Chapter3 Bordering and Everyday Peace with the Other

Settled Minoritized Communities and the Windrush Scandal

The term “Windrush generation” has been used to refer to West Indian adults and children who arrived in Britain from the Caribbean between 1948 and 1973, initially through free movement (from 1948) and then from 1963 with increasing restrictions on their rights to move to and settle in the United Kingdom.33 Free movement was facilitated by the Commonwealth of Nations, a global association of member states that had previously comprised much of the British Empire. The term Windrush comes from the name of a passenger ship, the HMT Empire Windrush, which was one of the first to bring a large group of West Indians (more than 1,000) to the UK after the end of the Second World War. After settling in the United Kingdom, many of the Windrush generation and their descendants were subjected to the routine violences that comprise negative peace, from racist hate crimes perpetrated by the majoritized population to structural and institutional racisms that reduced social mobility and embedded socio-economic inequalities that persist today.

After the introduction of the United Kingdom’s everyday bordering regime through the 2014 and 2016 Immigration Acts, some of the Windrush generation found it impossible to prove their status in the United Kingdom and were denied access to employment, health care, housing, and state support, which in turn led to destitution, deportation, or even death in some cases.34 Everyday bordering required UK residents to prove their immigration status in a wide array of everyday encounters and placed the burden of proving that status on these individuals.35 This was particularly problematic in the case of the Windrush generation, for whom the frequent changes in legislation during their settlement period created complexity, furthered by a 2009 decision (enacted in 2010) to destroy landing cards—the only record of the date of arrival of thousands of people from the Caribbean.

The impacts of everyday bordering on the Windrush generation became the focus of a political scandal in 2018, which eventually led to the resignation of the then home secretary, Amber Rudd. However, popular and media engagement with the scandal replicated the idea that the Windrush generation had been incorrectly “caught up” in policies that were targeted at “illegal immigrants” and sought to de-border a group of people who had been incorrectly “bordered.”36 The Windrush generation exemplified violent inequalities being felt by a group who were not the “Other” constructed in popular and political discourses surrounding the “hostile environment” policy. Theresa May’s designation of some people as “illegal migrants” has proved pervasive in UK public and political discourse. May, the home secretary responsible for the hostile environment policy, made a number of claims pertaining to this “group.”

In her speech introducing the first piece of legislation to the House of Commons in October 2013, May stated, “We will do everything we can to make it harder for illegal migrants to establish a settled life in the United Kingdom when they have no right to be here.”37 This established that the “Otherness” of this particular group warranted depriving them of the opportunity for any form of settled life. In particular, she went on to contrast these migrants with those she describes as “legitimate,” elucidating the “arche-violence” that Derrida refers to as being sited in language:38

Finally, the Bill will clamp down on those who live and work in the United Kingdom illegally and take advantage of our public services. That is not fair to the British public, and it is not fair to the legitimate migrants who contribute to our society and economy.39

This legitimacy is defined not only by legal status but also by “contribution” to “our” society and economy. Later in the same speech, the then home secretary extended this logic further to generate a clearer distinction as being one of paying into the public purse. Here, “hard working taxpayers” are defined as having to “compete” with this Other, directly envisaging conflict between these groups:

It is frankly ridiculous that the Government has to operate such a complex system to deal with foreigners who fail to abide by our laws. It is ridiculous that the odds are stacked in favour of illegal migrants. It is unacceptable that hard working taxpayers have to compete with people who have no right to be here.40

The rhetorical elements of this routine violence are evident in the reference not only to foreigners but to the possession of “our laws.” This violence extends to the suggestion that the current system is favourable to those without status in the country at the expense of “taxpayers.” Such an assertion is entirely false. Those forced to take up work without the right to do so are most often at a huge disadvantage, which is not only compounded by existing laws but created by them.41 This sleight-of-hand, which focuses on the individuals systematically excluded and made vulnerable to exploitation as the “Other” and hinders a more just and fair society, must be understood as a key impediment toward a positive peace with the Other. While such foci remain, systemic barriers are obscured and fail to be addressed, and the prospects for positive peace are diminished.

