Intersections of Displacement: Refugees' Experiences of Home and Homelessness [1 ed.] 1443876364, 9781443876360

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Intersections of Displacement

Intersections of Displacement: Refugees’ Experiences of Home and Homelessness By

Priya Kissoon

Intersections of Displacement: Refugees’ Experiences of Home and Homelessness By Priya Kissoon This book first published 2015 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2015 by Priya Kissoon All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-7636-4 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7636-0

This book is dedicated to my first Home, my Mother, and my Nanny who gave me Belonging.

TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ........................................................................................... ix Acknowledgements .................................................................................... xii Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1 Intersections and Definitions Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 22 Reconsidering Home and Homelessness in the Context of Forced Migration and Forced Resettlement Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 49 Research Design and Conduct Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 59 Traditions of Control: Empire and Nation Building Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 94 Contemporary Trends and Asylum Legislation in Canada and the UK Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 152 Refugee Respondents’ Characteristics and Housing Trajectories Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 196 Unpacking Home: London Refugees’ Perceptions of a Complex Idea Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 226 Unpacking Home: Toronto Refugees’ Perceptions of a Complex Idea Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 256 The Canadian View from Above: An Institutional Overview of Select Organizations Managing Arrival, Settlement and Integration

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Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 288 Comparative Observations and Conclusions Postface ................................................................................................... 301 References ............................................................................................... 303 Index ........................................................................................................ 330

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Figures

Caption

1.1 4.1

“Telescopic Philanthropy” Migrations and National Mythologies in Britain and Canada Snapshots of Domestic and External Britishness: Colonial and Postcolonial Identity and Control State Measures to Control Asylum and Immigration Typology of the (Un)welcome Refugees’ Agency is Enabled and Constrained in Various Ways, at Various Scales in the Asylum Process Pre-flight Decision Making and the Requisites for Refugee Determination Navigating the Asylum Structures Treaty of the European Union (1991) Maastricht Treaty Continuum of Homelessness: Toronto Factors Comprising Statutory Homelessness Duties in the UK Homeless Asylum Seekers in London as a Proportion of other Households Housing Tenure, Toronto 2003, Showing 75% in Private Sector Barriers to Integration for Asylum Seekers Why Claim Asylum in Canada/UK not elsewhere Tapping Social Ties: Duration of Stay with Contacts Snapshot of Residential Mobility amongst Refugee Respondents in London Snapshot of Residential Mobility amongst Refugee Respondents in Toronto

4.2 5.1 5.2 5.4

5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 5.10 5.11 5.12 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4

Page 13 64 71 97 105 111

112 116 125 136 138 139 142 150 159 164 185 186

x

6.5

6.6 7.1 8.1 Tables 2.1 2.2 2.3 4.1

4.2 5.1 5.2 5.3 6.1

6.2 6.3

6.6 6.7

List of Figures and Tables

The Relationship between Feelings of Home and Subjective Housing Assessment: A theoretical diagram Coping Occurs Alongside Constraints and Pressures Situating Case Studies in the breakdown of Respondents’ Current Housing: London Situating Case Studies in the breakdown of Respondents’ Current Housing: Toronto Adjustment to Moving to a Minority or Majority Position` Relative Adjustment Moving from Collectivist to Individualist Societies Coping with Migration from Collectivist to Individualist Societies Institutional Structure of Immigration in Britain and Canada Showing Developments Prior to Mass Racial Minority Immigration Traditions of control: Britain and Canada Post 1962 Canada and the UK’s Relative Refugee Burden (19982002) A Select List of Human Rights Instruments at Different Levels State Effects on Personal Agency and Individual Vulnerabilities Participants’ International Migration History: Smuggling Indicated Between Country of Origin and Asylum Expectations and Reality: A Mixed Continuum An Example of a Social Network in the Country of Asylum Comprising Strong and Weak, Formal and Informal Ties Human Capital: London Human Capital: Toronto

189

192 198 228

41 43 44 92

93 107 116 134 155

161 162

180 181

Intersections of Displacement

6.8 6.9 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 8.1 8.2 8.3 Graphs 1.1 5.1 5.2 Map 5.1

xi

Houselessness and Homelessness amongst London Refugee Respondents Houselessness and Homelessness amongst Toronto Refugee Respondents Case Study Selection Charles’ Housing History Berhane’s Housing History Gvantsa’s Housing History Homelessness is always, but not only, about dwelling Ryad’s Canadian Housing History Mr.Hamid’s Housing History Sham’s Housing History

188

New Asylum Applications in Canada and the UK, 1980-2001 Refugees and Asylum Seekers Worldwide (19912005) Total Asylum Applications Lodged in Canada and the UK (1991-2005)

18

Human Development and Armed Conflict 1993-2002 and Top Refugee Source Countries to Canada and the UK

Photosets 3.1 Photo Elicitation: London 3.2 Photo Elicitation: Toronto Charts 5.1 Origins of Asylum Applicants to Canada 1995-1999 5.2 Origins of Asylum Applicants to the UK 1995-1999 5.3 Canadian Immigration Levels – Target Ranges, 2004 5.4 Housing Tenure in Inner London Boroughs 2001

188 197 204 210 217 223 232 240 246

100 102

99

54 55 104 104 121 141

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In many ways this book is a collective construction and I am just its means. I began this research because of an academic interest and by the time it was completed I found myself deeply transformed by participants whose voices I can still hear and whose faces I can still picture. The refugees and the advocates who shared their perspectives on homelessness for this project believe that systems can improve and that knowledge and awareness can influence political will. It is difficult to ignore what is in plain sight, and this book is an attempt to bring what was hidden into view. This book belongs in its entirety to the people in Toronto and London who patiently shared with me their meanings of home in the context of displacement, and their supporters who saw potential in this project. Everything of merit in the text I owe to others; all errors are mine only. I am grateful for assistance from the organizations listed, and amongst these I would like to give particular thanks to Loly and Francisco at the FCJ Refugee Centre in Toronto for allowing me to walk with them while they “walk with uprooted people”. In Canada: ƒ Canadian Council for Refugees ƒ Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture ƒ Canadian Red Cross First Contact Programme ƒ Centre for Francophone Speaking People ƒ Centre for Spanish Speaking People ƒ Culturelink ƒ Eritrean Canadian Community Centre of Metropolitan Toronto ƒ FCJ Refugee Centre (FCJ Hamilton House) ƒ Flemingdon Neighbourhood Services ƒ Homes First Society ƒ Midaynta, Association of Somali Service Agencies, Toronto ƒ Northwood Neighbourhood Services ƒ Romero House ƒ Salvation Army

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ƒ Scott Mission ƒ Woodgreen Red Door Family Shelter, Toronto ƒ YMCA Youth Shelter In the UK: ƒ Arab Women’s Group, London (W6) ƒ Bayswater Families Centre, drop-in services for families who are homeless, London (W2) ƒ British Centre for Victims of Torture, formally known as The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture ƒ British Refugee Council ƒ Camden Local Authority ƒ EC-UK, Eritrean Community in the UK, Holloway Road, London (N7) ƒ Field Lane Homeless Families Centre, King’s Cross, London (WC1) ƒ Hackney Training and Employment Network, UK ƒ Housing Association Charitable Trust ƒ Holy Cross Charitable Trust: bed and breakfast project for asylum seekers (WC1). ƒ Iranian Community Centre: Holloway Road, London (N7) ƒ Praxis, Newcomer advice and orientation in London (E2) ƒ Refugee Assessment and Guidance Unit: London Metropolitan University I would also like to express my gratitude to Professor Chris Hamnett and Dr. Margaret Byron for their tireless supervision of this project; Professors Robert Murdie, Valerie Preston, and Daniel Hiebert for their encouragement and mentorship; Professors Minelle Mahtani, Juanita Sundberg, and Gerry Pratt for their support and positivity; and Professors Douglas Harder and Cynthia Kinnan for their stalwart friendship and faith in me. I am also indebted to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for their funding in support of this study.

CHAPTE ER ONE INTRODU UCTION: IN NTERSEC CTIONS AN ND DEFIN NITIONS

The refuggee will never feel f wholly at home h in a foreiign country. [....] The only rooff he can call hiss own is the blu ue sky that smilles upon him ass it did at home; no one can takee that away from him. (Cirtauttas, 1957, p. 59)

As a humann condition, hoomelessness has h preoccupieed people from m diverse and ancientt cultures, maanifest in storries of exile and banishm ment from religious texxts around thee world. In thee contemporaary era, the eu uphemism “no fixed abode” poinnts to mobility, or “unnrootedness”, as the underpinninng characteristtic of homeleessness, althouugh the mean nings and experiences of homelessness and hom me in people ’s lives are almost a as diverse as thhe people them mselves. Desp pite the multipplicity of mean nings and experiences,, a few of which w are exp plored in thiss text, the co oncept of homelessnesss is concomiitant with citiies and urbannization as weell as the

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archetypal homeless figures of the middle-aged single alcoholic male, resident in alleyways or city shelters, and “squeegee-kids” who have run away to the streets and survive on small transactional acts. Pavement or street dwellers, socially displaced persons, and families living in dwellings that are unfit for human habitation are characteristic of the working poor and most marginal classes in countries of the global south, which represent another type of homelessness, dominant in numbers, but often excluded from research and conceptualizations of homelessness. This book brings together different geographies of homelessness to share the perspectives of people living “exilic homelessness” at an international scale, as asylum seekers and refugees in the global north while also facing life on the streets or in shelters. I began my early research on homelessness in 1997 in Toronto as a graduate student examining the housing histories of people living in shelters and on the streets. Associated with my praxis was a heightened sense of social injustice related to formal Citizenship that failed to protect people from protracted street lives. Homelessness was a critical assessment of the welfare state, government, human rights and entitlements, especially for Canada’s First Nations people who are overrepresented amongst the homeless as well as other Canadians who claim never to have known a stable place to call home. For me, these Canadians were not only “chronically homeless” as people who had spent over a year on the streets and in shelters and hostels without housing; they were chronically homeless because of a pattern of housing instability that emerged before they were born, again in their youth, and finally in adulthood. The transition out of homelessness was only ever partial, and homelessness defined their housing conditions as well as their state of mind. At this time I had no interest in migrant homelessness. It simply was not on my radar until I began attending the meetings of the Homelessness Action Task Force (HATF) and heard refugees referred to as “doubly homeless”. While on the one hand they found themselves with nowhere to turn and facing the streets, on the other hand they were in a foreign state with no place, not even a country, to call home. “Doubly homeless” and in some instances “triply homeless”, were labels advocates ascribed to refugees, but I wondered if refugees would use these to describe their own experiences, and how long refugees experienced the conditions that created multiple homelessness. The HATF was formed to examine and ameliorate the conditions for homeless people in Toronto at a time when the demand for beds had

Introduction: Intersections and Definitions

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reached a critical point, shelter staff were unable to manage increasing numbers of people at their doors, and winter had contributed to the streetdeaths of several homeless people. In addition to the pressures to help people in from the cold and provide emergency shelter to the newly unhoused, shelter staff identified a concerning trend: growing numbers of immigrants and refugees amongst the homeless. This was a population that, until the 1990s, had been under-represented amongst the city’s homeless services. However, with increasing numbers of asylum seekers arriving in Toronto in the late 1990s, unable to compete in the city’s tight rental market (vacancy rate of 0.6 percent in 2000), and without the social capital to remain off the streets, this vulnerable population was defined by the City as being at high risk of homelessness. At one HATF meeting of a newly formed sub-group called the Refugee Housing Task Group (RHTG), created to address the issue of refugeeclaimant homelessness, refugee participants argued that Canada was failing to support newcomers’ basic needs. Specifically, a few people with relatives abroad suggested that the Canadian government needed to examine the UK’s provision for asylum seekers because family members and community members who had arrived in the UK were housed from “day one”. This meant that they did not face the various hurdles of newcomers to Toronto of finding suitable accommodation at the lower end of the affordable housing market. The conviction with which participants compared the “raw deal” in housing for claimants in Toronto with asylum seekers in London provided anecdotal evidence for the importance of a comparative study of refugees’ housing experiences. However, it was also clear that these vocal refugee newcomers felt their lived realities of homelessness in Canada were a betrayal of their expectations, which were their perceptions of Canadian multiculturalism, equality, and Canada’s reputation as a country of immigrants welcoming immigrants. Therefore, the research trajectory for this book flowed from two interrelated hypotheses: that national immigration and housing structures matter materially to the lives and welfare of newcomers; and newcomers’ sense of home and belonging are further affected by their ability to meet their basic needs for safety, security, and shelter at the international and residential scales. Refugee homelessness should be an important case study for anyone interested in homelessness and housing as a basic human right, because it provides a litmus test for local and conventional frameworks to ameliorate

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the lives of society’s most vulnerable persons, regardless of origin. Refugee homelessness elongates the concept of pathways to homelessness, by describing journeys over hundreds and thousands of miles. Discussions to prevent homelessness and improve housing opportunities for the homeless have traditionally considered individual vulnerabilities and structural factors that combine to cause homelessness or compound to create barriers to stable housing. From examining the lives of refugees on the streets and in shelters, it is clear that the causes of homelessness and their solutions require both a national and international lens. This lens will also allow us to see the interlocking effects of homelessness with migration, citizenship, and belonging to improve social cohesion and “community” at the neighbourhood, national, and international scales. Forced migration and homelessness are journeys or trajectories characterised by relative misfortune, constraint, and loss. Travellers at the cross-roads risk their most valued possessions as well as their intimate social relations, and physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. On the other hand, asylum seeking and residential mobility are intense acts of agency and points of departure on a quest for “home”. Stopping at any time and in any space before arriving to the ultimate destination means one is still “on the way” home, and while some are closer to the emotional and material nexus that produces this sense of place, the litmus test is ultimately a combination of duration and personal satisfaction in a space i.e. does one remain in a country or in a house out of choice or by constraint. Chronic exile or permanent homelessness may result where neither the emotional or material conditions of home are satisfied. In the context of international migration, the journey toward home continues with integration even after overcoming the initial hurdles of settlement. Exilic and homeless people’s mobility has been described to be as passive as pinballs, political footballs, or players in a game of chance, such as snakes and ladders. If life is a game of risk, what is the prize on which the refugee sets her eyes? Some form of “home” certainly – a safe place to rest one’s head, a place of respite, freedom, and relative security from environmental, political, and economic stress or harm. For some, the embodiment of this is democratic citizenship, for others it is about the opportunity to pursue one’s personal goals or way of life without interference and threat, others still may privilege a domicile or dwellingplace that provides for their basic needs and that of their family; for most, however, it is a combination of all three, reflecting the evolving priorities and needs of the individual.

Introduction: Intersections and Definitions

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Migrant flows are subject to the socio-legal categories that afford various rights and privileges to the characteristics of emigration. While many people may be facing “refugee like” situations in their countries of origin, it is only those who apply for refugee status who are warranted the internationally recognized label and accompanying rights by receiving states. Once attained, the refugee label acts with homogenizing potency to meld the diversity of national origins, backgrounds, upbringings, and socio-economic statuses that migrants carry with them as well as their motivations, ambitions, attitudes, and fundamental human agency. The same can be said of homelessness, where individual differences in migration status, personal history, prospects for exit, as well as the desire for housing, are obscured by one normalizing label. Behind both labels, the embodiment of risk and vulnerability, perceptions of loss and gain, skills and capacity to survive and thrive vary tremendously across individuals. Some refugees quickly adapt and recover from their dislocation while others face daily challenges with settlement. Similarly, some homelessness people require consistent support and intervention to pry them from the streets, while others are able to house themselves after a few “hots and a cot”, meaning a night or two in a shelter only. How do homeless refugees recover from, and cope with, displacement in their countries of asylum? The refugee and the homeless person have always had something in common – no place to call home or, rather, no place an outsider would deem suitable to be called “home.” Would the forced migrant consider herself homeless or almost home? In this book, we explore the refugee’s sense of place by examining the subjective and objective, affective and material meanings of home and homelessness in the country of asylum. The refugees who shared their stories were doing so in order to influence their worlds for the better in the most transnational or translocal of ways. Investigating the intersection of “refugeeness” and homelessness, two processes which archetypically operate at different scales, reveals opportunities to mend cracks in migration, settlement, and housing policies in refugee-receiving countries in the global north.

Refugees, asylum seekers, and irregular migrants broadly defined In a world of 7 billion people, about 232 million people are migrants (3.25%) (UNPD, 2013) making international migration one of the foremost economic, social and political challenges facing states in the

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contemporary world. However, not all migration is equal. In a period of extraordinary human mobility fifty-one million people around the world are forced migrants and nearly 7 percent of the international migrant stock are refugees (UNPD, 2013), substantiating the “age of migration” (Castles and Miller, 2009) as “the age of the refugee” (Said, 2001, p173; Wyschogrod, 1996). Worldwide, there are 1.2 million asylum seekers with half of these making applications in 44 industrialized countries (UNHCR, 2014), and despite their small numbers, asylum flows to the “global north” are a matter of intense political debate and begrudging obligation (Carens, 1992; Gibney and Hansen, 2003; Gibney, 2005). There is ample evidence of asylum seekers and refugee claimants depicted as undesirable unwanted migrants, where the tragedy of exile is replaced by rhetoric and policy framing these irregular migrants as something akin to human missiles, penetrating national defences (borders) and attacking state sovereignty and security, the domestic economy and social cohesion (Dowty and Loescher, 1996). For instance, in Canada, Chan (2013) lists the media’s most common descriptions of immigrants and refugees as criminal, illegal, and bogus (p19). The UK’s Joint Committee on Human rights (2006-2007) points to the possibility of a link between hostile media reporting and physical attacks on asylum seekers (p.6). Moreover, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR, 2006) elaborates on the human irony and heartbreak of managing to flee from persecution and arriving to abuse or death instead of safety in the prospective country of asylum: In recent years, a number of asylum seekers and refugees have been targeted and killed despite having escaped persecution for the safety of industrialized democracies like the UK. And for each one who is murdered, hundreds are assaulted and thousands are verbally abused.

