Exploring hospitality, hostility and (un)home in hotel accommodation for asylum seekers in the United Kingdom

Longing for Stillness: The Forced Movement of Asylum Seekers

Due to increasing numbers of asylum seekers and backlogs in processing asylum applications in the UK, the Home Office is increasingly housing asylum seekers long-term in accommodation that was intended to be short-term, including hotels. This study aimed to understand the impact of hotel accommodation on asylum seekers’ mental health. The sequential explanatory mixed methods design involved quantitative data drawn from 147 asylum seekers’ mental health screening questionnaires and qualitative data drawn from interviews with 16 asylum seekers who lived in hotels. The study found that hotels negatively impact asylum seekers’ mental health, with asylum seekers living in hotels experiencing higher levels of housing problems, psychological distress, and depression. Reflexive thematic analysis derived three themes to explain why hotel accommodation negatively impacts mental health: lack of safety, lack of autonomy, and social isolation. Policy recommendations include reducing asylum seekers’ time in hotels, increasing flow through the asylum system, and prioritising vulnerable asylum seekers for community housing. Clinical implications include the importance of assessing the impact of housing on mental health, considering hotel accommodation as a risk factor for self-harm and suicidal ideation, and referring asylum seekers to community groups and religious organisations, as these connections were identified as survival strategies.

Home

Since the tightening of Australian policy for protection visa applicants began in the 1990s, access to health care has been increasingly restricted to asylum seekers on a range of different visa types. This paper summarises those legislative changes and discusses their implications for health policy relating to refugees and asylum seekers in Australia. Of particular concern are asylum seekers on Bridging Visas with no work rights and no access to Medicare. The paper examines several key questions: What is the current state of play, in terms of health screening and medical care policies, for asylum seekers and refugees? Relatedly, how has current policy changed from that of the past? How does Australia compare with other countries in relation to health policy for asylum seekers and refugees? These questions are addressed with the aim of providing a clear description of the current situation concerning Australian health policy on access to medical care for asylum seekers and refugees. Issues concerning lack of access to appropriate health care and related services are raised, ethical and practical issues are explored, and current policy gaps are investigated.

Negotiating integration: Refugees and asylum seekers in Australia and the UK

Suicide Among Refugees--A Mockery of Humanity.

The rise of forced migration worldwide compels birth care systems and professionals to respond to the needs of women giving birth in these vulnerable situations. However, little is known about the perspective of midwifery professionals on providing perinatal care for forcibly displaced women. This study aimed to identify challenges and target areas for improvement of community midwifery care for asylum seekers (AS) and refugees with a residence permit (RRP) in the Netherlands. For this cross-sectional study, data were collected through a survey aimed at community care midwives who currently work or who have worked with AS and RRP. We evaluated challenges identified through an inductive thematic analysis of respondents' responses to open-ended questions. Quantitative data from close-ended questions were analyzed descriptively and included aspects related to the quality and organization of perinatal care for these groups. Respondents generally considered care for AS and RRP to be of lower quality, or at best, equal quality compared to care for the Dutch population, while the workload for midwives caring for these groups was considered higher. The challenges identified were categorized into five main themes, including: 1) interdisciplinary collaboration; 2) communication with clients; 3) continuity of care; 4) psychosocial care; and 5) vulnerabilities among AS and RRP. Findings suggest that there is considerable opportunity for improvement in perinatal care for AS and RRP, while also providing direction for future research and interventions. Several concerns raised, especially the availability of professional interpreters and relocations of AS during pregnancy, require urgent consideration at legislative, policy, and practice levels.

Safeguarding Refugee and Asylum‐seeking Children

This article explores how systemic injustices and social inequalities affect refugee and asylum seeker integration, thriving, and mental health in London. This is pertinent as the United Kingdom currently operates a 'broken' asylum system with unfair policies and a 'tough' immigration rhetoric which makes it extraordinarily difficult for asylum seekers and refugees to achieve community integration, have a good quality of life, be able to thrive, and have good health including mental health. Paradoxically, the United Kingdom Home Office also features an Indicators for Integration Framework to provide practical ways to design more effective strategies, monitor services and evaluated integration interventions. This study employed a qualitative research design including semi-structured interviews with 19 mental health and psychosocial support service providers working in third-sector organizations in London. The study results show that the current asylum system severely undermines efforts to support asylum seekers and refugees with their integration. All participants highlighted that asylum seekers and refugees lacked experienced poor quality of life and faced structural challenges to build meaningful social connections; to have access education, fair employment and good work; to achieve good mental health and wellbeing; and to be able to thrive. To improve community integration, quality of life, thriving, and mental health for asylum seekers and refugees in London and, beyond, the United Kingdom, four recommendations are made on structural and service-levels: (1) reform of the current asylum system by centering human rights; (2) implement and carry out needs assessments among asylum seekers and refugees focussing on key social determinants; (3) ensure asylum seekers and refugees benefit from the NHS Inclusion Health framework; and (4) extend the NHS Patient and Carer Race Equality framework beyond England. To be effective, all four initiatives need to be grounded in a participatory approach that meaningfully involves diverse groups of stakeholders including asylum seekers and refugees.

