uk /
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