The vitriolic rhetoric against asylum seekers obscures the life-or-death pursuits by individuals who have fled their countries of nationality. Research tells us, however, that where refugees end up matters to their safety as well as their settlement (Van der Veer, 1992; Renaud and Gingras, 1998; Bloch, 2002; Black, 1994, 2002; Korac, 2003). In turn, settlement supports, or a lack thereof, can exacerbate the grief associated with loss of place or accentuate the positive aspects of a new place and its outlook. The state has a positive duty to take steps to safeguard the lives of those within the jurisdiction (L.D.B. v United Kingdom [1999] 27 EHRR 212, para. 36.); however, it also has a basic duty to control access to its territories and resources, including the entitlements of citizenship. Therefore, immigration and asylum legislation as well as social welfare policies are fundamental to a state’s response to newcomers.

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Contemporary state responses to asylum are an expression of histories and traditions of incorporating and excluding others and building boundaries that reflect and protect national identity and associated territory. Despite international law and conventions, countries vary in their treatment of asylum seekers because they can; and this variation can drive, and be driven by, public perception or prejudice toward refugees. A refugee is defined by the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees as someone who, “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.” In view of this, there are three conjoined characteristics of a refugee: 1.

Being outside a person’s country of nationality (Geography);

2.

Being a member of a particular race, religion, nationality, social group or political opinion (Identity); and

3.

Being persecuted based on identity, which is the driving factor behind emigration (Fear).

Geography defines the refugee as a migrant foremost while their position and voice in society ascribe them a marginal or stigmatized identity in her country of nationality. This marginality combined with the ‘othering’ that occurs in the country of asylum create a double alienation for the refugee to overcome. Fear uproots, defines the push factors in the migration experience, and constrains available choices, making asylum seeking and refugee integration an emotional geography, while borders and identity make it political. Applying for refugee status is a transformative process: people become “cases”, persecution and torture become “evidence”, and nationality and other forms of identity are subsumed by the labels, “asylum seeker” or “refugee claimant”. Each case is determined on its own merits, and the burden of proof is on claimants or asylum seekers to show they are targeted and unprotected against persecution for reasons of their identity in their countries of origin. Once the claim is validated by the receiving state, the state may confer the right to asylum on the individual who is then legitimated as a “refugee”.

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Refugees are distinguished from asylum seekers through the act of conferment of a positive decision on a person’s asylum claim by the receiving state, or designate (e.g. UNHCR), which gives them leave to apply for permanent, indefinite, or temporary residence, while asylum seekers are awaiting a decision on their refugee application. The term asylum seeker is often used interchangeably with refugee claimant; however the former is more common in the UK while the latter is frequently used in Canada. Even the terms asylum seeker or refugee claimant do not apply until a migrant has filed her application for protection. If she never files an asylum application, despite her country conditions and individual experiences of persecution, she is categorized by her visa category e.g. student, visitor, temporary foreign worker. In cases where the visa was non-existent, fraudulent, or expired, she may be referred to as an irregular migrant. The irregular migrant category is popularly synonymised with “illegal migrant”, often by the migrants themselves. To seek asylum is a challenge to international borders while at the same time it is also an international human right; however, to confer asylum is ultimately the right of states. Some irregular, undocumented, or “illegal migrants” may bypass state authorities to occupy a space of asylum without government screening. This personal act of survival via subterfuge transforms a person into an invisible resident, which in the short-term may be a relief for some migrants who are fearful of not being able to convince a foreign country of the deservedness of their claim. In the longer-term, however, invisibility is corrosive to social and economic integration, health, and well-being, and protracted periods can ultimately lead decision-makers to question the legitimacy of any eventual application. The organization of rights and entitlements, especially pertaining to welfare and social benefits, is confounded by mixed migration and shifting status, and so the state and its policies demand the rationalisation of migration categories (Zetter, 1991; Black, 2001). Behind the labels, there is “a world of socio-economic statuses, personal histories, and psychological or spiritual situations” (Malkki, 1995, p 496). This is important to recognize because an asylum seeker may have access to supports and resources (e.g. access to waitlists for social housing, welfare, and counselling) unavailable to the same person if she is living in another migrant category.

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Refugee homelessness: A matter of scale and place The essence of the refugee problem is very, very simple. It is: to find ‘ein Plätzchen’, to find a ‘Mio Nido’ for people who for reasons of persecution have been obliged to leave their native country and who have therefore become ‘uprooted’ and homeless. (Dr. Gerrit Jan van Heuven Goedhart, 1955)

Refugees embody the theoretical contribution of scale to the literature on home and homelessness, where persons pursuing the former may find themselves struggling against the latter. This book explores the intersections of migration, housing, and the meaning of home at interlocking scales of support and oppression from the perspective of sixty refugees from different backgrounds living in Toronto, Canada and London, England, all of whom made asylum applications between 1996 and 2001 and were subsequently granted residence. To respect the cultural diversity and experiences of participants, the research method created a space for participants to express and examine their own multiple meanings of home and homelessness. There are socially constructed and accepted norms for the ways in which “home” and “homeless” are used in the vernacular and conceived in the West, and at times participants have tried to conform or distance themselves according to the interview question. Anticipating this issue, the research process began by re-locating home and homelessness in the context of each person’s own culture of origin, as well as their flight and settlement experiences, perceptions of loss, the process of reconstruction, and their relationship to various state structures that regulate housing and migration, including support for asylum seekers and the homeless. The research design framework included semi-structured interviews, keyinformant interviews, and photo-voice. Canada and the UK are both Western liberal democracies with advanced welfare systems, English is the dominant language, and they have a shared colonial legacy. However, Canada has developed a reputation as a country of immigrants with official bilingualism and multiculturalism and respect for human rights within the international community. Canada’s spirit of welcome is epitomized by its citizens receiving the 1986 Nansen Refugee Award for its role in refugee resettlement. In addition, the Charter of Rights, Canada’s constitution, establishes a baseline level of equality amongst all persons on Canadian territory, regardless of nationality.

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The UK, by contrast, has appeared to struggle with reconciling Britishness with its multiracial/multiethnic population and immigrant diversity, and has taken an exclusionary approach to asylum seekers for which it has been criticised by the UN amongst others. At another level, while housing vulnerable and destitute homeless people is a statutory duty for local authorities in the UK, social housing in Canada has devolved from national government to municipalities and homelessness is a municipal responsibility without legislative underpinnings. Therefore, the implications for asylum seeking households with no place of abode is different in the two countries: housing and welfare in the UK are tied to immigration status, and consequently asylum seekers are not treated as equal to nationals, and the opposite is true in Canada, where asylum seekers have access to mainstream benefits, social housing, and homelessness services equal to citizens throughout their claim. However, in both countries asylum seekers are considered a temporary population, and ineligible for integration services until refugee status or equivalent has been awarded. How refugees interpret and live within these regulatory contexts must be empirically examined, and this research provides a lens for us to assess receiving countries through refugees’ eyes and citizens’ contributions to newcomers’ futures, both of which are inextricably linked by nation-building. In addition to these structural issues, Canada and the UK experienced a dramatic rise in a “new homeless population” in the mid-late 1990s, characterised by families, the working poor, and newcomers (Kennett and Marsh, 1999; City of Toronto, 1998). Compared with other migrants, asylum seekers are highly vulnerable to homelessness (City of Toronto, 1998) and increasing numbers of homeless asylum seekers reflect the number of asylum applications received since the early 1990s. The geographical comparison between Canada and the UK, focussing on Toronto and London, contributes to understanding how refugee homelessness is structured, managed, and experienced at different levels. At its core, this research analyses refugees’ responses to one main research question: “How is home conceived, located and reconstructed in the asylum and settlement process?” Secondarily, the research also examined the ways in which national and residential dynamics affected refugee participants’ sense of home or homelessness. The remainder of this introduction further defines the issues at hand.

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Shelter as the cornerstone of settlement Research has documented the importance of housing as one of the cornerstones of reception and successful resettlement for refugees and asylum-seekers (Van der Veer, 1992; Zetter and Pearl, 1999; Carey-Wood et al., 1995; Carey-Wood, 1997; Murdie and Teixeira, 2000; Garvie, 2001; Foley and Beer, 2003; Edgar et al., 2004). Housing is extremely important for refugees as a place of safety, autonomy, and respite from the asylum process, the struggle for recognition and status, and the effort of integration or adaptation (Renaud and Gingras 1998). More than filling a basic physical need for immigrant newcomers, it constitutes an important resource in re-establishing social structures such as the family and linkages to the wider community, and minimising dependency on welfare support (Zetter and Pearl, 2000). However, evidence of systemic underhousing, i.e. living in substandard, crowded, unaffordable, and unsafe housing, amongst asylum-seeker and refugee households in London and Toronto has also been well documented (Quilgars, 1993; Garvie, 2001; Palmer, 2001; Zetter and Pearl 1999, 2002; Lukes, 2002; Anderson, 2003; Murdie et al., 1998; City of Toronto, 1998). In attempts to differentiate the impact of social exclusion and homelessness on various groups, research exploring the extent and pathways into and out of homelessness has proliferated (Sullivan et al., 2000; Murdie, 2005; Edgar and Doherty, 2001 as examples). The analysis presented here along with refugees’ viewpoints is primarily about the meaning of home/lessness, but it also contributes to a growing body of work examining experiences of volatility, insecurity, and discrimination in housing for people dispossessed and disenfranchised by the refugee process (Quilgars, 1993; Pearl and Zetter, 2002; Phillips, 2006; Murdie, 2005; Klodawsky, 2006; Hiebert, et al.2006; Kilbride, 2006; Robinson and Reeve, 2006). The analysis of refugees’ multi-scalar home/lessness, examined in the context of forced migration and settlement constraints, is concerned with a much wider notion of home than that which affords physical safety (e.g. the house from the elements. or the state from perpetrators of violence). While it does give attention to material safety, it also looks at emotional security. By unlinking home from the dwelling place, the term can be used to examine the process of self (re)construction at the interstices of a former and future home, irrespective of the time or space between them. In some manner, therefore, it may be more apt to

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focus on safety and security as the cornerstones of settlement, with the understanding that shelter is the foundation of both.

Postcolonialism, immigration, and the undeserving poor The deserving and undeserving poor have been a concerning dualism in welfare and charity from the Victorian era to present. The concern lies in the competition amongst the poor for finite resources. If one accepts the resource limitations, it may seem rational for those who are least deserving of relief to be restricted in their access. Who constitutes the least and the most deserving varies according to a number of factors, including politics, culture, and the economy. In an age of migration, the newcomer is often categorized as undeserving, and depending on the factors in play, asylum seekers may be constructed as the migrants least deserving of state support. This may seem paradoxical in countries whose wealth and power are founded on or by imperialism and colonialism, and who have significant immigrant or black and minority-ethnic populations. In an age of colonialism, the term “telescopic philanthropy” was coined to guilt wealthy British subjects, who sought to address abject poverty reported from the distant reaches of Empire, to turn their lens on the poverty at their feet in their home country. The term telescopic philanthropy adds a geographical factor to the undeserved-deserved dichotomy – distance (Figure 1.1). In essence, social commentary in late Victorian England questioned the responsibility of the state in caring for its colonies when there were so many people in dire need of welfare at home. This commentary has persisted over time, and has manifested as systemic and cultural racisms, sometimes masked by themes such as childhood delinquency, housing squalor, unemployment, crime and, most obviously, migration.

Introduction: Intersections and Definitions

13

Fig 1.1 “Telescopic Philanthropy” Little London Arab. "Please 'm, ain't we black enough to be cared for?" Punch, Volume XLVIII, 4 March 1865, p. 89.

In an age of exile, the proliferation of national instability, state conflict, and persecutory regimes have forced worlds together. Consequently, Canada and the UK are attempting to manage their duties towards their domestic homeless population and their humanitarian duties to asylum seekers, the preference for which is now ironically distant aid or “telescopic philanthropy”. Despite extra-territorial measures and development aid to refugee-producing regions, statistics reveal asylum seekers amongst the ranks of the homeless in both London and Toronto. Therefore, ameliorating the conditions for both groups is increasingly singular in scope because those who were “over there” are now here. However, the debates over deservedness continue, as do the interlocking oppressions of racism, poverty, and social exclusion. At the surface, refugee homelessness may seem to be a lesser-deserving form of housing need than citizens’ because non-nationals have not “paid into the system” and therefore should not expect to benefit from it. Furthermore, refugee homelessness may be a transitional phase of the settlement curve, caused by insecurity, fixed finances, a lack of knowledge of the housing culture and housing systems, no guarantors or guarantors with weak links, no social contacts or contacts that are strained

14

Chapter One

themselves. Each of these resource deficits improves with time, bringing greater degrees of confidence to the newcomer and familiarity with the nuances of a new society, and turning the settlement stage into a platform for integration. In theory, this may be true. In theory, refugees should find themselves in better situations with time: they had survived, they were safe from persecution, and they had arrived in a new country in which they could re-define themselves, live freely and plan for their future; so why should this be framed as a form of homelessness or even loss? In reality, the situation is mixed, and some refugees never find their way out of insecurity and instability. The reality of deservedness is also mixed. While there are cases of newcomers taking advantage of the social benefit or welfare systems in receiving countries, assistance can be a positive investment in the early stabilization of future citizens. This study only looks at the perspectives of people who received a decision on their refugee applications that allowed them to remain in the country and the impact homelessness has had on their integration.

Conceptualising refugeeness The poet Robert Frost famously wrote, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” This could easily be applied to the international refugee regime and the promises that lay behind a state’s humanitarian duties. The term refugee homelessness necessitates unpinning homelessness from the traditional association with housing and situating it alongside forced migration. Both concepts should be viewed first and foremost as disruptions: to careers; a sense of security; personal relationships; routine; and familiar geographies. “Refugeeness” encapsulates three key characteristics of the refugee situation: 1. Vulnerability - from the prospect of being returned to persecution; 2. Mixed objectives - that include seeing flight as an opportunity for work, study, or family reunification as well as safety and freedom of expression in the country of asylum; and 3. Agency - in the ability to make choices, escape, strategise, and find alternatives amidst seemingly immovable obstacles and structures, and to engage opportunities when they appear. Uprootedness is a consequence of survivorship.

Introduction: Intersections and Definitions

15

Most ‘South-to-North’ migration requires a period of adjustment to overcome an initial set of obstacles that may include any number of the following: x x x x x x

Unfamiliarity with the language; Arriving to a strange, unknown, or inhospitable (climatic or cultural) environment; Inversion of social status; Discounted skills, education, and work experience; Social isolation; and Adjustment to a culture that may be more individualistic than communal.

However, refugee claimants face additional obstacles inherent to their form of migration, mostly associated with a lack of choice, fear, and the imperative of departure: x x x x x x x x

Not necessarily choosing or understanding their destination; Migration marked by trauma and persecution; Vulnerable mental and physical health; Separation from family members whose safety may be at risk; Arrival without identity documents or with false documents; Arrival without evidence of qualifications; Arrival under the stress of deportation or detention; and Temporary admittance under the fear of return.

The first set of barriers are intensified by the second set of barriers, which in turn are exacerbated or ameliorated by state responses to asylum that institute measures of exclusion or equality. Earlier studies have highlighted systemic use of detention, reduced income support, dispersal, vouchers, unassured tenancies, restriction from work or conspicuous temporary national insurance numbers as examples of the exclusion, while examples of equality include welfare and social housing equality, permission to work, family reunification, reception on arrival, and universal healthcare (Ryan and Woodill, 2000; Zine, 2002; Junaid, 2002; Bloch and Schuster, 2002; Lukes, 2002). Maria (not her real name) was once a refugee and is now a citizen of Canada. Her painting of refugeeness welcomes the reader to this book. It defines home as a feeling of confidence, acceptance, interaction and

16

Chapter One

understanding, marking it as a two-way process. She depicts refugeeness as a form of survival and hope, rather than the despair and despondency suggested by the painting’s caption. Painted from the perspective of her country of origin, the viewer is partly barricaded by death and oppression, a reminder that the two percent of forced migrants who are able to seek asylum constitute a lucky minority. Maria depicts flight as an opportunity for peace, and Canada as a means of escape requiring a painful uprooting. She also suggests that the open hands symbolise both a relinquishing of the past and acceptance of change and the unknown. Like Maria, Edward Said’s experience of exile also informs the basic tenets of home as a psychological position foremost. He argues that refugees must resist the popular perceptions of forced migrants as weak and vulnerable: “Provided that the exile refuses to sit on the sidelines nursing a wound, there are things to be learned: he or she must cultivate a scrupulous (not indulgent or sulky) subjectivity” (Said, 2001, p. 184).

Conceptualising home Integration as an ongoing process of mutual enablement between individuals and various aspects or scales of society, which is also essential in understanding expansive notions of home and belonging. Society itself includes institutions, traditions, regulations, and environments that structure one’s life-world. While the details of the lifeworld may differ amongst individuals, integration consists of instrumental and affective elements. The former represents an improved level of functionality within society’s structures, and the latter the development of feelings of attachment, familiarity, and confidence with one’s surroundings as a sense of well-being. Functional indicators of integration (employment, housing, education, language acquisition) and affective indicators (belonging, citizenship, nationalism) are sometimes referred to as hard and soft indicators, respectively. Hard indicators receive the most attention by states because they are measurable outcomes of settlement. Soft indicators of integration are harder to assess, but are just as meaningful to migrants’ settlement. Home and homelessness can be used as metaphors to describe the extreme outcomes of poor functional integration or poor affective integration. As metaphors, home and homelessness are complex concepts, especially when considered materially, emotionally, and at different scales. Settles (2000) argues that limits on the locality of home are limits to the expression of the individual and “[t]he modern political assumption that

Introduction: Intersections and Definitions

17

one has one home in one nation is both an oversimplified view of today and a misreading of history” (p. 639). The simultaneity of home experiences expresses the fact that at any given time, home may be nested at different scales in different places and “...the home one has may be temporary and the home one wants may be beyond one’s reach” (p. 632). Home as shelter has symbolic and material meaning beyond “bricksnmortar”. In Watson and Austerberry’s seminal work on women’s homelessness (1986) they suggest it is also about standards and condition, privacy, control, space, comfort, stability, choice, and self-expression and there is no absolute definition of either home or homelessness (Watson and Austerberry, 1986; Saunders and Williams, 1988). But for some people the meaning of home may not be about shelter or even explicitly about place. It may be about liberty, family, health, participation, or any number of a-spatial things. Neale (1997) agrees that there may be dissonance between material and emotional aspects of home: that a person may be well-housed but feel homeless, or vice versa. However, Neale further suggests that this subjective experience leaves no room for state intervention, and on this point we disagree. In fact, identifying the dissonance between house/lessness and home/lessness is the first step in relevant intervention that helps people towards a fuller more consonant sense of home. Refugees’ perspectives provide a form of testimonial to the policies that augment or undercut home-making as part of the informal refugee settlement process.