The contributory focus—that is, the lack of paying into shared resources through tax—is common in discourses surrounding migration and was reflected back in the scandal that surrounded the Windrush generation’s treatment;42 in both the words of Donald Biggs, one of the victims, and the media coverage of the scandal:

I daren’t go anywhere or do anything—I didn’t want to be stopped and told I was an illegal immigrant. A solicitor told me: Immigration could knock on your door any time and you could be taken into detention if you don’t get this sorted. It frightened the living daylights out of us. I’d paid taxes here for decades. The more I think about it the more it makes me angry.43

Here, one of the Windrush generation explains how he was afraid of being classified as an “illegal immigrant” but also refers to the contribution he had been making for decades in the form of taxes to demonstrate how he was not the “Other” that the policy sought to exclude and unsettle. In a further report published in February 2020, the journalist responsible for researching and uncovering the scandal refers to the Home Office’s “mistake in wrongly classifying thousands of Commonwealth-born people who came to the United Kingdom as children in the 1950s and 1960s as illegal immigrants.”44 The claim that this is the institution’s error is incorrect and further obscures the violence that the exclusion represents—an exclusion that was known, perhaps not specifically, but in general terms. Member of Parliament Sarah Teather referenced this exclusion while the legislation was being discussed in Parliament:

These are the sort of people I worry will fall foul of the Bill because they struggle to provide their documentation. We know that there are a lot of people who fall through the net when they are first given refugee status and end up destitute. They make up the bulk of the people whom the British Red Cross deals with in terms of food parcels because they cannot prove their entitlement to benefits. A significant number of people have the right to stay but will struggle to be able to prove it.45

The comment by the MP for a London borough demonstrates that there were some people with status who were unable to prove it because they did not have documentation from the Home Office. Prior to the new legislation, some of them were already being forced into destitution, unable to get a job or any form of state support. Therefore, the legislation was understood to create and further the inequalities central to negative peace, intensifying the routine violences of everyday life for minoritized groups. This analysis suggests we should view the legislation’s impacts on the Windrush generation not as a mistake but as an accepted part of the systemic violence against minoritized communities in contemporary Britain.

Seeking Asylum

One of the groups subjected to routine violence—material and rhetorical—in the United Kingdom are those who seek refuge under international human rights laws. The systemic harms of the UK asylum process are well documented in a range of academic literature.46 A society that continues to create and support institutions, processes and practices that harm some of its members in this way cannot be understood as peaceful.

Asylum seekers have increasingly been subjected to rhetorical violence, which focuses on and questions the “genuineness” of their claim. Questions of genuineness in relation to asylum are present in public and political debates on immigration. The term “genuine asylum seeker” is often juxtaposed with so-called “economic migrants”:

More than 300,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe so far this year. These people came from different countries under different circumstances. Some are economic migrants in search of a better life in Europe; many are refugees fleeing conflict. It is vital to distinguish between the two.47

Public discourses of genuineness are often shaped by policy programs, which seek to define and support “vulnerable” refugees. Since early 2014, resettlement schemes have brought refugees living in camps—initially from Syria—directly to the United Kingdom, thus seeking to reduce exploitation and human trafficking. The Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS—also known as the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Programme) prioritizes the elderly, the disabled and victims of sexual violence and torture. In addition, the UK government also introduced a scheme for resettling vulnerable children (and their families) fleeing conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa. And the Dubs Amendment to the 2016 Immigration Act agreed to resettle unaccompanied refugee minors living in Europe.48 All of these schemes created particular definitions of vulnerability, which emerge in popular discourses surrounding the “genuineness” of asylum seekers.

Discourses of genuineness intersect with the ongoing convergence of asylum and terrorism, which has been developing since the mid-2000s.49 Those designated as “Other” are often met with suspicion as governments attempt to manage perceived risks.50 These regimes of immigration and border control that prioritize the vulnerable cast doubt on the claims of those unable to seek refuge via these resettlement routes and place them at risk of systemic harms during the asylum process. Due to everyday bordering, these systemic violences are experienced more and more in everyday life, and frequently perpetrated on the state’s behalf by a range of everyday actors, from doctors’ receptionists who refuse to register asylum seekers for care to which they are entitled to check-out staff who refuse to accept Home Office-issued payment cards.51

Therefore, state violences against asylum seekers in the United Kingdom are also material. Denied access to both the labour market and to social security/state support, the vast majority are forced into destitution. It is only then that the state steps in and affords support, but only as exception and outside of the parameters supporting the rest of the population. For example, they are housed in accommodation primarily located in areas of social deprivation, which often does not meet basic health and safety requirements and which, during the COVID-19 pandemic, were exposed as unsafe shelter during lockdown measures.52 In addition to the forced displacement associated with accommodation, reporting regimes for asylum seekers discipline their mobilities. State levels of cash support are well below those of the general population; some asylum seekers receive no cash support at all. They receive access to health care but often experience difficulties in accessing needed care.53 Many also live with the threat of being detained—the United Kingdom is one of the few countries with no time limit on immigration detention.

