Briefing Papers

These are an occa­sional series of brief­ings aimed at pro­vid­ing the reader with a crit­i­cal intro­duc­tion to the sub­ject mat­ter. Draw­ing on PAFRAS’s exten­sive work with refused and des­ti­tute asy­lum seek­ers at our twice weekly drop-in these papers offer an insight into a cor­ner of soci­ety that exists beyond the reach of main­stream provision.

PAFRAS brief­ing papers pro­vide con­cise analy­ses of key poli­cies and con­cerns about those indi­vid­u­als ren­dered des­ti­tute by the asy­lum process. In doing so, the human impacts of des­ti­tu­tion poli­cies are emphasised.

Avail­able Now!

Brief­ing Paper 14: Where Now for Jus­tice? Legal Aid in West Yorkshire

Jan­u­ary 2011, Lau­rie Ray

Novem­ber 15 marked the begin­ning of a new three-year Stan­dard Civil Con­tract for Legal Aid pro­vi­sion in Eng­land and Wales. The ten­der process for this con­tract, which closed on 28 Jan­u­ary 2010, was plagued by con­tro­versy around the Legal Ser­vices Commission’s declared inten­tion of greatly reduc­ing the num­ber of providers deliv­er­ing legal aid work and by crit­i­cal flaws in the selec­tion cri­te­ria used. This lat­ter con­tro­versy recently cul­mi­nated in a High Court vic­tory for the Law Soci­ety, when the court ruled the family-law ten­der­ing process had been unlaw­ful, can­celled its result and ordered the LSC pay them £300,000 in costs.

On Novem­ber 8, a sim­i­lar case brought by South Man­ches­ter Law Cen­tre won the right to pro­ceed with a Judi­cial Review against the ten­der­ing process for asy­lum and immi­gra­tion. The Judi­cial Review will be heard in Jan­u­ary 2011.

Where Now For Jus­tice, PAFRAS’s four­teenth brief­ing paper, takes a crit­i­cal look at legal aid pro­vi­sion in West York­shire and more widely and explores the impli­ca­tions of the new con­tract for access to justice.

Brief­ing Paper 13: Beyond the Edges of Health­care Pro­vi­sion: the Impact of Des­ti­tu­tion on the Health of Refused Asy­lum Seekers

Sep­tem­ber 2010, Lau­rie Ray

In July 2009 PAFRAS pub­lished a brief­ing paper focus­ing on the pro­vi­sion of health­care to refused asy­lum seek­ers and analysing devel­op­ments in gov­ern­ment pol­icy on health­care pro­vi­sion to them. Writ­ten in the wake of an appeal court rul­ing that with­drew free sec­ondary health­care pro­vi­sion from refused asy­lum seek­ers, ‘Beyond the Edges of Health­care Pro­vi­sion’ also looked at access to pri­mary (GP and den­tal) care pro­vi­sion; the­o­ret­i­cally unaf­fected by the rul­ing. This new brief­ing paper, writ­ten one year later, brings us up-to-date with devel­op­ments in the pol­icy arena and reflects on the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of pol­icy for the lives of the peo­ple with whom PAFRAS works.

Brief­ing Paper 12: Forced Inac­tiv­ity and Bar­ri­ers to Participation

Sep­tem­ber 2009, Jon Bur­nett & Fidelis Chebe

Forced Inac­tiv­ity and Bar­ri­ers to Par­tic­i­pa­tion among Refused Asy­lum Seek­ers focuses on the ‘deskilling’ of refused asy­lum seek­ers. Whilst the asy­lum process works to ensure that all of those who are forced to seek sanc­tu­ary are denied par­tic­u­lar oppor­tu­ni­ties, end of process asy­lum pol­icy adds to these bar­ri­ers. By explor­ing this frame­work this brief­ing paper aims to make clear one aspect of asy­lum pol­icy, as it effects those whose claims for asy­lum are rejected.

Brief­ing Paper 11: Beyond the Edges of Health­care Provision

July 2009, Jon Burnett

PAFRAS Brief­ing Paper 11 focuses on the pro­vi­sion of med­ical assis­tance avail­able for refused asy­lum seek­ers. The level of med­ical care that refused asy­lum seek­ers are able to access has, for some years, been a source of con­tention. The present gov­ern­ment has made clear that, where pos­si­ble, access to med­ical sup­port will be denied and the result has been ongo­ing; appear­ing before the courts on numer­ous occa­sions. At the same time, issues around access to med­ical sup­port have caused debate, and in many cases protest, within the med­ical pro­fes­sion itself with many indi­vid­u­als call­ing for improved health­care services.

Brief­ing Paper 10: The Polit­i­cal Econ­omy of Malnutrition

April 2009, Jon Burnett

The UK is one of the rich­est nations in the world. Yet accord­ing to a report pub­lished by the British Asso­ci­a­tion for Par­enteral and Enter­nal Nutri­tion (BAPEN), in Feb­ru­ary 2009, more than 3 mil­lion peo­ple either suf­fer from or are at risk of mal­nu­tri­tion. The rea­sons for this reflect a mix of fac­tors includ­ing, BAPEN states, poverty and social iso­la­tion and this influ­en­tial study rec­om­mends the need for a strat­egy to be estab­lished tar­get­ing mal­nu­tri­tion within the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion. for those who are refused asy­lum there is a unique and spe­cific bar­rier in that their mal­nu­tri­tion is a direct result of gov­ern­ment pol­icy. This brief­ing explores the polit­i­cal econ­omy dri­ving gov­ern­ment pol­icy and exposes some of the bru­tal real­ity of enforced destitution.