Structure and agency in refugees’ lives Structuration theory is used as an overarching framework to bind ideas of homelessness, home, refugeeness, and integration and demonstrate the interdependence of refugees’ agency and social structures. While refugees’ lives may be structured by institutions, regulations, laws, and traditions, they are not predetermined by them (Jencks, 1996; Neale, 1997). Following the conceptual and methodological considerations in this research, Chapters Four and Five take considerable efforts to explain the traditions of control of each country and their relationship to migration, foundations of contemporary policies based on equality or difference, and contemporary responses to trends in migration as a product of national identity and countries’ role in the world. As an example of the different pressures each country’s asylum determination and welfare systems are

Chapter One

18

under, Graph 1.1 compares the numbers of applications lodged in Canada and the UK between 1982 and 2001. Graph 1.1 Asylum Applications in Canada and the UK (1980-2001) New Asylum Applications in Canada and the UK 1980-2001 120000 100000 80000 Canada

60000

United Kingdom

40000 20000

84 85 19 86 19 87 19 88 19 89 19 90 19 91 19 92 19 93 19 94 19 95 19 96 19 97 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 19

19

19

19

82 83

0

Source: UNHCR, 2001

Between 1993 and 2001, the numbers of applications lodged in Canada doubled to 42,000; however, the UK was handling claims in excess of 100,000 in 2001. Since popular opposition to asylum is positively correlated with the numbers of applications, statistics are important. Dramatic differences in national responses were also evident after the events of 9/11 (Chapters Five and Nine). Political rhetoric and public attitudes are important to this discussion because they are means of broadcasting who is deserving of state protection and who is not, who is the surveilled and who is surveilling, and ultimately who does not belong. This sense of ‘otherness’ is examined in conjunction with refugees’ feelings of attachment to the country of asylum and their desire to make their country of asylum a home. Interweaving a series of broad-ranging ideas borrowed from behavioural geography, environmental psychology, and development economics with structuration theory the conceptual framework provides a basis to understand the principles of security and agency and their involvement in constructing home. Chapter Two examines the significance of definitions

Introduction: Intersections and Definitions

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and then turns to discuss agency, vulnerability, and forms of adjustment to a new society. Finally, integration is discussed as a duality of functional and affective indicators, which complement each other and provide a holistic framework within which refugees’ own perspectives can influence policy. Ultimately, the interwoven strands of homelessness, refugeeness, and home are used in this research to understand the interplay of different structural scales on refugees’ settlement and integration within a comparative framework, and it does this using primarily qualitative methodologies to elicit refugees’ opinions and interpretations of place. Important to this analysis are the processual aspects of refugees’ struggles for the entitlements of citizenship, including shelter and a sense of belonging. Caveats to comparative research are many. In addition to increasing the required research time and budget, comparative research needs to be designed and conducted to reproduce the study in different social and political contexts, and sensitive to the culture, institutions, and debates in both countries. The decision to focus on refugees’ experiences and perceptions of their housing situations and the meaning of home complicated the comparative structure with a qualitative methodology (Quilgars et al., 2005). This research is about refugeeness and homelessness together, and it is refugees’ subjectivities (Lacroix, 2004) that provide the vehicle for peeling away the layers of home and providing an alternative conception of homelessness. A qualitative approach was most appropriate to the nature and depth of the research and the sensitivities of the group concerned. The number of interviewees was capped at thirty in each city to provide a minimum number to facilitate comparison and small enough to address the goal of the research to explore conceptualisations, and elicit reflexivity and subjectivity of refugees’ experiences of settlements through the lens of home and homelessness. Further parameters on the selection of interviewees included that they should have claimed asylum between 1996 and 2001 and have leave to remain. Therefore all interviewees were relatively recent post-determination refugee claimants with between one and six years of experience in the country of asylum. There was no restriction on nationality. These issues and other aspects of research design and implementation, including the process of finding and interviewing participants, are discussed further in Chapter Three.

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Chapter One

Chapter Three operationalises the ideas raised in Chapter Two. The research methodology chapter focuses on affective indicators of integration as a gap in integration studies, which gives minimal priority to refugees’ evaluation of their settlement. The chapter justifies a comparative study, and describes in detail the research strategies and decisions used in constructing the interview schedule, getting help from organizations, finding participants, and interviewing. I discuss some of the issues that that arose while conducting interviews personally, and how these were overcome. One strategy for sparking the creative imagination of refugees in discussing home was the use of photography. The chapter illustrates some examples of this photography and its depiction of the material and emotive aspects of home and homelessness along with refugees’ comments. Chapter Three attempts to address the question, “Is it possible to measure refugees’ early housing careers and meaning of home in a cross-national comparison?” The first step in understanding home in a comparative study is to examine the national structures to which refugees arrive. Chapters Four and Five analyse the social, political, and economic traditions that constituted early responses to immigration, the relationships of Britain to Canada, as well as each country to the rest of the world. Chapter Four provides an overview of the evolution of each state’s response to immigration and its role in nation-building, while Chapter Five focuses on major asylum trends since 1990, how states’ responses are structured, and legislative trends directly affecting asylum seekers. These Chapters are evidence that different trends and institutional contexts have different effects on refugees, and while both countries enable and constrain refugees’ settlement and integration, they do this in ways that reflect the relative role and importance of immigration in the national identity. In Chapter Six, refugees’ characteristics are discussed in relation to their capacity to influence, positively or negatively, refugees’ housing chances. The chapter considers the interplay of characteristics and their effects on refugees’ chances in the housing market, provides a snapshot of refugees’ housing careers, and discusses the frequency and nature of respondents’ houselessness. By examining aspects of life in the country of origin, social and human capital, and refugees’ expectations, this chapter addresses the question, “Can various forms of capital help refugees to improve their housing trajectories and support their resilience when confronted with deterrent policies?”

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Chapters Seven and Eight present case studies, three in each city, to provide in-depth insight into different housing trajectories. Different pathways to housing are presented, emphasising the ways in which people with varying degrees of vulnerability and capital were able to direct their lives and express their agency. Detailed housing histories are provided for each case. Chapters Seven and Eight address the question, “What are the different pathways to home and homelessness in Canada and the UK and how do they intersect with refugeeness?” Chapter Nine concludes the empirical discussion by examining gatekeepers’ perspectives. The focus in the chapter is on Canada due to restricted access to policy-makers in the UK. The chapter relies on multilevel key informant interviews on refugee integration and refugee homelessness with people representing different aspects of official bureaucracy. The interviews reflect the perspective of state actors in the role of asylum to the overall immigration programme and its challenges and benefits. In addition, interviewees offer critical reflection on UK policies. Finally, the research concludes with a reflective and critical overview of the success and failures of the research, its major findings, policy implications, and suggestions for further research. To summarise, this research examines refugees’ housing and home trajectories over the asylum and settlement process: first defining the theoretical framework including the ideas of home and homelessness, refugeeness and integration, and then examining how these were incorporated into the research design and implementation. This research then analyses the evolution of contemporary structures through history and increasing numbers of asylum applications, policy trends, and challenges. This is followed by the first of four empirical Chapters, discussing respondents’ journeys, expectations, contacts and demographic characteristics; analysing six case studies divided between London and Toronto to demonstrate the ways refugees are socially constituted, constrained and enabled, through formal and informal systems; and examining the experiences of the gatekeepers in managing asylum. Finally, observations, findings, and recommendations are summarised. However to begin, Chapter Two defines the concepts and framework in which this research is set.

CHAPTER TWO RECONSIDERING HOME AND HOMELESSNESS IN THE CONTEXT OF FORCED MIGRATION AND FORCED RESETTLEMENT

Deprived of all the aspects of his home, man would be deprived of himself, of his humanity. (Vaclav Havel)

A theoretical mosaic Homelessness, forced migration, and the meaning of home each constitute a significant body of academic work across disciplines. Explorations into the themes, and indeed the realities, of poverty, exile, and longing for home have been a part of human histories from time immemorial, intrinsically tied to our deepest needs for security and stability in an uncertain world. The intersection of home, homelessness, and exile has social, economic and political underpinnings, and at the international and national scales, these strike at the core of humanity and morality to raise questions about our obligations to strangers. Gandhi once said that the test of a civilised democracy is how a government treats its minorities; half a century later, in a world defined by globalisation, and countries defined by multiculturalism, a more salient test might be how a government treats foreigners seeking asylum in their territory. “Home” is a social and a spatial concept. It is multi-faceted and open to interpretation. Homelessness and “refugeeness” are major disruptive events in a person’s life and “home” can be a concept that assists in the interpretation of “immigrant integration”, because it can reflect refugees’ perceptions of their flight and settlement experiences. Home has both literal and metaphorical meaning in traditional cultures that relate to various aspects of a person’s life. It is short, simple, and familiar word that many people are used to in some way or another. In contrast, integration is

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a policy-laden term that changes meaning according to the project of the state, its history, immigration politics, and world-view, and it has been criticised as a tool of immigration management rather than social inclusion (Smith, 1996; Carerra, 2006; Guild, 2006). This chapter begins by introducing theoretical constructs that are used throughout the research, before examining definitions of homelessness, aspects of “refugeeness”, and finally integration, each in relation to the dialectic of home and homelessness in refugees’ experiences of loss and achievement. For Goldberg, an expert on the sociology of race, the home at a national scale is a place of “peace, of shelter from terror, doubt, and division, a geography of relative self-determination and sanctity” (1993, p. 199). At a local level, city historian Lewis Mumford argues that when the many parts of home converge they produce “…the most tenacious cement possible for human society” (1961, p. 287), and at the scale of the dwelling, Rybczynski (1986), like Cooper (1974), argues that the home brings together “the meanings of house and of household, of dwelling and of refuge… a physical ‘place’ but also the more abstract sense of a ‘state of being’,” (Rybczynski, 1986, p. 66). Home may be connected with the body, its health and well-being, the closeness of family, and the comfort and security found in each. A sense of home need not be place bound; in fact, it need not be a place at all. As well as a “state of being,” it may also refer to a “state of doing”, the ability to progress, succeed, make decisions, and choose one’s pathway. There is no single theory or explanation of migration, integration, or homelessness; therefore, I have approached theories to build an analytical framework mosaic. The duality of structure, theories of need and resources, power, and capability are drawn on to discuss refugees’ intersections of displacement.

Structuration, power, and capability Structuration is a theory of the creation of social structures, which constitute society, or as Giddens calls it, “the dynamic process whereby structures come into being” (Giddens, 1993, p. 128). As a component of a theoretical mosaic, structuration is useful for comparative research since it can help us to understand how national structures influence people’s day-

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to-day lives and the way people cope with extraordinary events, exemplified by international displacement. Giddens’ theory of structuration (1981) argues that structures do not frame society, but rather comprise rules and resources, which individuals draw on within the bounded structures of society and self. On the one hand structures may be dominating and oppressive, and on the other, agents are capable of transforming their everyday realities in three ways: preserving and using existing structures for their own purpose; creating alternative or parallel structures to bypass others; and destroying structures to make change through revolutionary resistance. Structuration, therefore, is a philosophy of action, “human doings” (Giddens, 1993, p. 129), and it suggests that the constitution of society is shaped by human agency just as the choices, intentions and capabilities of human agency are constrained and enabled by society’s rules and resources, an interaction that Giddens refers to as the “duality of structure” (Giddens, 1993, p. 128, 129). However, Giddens also recognizes the centrality of power in everyday life, and that every interaction is shaped by asymmetries in resources. In structuration theory, power refers to capabilities, and power is the property of the interaction of structure and agency because it allows people to mobilise resources, which in turn have power over them (Ibid., 1993, p. 118). Generally, individuals who lack resources also lack the capability to take control of their life in order to alter its course (Ibid., 1993). As a philosophy of “doing”, particularly related to ameliorating the lives of the poor and disenfranchised, the core ideas of empowerment and capability, or capacity building, are principles of social justice and selfhelp: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day—Teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. This philosophy bridges two fundamental human needs: the basic necessities of survival and safety; and the purposeful activity of belonging and self-esteem, both of which are requisites for transforming one’s lifeworld and building equality. To paraphrase Sen and Nussbaum (1993), to be housed is not the same as to house oneself. The latter requires capacity building, while the former subverts it, and human agency is greater in the latter. Capability reflects a person’s ownership of the means to choose between different ways of living, and particularly amongst refugees, choice is vital to a sense of freedom, opportunity, and ultimately, ontological security that produces confident, active citizenship (Nussbaum and Sen, 1993).

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Borrowing from Maslow (1943), there are different categories of human need, each of which corresponds to structures, formal and informal, that satisfy them: ‚ Physiological, survival, and safety needs require material responses (life sustaining); ‚ Social needs, such as belonging, require bonding and associative resources (life affirming); and so-called ‚ Spiritual needs require facilities for education, re-skilling, and personal development (life developing). Certain structures within a society are better at meeting specific needs than others and, over time, the needs that are a priority for refugees will change. When examined more closely, the need categories also loosely reflect migrant settlement stages; although, at all stages people will have overlapping needs that differ in emphasis based on their knowledge of society and its rules and access to resources. Moreover, not everyone will be capable of meeting their own needs. Differences in capability are based on the strength of individual characteristics, including accumulated wealth and human and social capital, expectations, and preparedness. Barriers to integration are interpreted through individual characteristics, needs, and hopes and may be prioritised differently depending on a person’s circumstances (e.g. separation from family, immediate health needs, requirements to repay agents or send remittances). These priorities may emerge within a person’s definitions and experiences of home and or homelessness. Home and homelessness are not neutral terms. They are socially and politically constructed, formed from individual experience and personal vulnerability, and reflect structural inadequacies in society. They are terms of power and powerlessness, and they are gendered, racialised, classed and bound to issues of deservedness, citizenship and settlement (Burrows et al., 1997; Daly, 1996; Harrison, 1999; Steele and Somerville, 2002; Edgar et al., 2005; Tomas and Dittmar, 1996). Obviously, the resources of a society can not only influence material living standards, but also organize an individual’s “life chances” (Callinicos, 1985, p. 145; Giddens, 1993). However, Giddens argues that even the most seemingly powerless person can, to some extent, “alter the conditions of life that others seek to thrust upon them” (1981, p. 171). Structures

26

Chapter Two

impinge on agency; for example, through an individual’s unfamiliarity with the rules that govern social practices, and disruption of one’s daily routine. Each of these disruptions can undermine an individual’s “ontological security” but, with adaptation and integration measures, the affects can be mitigated. Ontological security is defined as the continuity in everyday life that gives it order, meaning, and stability (Bilton, et al., 1996, p. 665). The notion of the “lifeworld” is the totality of an individual’s day-to-day interaction with their environment and its constituents (Buttimer, 1976). The lifeworld is closely related to Bourdieu’s idea of the “habitus”, which similarly constitutes the daily practices embodied by an individual, although it may also include a group, society, or nation. Ontological security is psychologically founded on the formation of trust relationships through daily interaction in one’s lifeworld, or “routinisation” (Gregory, 1989, pp. 190-204; Giddens, 1989, p. 278), and it is significant to “human doings” because it is the basis of a positive view of one’s lifeworld and the future, and based on a sense of safety, confidence in one’s environment, and satisfaction of basic human needs. Consequently, it is contingent on avoiding chaos and fear. Forced migration and homelessness both epitomise disruptions to ontological security, reflecting the state as the ultimate site of power in the structuration duality (Giddens, 1993). Mistrust, fear, and loss undermine human agency, to make it reactive, rather than proactive, and it is in this context of structural domination that refugees struggle to stabilise their futures and give their lives meaning. Giddens intended that structuration theory would sensitize research to the duality of structure, the transformative power of agency, and generate new epistemologies and ontological understandings of the social world of the individual (1981). Structuration theory offers insights into how national asylum and welfare structures interact with refugees’ agency to produce meanings and experiences of home and homelessness.

Operationalising and Obfuscating Home/lessness On the one hand the importance of definitions and the necessity of operationalising terms of social need are self-evident in order to estimate the size of the need and resources required to meet it. But who determines whether that need has been met and how effectively? Listening to

Reconsidering Home and Homelessness

27

refugees’ perceptions and experiences of homelessness is one way of finding out. This section explores the material and psychological elements of home and homelessness. Who is homeless and who is not, who is a refugee and who is not, constitute social and legal distinctions that are made according to a number of factors, including a country’s politics, ideologies, economics and culture. The first step in solving a problem is to recognise it, and this demands drawing a line that defines those who need help from the rest of the population. Moreover, definitions also distinguish amongst those who need help but may be undeserving of it, and those who may be deserving but who society is unable or unwilling to help. Thus a continuum of policy definitions in turn structures a continuum of need, and vice versa. Together these decisions animate research, political debate, and social commentary, and are essential to governments’ construction of public policy. The differences in definitions and estimations are a function of the difference in importance that each country accords to housing issues. While “housing is a fixture of Britain’s political landscape” (Daly, 1996, p. 17) governments in Canada, have devolved their role in housing, relying on municipal and non-profit sectors to manage housing need (Chapter Five). Consequently, there is an important distinction in who defines homelessness in Canada and the UK. One of the ways definitions are operationalised is through policy (Chapter Five). In the UK, the national government has legislated a duty to local authorities to house destitute and vulnerable people. Consequently, the definition of homelessness is precisely legally defined. By contrast, definitions of homeless households in Canada are municipally based, have no legal ramifications, and are relatively broad. Definitions are central to refugees and homelessness because both are legal statuses with obligations on a state to provide assistance, mainly through provision of a place to stay, from which one can leave and return: in the case of homelessness, this is satisfied by shelter, and in the case of refugees, a nation of asylum (see UN ICESCR and UDHR). But who is homeless and who is a refugee is determined not only by the state and influenced by its economy, and the character of its society, but also by

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human agency and those who apply for assistance as an asylum seeker or applicant for shelter. Definitions not only differ according to state policy, but also over time, including and excluding applicants according to political agendas, ideologies, and public sentiment. The act of defining vulnerable groups frames programmatic responses and assists in the allocation of resources. The lines that distinguish those eligible for assistance from those who are not are blurred because homelessness like forced migration is processual, locational, and experienced to different degrees, reflected in terminology that describes a continuum of need.