When one thinks of refugees and asylum seekers in the United Kingdom, one tends to think of London and the South East of England, cities in Scotland such as Edinburgh and Glasgow, and, from time to time, part of Wales, but almost never Northern Ireland. In academic and policy articles, papers and reports about forced migrants in the UK, Northern Ireland is at best referenced in passing and, more often, omitted entirely. While this has been historically rooted in the empirical reality that almost no refugees seek asylum in the region, changing realities mean that this omission is no longer justified. Although the number of refugees in the region remains small when compared with other parts of the UK, the proportional rise in asylum claims in recent years has been dramatic and is thus quickly becoming an important concern in Northern Ireland, which presents interesting challenges not encountered elsewhere in the UK.The sectarian divide in Northern Ireland poses a particularly dramatic challenge to the assumption within integration policy and theory that host communities are socially cohesive entities for which generalisations about values and practices can be broadly applied as standards for refugee and asylum seeker integration. Furthermore, the population of refugees and asylum seekers in Northern Ireland presents a particular challenge to the existing integration literature because their integration is embedded in the context of a divided society, which is actively engaged in a particular form of local, intra-societal integration.This paper explores how an empirical understanding of the situation helps in rethinking assumptions of homogeneity widespread in integration theory. By engaging a modified version of intersectionality as a tool with which to conceive the complex nature of social divisions, the paper places the heterogeneity of host communities as the starting point for explorations of integration. Thus, the particularly divisive sectarianism of Northern Ireland is used to elucidate broader theoretical issues of integration for refugees and asylum seekers.

In recent years, Northern Ireland has seen an increase in the numbers of asylum seekers and refugees. Given its status as a post-conflict region, this is a relatively new phenomenon for the area. Northern Ireland is also the only part of the United Kingdom (UK) without a refugee integration strategy. In 2016, we conducted an extensive study for the racial equality unit of the Office of the First and Deputy First Minister in Stormont on the everyday life experience of asylum seekers and refugees in Northern Ireland with view to understanding how service delivery and notions of integration/inclusion impact. This was a mixed methods study using quantitative survey methods and in-depth semi-structured interviews with service providers, asylum seekers, refugees and new UK citizens. We examined a range of service provision such as education, labour, legal provision, housing and health. This article examines the issue of mental health with respect to asylum seekers and refugees in Northern Ireland. The results delineate how asylum seekers and refugee's mental health is dramatically impacted by the asylum system in Northern Ireland (and hence, the UK) and the dearth thereof, of particular and necessary supports and access issues in the space of health and mental health in Northern Ireland. We describe how post-migration stressors experienced through the UK asylum system further compound mental health issues. The findings provide a focus on the asylum system, housing and employment. Our research found a dearth of mental health supports in Northern Ireland and concluded that the asylum system in the UK (as a form of post-migration stressor) further exacerbates and contributes to poor mental health and well-being for many asylum seekers and refugees.

Defining home has become a complex matter in a mobile world. With many people now able to move fairly freely and having a number of options with respect to where they can reside, the conventional concept of home that links it to one particular place is no longer as useful. Drawing from a qualitative study of 34 traveling professional workers (TPWs) in Da Nang and Hoi An in Vietnam, the article explores how home is perceived among this group of international migrants. TPWs think of themselves as having more than one home. The article also distinguishes between two related notions: "temporary home" and "permanent home." Key factors that can influence the TPWs' perception of home are identified, including physical exposure to the place, social relationships, a sense of belonging, and employment. Overall, the article explores the concept of home—settling and dwelling—among a group of professional workers employed within the tourism and hospitality industry who are pursuing their careers in a place other than their original home. The concept of home has evolved for migrants who are highly mobile and whose profession offers them opportunities to work internationally; in this context, home is a multifaceted phenomenon. Home has to be considered in relation to relocation as well as being tied, even if temporarily, to a specific place.

ABSTRACTContext: According to the World Health Organisation ‘more people are on the move now than ever before with an estimated 1 billion migrants in the world today and 68 million forcibly displaced people'. GPs are on the frontline of healthcare in the UK and have a responsibility to provide free and equitable access for everyone.Aim: The main aim of our work was to assess GP trainees’ current experience, knowledge and attitudes towards caring for refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants.Description: 30 final year GP trainees on the Dorset Vocational Training Scheme (VTS) were asked to participate by completing a questionnaire.Outcomes: The results show that GP trainees lack knowledge regarding migrants health needs, rights to care, including whether there is a duty to disclose an illegal immigrant and what to do if a patient could not provide proof of identification. They lacked experience and confidence in caring for this group of patients, with the biggest perceived challenge being language barriers.Conclusions: Education in primary care needs to respond to meet the challenge of population movement (5), and this project highlighted a need to improve education on migrants’ rights to care, local support groups, as well as common health problems. In response, we have reviewed our curriculum and introduced an education session on refugee health for all our GP trainees in Dorset.

Providing care for migrants and refugees

Escaping war and persecution during the twenty-tens, over two-million displacees made life-risking journeys into Europe. Trauma continued for those who managed to cross borders and reach new havens: grappling with migration systems, searching for decent housing, and striving for social integration. This article presents empirical findings of a multi-modal participatory mapping project conducted with refugees and asylum seekers in Southwest England, and highlights the impact of memory and deep creative mapping on the spatial practice of making-home in forced displacement. The resulting maps embody spaces of recovery; memoryscapes revealing synergies between the constructs of memory and the concept of home in exile. The project asks how a creative participatory method of mapping home through memory reconsolidation can ameliorate the trauma of displacement and aid the re-making of home.