Over the past 500 years, Western migration, colonisation, enslavement, imperialism, violence and wealth extraction have shaped the world we live in. They have created massive inequalities of wealth between countries and left people in many regions exposed to more violence, more poverty and at greater risk from climate change.
This is as much a problem of the present as it is a matter of history. Western governments continue to extract wealth from – and exert violence on – many countries around the world. Their actions are driving increased displacement and refugee migration.
But when the people displaced by current policies or the legacies of old ones try to reach the UK to ask for safety, far too often they are pushed back, detained, deported, and killed. And they are overwhelmingly people of colour. In fact, many are the direct descendants of people who faced the violence of the British Empire in the past.
Our new briefing ‘Asylum in the UK: a front line for racial justice’ reveals that since 2001, seven in 10 people who sought asylum in the UK were from countries that experienced British colonial rule or high levels of British violence and resource extraction.
Racism is a defining feature of British colonial history. This new work argues that it’s also a defining feature of the UK’s refugee protection system. They are two sides of the same coin.
The UK asylum system is racial injustice in action
Racism in the asylum system creates fear, abuse, self-isolation, poverty, and low life prospects for racialised minorities who have sought shelter in the UK.
Calling out this racism isn’t about posturing. It is absolutely critical to protecting refugee lives. Racialised minorities are far more likely to live in terrible homes, be excluded from the jobs market, face abuse from the state and the far right, and be at risk of detention and deportation than those who are not.
Why insist it’s racist, rather than just inadequate, not fit for purpose, or simply bad? The Annie E. Casey Foundation defines structural racism as “the cumulative and compounding effects of an array of factors that systematically privilege white people and disadvantage people of colour”. In other words, policies that generate negative outcomes primarily for racialised minorities are racist. And by this definition, the British asylum system is shot through with structural racism.
We must call it what it is in order to stand a chance at fixing it.
These attacks may not be framed in explicitly racist terms, but they target the same groups
While the origins of the racist asylum system go back decades, policy developments particularly since the end of the Cold War have solidified a protection system in the UK that treats people differently depending on where they come from.
Just look at how the government responded to the Russian invasion of Ukraine compared to the civil war in Sudan.
One group of people fleeing war are rightly provided with a safe route to sanctuary, a warm welcome from the UK Government, access to mainstream benefits, and the right to work.
The other group fleeing war must cross the Sahara, the Mediterranean Sea, Europe, and the English Channel to reach the UK. If they make it, they could be detained and potentially deported to Rwanda. Or they could end up in a hotel or army barracks, banned from work, and told to live on £9 a week. Or they could disappear and try to live as invisibly as possible. But what’s certain is that no warm welcome will be waiting for them.
Look also at how Britain’s leading politicians attempt to delegitimise racialised minorities seeking sanctuary in the UK with colourblind phrases such as ‘economic migrant’, ‘bogus asylum seeker’, or ‘illegal migrant’. These attacks may not be framed in explicitly racist terms, as they would have been in earlier eras. But they target the same groups and seek to have the same effect: exclusion.
Verbal attacks from government ministers comprise just one of the many frontiers on which people seeking asylum face racism. People interviewed for our report say they are also segregated in poor housing that can feel like a prison; denied access to employment or a liveable welfare allowance; and face abuse on the streets or denigration from Home Office officials.
Racial justice and refugee rights advocates must join forces
As with the Windrush Scandal and the Grenfell Tower tragedy, decision makers must be shown that current policies and laws are racial injustice in action. They cause inequality, poverty, and death for racially minoritised people.
This is why we are calling on the next government to launch an independent review of racism in asylum policy and practice at the Home Office and its private contractors.
The hostile environment must also be dismantled. It cannot exist alongside an anti-racist system. We want to see people seeking asylum given the right to work and safe housing in our communities, well out of reach of predatory companies looking to profit off them.
Racism is about whose lives matter. From displacement to deportation, from deprivation to dehumanisation, our asylum system is telling racialised minorities their lives do not matter. This is why asylum is at the frontline of racial justice.