The problem of “home” The term homelessness is not as clear as others that could be used to better describe the loss of shelter. The terms houselessness or rooflessness are more specific descriptions of inadequate accommodation or living without a roof of one’s own in shelters or on the street. This is because the word “home” has multiple meanings, metaphorical, relational, and material: Home 1 n. place where one lives; fixed residence of family or household; native land; institution for persons needing care or rest etc; place where thing originates or is native or most common; finishing point in race; home match or win in games (OED, abridged).

Although it seems logical that homelessness, should then reflect the absence of the above, the dictionary definition is relegated to the material: a. lacking a dwelling place (Op Cit).

Hulchanski (2000) asserts that while homelessness is not just a housing problem, it is always a housing problem. Home, however, is neither just about housing nor always about housing. More than shelter, “Home is a spatial metaphor for relationships to a variety of places as well as a way of being in the world” (Springer, 2000, p. 480). Springer’s definition of home is paramount to bringing together a discussion of homelessness and refugeeness within the duality of structure at different scales and in different places, and understanding home as conjoined to psychology and emotions. This represents a gap in the literature, which I attempt to fill in this study by examining refugees’ experiences of housing and meanings of home and homelessness.

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There has been a lack of nuanced discussion of how people who have sought and achieved asylum resolve experiences of loss and how housing conditions affect their sense of well-being and belonging. Research often ignores home as a process and presents it as precisely located, synonymous with the country of origin at one scale or the residential dwelling at another. This is most evident in accommodation studies that refer to refugees as homeless on arrival to the country of asylum (for example, Quilgars, 1993; Ryan and Woodill, 2000), and experiencing a “double homelessness” in “…the loss of both a home and a homeland” (Garvie, 2001, p. 6). But asylum migrations are more complex than this, reflecting ease of travel and information, transnational social networks, and a web of human rights to which states are accountable. The lack of critical reflection in the use of the terms home and homeless in relation to refugees is problematic in at least two ways: it assumes de facto homelessness for forced migrants or “double homelessness” for poorlyaccommodated refugees, which simultaneously diminishes and normalises the homelessness experiences of citizens; and it presumes ties to and a relationship with the country of origin, which may reflect a Western imaginary of “the refugee” rather than a refugee’s experiences. Consequently, this book uses a qualitative methodology and in-depth interviewing to elicit refugees’ views about their definitions of home. The meanings of home and homelessness in the contexts of forced migration and housing are determined empirically. Neither the country of origin nor the place of dwelling can be presumed to have been a home in any respects, and the imposition of this emotionallyladen term on spaces that may have included persecution, destitution, and fear constitutes sentimentalised concepts of both national and domestic spaces. Similarly, situations and experiences that researchers presume to be characterised by loss, remorse, stress, and insecurity may satisfy more pressing individual needs; for example, some asylum seekers may value proximity to family or social networks to the detriment of their material living conditions or Western standards of comfort and housing health. This is not meant to downplay the hurdles that asylum seekers face in the asylum process, nor their effects, but to emphasise that the geographies of home and exclusion must originate from the lived reality of the individual and accommodate scale, time, and space. Castles and Miller have suggested that migrants are compelled by their situation to have multilayered identities (1993, p. 274), and by extension the geographies of migration must also be multi-layered, complex, and perhaps contradictory according to refugees’ associations and interpretations of space and place.

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Reflections on the meaning of home are especially poignant for people who may have lost home and, while it may not be the case for all refugees, it may be the case for most. In addition to providing refuge from the elements, a dwelling offers physical and psychological security, connotes status, represents a source of pride, self-respect, and a tangible measure of our economic worth (Daly, 1996, p. 149), which in the case of refugees is often diminished by national policies. National asylum policies and welfare regulations affect refugees to different extents and in different ways according to the traditions of the countries in question, their histories and role of immigration, and the boundaries of belonging, as well as refugees’ resilience and ability to cope.

Refugee Migration: Refugees and “Refugeeness” Nations are bounded by policies and practices that regulate access to territory, and although “…unprecedented global mobility [and] spatial boundaries may no longer be significant for what they physically contain, [they] are increasingly important for who they symbolically exclude”. (Smith, 1993, p76)

Phases of refugee migration There are four phases of movement, which comprise the refugee experience: flight; transit; asylum seeking; and settlement. Flight includes all intra-national movement as people prepare to escape their country of persecution. Asylum seekers begin their migration and integration in the country of origin. It begins with an idea of flight, and some consideration of a direction or destination. People may experience stages of levering out of the country with escalating degrees of violence and persecution, or experience a single incident, that catapults them out of the country. The confusion, anxiety and loss associated with flight have implications for the meaning of home for refugees. The absence of alternatives in having to exit the country of origin quickly and secretly may create a sense of a thwarted trajectory and severed relations that compel people to look back while fleeing and settling, with sentiment, guilt and remorse. In addition, this interruption to their previous lifecourse can consume the thoughts of refugees so much so that they have no room to re-construct home in the country of asylum (Ho and Kissoon, 2012). Transit refers to what can be a circuitous and life-endangering journey to asylum, which can compound the fear that a refugee embodies in flight

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from persecution. This phase of travelling is a game of roulette for asylum seekers who cannot know if or when they will be detected, detained, and deported, consequently this phase does not end until an asylum claim is made. When a claim is lodged, the asylum-seeking phase begins a period of “wait-and-see” anxiety and the stress of adaptation. For this reason, the asylum-seeking stage and the settlement stage blur because although settlement officially begins at the time that a claimant receives a positive decision, the unofficial reality is that it may begin on arrival in the country. In fact, some precursors of integration may even begin before departing the country of origin, especially where the destination is decision-based and reflects the desires of the claimant. During asylum seeking phase asylum seekers may be vulnerable to exploitation, poverty, and depression due to gaps in their capital and resources, including not having close social ties or stable employment or housing. Finally, settlement describes the embarkation of new life careers, social networks, political involvement and participation, and community formation over time in the country of asylum, influenced by internal and external circumstances.

Forced settlement as a reflection of forced migration Forced migration and settlement thus encapsulate: a) the constraints and restrictions associated with the brief window of opportunity to escape the country of persecution; b) the logistical unfeasibility of transferring a lifetime of accumulated items; c) the relatively sudden departure from close relations left behind in the country of persecution; d) the uncertainty of relocating to an unfamiliar or unknown culture and place; e) the severance of life-course careers, such as housing, employment and education;

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f) dependency on assistance to arrive to a safe place that may be the decision of helpers or smugglers rather than the asylum seeker; and g) arrival to a reception centre, or removal to a city, or dwelling unknown to or undesirable to the asylum seeker. Each facet of “forced settlement” is a reflection of “forced migration” – they are sides of the same coin. The effects of forced settlement may be exacerbated by policies that are unsympathetic to the social and geographical dislocation experienced by new arrivals. .

Characteristics of refugee arrivals How are refugees different from other migrants? Why are their needs more urgent than economic or socio-familial migrants? Critically, refugees’ needs may be masked by other migration categories and motivations, which emphasise the complex realities of the entangled nature of human agency and institutional categories. While a person may have concurrent drives, such as a better life, to be with family, and to escape danger, each has their own characteristics. Although the drives may have certain characteristics, they are not exclusive and do not operate in isolation. When considering the drive to migrate that is most closely associated with the refugee category, there are three interrelated emotional features: i. Vulnerability The first general characteristic of refugees that is essential for understanding their settlement needs generally, and their housing and home trajectories in particular, is the emotional quality that results from fear of political persecution, displacement, and the traumas of forced migration. Just as homelessness is not just about housing but always about housing, equally, being a refugee (or in other words, “refugeeness”) is not just about vulnerability, although vulnerability is always present. It is the inherent vulnerability of the refugee situation that makes asylum a matter of international protection and cooperation. Refugee vulnerability is also more than being “outside one’s country of nationality”, which is common to all migrants; it is also about claiming one’s basic human rights, which may have been violated in the country of nationality. Therefore there is a legal burden, in addition to the physical

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risks and emotional vulnerability, which begins with applying for asylum in a second country. It is the claim of vulnerability to persecution in the country of origin that gives someone the right to seek asylum and that also often affords asylum seekers access to life-preserving basics, such as shelter, health-care, and income for food and clothes. ii. Dynamic “imminent-needs” hierarchy The second general characteristic of refugees is that the needs that are most imminent vary according to the individual as well as the stage of the asylum and settlement process, and for many people fleeing persecution trauma and stress counselling are as important as food and shelter. While a person’s objectives over the asylum and settlement process shift with their satisfaction of basic needs; asylum seekers’ most immediate concern on leaving their country of origin is safety. Yet, in some cases the persistence of fear can transform into paranoia and anxiety that remains with a person and can debilitate settlement, even though materially, a person’s safety needs may be met. In countries with experience of receiving asylum seekers, counselling for victims of torture and trauma is commonly supported because early care interventions can assist with settlement and integration. Additionally, ambitions that may have been suppressed by the immediacy of flight and survival may surface over the course of arrival and settlement in the country of asylum. On arrival, the most pressing concerns are of course safety, security, and survival; and once achieved to some degree, other motivations may surface, including forming relationships, family reunification, re-training and employment, and home-ownership. Therefore the expression of imminent needs by a person whose dominant motivation may be to obtain refugee status might be confounded by posttraumatic stress disorder, or escalate hierarchically as basic needs are met. iii. Agency amidst constraints The third general characteristic of refugees is their agency: that is people’s ability to recognize their situation, identify their needs, and make decisions based on both. Asylum seeking is a process structured by social and political systems, and asylum seekers’ aspirations do not stop at finding safe haven, but may include being an equal participant and citizen in a new society.

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Acknowledging that asylum seekers are active agents in the process of flight, settlement, and integration does not negate the validity of their arrival or claim, nor does it mean that all people are equally active in the decision-making. Minors, for instance, and people who have used smugglers may be amongst those who have had the least decision-making power. Recognizing asylum seekers’ agency is to understand that in migration journeys that have been structured by fear and persecution, being given choices or asked to make decisions can be restorative and empowering. Refugeeness is a problem of individuals and society, structure and agency. In his discussion of homelessness Jencks (1996, p. 48) underscores that homeless people are not just passive victims of circumstance or institutional oppression, but rather make choices, however limited those choices are, in their own interests. The same can be said for refugees. Choices are limited not only by institutions and policies, but also by social and human capital. Where agency is over-emphasised, the intentionality and decision-making of the refugee is also exaggerated to be a lifestyle decision, or strategic act to access social-welfare benefits or citizenship rights. Stressing intentionality, without duly recognizing the structures that frame choices, , tends to attribute blame to individuals for their life situation, and diminishes the systemic and institutional barriers that limit their ability to escape, find asylum, and settle. By diminishing the importance of structural obstacles to people’s life chances, both refugeeness and homelessness are framed as issues of individual deficiency, which contribute to public perceptions of undeservedness. On the other hand, more liberal views may overemphasise the role of state structures and regulations, thereby constructing people as “human pinballs” (Amnesty International, 1995), devoid of agency. Jencks’ recognition of homelessness as a process of structuration, prepares the ground for an integrated approach to understanding homelessness and, by extension, refugeeness. Jencks places homeless people’s “choices” in their context: while some people may reject authority, family stress, abuse, rules, regulations, and institutions, no combination of rejection amounts to a “choice” to live in the streets (Jencks, 1996, p. 120). Similarly, asylum seeking is about “constrained choices” in that people are compelled to flee, and in doing so make some decisions about ”how” and “where to”, but just because asylum seekers rejected the conditions that fostered fear and

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instability in their countries of origin, does not mean that they “chose” to seek asylum. Moreover, asylum seekers who reject nearby countries or “convenient” flight options for a more difficult journey to safety, and who reject unfamiliar countries with unknown or precarious immigration rules, should not be deemed as “shopping” for sanctuary. For some of the refugees interviewed for this research, the asylum process was first and foremost a project of putting as much space as possible between themselves and events in places that put their lives at risk (cf Chapter Five). This amounts to rejecting proximity for the increased security associated with distance. Crossing the nearest border does not mean that safety is guaranteed. In the refugee’s case, international migration is an effective survival tactic and is the most basic need at the first stage of the asylum project i.e. getting to a safe zone. A person’s destination is often the place in which she, or her smuggler, feels her chance to remain is best. This is a complicated calculus of survival and it should be a source of pride for Canada and the UK that they are preferred destinations. Recognizing asylum seekers as having agency and the ability to make choices for themselves, even though they may be forced to choose from equally problematic or difficult options, is crucial in appreciating their survival. Asylum seekers have shown their resourcefulness and their ability to survive in getting to Canada and the UK. Unfortunately, although choice and control are foundations of settlement and integration, governments often remove choice and control from asylum seekers as strategies of deterrence and, arguably, punishment for their spontaneous migration (Chapter Five). However, understanding asylum and settlement from refugees’ own points of view should convey the importance of encouraging and maximising choices in the country of asylum to heighten a sense of control and personal responsibility, and contribute to continuity and comfort, all of which are building blocks in the re-assembly of broken careers and the reconstruction of a sense of home. Re-establishing a career path and sense of home are two types of investment, economic and emotional, that benefit not only the asylum seeker but the country of asylum as well.

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The European Council on Refugees and Exile (ECRE, 2005) refers to asylum seekers as a population of migrants that is at once the most vulnerable and resilient in society because, despite the barriers, their ability to lead their lives is evident in their survival, flight, and settlement in the country of asylum. Politics and policies are paramount to structuring people’s lives, which is why this research is, at its core, comparative. For Jencks, it is a combination of political indifference and personal vulnerability that has caused homelessness to persist (Jencks, 1996, p. 48); however, homelessness amongst asylum seekers cannot be explained this way because the political response to asylum seekers has been far from indifferent. Noble (2004) refers to “uncivil attentions” to describe the continuum of the state and society’s responses toward asylum seekers, which include various forms of social exclusion on the one hand and violence on the other, thereby exacerbating the first general characteristic of refugees, vulnerability, and the second characteristic discussed, shifts in the imminent needs hierarchies, defined by individuals through the process of asylum and settlement. So, while the state and society’s “uncivil attentions” undermine refugees’ ability to express their agency, meet their needs, and alleviate their vulnerability, Noble further suggests that such social and political forms of “othering” do more than exclude asylum seekers: they regulate belonging and participation and undermine the ability of migrants to feel “at home” (Noble, 2004, p. 108). Consequently, the debate extends to issues of citizenship, belonging and social responsibility, and asylum seekers are at once constructed as victims of social structures (largely in the “third world”) and opportunists who use the moral imperative to the right to asylum (in the West) to mask economic motivations for migration with political persecution. The historically and geographically bound “deserving” asylum seeker fleeing the atrocities of a renowned tyrannical regime was easier to know and understand than the contemporary asylum seeker who may arrive to the West from any number of unknown countries with atrocious human rights records and corrupt governments. As discussed in Chapter Five, this explains the continued popularity of refugee camps as a way of managing displaced persons. Unfortunately, confusion about “who the asylum seeker is” is used to create a picture of suspicion and illegitimacy for the most

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mobile, and arguably the most able to be upwardly mobile in the country of asylum, while charity is reserved for those who remain in situ. However, the reality of asylum seeking is that as an act of migration, it bears different meanings according to the objectives of the migrants. This realisation heightened the public’s distrust of the asylum seeker, and particularly after September 11th, 2001, undermined confidence in the asylum system, since it seemed impossible that any method could possibly detect what objective the asylum seeker had in mind and how to distinguish the nefarious or the materialistic from the political victim. Actually, asylum determination is a complex legal process, rigorous and, especially in the UK, errs on the side of refusal (Chapter Five). Indeed, because refugeeness, the imminent need for safety and refugees’ desperate agency may result in their illegal entry or presence in the country of asylum (Kissoon, 2013), the 1951 Refugee Convention states that irregular entry and false documents should not be penalised. This also indicates that the mode of refugees’ flight and entry should not have a bearing on judgements of legitimacy and the determination of their asylum claim. Research in the field of mental health has noted that international migration, as a significant stressor, may predispose people to mental illness, and amongst migrants, asylum seekers experience a major increase in vulnerability because of pre-migration trauma, the rate of cultural change, and lack of choice (Bhugra, 2004; Noble, 2004). Many immigrants may face communication difficulties, the inversion of social status, lack of recognition of foreign credentials in the job market and education systems, and learning one’s rights and entitlements, but refugees face deeper levels of deprivation. According to Hiebert et al. (2006) this is because many refugees depend on welfare rates that are far below the poverty line, and possess less human social and economic capital, compared with the average family, or skilled migrant. Furthermore, prior to departure, asylum seekers will have had little time to prepare mentally for prospective re-settlement and very little opportunity to prepare practically because of the momentum of departure and uncertainty of their specific destination. This means that they may not have had a chance to familiarise themselves with the language or customs of the country of asylum, or collect and copy documentation of their careers, education, or skills to facilitate assessment of their qualifications skills and ease entry into the labour market. Other characteristics of their migration that intersect to create disadvantage on arrival relative to other migrant

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categories include: leaving behind close family members, often in uncertain, unstable, circumstances; leaving behind a lifetime of accumulated wealth with uncertain consequences; arriving with health problems related to experiences of loss, torture and other trauma; and travelling with anxiety about arrest and deportation. Although asylum seeker status predisposes one to homelessness in the country of asylum (Feantsa, 2004; Hiebert et al., 2006) not all asylum seekers will experience homelessness, and some will cope with the experience with greater resilience than others.