Importantly, as everyday bordering has intensified in the United Kingdom, the state has also co-opted more and more UK residents into enforcing its bordering regime through immigration checks in everyday life. State and systemic violence toward asylum seekers has become routinized in everyday encounters. From refusing to open bank accounts to requesting unnecessary documentation for primary health care registration and controlling how asylum seekers spend their limited cash, an army of untrained immigration officials b/orders asylum seekers in the United Kingdom.54 What are the prospects for everyday, positive peace within such a regime? Below, I present examples of how communities are responding to everyday bordering and carving out new spaces for creating positive peace with the Other in everyday life.

Borderwork, Peacework

Firstly, I want to focus on how forcibly conscripting UK residents into state borderwork actually leads to a proliferation in borderwork, more broadly conceived, and presents opportunities for everyday peacework. Rumford reminds us that the making of state borders has never been solely the work of the state—its institutions and actors.57 Making territory integral to the state has long engaged a range of different social actors.58 Some have supported and engaged with the central government’s political project of belonging that underpins border regimes;59 others have challenged this or presented alternative political projects of belonging.60

However, for many, especially those from the majoritized population whose belonging is rarely (if ever) questioned, engagement with borderwork was limited to passively accepting state bordering regimes; that is to say that they were not actively involved in the labour of state political projects of belonging, either by administering state bordering regimes or taking a position on who does or does not belong in the United Kingdom, which would lead them to actively support or oppose state bordering regimes. Everyday bordering legislation and the surrounding mediation of it have made it more difficult for some in the majoritized population to continue their tacit complicity in the violent inequalities of bordering regimes. This has been particularly evident in the delivery of health care, where professional bodies and other organizations have become outspoken critics of everyday bordering. The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) collaborated with the non-governmental organization Maternity Action to investigate the impact of charging regimes on midwives. Charging is the main mechanism the UK government use for bordering the NHS and some of its services. In a foreword to the report that resulted from the collaboration, RCM Chief Executive Gill Walton stated:

Cost Recovery in the NHS is not new, but recent legislative changes in England have made the NHS part of what is known as the “hostile environment.” This report has found that midwives resent being made part of Cost Recovery architecture, finding it an anathema to the professional ethics of midwifery.61

Not all health professionals have the same active level of engagement in state borderwork. For example, questions about immigration status are often embedded in administrative regimes, with borderwork primarily undertaken by reception staff in primary care settings and specialist staff in Overseas Visitors offices in secondary care. Midwifery has received attention as one of the few areas in which healthcare professionals directly collect/ask patients about their immigration status in “booking appointments.”62 The RCM has taken a position opposing midwives’ involvement in state borderwork and opposes state bordering within health care more broadly on the grounds of both individual and public health:

The RCM is committed to supporting our members to deliver the best care they can, and Cost Recovery is a barrier to this. We believe that maternity care should be exempt from NHS charging altogether to protect and promote maternal and newborn health. The current charging regime needs to be suspended until the government can prove this policy is not doing any harm and jeopardising our shared ambition to make England the safest place in the world to have a baby.63

The questions midwives are expected to ask during a booking appointment might be understood as a form of borderwork, in that they seek to define who is chargeable for care; however, the RCM’s active opposition to their forced involvement can be considered peacework, as the organization seeks to address inequalities in access to health care and health more broadly.

The British Medical Association (BMA) argues that it is a doctor’s role to explicitly challenge state bordering within the NHS:

The BMA called on the government to publish the findings of its own review into the effects of migrant charging, which it launched back in 2017, but this request has been denied. We can only assume that this is because the results confirm what clinicians at the front line already know—that mistakes, injustice, and avoidable suffering have been caused not for financial benefit, but merely to help the government look tough on immigration. As doctors, we must continue to speak out against this policy, which harms us all: vulnerable people are denied care, public health is compromised, and the founding ethos of the NHS is undermined.64

In both examples, the active engagement of healthcare professionals with bordering emerges from the embedding of borderwork into the healthcare system. Everyday bordering not only increases routine violence but, in engaging more residents in borderwork, acts as a spur to challenging this violence.

