Abstract
ABSTRACT The ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe has drawn attention to the reasons why people risk desperate journeys to seek safety. However, less research has focussed on what happens to those on the move once they have reached their destination country. In recent years the UK government's ‘hostile environment’ policy for asylum seekers has taken precedence over attempts to integrate refugees, creating a system in which destitution, dispersal and detention have all become pervasive features. This paper takes a discursive psychological approach to the analysis of interviews with asylum seekers in Wales, UK. It argues that participants draw on economic repertoires of effortfulness to construct accounts in which belonging is dependent upon being able to contribute to the economic and civic life of the host society. It further highlights how participants construct accounts in which restriction from the asylum system is positioned as the reason for not belonging and that time spent as an asylum seeker is policy-imposed liminality. The findings suggest that allowing asylum seekers to work would be a key step forward in integration policy and contribute to generating a greater sense of belonging.
Highlights
In recent years the Mediterranean ‘refugee crisis’ has drawn attention to the increasing movement of people from countries in the Middle East and Africa, fleeing war and persecution, who have arrived in Europe
This paper takes a discursive psychological approach to the analysis of interviews with asylum seekers in Wales, UK. It argues that participants draw on economic repertoires of effortfulness to construct accounts in which belonging is dependent upon being able to contribute to the economic and civic life of the host society. It further highlights how participants construct accounts in which restriction from the asylum system is positioned as the reason for not belonging and that time spent as an asylum seeker is policy-imposed liminality
This paper offers a novel contribution to the literature on the ways in which belonging is discursively constructed by refugees and asylum seekers in the UK
Summary
In recent years the Mediterranean ‘refugee crisis’ has drawn attention to the increasing movement of people from countries in the Middle East and Africa, fleeing war and persecution, who have arrived in Europe. At the height of the so-called ‘crisis’ in 2015 over 1.2 million applications for asylum were received in EU countries (Eurostat, 2016). The ‘refugee crisis’ has led to an increase in research by academics in this area. Whilst this has principally been concerned with media coverage of the crisis Crawley, Duvell, Jones, McMahon, & Sigona, 2018), some research has focussed on what happens to those on the move once they have arrived in their destination country
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