Compatible migrations: Characteristics of respondents and asylum destinations Callinicos (1985) suggests that the scope of agency depends on the relationship between two geographies: first, where people are from and the circumstances of migration and second, where people end up or the circumstances in which they find themselves. This is not to revert to environmental determinism, but to acknowledge that geography has an impact on the organization of one’s life chances, and different opportunity structures exist for people in different places. According to Noble (2004) “Migrant home-building must, by necessity, constantly negotiate the affective and cognitive dissonance thrown up by the act of migration as it attempts to secure a place in a new world” (p 108). To become at home, therefore, refugees have to reconcile their expectations with the realities in the country of asylum because the greater the discrepancy between people’s situation and their self-concept, the greater the dissonance. Dissonance is uncomfortable and stressful, and therefore undermines one of the fundamental prerequisites of home at any scale, “ontological security” (Giddens, 1990).

Two dimensions of refugees’ earlier geographical experiences: Depth and breadth of residential mobility Ontological security is essential to understanding refugeeness, because at a very fundamental level it is the basis of emotional stability and trust in one’s environment, which has broken down in the country of origin and needs to be built in the country of asylum.

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Routinisation and residential mobility occur over the life-course and create personal maps of meanings through space-time that change in two dimensions: how well we know a place, and our breadth of experiences with different places. Each embodies a different relationship between a person and their migration history, and their degree of comfort with migration. For example, one person may have great anxiety about moving dwelling, having lived in one place for her whole life, while at the other end of the continuum, a person may feel trapped at the thought of remaining too long in one place. In addition to factors related directly to persecution, mental and physical health, and forced migration generally, these types of place “knowings” and one’s geographical history have an impact on the ability to cope with resettlement. i. Routinisation and “deep-knowings” Routinsation can make some places so familiar we move through them on auto-pilot, so to speak, and the places themselves interact with our day-today realities as a bodily reflex. This first dimension refers to a deepknowing of place that occurs over time and with repetition. The dwelling place, at various levels, becomes predictable and comfortable through daily living, or one’s strategies may make it so, and its familiarity supports a sense of home. Being used to something, the way a place looks, smells, sounds, feels, structures everyday-life and gives people a sense of belonging, being “in-place” as opposed to out-of-place or dis-placed. Routinisation, therefore, supports a feeling of ontological security, which is important to the meaning of home because it gives people “the confidence, continuity and trust in the world… in order to lead happy and fulfilled lives” (Hiscock et al., 2001, p. 50). At a number of scales, refugees’ home-making requires re-orientation of the life-world in order to manage personal, social, and cultural loss, and from that loss an attempt to build new social networks, find occupational opportunities and resume behaviours associated with their stage in their life-course. Protection, permanence and comfort are fundamental to the feeling of safety at the national level, as well as the local and household levels. Ontological security reflects a sense of sanctuary in the country of asylum and belonging in society. Trust and confidence in one’s environment may improve with time, at which point more advanced elements of peoples housing needs and housing career e.g. prestige, status, and self-concept may be pursued in home-making (Hiscock et al., 2001). In this way, the verticality of the housing ladder, housing career, and familiarity with a place are encapsulated by the term “deep knowing”,

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which is one dimension of routinisation that results in ontological security over time but not space. However, barriers to ontological security and the re-orientation of home are numerous for refugees e.g. uncertainty, the absence of control, the intrusiveness of horrific memories and the enormity of their loss, isolation and loneliness, and destitution. Combined with the dissonance of migration and the disjuncture to one’s social world, refugeeness itself makes settlement and integration an extraordinary feat. ii. Routinisation and “place-knowings” The life-map also expands over the life-course to include places of work, travel, and dwelling, which represent a cumulative network of localities with varying meanings in one’s life. This network of places creates a cache of “place-knowings”, which vary in intensity and degree. How well the places that constitute our daily lives are known depends largely on the time spent and the relationships that were forged. These two aspects of place-knowings affect the degree to which the places support a sense of well-being and confidence, or in other words ontological security. Place-knowings represent a cumulative spatial history in people’s lives and are important to understanding migrant resilience. Migrants with a background of place-knowings, i.e. previous experiences of migration and mobility, by work, travel, or dwelling, “minimise the fragility of ontological security” by situating migration within a practice of continuity, rather than as a critical situation or disjuncture (Gregory, 1989, p. 197). However, international mobility, like a high rate of residential mobility, is not necessarily advantageous, as the circumstances of migration and the inventory of experiences have implications for the interpretation of place and settlement. Refugee migrations are far more complex than simple a-tob movements from the country of persecution to the country of asylum, and many refugees interviewed for this research referred to being resident in at least one other country prior to arriving in Canada or the UK. Where place-knowings are international, constitute urban experience, and result in a “familiarity with strangeness” e.g. comfort in difference in language, customs, attitudes, dress and foods, ontological security can develop through adaptation to difference and the expectation of strangeness. Familiarity with strangeness can make a person more comfortable with the unpredictability of new environments and more adaptable to settlement in new places. All things being equal, the radical disjunctures that “destroy the certitudes of institutionalised routines”

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(Giddens, 1990, p. 61), in the country of origin through persecution, and in adapting to a new milieu in the country of asylum, may be mitigated by a history of mobility and internationality.

Two forms of socio-cultural adjustment in the migration process: The relationship between the countries of origin and asylum i. Majority- -minority migration and adjustment International migration not only challenges the certitudes of routines, but also belonging, and another way of knowing a place is by comparison with one’s position of social status in the countries of origin and asylum. A person who moves from a majority position to a minority position in a new society is likely to have greater difficulty than a person who moves to other contexts (Bhugra, 2004) because power is associated with the majority position, and also because the majority position is normalised to create a sense of cohesion and belonging. This is outlined in the form of a simple typology in Table 2.1. Table 2.1 Adjustment to Moving to a Minority or Majority Position

Sending Country

Majority Minority

Receiving Country Majority Minority Medium adjustment Retarded adjustment Accelerated adjustment Medium adjustment

The varying degrees of adjustment that occur when moving from a majority to a minority position, and vice versa, and the attendant shifts in power relations, may not only be generated by race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, and political opinion, but also language. At neighbourhood scales, there may be other sorts of dissonance related to self-image that have been nurtured from one’s previous residential experiences and socio-economic position: for example a move from ownership to rental. The idea of the majority-minority position is not straightforward. This is largely because multiple and layered identities are not necessarily related, and the identities that one might give the most credence to in one context are not necessarily the same characteristics that determine belonging in another. Such compatibilities of ideologies and values are important to one’s adjustment in society (Table 2.1), and so gravitating toward some

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countries rather than others in the flight from persecution increases individual-social compatibility and an attendant sense of belonging. Such compatibility has political value because it reproduces the ideologicalpolitical constitution of society, which also structures national identity. Moving between a majority and minority position is a matter of adjustment but also accessibility. Chapter Five discusses accessibility in terms of geographical proximity between the country of origin and asylum, and the ease and expense of mobility between the two. Additionally however, accessibility reflects the proximity of values, language, culture, ethnicity, and appreciation of skills and resources between the asylum seeker’s country of origin and asylum. Providing a psycho-social meaning as the second definition of “accessibility”, the Oxford English Dictionary states that it is the quality of “being understood and appreciated” (OED online). Wider differences between the countries of origin and asylum entail more resources for bridging them, and the distance can affect refugees’ “settlement climb”, where in theory those with the least distance have a head start. Moreover, prior to fleeing, the perceived distance between two countries may influence the direction of flight since most journeys begin in the mind. The various perceived social, political and cultural distances can increase or decrease the effort and time asylum seekers take to integrate in society, and because integration is a two-way process, this form of accessibility, understood through psycho-social distance, has a social and economic cost for the receiving states. Indeed, the distance involved may additionally influence the willingness of asylum seekers to integrate on arrival to countries, which, while being geographically accessible, are otherwise inaccessible. This has particular relevance to the debates on multiculturalism and immigrant integration for Muslim asylum seekers in Western European countries, most recently Denmark, but also Germany and the Netherlands1.

1

For example, the ‘cartoon wars’, which became an international incident, and which precipitated talk of a values test for immigrants to Denmark; the honour killings of Turkish women in Germany, which illustrated the Muslim demands for a segregated society; the murder of Theo Van Gogh, also illustrative of a clash in values in the Netherlands, see also Abu-Laban, 1996; AlSayyad and Castells, 2002.

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ii. Migration from ‘we’ to ‘I’ societies In his research on mental distress in immigrants, Bhugra accords the places of origin and arrival particular relevance as “vulnerability factors” (Bhugra, 2004, p. 84) and he argues that the more dissonant the cultural origins and the cultural present, the greater the risk of pathology. In addition to issues of previous geographical experience and urban dwelling, and how one experiences majority-minority migration, the national characters of the sending and receiving states, and particularly whether there is continuity between them as collective or individualist societies, affect the process of acculturation through differential incorporation (Bhugra, 2004). Bhugra limits his research to the broad-traits of collectivist and individualist cultures or “national characters”, which embody “culturally defined values” (Bhugra, p. 86). Table 2.2 expresses the cultural distance between sending and receiving countries in terms of their collectivist or individualist identities, and in a general way, there seems to be an understanding that Western countries, such as Canada and the UK, represent the latter while the rest of the world, particularly the developing world, represent the former. Within this typology, different geographies have been brought together to show that proximity eases adjustment and distance is a barrier that needs to be negotiated. Moving from one collectivist culture to another, or one individualist culture to another, is likely to cause minimal friction between agents and the social structures to which they arrive. On the other hand, moving from an individualist culture to a collectivist culture or vice versa may create discord in socialised behaviours and apprehensions about how to behave. Table 2.2 Relative Adjustment Moving from Collectivist to Individualist Societies

Sending Country

Collectivist Individualist

Receiving Country Collectivist Individualist Easier adjustment Very difficult adjustment Very difficult Easier adjustment adjustment

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Such schematics are not devoid of personality or agency, and evidence from Bhugra’s research shows that along with two types of community cultures, there are also two types of personalities, allocentric (group centred) and idiocentric (self-centred), and these personality types will experience places differently. Not all people from a collectivist society will be happy to move to another collectivist society, particularly if they have an idiocentric personality. This is another indicator of the importance of choice in supporting personal responsibility and facilitating integration. In table 2.3, the role of personality is inserted into the typology of national character. The table shows the compatibility of different stylised personality traits with national traits. For people from collectivist societies who are allocentric, one of the greatest social “calamities” (Bhugra, 2004, p. 88) of migration is the feeling of ostracisation and lack of intimacy in the West. Cultural consonance is not only an important psychological factor in settlement and integration it is also an important practical resource for people and a source of support. According to Bhugra, social support provides a “buffer against mental illness” (p 84, 2004), and overwhelmingly, those who complained the loudest about their loneliness and social exclusion, and who were least capable of being sociable were men (Ghazinour, 2003).

Individual character

Origins: Collectivist Society

Table 2.3 Coping with Migration from Collectivist to Individualist Societies

Allocentric (group centred) Idiocentric (self centred)

Receiving country National Character Collectivist Individualist Low stress Greatest stress High continuity Low continuity Seek ethnic density High stress Low stress Resist norms Disregard group needs Avoid ethnic density

For voluntary migrants and wealthy migrants, choice and human capital can buttress ontological security by offsetting the stress of migration, adjustment, and residential mobility and purchasing a degree of continuity in the migration experience. Such migrants often have some freedom of choice in deciding where and how to live, and with whom they associate as in-groups. However, amongst those with the least resources, migration is often a result of compulsion rather than choice, and without the skills

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and resources to facilitate settlement, there is greater dependency on social ties, if existent, and formal assistance. For forced migrants, especially those who are destitute, the “buffer” of social support and mediating structures are integral in bridging societies and cultures, and in negotiating barriers, including discrimination and housing supply.

The Duality of Integration: Instrumental and Affective Indicators Integration is a contested term (Robinson, 1993; Castles, 2000; Ager and Strang, 2004; Phillips, 2006) which raises questions such as who should integrate? integrate into what? defined by whom? and when is someone integrated? One possible set of answers to these questions might be: immigrants and refugees; society; the state; and when they contribute to the state more than they depend on it, respectively, but a counter position might be suggested by immigrants and refugees themselves. According to some academics, the notion of integration has failed to engage in social inclusion for refugees, and instead has become a mechanism of state control over access to territory through deterrence and invisibility (Carrera, 2006; Smith, 1996). Although integration has been defined in some arenas as a dynamic twoway process of mutual accommodation between newcomers and receiving states (ECRE, 2005; Castles et al., 2002; cic.gc.ca), indicators reflect country’s traditions, histories, and perceptions of nation-building. Berry (1980) ties integration with acculturation and defines it as a process where individuals participate in larger society while maintaining their group or cultural identities. By comparison, the UK National Refugee Integration Forum (NRIF, 2005) defines refugee integration as a process that occurs, when refugees are empowered to achieve their full potential as members of British society, to contribute to the community, and to become fully able to exercise the rights and responsibilities that they share with other residents, while nothing is mentioned about maintaining their culture or group identity. Ager and Strange (2004) conclude that an individual or group is integrated within a society when they: x

x

Achieve public outcomes within employment, housing, education, health etc. which are equivalent to those achieved within the wider host communities; Are socially connected with members of a (national, ethnic, cultural, religious or other) community with which they identify,

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x

with members of other communities and with relevant services and functions of the state; and Have sufficient linguistic competence and cultural knowledge, and a sufficient sense of security and stability, to engage confidently in that society in a manner consistent with shared notions of nationhood and citizenship.

Ager and Strang (2004) organize indicators of integration into five domains: social; personal safety and stability; rights; facilitating factors, such as language and cultural knowledge; and housing, employment, education and health. However, they accept that the key markers of integration are derived from this last domain (Ager and Strang, 2004, p. 15). Both the Canadian and British governments agree that the “The full integration… of asylum seekers awaiting decisions on their claims is neither achievable nor desirable” [18 Nov 2003: Column 823W, Beverley Hughes]. It is argued that public expenditure on a temporary population is uneconomic since the majority are not granted refugee status, and it is unfair to claimants to raise their standard of living and expectations beyond achievable levels in their countries of origin to which they are returned. However, when the decision to remain is received, refugees have the rights and entitlements of citizens, and are suddenly encouraged to involve themselves in the institutions and society that framed their marginalisation while they were at their most vulnerable. While the governments assert integration is not for asylum seekers, refugee interest groups have called for “integration from day one” (HACT, 2004) so that refugees are orientated to their society from the very beginning, and have more confidence about rights, duties, processes, opportunities and entitlements by the time they receive their positive decision. They argue that the gamble pays off in better-integrated newcomers, and a form of human capital investment for individuals returning to their countries of origin if their application is refused. The European Council on Refugees and Exile (ECRE) also argues for integration from day one since the reception phase is crucial to the process of integration and unequal entitlement and delays is demoralising for refugees. Moreover, they suggest this structural inequality fuels discrimination and prejudice and the Home Office has cited racism as one of the key issues which affects refugees and “a major barrier to refugees

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fulfilling their full potential” (Home Office, 2002, pp. 4-5). What none of these definitions includes, however, are refugees’ perspectives. According to Korac (2002), while functional indicators may be important for integration to happen they do not necessarily make people “feel integrated” (Korac, 2002). Korac’s comparative study of Italy and the Netherlands concluded that measurable indicators of integration were insufficient to understand refugees’ adaptation and settlement, and social indicators were also necessary; however, she did not suggest what these might be. But clearly feeling integrated is as important as achieving instrumental and social integration, particularly in an age of global migration coupled with terrorism, and contested national identities amidst race riots and debates about cohesion and the borders of belonging. It is important and necessary to understand where newcomers draw the borders around their home, define their home-space, and interpret their housing trajectories as an outcome of their wants and capabilities, and the constraints of the state. Functional indicators of integration refer to a half-dozen “bureaucratic measurements” as a baseline of socio-economic performance (Zetter et al., 2002, p. 5), which include: language proficiency, labour market participation, civic and political participation, educational performance, and accommodation in adequate housing (Zetter, 2002; Ray, 2002; Home Office, 2000) and social integration is inferred from issues of identity, belonging, and the quality and strength of social links (Korac, 2002; Zetter et al., 2002). Research has demonstrated that “affective” indicators are profoundly significant to integration (Korac, 2002; Bloch, 2002; Zetter et al., 2002; Ryan and Woodill, 2000; Robinson, 1998; Castles et al., 2003; Montgomery, 1996; Yu and Liu, 1986), and are knowable through qualitative in-depth research that elicits refugees’ perceptions in the context of the whole of their refugee experiences, including displacement, flight, asylum-seeking, and settlement. Although governments pay lip-service to the rapid integration of newcomers, systemic and structural obstacles act to frustrate assertions of individual agency or upward mobility. Programmatic integration strategies that are premised on involving, enabling and empowering refugees through actualising and validating their agency, contribute to meeting their tangible and material, and “fundamental needs”. Fundamental needs include dignity, security, social connectedness and identity (Stenström, 2003, p. 30), and are important not only because they buttress functional

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integration, but because they are essential to human welfare and a sense of home. What defines integration and how we measure integration cannot ignore the lived experiences, voices, and perceptions of refugees themselves (Tait, 2006). This research uses the indicator of “home” as an affective marker of refugees’ perceptions of national belonging, achievement and housing satisfaction in the country of asylum. Affective indicators are dynamic, reflexive, and complement functional integration and ‘social indicators’ of integration, which reflect community formation and participation (Ray, 2002). In terms of housing integration, “home” has been used to indicate access to good quality, affordable housing that meets refugees’ diverse needs (Phillips, 2006, p. 541). Most research on the housing circumstances of new immigrants emphasises housing as functional integration, even where housing satisfaction is considered, and the costs of systemic underhousing refer to the receiving society rather than to the well-being of refugee claimants. Research indicates that early stable housing trajectories beget security and autonomy and facilitate functional and social integration (Zetter and Pearl, 1999; Carey-Wood et al., 1995; Carey-Wood, 1997; Murdie and Teixeira, 2000; Garvie, 2001; Foley and Beer, 2003). As the cornerstone of refugee settlement housing is important to integration outcomes, but while a large proportion of refugees live in poverty, experiences of poor quality, overcrowded and unhealthy housing is a general poverty problem and not specifically a refugee problem (ECRE, 2005). The duality of integration, its material and psycho-social elements, require a combined framework derived from a refugee-centred reflexive evaluation of integration that captures refugees’ agency and struggles for security amidst structural enablement and constraints. Integration is about more than attaining the necessities of daily living; it is also about the processual achievement of a sense of home at widening scales. Home must be worked for in the country of asylum, it cannot be passively attained, and it takes time to create successful integration. Home does shape our behaviour, but our behaviour also shapes home, and this is yet another tension that qualitative investigation of home can illuminate. The next Chapter uses the framework of home/lessness and discusses how it can be implemented in the research design in order to capture the resettlement trajectories of recently arrived refugees to Canada and the UK.