In addition to successes in debordering care and having charges removed or waived in individual cases, there have also been examples of wider systemic changes resulting from challenges to borderwork in the healthcare system. In 2017–2018, the BMA joined a number of other organizations, such as Doctors of the World and Liberty, in calling for the end to data sharing between the NHS and the Home Office, as part of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which came to light in January 2017. Following an inquiry by the Health and Social Care Committee, which was launched in January 2018, the MoU was withdrawn in November 2018.65 Led by a number of organizations, the Vaccines for All campaign in 2021 was widely supported across the public and third sectors and was successful in extending the UK’s free COVID-19 vaccine program to all residents and reducing barriers to accessing the vaccine for some groups of migrants.66

I want to reframe these actions and efforts to disorder bordering regimes as alternative approaches to building positive peace, that is, I argue that they operate at a nexus of borderwork and peacework. Labouring at this nexus involves disordering existing orders and borders, and recognizing that peaceful conditions for some may be experienced violently by others. Ending these violences and building positive peace entails accepting that disorder is integral to these processes and practices of building positive peace. There is no clear point at which positive peace is achieved and the struggle for it can end, for as Don Flynn points out, there has been a regression:

The difference between now and 15–20 years ago is that people felt they were on course for integration. It might be slow; it might be, you know, step by step. . . . And, you know, by and large it contributed to probably what is quite a good record as far as the UK is concerned. [The UK] was generally considered to have a better record in terms of the integration of its migrant communities. I think we really have to be concerned that we have more or less put a full stop to that now. That people who find themselves in a difficult situation with their immigration status cannot be quite so optimistic that over time they will find a way to sort it out. That life will gradually become better. That they will extend their circles of friends and contacts. That they will feel more and more part of the community that they are living in.67

Prior to introducing the hostile environment policy, those engaged in this struggle to disorder bordering regimes sensed that while there may be no clear trajectory toward positive peace, over time individuals could escape the violent inequities within bordering regimes. Therefore, part of the shifting dynamics of bordering regimes involves both the violent conditions created and the efficacy with which a bordering regime closes routes or opportunities to exit these routine violences. Everyday bordering marks a shift in the levels of everyday state violence as described in the previous section not solely by creating violent conditions but also by ensuring that those violent conditions are felt over sustained periods by more and more people, whether or not they are the intended targets of the policy. Consequently, it greatly increases the violences of everyday peace in the United Kingdom. Perhaps we should not be surprised, therefore, at the agonism and disorder that everyday bordering has created. Lynn Staeheli has argued that both disorder and its suppression can threaten democratization.68 Should we not also consider that disorder might threaten everyday peace—but that its suppression, particularly when it permits the proliferation of routine violence, may also present a more immediate threat to everyday peace with the Other?

Peace Within Agonism

Creating space for disorders leading to positive peace requires openness to potentiality, as often “the outcome of struggle is not predetermined,”69 and multiple publics may be formed that can sometimes be in conflict with one another. However, as Bregazzi and Jackson argue, it is important to pay attention to the forces of love, care and conviviality that permeate everyday life to avoid foreclosing possibilities for positive peace.70 While there may be an obvious draw toward highlighting the agonism that emerges in response to the violences of everyday bordering, paying attention to peaceful acts within violent contexts opens space for better understanding the shifting dynamics of peace with the Other. In this section, I will explore these peaceful acts by analyzing the work of one organization, the Migration and Asylum Justice Forum, which emerged in the northeast of England in 2015 in immediate response to the 2014 and then the 2016 Immigration Acts. This group is a pertinent case study because, while they were founded on agonistic principles, specifically aiming to create space for migrant-activist political subjectivities, they were only able to sustain their campaigning and advocacy through acts of love and care that supported and sustained relationships between the members—from both mobile and non-mobile populations.71 Analyzing the forum’s work enables us to explore how struggles and conflict related to everyday bordering may also be imbued with and shaped by peace.

The Migration and Asylum Justice Forum was founded upon a pre-figurative politics: they sought greater justice for migrants—particularly asylum seekers—through wider social and political change and operated on principles of equity and justice that were very much aligned to positive peace. For example, the forum sought to centre the voices of minoritized and marginalized people impacted by everyday bordering and understood their role as supporting people from these backgrounds to drive the forum’s work. This meant that, wherever possible, those with recent or current lived experience of the United Kingdom’s immigration and asylum regimes held elected roles. Those without this direct experience were there to support and listen. I saw this approach in action at a meeting in 2018 when an asylum-seeking member, Artur, grew irritated with what he thought was a majoritized population member’s attempt to dominate the conversation. He confidently turned to the speaker and said, “You come here because you want to help us, right? So why don’t you be quiet and listen while we tell you what we need?”