Brief­ing Paper 9: What is Destitution?

Feb­ru­ary 2009, Jon Burnett

It is esti­mated that there are up to 280,000 asy­lum seek­ers in Britain who have been forced into home­less­ness by the asy­lum sys­tem. In this paper Jon Bur­nett looks at des­ti­tu­tion as a core com­po­nent of an asy­lum pol­icy aimed at deter­ring those seek­ing sanc­tu­ary from com­ing to the UK and forc­ing those already here to leave and the impact of this pol­icy amongst PAFRAS ser­vice users.

Brief­ing Paper 8: No Direc­tion Home?

Jan­u­ary 2009, Jon Burnett

No Direc­tion Home? The Pol­i­tics of Return for Refused Asy­lum Seek­ers focuses on routes of return for asy­lum seek­ers whose claims have been refused. Since com­ing into power the New Labour gov­ern­ment have placed con­sid­er­able empha­sis on return­ing refused asy­lum seek­ers – forcibly or oth­er­wise. Ensur­ing that the num­ber of removals of refused asy­lum seek­ers is greater than what are classed as ‘unfounded’ asy­lum appli­ca­tions is described as ‘per­for­mance improve­ment’. These removal poli­cies have been imple­mented, fre­quently, in the face of warn­ings from NGOs, lawyers, inde­pen­dent experts and even the UNHCR that depor­ta­tions may well lead to tor­ture and severe injury.

Brief­ing Paper 7: Wage Exploita­tion and Undoc­u­mented Labour

Octo­ber 2008, Jon Burnett

The right to work for asy­lum seek­ers, granted in 1986, was abol­ished in 2002, since which point sig­nif­i­cant resources and efforts have been chan­nelled into pre­vent­ing those who are seek­ing asy­lum from enter­ing the labour mar­ket. This brief­ing paper looks at the pol­icy and it imple­men­ta­tion as well as bring­ing to light expe­ri­ences of asy­lum seek­ers, forced to join the black mar­ket in labour for their survival.

Brief­ing Paper 6: Racism, Des­ti­tu­tion & Asylum

June 2008, Jon Burnett

The sixth of PAFRAS brief­ing focuses on des­ti­tu­tion and racist vic­tim­i­sa­tion. In the 1998/99 year the Home Office began to record racially and reli­giously moti­vated harass­ment, wound­ing and assault. The total num­ber of recorded inci­dences was 17,720. In 2006/7, the last year from when sta­tis­tics were avail­able, this had increased to 38,454. Sta­tis­tics for offences against those seek­ing asy­lum are not recorded sep­a­rately, but inde­pen­dent stud­ies indi­cate that asy­lum seek­ers are par­tic­u­larly vul­ner­a­ble to racism violence.

Brief­ing Paper 5: Men­tal Health, Des­ti­tu­tion & Asylum

March 2008, Jon Burnett

Accord­ing to Dr Angela Bur­nett of the Med­ical Foun­da­tion for the Vic­tims of Tor­ture, between 5% and 30% of all Asy­lum Seek­ers are reck­oned to have been vic­tims of tor­ture in their native coun­tries. Dis­tress, anx­i­ety, depres­sion and other men­tal health prob­lems are per­haps nat­ural reac­tions to the extreme cir­cum­stances from which they have fled and the dis­lo­ca­tion of arriv­ing in an alien coun­try. These trau­mas can also impact neg­a­tively on an individual’s mem­ory and their abil­ity to effec­tive present their case for asy­lum and sub­stan­ti­ate their claim.

Fur­ther­more how­ever, it is a widely acknowl­edged fact that the asy­lum process can have a neg­a­tive impact on the men­tal health of indi­vid­u­als sub­ject to it. This brief­ing paper looks at the links between des­ti­tu­tion and men­tal health prob­lems amongst refused asy­lum seekers.

Brief­ing Paper 4: Dawn Raids

March 2008, Jon Burnett

PAFRAS’s fourth brief­ing paper casts a crit­i­cal eye over the much crit­i­cised use of dawn raids in the deten­tion of asy­lum seek­ers, includ­ing asy­lum seek­ing fam­i­lies. This is a prac­tice still very much at the heart of the UKBA’s strat­egy for intim­i­dat­ing its vic­tims and one that was recently crit­i­cised by the Inde­pen­dent Chief Inspec­tor of the UKBA (see “Immi­gra­tion inspec­tor crit­i­cises dawn raids on fam­i­lies fac­ing depor­ta­tion” in The Guardian 27 July 2010).

Brief­ing Paper 3: No Access to Justice

Jan­u­ary 2008, Jon Burnett

No Access to Jus­tice: Legal Aid and Des­ti­tute Asy­lum Seek­ers inves­ti­gates New Labour’s reforms of the Legal Aid sys­tem and their dra­matic impact on refused asy­lum seeker’s access to justice.

Brief­ing Paper 2: Detain­ing the Destitute

Novem­ber 2002, Jon Burnett

Des­ti­tu­tion and deten­tion are explic­itly linked by pol­icy, which crim­i­nalises asy­lum seek­ers whose claims are rejected. All asy­lum seek­ers are liable to be detained at any point. For the des­ti­tute, deten­tion is utilised in a num­ber of ways to coerce removal.

Brief­ing Paper 1: Sec­tion 4 Support

Jon Bur­nett, August 2008