CHAPTER THREE RESEARCH DESIGN AND CONDUCT

For the forced migrant “…homelessness is not necessarily contained in the common definition of being without shelter.” (Ryan and Woodill, 2000, p. 10)

Reliable research is dependent on good research design. This chapter pays attention to the tools and methodology employed to elicit meanings and subjectivities from refugee participants. It examines recruitment, trust, and relationships with participants recognizing that the interview process itself can be a catalyst for new ways of refugees’ thinking about home and homelessness. The meaning of home and its antithesis were central to each interview, defined by participants to reflect their experiences, background, and ethnocultural and linguistic specificities. The meaning of home was elicited through conversational probing, through soliciting metaphors, proverbs and similes from the country of origin (particularly important for cultures with a strong oral tradition), and through photography as an alternative medium to capture the meanings of home and homelessness (Clark-Ibanez, 2004; Hurworth, 2003). In addition, participants’ detailed housing histories in country of reception were documented. Secondarily, information about arriving, finding help, achieving leave to remain and employment and benefits was also collected to situate the housing histories and add some structure to the meaning of home. Overall, sixty semistructured interviews were conducted, thirty in each city (Chapters 6, 7, 8). The average length of interviews was approximately two hours, and the interview schedule, consisting of four sections, gave me the flexibility to follow refugees’ stories of arrival and settlement and when necessary to lead with questions. These were complemented with approximately a dozen formal and informal key-informant interviews, some of which are used to provide an institutional overview from the Canadian perspective in Chapter Nine. In this next section, I outline how this was achieved (for a more detailed discussion see Kissoon, 2006).

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Building confidence and constructing the interview schedule Gatekeepers Chambon et al. (1998) identified a number of important starting points for conducting ethically sound research with refugees. These include points to consider if working with a community partner, and others that are reminders to respect participants’ rights and sensitivities: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Research projects (involving an) agency should be participatory and flexible to adapt to the ways of functioning of the agency; Research projects should benefit refugee clients and contribute to their well-being; Participants should be respected as persons, and their experiences, opinions and choices should be given weight; Research procedures should not be disruptive to client-staff relations; Research procedures should avoid any re-traumatisation of the refugees; and Participation in studies should be guided by the principle of informed consent without direct or indirect pressure (Chambon et al., 1998).

Although this research was not conducted with a partnered agency, many agencies were involved at different levels and stages of the study. The first phase of the research process was about mutual confidence building and earning trust. This was approached by spending time to understand the organizations supporting refugees and asylum seekers. In addition to volunteering with organizations over the duration of the study, I also conducted key-informant interviews and attended meetings and workinggroups where I could be seen to be contributing to organizations’ collective mandate of supporting the health and welfare of newcomers. I arrived in the UK at the height of the debate and inflammatory media reports against “scrounging” and “bogus” asylum seekers, and there was a wall around refugee community organizations (RCOs) and NGOs that took time to penetrate. Organisations were justifiably protective of their clients and guarded against rogue journalism that fed misleading headlines and other forms of possible exploitation. A number of factors helped me to scale this hurdle: the first was written assurance that my research was being conducted within a University department for academic purposes

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only; the second was that I was not funded by the Home Office (see Robinson and Segrott, 2002, p. 9); third was my willingness to meet faceto-face with a copy of my research statement and draft interview schedule for evaluation; and finally, I was able to gain approval from some staff, which contributed to a snowball effect with other organizations. For some staff of organizations in the UK, my positionality as a Canadian interested them because they wanted to know more about Canadian welcome practices. In Canada, my work with British asylum-support counterparts and experience in the field was also a point of curiosity and an entry-point to my discussions with organizations in Toronto and their clients. Despite this, gaining access was still very difficult. Especially in the UK, organisations were pressed to meet clients’ urgent needs; they were hounded by media; struggling with funding; and constantly short-staffed. NGO and RCO gatekeepers sometimes refused to talk to me altogether or, more often, would agree to meet me but refuse to share information about the study to their clients because they saw their clients as vulnerable, oversurveyed, and burdened by trying to meet their basic needs. Sampling was therefore limited by the obstacle of awareness of the study itself. As gatekeepers, the organizations serving refugees were crucial intermediaries to participants (see also Bloch, 1999). The researcher can also be a gatekeeper to interviewees, and there were restrictions, deliberate and incidental, that excluded some participants. Due to limited time and resources, the number of interviewees was thirty in each city. Purposive sampling (Mason, 2002) was used to maximise the information collected and explore the heterogeneity of experiences rather than facilitate generalization. The selection and background of the interviewees was diversified to maximise points of view and uncover the multiple realities of home/lessness and housing amongst refugees. Only people with leave to remain (exceptional or indefinite) were sought as participants to situate the interviews within a longer-term outlook on settlement, family-reunification, and integration. Leave to remain entitled people to integration services as “full and equal citizens” (Home Office, 2000). Potential interviewees were restricted to those persons who made refugee claims between 1996 and 2001 to ensure: 1) that people’s experiences as asylum seekers were relatively recent; 2) there was a defined period for the examination of policies and their influences, and 3) participants were resident for at least a year and so had experience on which they could reflect. Snowball sampling and self-referral were also employed as flyers

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were posted in community amenities and public places. Figures 3.1 and 3.2 reveal the nature of the interview-seed relationships and dependency on NGOs and RCOs for assistance, with twelve organizations involved in London and sixteen in Toronto. In contrast to research conducted with more established migrants, snowball sampling was relatively inefficient amongst recently-arrived refugees because of their embryonic social networks (see Chapter Six for further discussion). Three interviews came from snowball sampling in London and none in Toronto, and two interviews each came from postering and self-selection (without staff mediation). This demonstrates the (in)effectiveness of different modes of solicitation and emphasises the importance of gatekeepers.

Using photographs The meaning of home was defined by participants to reflect their experiences, background, and ethno-cultural and linguistic specificities. Meanings were elicited through conversational probing, through soliciting metaphors, proverbs and similes from the country of origin as illustrative of the meaning of home, and through photography as an alternative medium to document and symbolise home and homelessness (ClarkIbanez, 2004; Hurworth, 2003; Kissoon, 2006). In this way, the parameters of each of the interviews were situated in the culture of each of the interviewees. Photography was used to concretise the role of the researcher as “bearing witness” (Chambon et al., 1998). Photographs functioned to: x x x x x x x x

bridge psychological and physical realities; allow the combination of visual and verbal language; assist with building trust and rapport; produce unpredictable information; promote longer, more detailed interviews in comparison with verbal interviews; provide a component of multi-methods triangulation to improve rigour; form a core technique to enhance collaborative/participatory research and needs assessments; and complement conventional interviews for many participants (Hurworth, 2003).

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The photographs generated conversation about the emotional and physical aspects of home and housing, dwelling and nation, and were useful in sharing the subjectivity, loss, and privileges of refugees’ lives. They were testimony to refugees’ residential conditions, and additionally facilitated the communication of dimensions of home/lessness in relation to different scales and sites of dwelling, symbolic or literal (Clark-Ibanez, 2004), through non-verbal means. When scheduling the interviews, prospective participants were asked to think about what home meant to them and what not being at home or feeling homelessness meant to them and what I should photograph to represent each feeling. Nothing would be photographed without permission and no people would appear in the photos without consent. Refugees described what they had chosen and why. The photographs allowed people to open up the subjective concepts of quality and satisfaction and, just as in telling their stories, framing the photo was an act of agency. Refugees expressed satisfaction at documenting their substandard housing conditions. In addition, they were glad to receive copies of the photos taken to keep or send to their families since many did not own cameras (Photo sets 3.1; 3.2). Not everyone felt comfortable with the camera, and some preferred simply to offer a description. Generally, people’s homelessness photos reflected their housing problems, including pictures of mould, small rooms, filthy communal facilities, and general disrepair. People’s photos of home included leisure and relaxation activities such as TV, Game Boy, music, instruments, and football, which were also continuations of their usual activities in their country of origin. Home photos also reflected family and friends present in the UK and Canada and pictures brought from the country of origin. The photographs were taken on completion of the interview process. This was an effective complement to a long and language-intensive interview process, closing the discussion of what made people feel at home and what made them feel homeless in the UK and Canada.

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Key informant interviews This research is about refugees and their integration, and while refugees may have certain views about this, defining integration, meeting integration needs, and coordinating migration flows with integration goals are the domains of governments. Consequently, it is important to understand how the state views refugee integration and refugee home/lessness and what most concerns them about refugee integration and the meaning of home. In both theory and practice, making Canada a home to newcomers is essential to Canadian immigration policy, which sees migrants as a tool for nation-building; however the national government is relatively distant as an actor in asylum and settlement, compared with municipalities. In contrast, the UK’s history and traditions of control have generated national government involvement through a separate and unequal system of housing and welfare entitlements for asylum seekers (see Chapters Four and Five). These differences make a state perspective an essential component of comparative research. Furthermore, key informant interviews give voice to structure, so to speak, within an analytical framework of structure and agency. Therefore, a small number of interviews were conducted in Canada and the UK, comprising Chapter Nine of this research. As mentioned, on my arrival in the UK the asylum system was under criticism, the government was said to be failing to protect its borders from increasing asylum flows, and government departments were under siege from reporters and lobbyists. Inquiries made to the Home Office for interviews were turned down, or deferred to a less critical time, which never came. Consequently, key informant interviews in the UK were conducted with NGOs and RCOs. These included housing staff from the British Refugee Council (BRC), Shelter, and the Piccadilly Advice Centre, the Director of Praxis and a housing help worker, a member of Camden Council’s housing office, and a regional officer from the National Housing Federation (London). Although I was grateful for these interviews during the extraordinary period in which they were given, the interviews gave a combined perception of state structures as oppressive and constraining, without perspectives on the state’s role in enabling asylum and refugee integration. These interviews had more importance, therefore, on providing a contextual background and overview of asylum problems in the UK, vocalising clients’ housing needs, and confirming or raising important issues to be examined in the refugees’ interviews about housing conditions, the inflexibility of the system, et cetera.

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In Canada, however, the period of fieldwork was significantly calmer compared to the UK, and an inside contact was able to schedule interviews in Ottawa with Directors of the main branches in Citizenship and Immigration Canada that deal with refugees and integration. In addition to CIC officials, I interviewed an official from the City of Toronto, a Member of Parliament, and several RCOs and NGOs including the UNHCR office, Canadian Red Cross, President of the Canadian Council of Refugees (CCR), Director of CultureLink, the housing officer from Midaynta (a Somali umbrella group), COSTI settlement agency, former President of the CCR and co-director of a refugee women’s shelter FCJ Hamilton House, the HomesFirst social housing association staff, and the Director and housing officer of Toronto’s largest men’s shelter, Seaton House. Factors in this comparative ease of access include completely different pressures in terms of asylum flows, public support for immigration, and media responses. Also, I was more comfortable and familiar with the Toronto network, had inside contacts, and generated interest by being located abroad and conducting a comparative study. The British way of managing asylum had a reputation that preceded my request for interviews, and generated a great deal of interest. Because of the substantive nature of these interviews and the depth of responses that were provided, they comprise the bulk of Chapter Nine of this research. In contrast to the refugee interviews, some key informants refused to be taped, e.g. the UNHCR interviews were short to accommodate participants’ schedules and ensure I could be seen, and interview questions were sent ahead of time and consisted of four or five points from which participants could focus their discussion. One way to understand home as an indicator of refugee integration is through qualitative research that acknowledges the human effects of structures that create dissonance and/or harmony amongst the social, legal, and physical domains of home. Empathetic in-depth qualitative interviewing with sixty participants, key-informant interviews, and a foundation on previous research evidence, provide testimonies to the intersection of refugee-ness, homelessness, and home in relation to refugee experiences and to the utility of home as an affective indicator of integration and starting point in assessing refugee settlement. Key informants offered a viewpoint on integration that complemented refugees’ stories. Ethno-cultural organizations had a high degree of involvement in the everyday lives of their clients, and were an efficient

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and effective recruitment resource for participants. They helped to recruit participants who could speak English well, or for whom an interpreter could be found. Because home is a concept of place and space, it allows analysis of a trajectory beyond the physicality of any particular dwelling. A key element of this discussion is that a sense of home can also influence refugees’ evaluation of the quality of a residence, at one extreme making the material irrelevant to their settlement and belonging at the scale of nation, city or accommodation. Integration and belonging are metaphors for relationships practiced at various geographical scales and, it is possible to pursue methodologically sound and innovative techniques that begin to unravel these complex ideas. Comparative research demonstrates the dominant effects of structure on refugees’ agency and the ways in which refugees’ trajectories, living conditions, and perceptions are influenced by the nation’s acceptance or rejection of their settlement. As demonstrated in Chapters Four and Five, these national attitudes are institutionalised and enacted differently in Canada and the UK, influenced by different international and domestic pressures and historical traditions of immigration.

CHAPTER FOUR TRADITIONS OF CONTROL: EMPIRE AND NATION BUILDING

Now what is more contagious than to live side by side with a rather primitive people? Go to Africa and see what happens… . The inferiour man exercises a tremendous pull upon civilised beings who are forced to live with him because he fascinates the inferiour layers of our psyche, which has lived through untold ages of similar conditions. (Jung, 1930, referring to the behaviour of white Americans who had experienced ‘racial infection’)

Immigration policies are methods of inclusion and exclusion, of demonstrating who belongs to the nation and has rights to citizenship and who does not. Taking an historical perspective of these matters provides a longitudinal view of a nation’s response to migration and its changing role in the world. This chapter discusses the histories and traditions of migration in Canada and Britain, including important legislative and immigration milestones, before turning to contemporary legislation, the politics and institutions of asylum migration in Chapter Five. The chapter has two sections: the first discusses the role of early migrations in nation-building and historical examples of exclusion and deterrence, which have shaped contemporary attitudes toward immigration in Canada and the UK; and the second focuses on policy and migration trends from 1945 to the late 1980s. This chapter demonstrates that Canada and the UK’s “world views” (Reitz, 1988), based on their different roles in the global economy, international relations, and national self-perceptions, have generated divergent interpretations of the role of migration policy in nation building: protecting and reinforcing an imagined culturally homogenous British society, on the one hand; and regulating and expanding access to citizenship to support a strong Canadian economy, on the other. Such divergent attitudes toward international migration, manifested in national politics and institutional rhetoric, mask what are in reality closely knitted histories and parallel contemporary concerns to

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benefit from increasingly globalised migration flows (Reitz, 1988; Smith, 1993; Freeman, 1995; Gibney and Hansell, 2003).

Early Migrations and the UK’s Plural Beginnings i. Conquerors Immigration is not a post-WWII phenomenon. England as the seat of Empire may have been ‘racially’ homogenous, but it was by no means culturally or ethnically singular. Britain evolved as a product of successive migrations and conquests by tribes and clans, including the Jutes, Angles and Saxons, Vikings, and Normans (Mason, 2003, pp. 16-17; Rich, 1994; Hill, 1970), evidence that the hyphenated ‘Anglo-Saxon’ identity oversimplifies the country’s history. ii. Refugees In addition to invaders and conquerors, Britain also received flows of refugees as early as the 17th Century. In fact, the term refugee was first used in English in the 1680s to describe the Huguenots, French-speaking Protestants who were fleeing religious persecution in France1. In the late 19th century, refugee migration continued as about 200,000 Jews fled Russia and Eastern Europe to settle mainly in London’s East End, and for the first time foreign immigration made a quantitative impact, giving rise to the 1905 Aliens Act, a defensive measure against undesirable migration2. Although they do not form a large part of the conglomerate of British identity, refugees are included in historical analyses of British history because they have an important political relationship with the state. Kushner (1999, 2003), provides a detailed examination of the treatment of anti-Communist Poles and Hungarians in the 1950s, and European Jews and Ugandan Asians, and also examines the media’s reactions to these flows and the corollary political response; Bloch (2002) gives a detailed analysis of refugee migration and British politics, with an emphasis on the effect of European relations; Pirouet (2001) situates a contemporary 1

“Refugier”, to take refuge, originated from the Latin re- “back” and “fugere”-flee, the word refugium meaning “a place to flee back to” (OED, etymology, refugee). 2 Exceptionally the 1905 Act did not apply to people seeking asylum. Prior to this Act, Britain had permeable borders with no checks at ports of entry or needs for passports or visas. Until the outbreak of WWI, most of the countries of Western Europe had limited or no passport requirements and allowed almost everyone to travel freely (Kern, 1983).