From 2017 until the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the forum met every two weeks. These encounters exemplified the love and care that underpinned their work. Members brought food, made each other hot drinks, and cared for each other’s children to enable parents, especially asylum-seeking members, to participate. Although the forum referred to the gatherings as “organizing” meetings, they were about much more than simply organizing campaigns and actions. How the food offers were tailored demonstrated the care and thought that went into them. Cakes were baked for different food intolerances/allergies; fresh fruit was provided after a discussion about the poor quality of food bank parcels and concerns about obesity-related health problems; food was appropriate to the range of different backgrounds of the members. These small offerings recognized and challenged the physical harms emerging from the structural violence of the asylum system, where most were unable to maintain a healthy diet on the equivalent of just over £5 a day.72

Members also demonstrated concern for each other’s physical and emotional well-being through accompaniment on visits to Home Office reporting centres.73 On these visits, a member from a majoritized background would accompany the reporting member to the centre. Although they could not enter the centre and had to remain outside, the member provided support on the journey and, in practical terms, would quickly learn if the reporting member had been detained. Accompaniment “puts bodies that are less at risk next to bodies that are under threat, as a sort of ‘unarmed bodyguard.’”74 It has been used in an array of settings, from its roots in Gandhi’s Shanti Sena (or “Peace Army”) to the US Civil Rights Movement and by Peace Brigades International. Migration and asylum support groups in the US have used access to and being with migrants at threat of deportation to “communicate solidarity and compassion, as a way to monitor the treatment of detainees, and to enable spiritual and emotional connections with them.”75 Koopman describes this coming together of bodies to “build alternative, non-violent securities” as “alter-geopolitics,” which necessitates building connections with those who may have been considered “Other” in order “not just to stay alive and be safe, but to live well, to live with dignity and justice.”76

In addition to caring for the physical health of members, the Migration and Asylum Justice Forum also sought to improve participants’ mental health and well-being. Everyday interactions between the members were replete with small acts of love and care. In the group’s social media chats and in meetings, members praised each other’s efforts and achievements. They avoided criticism even when among different underpinning values and ideals. This was exemplified in an event in late 2018. The forum held a public screening and debate, and one of the members—an asylum seeker called Raman—gave a speech about his hopes when he came to the United Kingdom and his personal experiences of the asylum system. During a break, Elias, a member of the audience who had collaborated with the forum in the past, took Raman to task, telling him his “dreams” were not the right ones and what he should be aspiring to instead. Raman stood up for himself, but Elias became insistent and domineering. Some other members of the forum—mostly those without asylum-seeking backgrounds—swiftly moved to support Raman by approaching and asking if he was alright and congratulating and thanking him for his speech and involvement in the event. After Elias left, several reiterated their thanks and told the Raman to ignore Elias’ intervention.

On another occasion, I was involved speaking with two female members of the forum outside of the usual meeting. One, Ella, confessed that she had removed herself from the WhatsApp group and other social media because she was struggling with her mental health. The other, Jane, spoke at length about her own struggles with her mental health, offering empathy and support and sharing hope as her own mental health had greatly improved. In 2019, members of the forum rallied around another member, Brian, when his wife, another long-standing member of the group, was diagnosed with dementia. Brian received practical support with shopping, getting his wife to various medical appointments, and with duties he had taken on in the forum itself. In these encounters and many others, members showed each other love and compassion on a range of issues. This was also apparent in the weekly meetings, when asylum-seeking members shared their fears, anger and frustration and others responded with hugs, a comforting hand, a sympathetic smile or even tears.77

This is not to say that everyone experienced the Migration and Asylum Justice Forum as a supportive environment or that there were no conflicts between members. However, as one member, Jim, explained,

I think we all just try to remember what everyone is going through and let some behaviour go for the greater good. I mean I think [Raman] has had arguments with everyone in the forum by now. He and [Artur] have had some big arguments in the past but the next time you see them, they are best friends.

For Jim, the forum’s campaigning and struggle were best served by a lack of internal conflict and underpinned by solidarity, which Featherstone has argued is a generative spatial political practice that constructs “relations between places, activists, diverse social groups.”78