Keeping a distance in neoliberal times: The politics of friendship in the City of Sanctuary movement

Abstract

AbstractIn 2010, the UK government transferred all contracts for the accommodation and reception of asylum seekers from local authorities to private contractors, followed by large financial cuts to support services. This article explores the consequences of these neoliberal reforms for the languages of asylum used by the City of Sanctuary movement, and how these languages relate to the politics of asylum of the state. Drawing on an analysis of semi‐structured interviews with the founders and volunteers of the movement in Swansea, the article uses Heideggerian and Derridean theories to show how the movement's original language of ‘friendship’ emerged in response to the UK government framing asylum seekers through languages underpinned by ‘foreignness’ and was meant to reduce relational distance. It then shows how neoliberal reforms of asylum housing caused discursive and practical changes within the movement: a moral responsibilisation of volunteers to substitute for support services lost through austerity measures, and a structural professionalisation to be able to do this support work. It was those structural changes, this article argues, which shifted the dominant framing of the relation between volunteers and asylum seekers from friends to case workers. This re‐establishment of relational distance is of conceptual importance as it highlights how friends and foreigners can often be constructed in a very similar manner.