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debate on asylum in Britain in the relative generosity of the country’s past responses, while London (2000) challenges the country’s so-called generosity towards Jews fleeing the holocaust. Coleman (1994) distinguishes between acceptable invisible migration and the hyper-visibility of contemporary flows, which undermines integration; and Cohen (1995) examines the racisms of such selective integration. iii. The African minority Black people too have been present on British soil since Roman times, though in small numbers relative to other minority populations, and have had a continued presence in Britain since the early 16th century (Fryer, 1984) particularly across the country’s ports. However, from the beginning, their arrival and settlement was dissonant with the image of ethnic purity that was, and arguably is, integral to Britain’s sense of nationhood and identity. History acknowledges the presence, and exclusion, of black people in British society from at least the Elizabethan age (Rich, 1994). In a decree in 1596 Queen Elizabeth I stated, “…understanding that there are of late divers blackamoores brought into this realm, of which kinde of people there are already too manie… those kinde of people should be sent forth of the lande” (Acts of Privy Council, 11 Aug, 1596, cited in Hill, 1970); and in 1601, she again expressed her desire to deport black people who had “crept into this realm” and were “fostered and relieved here to the great annoyance of her own liege people” (Fryer, 1984, p. 10; Hall 1978). Then, as now, the visibility, numbers, and costs of migrants targeted them for exclusion through deportation where their arrival was unpreventable. iv. Religious minorities In this early period of British history, exclusion generally had more to do with perceived ‘otherness’, such as religious prejudice, rather than ethnic prejudice, though the two did intersect (Fryer, 1984). For example, after the Crusades, although Edward I signed an edict of expulsion of Jews in 1290, seized their assets, and essentially annihilated their communities, conversion to Protestantism was often enough to allow them to remain, and centuries later, in 1656, Cromwell allowed Jews re-admittance if they converted (Fryer, 1984). The welcome based on conversion is significant because it speaks to the British favour of invisibility through adaptation and assimilation, and prefigures the difficulties of integration hundreds of years later that would face ‘other others’ more conspicuous for that which cannot be converted, e.g., skin colour, and for ethnic and religious differences protected as Human Rights.

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Between 1899 and 1902, immigration to Britain tripled, and between 1875 and 1914, 120,000 Jews arrived in Britain settling mainly in London’s East End, where outbursts of violence against them became the norm, perpetuated by the local working class who saw them as an influx of cheap immigrant labour (Foot, 1965; Layton-Henry 1992). An intense period of migration, residential segregation, and competition in the labour market mixed with religious difference, created a highly visible target for resentment and re-doubled calls for a policy of exclusion. The pressure resulting from this large-scale migration was concentrated at the lower ends of the housing and labour markets and within areas of the country with the least economic strength and diversity, reflecting the social, spatial, and economic inequality of “absorptive capacity”. Demands for the exclusion of aliens predate the incendiary debates on asylum seekers at present, as does dispersal as a perceived solution to the burden of inassimilable segregated groups: Just as one river could carry a certain amount of sewage, but not the sewage of the whole Kingdom, so one portion of London cannot carry the whole of the pauper and diseased alien immigrants who come into the country (Fisher, member of parliament for Fulham, cited in Foot, 1965, p. 97).

v. Aliens The next major exclusionary Act was directed at Germans (Dummett, 2001, pp. 3-4). The 1914 British Nationality & Status of Aliens Act conferred the common status of British subject on people who had specified connections with the Crown’s dominions, and allowed the Home Secretary to control any aspect of immigration through the introduction of Orders in Council (Panayi, 1993; Layton-Henry, 1993, p. 7), e.g., the 1920 Aliens Order, rather than through legislative amendments. The Orders, which were renewed every year until being superseded by the 1971 Immigration Act, gave the Home Secretary the power to deport any alien “…whose presence in Britain was not considered to be ‘conducive to the public good’” (Layton Henry, 1993, p. 7). Seen as the turning point in British immigration policy by Dummett and Nicol (1990) and the precursor to modern attitudes, aliens went from “allowed unless specifically prohibited” to “prohibited unless specifically allowed” (p 112).

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As Foot (1965) has demonstrated, Britain’s disdain for immigrants did not begin in the mid-20th century, but can be discovered in popular resentment toward the destitute Huguenots, Palatines, and Walloon foreigners, their ways and language; violence and hostility toward the “diseased”, “criminal” and “lazy” Irish; and Jewish migrants in the 19th and early 20th centuries who “clotted” in East London and were referred to as “…the scum washed on our shores from dirty water coming from foreign drainpipes” (pp 80-87, 94-99). The racialised language used to denigrate foreigners in these early debates indicates the fluidity of race as a tool of ‘othering’ and the potential for many different groups to be racialised, mirroring modern-day debates against outsiders, including asylum seekers. Race categories, like other forms of ‘scientific’ classification, were a preoccupation of the Enlightenment era, and racialised language was commonly used even by the political left in the Victorian period (see for example, Engels’ The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844, and Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor). The next major wave of immigration occurred after the Second World War. But first it is necessary to understand the formative role of slavery, colonialism and imperialism on British identity and its institutionalisation in the New World. The next section demonstrates the shared history of Canada and the UK borrowing from Razack (2002) and Driedger (2002) to discuss the central role of migration in nation building.

Nation-Building on Racism: Canada’s Genesis as a British Settlement Britain’s national identity is situated in its history of colonisation, emigration, territorial expansion and the building of empire. Figure 4.1 represents four waves of the UK’s migration history: the symbolic multiethnic composition of ancient Britain; emigration for economic and social power through colonialism and settlement; and immigration from the former colonies and rest of the world.

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Chapter Four Fig 4.1 Migrations and National Mythologies in Britain and Canada

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Britain’s colonial and imperial projects are tied to Canada’s founding, through which Canada started as a trading and settler colony with two goals: preservation of Britain’s economic might and expanding Britishness. Consequently, while Britain’s history included the multiethnicity of Empire and a drive for expansion, Canada’s nation-building was inward-looking and bounded within its territory. Canada’s migration history comprises migration of aboriginal people across the Bering Strait 12,000 years ago (Dreidger and Halli, 2000; Leman, 1999); European, particularly British, settlers and traders; and immigrants and refugees from the rest of the world. British colonialism operated in three stages of domination to produce a sense of European entitlement, which persists in Canada to this day, as a result of the historical convergence of race, space, and law. Firstly, land was deemed uninhabited on conditions that erased indigenous cultures, namely if “…people were not Christian, not agricultural, not commercial, not ‘sufficiently evolved’, or simply in the way” (Culhane, 1998, p. 48). The production of ‘emptiness’ for the purpose of colonising formed the doctrine of terra nullius, or no one’s land, assuming ownership by fiat. In this stage, processes of slavery and imperialism structured an entrenched superiority toward Blacks who were identified as chattel (Hill, 1970; Richmond, 1954, 1961) and relegated to particular spaces on the periphery of Empire while Whites were privileged by mobility and the agency to occupy different spaces. When slavery was abolished by Britain in 1834, economic dependence on “peripheral” spaces persisted and consequently Blacks continued to be seen and treated as second-class citizens. Social Darwinism provided a pseudo-biological justification for white racial superiority3 and “black bodies” as commodities within a “Manichean world” (Fanon, 1965, p. 35) that relied on the domination of false differences for British economic advantage (Driedger and Halli, 2000, p. 6). Britain’s imperial and colonial past are contributory factors to the racisms that are experienced today, which are seen as so integral to Britishness that Hall (1978) calls racism the “condition of England” (p. 24). As Castles and Miller (1998) argue Britain’s racist ideologies were transported to

3

Scientific method became an epistemological tool for constructing an ontology of black inferiority and white supremacy that still resonates in some sectors of society, simultaneously buttressing white hegemony and itself as a methodology. For a contemporary example Herrnstein and Murray, The Bell Curve, 1994.

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settlements along with its customs and institutions, where they became pillars of nation-building in the New World. Typically, the story of multiculturalism that has come to dominate Canadian history begins with the eventual partnership of the French and the English in displacing the aboriginal tribes that were the continent’s original inhabitants4. In fact, Franco-British relations, integral to Canadian multicultural mythology, were founded on the segregation of the French to Lower Canada (Quebec). The 1867 British North America Act united Upper and Lower Canada under confederation, and secured positions of authority “…so that white Europeans became the legal and dominant force in the shaping of the dominion” (Driedger and Halli, 2000, p. 6). Constructing white Europeans settlers as discoverers of the New World, the first to arrive and the principal developers of the land, created a hierarchy of deservedness and the entitlements of citizenship that some researchers have described as an “anachronistic” process (McClintock, 1995) creating dissonant belongings. Just as immigration and multiethnicity are relegated to contemporary issues in Britain’s history, indigenous people in Canada are consigned to a space that pre-dates the country’s founding by Europeans (Ibid., p. 130) and other darker-skinned people are classed as “immigrants” and “late arrivals” undeserving of equal status with the Charter groups. While French and British bi-culturalism is the official historical precedent for Canada’s multi-ethnic future, it also established a hierarchy of Canadianness, with the French and English Charter groups, at the top, a hierarchy that is preserved in Canada’s contemporary cultural mosaic (Porter, 1965, p. 71). The contribution of non-white and non-European groups to Canada’s early development has been subordinated in the national imagination and its history remains comparatively veiled. The notion of Charter groups as founding nations ignores the presence of aboriginal peoples, their dispossession and, in some cases, their extermination. Indeed, an alternative viewpoint holds that Canadian multiculturalism began well before the arrival of Europeans, since each aboriginal nation had its own language, customs and heritage, and it was into this existing multicultural milieu that early Europeans settled 4

In fact, it was due to Native cooperation that Canada won the war of 1812 against America, which is why their exclusion from the “charter group” or nation’s founders is deemed an historical erasure. In addition, Canada’s involvement in slavery is well documented amongst historical accounts of racism, alongside with Japanese internment (Ridell, 1919, 1920; Winks, 1971; Driedger, 2003, p. 228).

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(Driedger and Halli, 2000). Razack (2002) argues that North Americans deny civilisation existed until the advent of Europeans, and put the near annihilation of the native populations, slavery, and early immigrant exploitation to one side, although each contributes to Canada’s place in the world today. Similarly, refugees and forced migrants occupy an anachronistic space in contemporary migration from the Third World, when in actuality Canada’s European arrivals mark the country’s beginnings as a place of opportunity for the dispossessed (Porter, 2002). In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Great Britain and Ireland were net exporters of about 15 million people escaping to the New World for a better life, many of whom were labelled social refugees and economic asylum seekers from feudal Europe (Porter, 2002; Layton, 2000): “fleeing Britain’s stifling class and sexual conventions” and seeking “…economic’ asylum from the ‘tyranny’ of agricultural and industrial capitalism (Porter, 2002, p. 4). While multiculturalism is predominantly considered an expression of Canadianness today, it has evolved through a process of colonialism, domination, and segregation. The third wave of migration to Canada, consisting of “non-white migration” actually began in the country’s formative history. Measures to limit non-white migration, and the implementation of explicitly racialised policies, which privileged white, European, and specifically British migrants, date to the 19th century. Between 1867 and 1895, Canadian immigration policy began as a laissezfaire process supplying labour, particularly agricultural homesteaders, to the Canadian west. Free land was offered first to northern Europeans, and then to eastern and southern Europeans. Nearly two million immigrants came to Canada between 1901 and 1911, increasing the population by 28 percent; in a single year, 1913, more than 400,000 immigrants arrived (Knowles, 1997; Driedger, 2002). From this point onward, Canada planned its immigration strategy to coordinate with its economic and industrial needs, following a trajectory that moved from recruiting for the agricultural sector to the manufacturing, service and information sectors. While based on economic lines, immigrant recruitment was not indiscriminate. As in Britain, Orders-in-Council were used to exclude “undesirables”, mainly Chinese (Driedger, 2002, p. 50). Indeed, for almost a century after the end of slavery in Canada (1833 British Emancipation Act), the Canadian government enacted discriminatory legislation

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impeding the full participation of minority ethnics in Canadian society (Anderson, 1991). As in the expansion of Empire, in the process of Canadian nation-building Social Darwinism was used as the basis for exclusion of people from southern Europe, the colonies, and the “third world” to Canada: they were considered to be inherently unsuited to the harsh Canadian climate; had the potential to alter fundamentally the character of the population; and “pollute” superior, “Nordic and Aryan races” who possessed a “biological aptitude for nation-building work” (Foster, 1998, p. 87; Smith, 1993, p. 55). In 1815, for instance, the Nova Scotia Assembly protested against British government plans to bring black residents from Bermuda to Canada: …the proportion of Africans already in this country is productive of many inconveniences; and the introduction of more must tend to the discouragement of white labourers and servants, as well as the establishment of a separate and marked class of people, unfitted by nature to this climate, or to an association with the rest of His Majesty’s Colonists (Malarek, 1987, p16).

The Assembly uses four arguments to justify the exclusion of black colonists from their territory: 1) blacks are culturally different and cause “inconveniences” to the country; 2) the presence of blacks dissuades white migrants from settling in Nova Scotia; 3) blacks are genetically indisposed to colder climates; and 4) blacks are inherently incompatible for coresidence with white Colonists. Scholarship of this period produced sophisticated racial-national taxonomies, showing that Europeans were superior “stock” relative to the rest of the world, and amongst Europeans, the Scandinavians, French, German and British were superior (Woodsworth, 1909, cited in Foster, 1998, p. 88-89) to Russians, Slavs and Italians. According to Woodsworth (1909), “Orientals” were inassimilable, and blacks were corrosive to society, citing America’s “Negro problem”. The problems associated with both groups could be avoided if they were excluded from Canada. Citing “absorptive capacity” (Foster, 1998, p. 89) Canada justified immigration controls against various nationalities and particularly visible minorities, arguments that recur through Canada and the UK’s immigration histories. Immigration exclusion based on race was institutionalised under Canada’s first Immigration Act of 1869 and reaffirmed in the 1952 Immigration Act, Section 61, which gave the government the power to:

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…limit or prohibit the entry of immigrants for reasons of nationality, citizenship, ethnic group, class or geographic area of origin, peculiar customs, habits, modes of life or methods of holding property, unsuitability with regard to climatic, economic, social, industrial, educational, labour or health factors or probable inability to become readily assimilated (Foster, 1998, p. 90).

The inability to assimilate was attributed explicitly to darker-skinned Europeans as well as “Orientals” and “Africans”, and remained a criterion for inadmissibility until the 1960s. The goal of immigration policy in the 19th century was not to strengthen the economy through immigration and cultural diversity, but rather to reproduce Britain in Canada by building up the British Empire and perpetuating British institutions (Anderson, 1991), and Chinese and other foreign labour migrants were antithetical to this goal5. The government’s immigration policies developed from the exclusionist policies used to bar the Chinese from immigrating and it continued to erect a variety of barriers against various non-white populations until 1962. Race was produced in various ways in Canada’s early history to keep Canada British by any and all means. Ethnic diversification in Canada emanated from a historical process with a long period of preoccupation with building a white country through explicit preference for immigrants from northern Europe, and deterrent and punitive policies toward non-whites. Although the point system was implemented in 1962 and the 1976 Immigration Act was purged of all racial references, making the system applicable to all equally, and with equal human rights and responsibilities to society, some groups suggest that equality under the law did not remedy decades of racialised exclusion, and in fact entrenched a status quo ante of continuous disadvantage by falsely presuming a level playing field (Foster, 1998, p. 30). The following section examines post-war immigration from the former colonies and developing world and its influence on British and Canadian national identities.

5

The exclusion of Chinese immigrants, who were brought to Canada to work on the railroads and in mines in the 1880s, through the Head Tax and other “malicious measures” against Yellow Peril was given a full apology by Conservative Prime Minister Harper in 2006.

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Boundaries of Citizenship and Identity: Immigration to Britain and Canada Post WWII Post WWII Migration to Britain While all immigration has a spatial component, Britain’s history of migration has fundamentally been about situating boundaries, expanding territory and defending the frontiers of identity (Cohen, 1994). The third phase of Britain’s story of migration concerns the arrival of immigrants from the expanse of Empire, and correspondingly a “shrinking circle of generosity” in defence of Britishness (Cohen, 1994) (Figure 4.2), which led to the rise of an “indigenous British racism” (Hall, 1978, p. 26), epitomised by the country’s struggles through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Figure 4.2 illustrates geographically-situated notions of Britishness. Pre1900 comprises the first phase of British Imperialism, slavery, colonialism and the expansion of Empire with a defined core, referred to as domestic Britishness, and periphery, referred to as external Britishness. Between the First and Second World Wars, the second phase of Britain’s migration history involved the maintenance of Imperial Britishness through fixed boundaries and selective assimilation. Post WWII, the periphery sought the privileges at the centre. In this third phase, migration from the colonies transgressed the fixedness of Britishness that was required to maintain an exclusive notion of citizenship (Paul, 1997). By transgressing the spatial boundaries of Empire, colonial migrants were threatening the essence of Britishness, and the beginnings of mass post-war migration from the colonies provoked a “new conflict between different ways of describing the nation and its citizens” (Phillips and Phillips, 1998, p. 78). According to Reitz (1988), “The concept of ‘British subject’ created the legal possibility of mass immigration, but was never intended to make it a reality” (p. 126).

Fig 4.2 Snapshots of Domestic and External Britishness: Colonial and Postcolonial Identity and Control

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Britons saw themselves as the head of a hierarchy of nations and “The idea which underpinned this role and held the whole structure together was a belief in the racial supremacy of whites born in Britain” (Phillips and Phillips, 1998, p. 74). By moving from the periphery to the centre, migrants transgressed the fixed imperial space and merged the separate communities of domestic and external Britishness, by “backward” and conspicuous people arriving to the seat of civilisation. The recruitment of workers from the West Indies, Asia, and Africa during the Second World War reflects the second phase of migration history (Paul, 1997), where the government maintained its war-time economy through selective migration from the colonies. This migration was government sponsored and highly regulated and contrasts, therefore, with the spontaneous arrivals from the same regions, which later sent ripples of discontent through society (third phase, Figure 4.2). This section examines trends within the third phase of Britain’s migration story, focusing on legislative and race-relations steps that have led to today’s politics on asylum seekers. In the immediate post-WWII years, the demand for labour in undermanned industries and in the reconstruction effort resulted in recruitment of demobilised Polish soldiers and “European Volunteer Workers” (EVWs) from refugee camps in Europe (Coleman, 1994, p38; Cohen 1994; Husband, 1982), justified for the economic and racial benefits to Britain. There was no offer of a multicultural society, as the long-term aim was absorption. The expectation was that these migrant communities would disappear into the larger community of “domestic Britishness”. There was widespread public resentment of the new migrants; however, the government began a process of propagandising, complemented by various assimilationist strategies, such as dispersal, “to foster conditions in which national allegiances might be dropped” (Paul, 1997, p. 86). The Polish immigrants were assisted by the 1947 Polish Resettlement Act, which recognized the economic, housing, health, welfare and education needs of Polish settlers, including immediate and intensive language instruction (Rees, 1982, p. 80), which assisted in making people who were “‘somewhat visible’ invisible.” Between 1946 and 1950, Britain received 77,000 EVWs, 8,000 Ukrainian prisoners of war, and between 70,000 and 100,000 Irish labourers. This migration was highly regulated by the central government, which facilitated settlement and integration.

