Abstract
This article considers the impact of COVID-19 on international protection applicants in the Irish asylum system. It presents a critical reflection on the failings of direct provision and how the experience of COVID-19 has further heightened the issues at stake for asylum seekers and refugees living in Ireland. In Ireland, international protection applicants are detained in a system of institutionalized living called direct provision where they must remain until they receive status. Direct provision centres offer substandard accommodation and are often overcrowded. During the pandemic, many asylum seekers could not effectively socially isolate, so many centres experienced COVID-19 outbreaks. This article examines these experiences and joins a community of scholars calling for the urgent end to the system of direct provision.
Highlights
In the midst of Ireland’s first lockdown (March 2020), a group of asylum seekers living in an over-crowded direct provision centre in one of the more rural parts of Ireland experienced an outbreak of COVID-19
Life in direct provision has been further complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic
Individuals and families have found the following of public health guidelines next to impossible in the overcrowded, substandard living conditions imposed by the Irish asylum system
Summary
Rebordering practices are visible everywhere, with a failure of cross-border approaches apparent through a number of regions in the EU (Rumford 2006; Fanning 2019; Chetail 2020; Ní Ghráinne 2020) and some countries, such as Australia and New Zealand, closing their borders (a response many say is effective with respect to managing the virus) This is an intersection of medical and political borders (Ticktin 2020a, 2020b) which, while touted as being the best way to protect a country from the spread of the pandemic, has contributed to increased securitization and restriction of movement (and a foregrounding of citizenship). Therein, it is clear that there is no place for an asylum system resembling direct provision
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