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In contrast, attitudes toward the 417 Jamaicans who arrived on the Empire Windrush on the 22nd of June 1948 marked the beginnings of a moral panic. This one migration (see Hansard, 451, 1851-52, 8 June 1948) to Britain’s shores, conspicuous and uninvited, would be replicated from other parts of the Commonwealth and Dominions; it seemed that the core was under siege. What turned an act of migration into a moral panic was not a lack of commitment toward multiculturalism, Empire, or the government’s duties and obligations toward the migrants on the Windrush, who were entitled to live, work, and vote in Britain as British Subjects. Rather, the crisis was born from a matter of logistics and visibility, where spontaneity of arrival undermined the ability of the government to manage issues of housing, employment and settlement (Hansard, 451, 1851-52, 8 June 1948): The arrival of these substantial numbers of men under no organised arrangement is bound to result in considerable difficulty and disappointment… . However, it will be a matter of some difficulty… to find out where they are to be put and where they are to sleep when landed at the dock [Isaacs, Minister of Labour, Ibid., 1948].

In contrast to the programmes available for European incorporation into domestic Britishness, there were no official strategies for inclusion of these arrivals. Moreover, despite a shared language, culture, and regard for Britain as their motherland, their racial conspicuousness allowed them to be targeted as people who did not belong. Unable to maintain separate spheres internationally, a core and periphery arose at home in Britain’s urban centres (Figure 4.2) and, unhindered by the government’s passive role in integration, migrants from the commonwealth and colonies were marginalised in areas of “‘traditional’ deprivation” (Phillips and Phillips, 1998, p. 108), a “culture of poverty”, and “tangle of pathologies” (Rex, 1986, p. 29). While some scholars argued that the government contrived “…to associate a threat with uncontrolled migration to justify controlling legislation and attaching the blame on illiberal public opinion” (Paul, 1997, p. 132), a more conservative estimation of the government’s role in the deterioration of public attitudes towards British colonial subjects was indifference or unawareness of the inherent dangers of introducing new arrivals to a society with a tradition of white superiority and imperialism and long-standing social problems of housing and schools (Dummett and Dummett, 1982, p. 99; Hansen, 2000).

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This period of highly racialised debate generated the first Act to define British citizenship, the 1948 British Nationality Act (BNA). The Act created the status of “Citizen of the UK and Colonies”, which distinguished “British Subjects” from “British Subjects without citizenship”, where the latter applied mainly to people from India and Pakistan and who were henceforth subject to immigration controls in Britain (Coleman, 1994; Cohen, 1994). Even so, “…from the time of Churchill’s premiership, new Commonwealth immigration rose from 3,000 in 1953 to 46,800 in 1956 and thence to 136,400 in 1961” (Hansard, Mr. Andrew Turner, Isle of Wight, 19 March 2003, col 270). Although the period of the late 1940s and 1950s has been called the laissez-faire period of open-door British immigration politics (Hall, 1978), the politics of belonging was rife. Colonial Britons were reduced to “commonwealth immigrants”, ‘othering’ blacks by situating them as an external population distinguished from those who belonged, i.e., white Britons. The process of exclusion of blacks from Britishness paralleled the selective inclusion of whites, the ‘internal/domestic’ population who were seen as highly assimilable, and therefore contributed to a colour-coded notion of British citizenship. The descendants of the European wave of post-war immigration were “…almost completely ‘invisible’ as social groups” (Coleman, 1994, p. 38), and, as Coleman goes on to say, invisibility is one indicator of successful immigrant integration, which was easily accomplished by white Europeans and impossible for minorityethnics from the former colonies (Hill, 1970). Commonwealth immigrants came from widely different cultural backgrounds, with differences of religion, language, and social customs; however, they had in common a largely downward occupational mobility (Hill, 1970). Consequentially, ‘whiteness’ was considered a predictor of successful integration, a view that was also strongly held in Canada, influencing its immigration policies until the 1960s, and arguably continuing to influence immigration decisions in both Canada and the UK today. Until 1962, any Commonwealth citizen, or British subject without citizenship, could freely enter the UK to live and work. This changed with the introduction of the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act (CIA), which, says Paul (1997), was first debated with the arrival of the Empire Windrush, but was so contrary to the Empire’s ideological commitment to multiracialism, that restricting citizenship could not be considered, or

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indeed justified, until discussions to join the EEC in the 1960s demanded it (Smith, 1993). Security against mass migration on a common labour market needed to be provided for EU entry, and the CIA provided it. Although the 1962 CIA was introduced to control non-white Commonwealth immigration, the new commonwealth migration between 1960-1962 was greater than the sum of all post-war colonial migration preceding it, as people who previously engaged in two-way transnational migration as temporary workers, felt compelled to “beat the ban”, and became immigrants, bringing over their fiancées, wives, and children. Prior to the 1962 Act, there was a strong correlation between immigration and the needs of the economy, but from 1960-62, during which time the Act was debated and then implemented, net migration surpassed the demand for labour (Peach, 1998). British citizenship does not promise British identity. The most renowned proponent of this idea was former Conservative MP Enoch Powell, whose explicit racisms were so resonant with the white working class, that despite his being removed from Cabinet, the Conservative party won the 1970 election on a restrictionist immigration platform against ‘the enemy within’. As such, “[Powell’s] vision of white seignority over UK space [became] enshrined in the patriality clause of the 1971 Immigration Act” (Smith, 1989, p. 121). The 1971 Immigration Act was legislated to limit the entry of Kenyan Asians who had British passports. Patriality allowed the UK to deny entry to Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies and other Commonwealth citizens unless they had a parent or grandparent who had been born, adopted, naturalised or registered in the UK, even if they were UK passport holders. The patriality clause resulted in the exclusion of almost all non-white Commonwealth immigration, and primary labour migration, to the UK (Spencer, 1997). Denying citizenship is one aspect of denying identity. However, there is also a denial of Britishness towards citizens who are black. . Referring to this denial as the nation’s “double border”, Cohen (1995) suggests that British identity is an “impenetrable social and political construction” (p 42). At best “alien citizens”, according to Powell, non-white Britons can never become British, and this, he claimed was “…the tragedy of a growing minority, alien here and yet homeless elsewhere…” (Powell quoted in Dummett and Dummett, 1982, p. 123). As Hall argues, the border around British identity can only be re-drawn by white Britons, therefore as long as white Britons fail to identify or recognize black

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Briton’s belonging, national identity will remain unattainable for them because Britishness is “racially coded” and Englishness has “systematic, largely unspoken, racial connotations” (Hall, 2000, p. 27), with consequences for growing minority exclusion, social and institutional alienation. Moreover, in Britain, the categories “black, poor, Third World, migrant and third-country national operate to some extent interchangeably” (Morris, 1997, p. 254). In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the flow of migrant labour was discussed in the language of colour and ‘race’, as if race was a natural, concrete and self-evident fact (Cohen, 1994). As a result, the British public came to view immigration, not as a major economic benefit to the country or as necessary for post-war regeneration, but rather as a threat to British ‘racial identity’ and culture (for further discussion on the racialisation of British politics in this era, see Miles, 1990; Miles and Phizacklea, 1984, Rex and Moore, 1967; Gilroy, 1987; Solomos, 1989; Paul, 1997). According to Hartmann and Husband (1974) the language of this account was that of natural disasters, and extreme threat, and it fed, and fed off, the political party competition to persuade the anti-immigrant voter (Hartmann and Husband, 1974), thus creating a “moral panic” (Hall, 1978, citing Cohen, 1972, p. 9). With immigration legislation after WWII, blacks were turned into de facto immigrants, immigrants were constructed as a problem, and the solution for better race-relations was not to incorporate “the problem”, which would corrupt society, but to restrict it through administrative controls on immigration. Parallel to the increasingly strict immigration legislation post-WWII was a series of Race Relations Acts (RRA) to facilitate ‘harmonious community relations’ by outlawing discrimination based on race (1965, 1968, 1976 Race Relations Act; 2002 Race Relations Amendment Act). However, the Acts were criticised as a veneer for discrimination that was inherent in the immigration legislation (Dummett and Dummett, 1982), and despite the RRAs, immigration legislation between 1962 and 1988 had a number of deleterious social effects, including limiting family reunification, and constructing immigrants as a problem. Today, the RRAs are a prominent part of equality legislation, however, in the late 1960s, “…more coloured people were prosecuted than white, for incitement to hatred” (Hill, 1970, p. 165). By the time the 1968 RRA made discrimination illegal, segregated communities were established (Rex, 1986). Segregation, argues Rex, is a

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product of choice as well as constraint, however, “West Indians and Asians did not choose to be segregated in the worst inner city housing” (p 17). The areas in which immigrants lived were characterised by derelict properties, lack of recreational facilities, low standard school buildings and inadequate hospital services, and were associated in the minds of the majority with the presence of “coloured people” (Hill, 1970, p. 154; Smith, 1989). The “problem of immigrants” was indistinguishable from their social conditions, which were pre-existing, but in the minds of the majority they were blamed on the inhabitants (Smith, 1989). Consequentially, the immigrants saw the government as committed to punishment, deterrence, and exclusion from an attachment to Britain (Richmond, 1961 c.f. Macpherson, 1999), and this loss of confidence influenced the growth of militancy in the 1960s and 1970s and the development of “black power” (Gilroy, 1987; Modood, 1992). Smith (1989) argues that the immigration controls in the 1960s were justified on the grounds of the inability to integrate greater numbers and larger communities into national life, i.e., limits to absorptive capacity, a concept that governments have used to manage race relations (Spencer, 1998), and which has been the touchstone for immigration and asylum legislation over two decades (Smith, 1989; Dummett, 2001; Spencer, 1994). As discussed, the concept of invisibility is an important aspect of integration strategies, and one extreme means of assuring invisibility is to keep immigrants out (Smith, 1989; Coleman, 1994; Hill, 1970). While governments in the 1960s used immigration control, rather than citizenship laws, to define who belonged to the UK, the 1981 British Nationality Act (BNA) put British citizenship in the statute books through confirming patriality, which was introduced in the 1971 Immigration Act, giving people the right of abode, through jus sanguinus (Karatani, 2003). The Act was passed in anticipation of massive migration into Britain from the EEC. But although Britishness was guarded by the state, it was undefined as anything other than that which could be “swamped by people of a different culture” (Karatani, 2003, p. 182, citing Thatcher’s Granada television interview in 1978). Subsequently, the 1988 Immigration Act was enacted, which excluded reuniting family members from recourse to public funds and withdrew automatic right of entry for the spouse and children of Commonwealth citizens settled before 1973 (Bloch, 2002, p. 38). Both of these are measures currently in place in Canada, which is lauded for its liberal immigration system, where the “right to apply” for permanent residence and citizenship exists for children born in Canada and

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reuniting family members, but it is not automatic. Similarly, sponsoring family are contractually bound to support family members for up to ten years from arrival and default can have negative ramifications for the citizenship application. This is indicative of the closeness in the measures used by Canada and the UK to control migration, while the politics and rhetoric of immigration remain divergent. Crucially, up to this point in UK immigration, asylum was never an issue. Preferring to see asylum migration as temporary, the government established programmes with local NGOs and social services to adhere to their humanitarian aspirations through waves of exiles including Ugandans, Chileans and Greek Cypriots in the 1970s, Vietnamese refugees at the turn of the decade (Panayi, 1993, ICAR.org.uk; Joly, 1996) and nearly 40,000 asylum applicants mainly, Iranians and Sri Lankan Tamils, in the 1980s. Coinciding with this later flow, the government introduced two measures to limit burgeoning numbers: visa restrictions and the 1987 Carrier’s Liability Act (CLA). Visa restrictions were imposed on nationals from Sri Lanka in 1985, and in 1989 on Turkish nationals, to stem Kurdish applications, at a time when deteriorating conditions in both countries were sending refugees to Britain and elsewhere (Bloch, 2002). The 1987 CLA was introduced to curb the numbers entering Britain with false documentation by imposing fines on carrier companies that brought passengers without the appropriate documents into the UK, and since then the Act has been extended to include trucking companies in addition to planes and trains. The 1987 CLA placed the responsibility for immigration prevention with outside bodies, and thus represented a new approach to immigration control (Bloch, 2002, p. 46). Yet, research has shown that visa controls and carrier sanctions have “the unintended effect of encouraging the expansion of smuggling and trafficking networks” (Brouwer and Kumin, 2004, p. 9), because although visa controls discourage irregular migration, they do not prevent persons without visas from arriving and seeking entry. The 1987 CLA was also interpreted as a potential infringement of the right to seek asylum, preventing people leaving or returning people to countries in which they feared torture, death, or imprisonment. Neither visas nor carrier sanctions are limited to the UK. Industrialized countries regularly impose visa requirements on countries that produce large numbers of refugees, asylum seekers, or irregular migrants. For

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example in 2001, Canada imposed visa requirements for citizens of Hungary and Zimbabwe, in direct response to the large number of asylum seekers from those two countries. From the assumption of free entry for British subjects around the world before WWII, after the war the UK’s immigration legislation became racialised and restrictive; and as discussed in the next section, Canada went from explicit racial selection to the introduction of the point system and official multiculturalism. In the post- WWII period, Canada and the UK appear to undergo a “reversal of roles” in their responses to immigration (Smith, 1993, p. 57); however, despite this paradigm shift, in practice, both countries had and continue to have very similar ends and means: demographic stability and economic growth through managed migration and access to citizenship.

Post WWII Migration to Canada Canada’s immigration legislation between 1945 and 1988 can be subdivided into two parts: racialised immigration legislation pre-1962, and deracialisation after 1962. However, the new set of criteria that replaced Canada’s racially discriminatory grounds for exclusion was not a relaxation of policy towards the rest of the world, or the de-regulation of immigration policy, but the implementation of strict criteria assessing applicants based on skills, education, and capital, rather than personal or ethnic suitability.

Canadian immigration legislation from 1945 to 1962 In the immediate post-war years, Canada pursued a highly Eurocentric and racially exclusive immigrant selection process. While Britain’s policy of entry and settlement for British subjects throughout the world was based on the perception that migrants would fill a labour niche, and then return home, migration to Canada was perceived as a one-way flow, ending with permanent settlement (Smith, 1993). Therefore, Canada sought migrants who could conform to the “ideals of Canadian nation-building” (Smith, 1993, p. 56), which were oriented toward re-creating a British type of society in Canada. The dominant group at the time, the British, organized to restrict immigration to British and Northern European source countries, and it was presumed that the French and British, occupying distinct territories within

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Canada, would assimilate migrants to their respective linguistic and cultural norms. Britain was the principal source of labour recruitment to Canada after the War, but labour demands necessitated more workers. Eastern and southern Europeans arrived throughout the 1940s to face antiimmigrant sentiment as ethnic “others”. Indeed, Canada’s attempts to steer its development in favour of white Britishness caused them to reject the resettlement of Polish Free Army Veterans from Britain in 1946 because they were deemed unsuitable. Only grave shortages of workers, particularly in agriculture, forced the cabinet to approve and fund their resettlement (Knowles, 1997, p. 130). In its formative period pre-1900, Canada pursued a plan of Anglo-conformity despite the economic repercussions, but in the post-war period it was no longer capable of doing so. Managing economic pressures, political ambitions within the international community, and the dissent of French-Canadians against what they deemed British privilege forced them to open their doors to the rest of the world, though this would not fully happen until 1968. Until the passage of the 1947 Canadian Citizenship Act, all Canadians were defined as British subjects, and all British subjects, including members of the Commonwealth, were entitled to equal rights as Canadian nationals. Canada was the first Commonwealth country to establish a citizenship separate from Britain and it did so for four main reasons. First nationalism and national citizenship was of growing political importance to Canada, particularly with the creation of the United Nations: “Nation as a concept relies in large measure on citizenship and the evolution of citizenship represents the very essence of our collective identity as a people” [36th Parliament, 1st Session, Hansard, 05/02/99, no 175, Mr. Andrew Telegdi, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Lib.]. Canada wanted recognition as an independent nation within the international community (Karatani, 2003; Smith, 1993). Second, in the aftermath of Canada’s prominent role and losses in the Second World War, the government wanted to institute Canadian citizenship to honour the memory of Canadian soldiers who fought and died for their country and for European liberation [36th Parliament, 1st Session, Hansard, 05/02/99, no 175,Telegedi]. Recognizing Canada’s multi-ethnicity and commitment to equality was important after the war. Indeed, the third reason for a distinctly Canadian citizenship was that it was considered a significant gesture to complement the migration and settlement of large numbers of Europeans, who were encouraged to include themselves in Canada’s vision of nation-building. Lastly, Britain’s identity was shifting from the centre of Empire to the periphery of the

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European community (Smith, 1993, p. 54) and was increasingly insignificant to Canada’s identity and economy, which was by then in close trade with America. Furthermore, Canada did not want to grant citizenship and equal rights to members of the Commonwealth and the adoption of citizenship legislation would allow Canada to preserve its Eurocentric character (Karatani 2003, Smith, 1993). The 1947 Citizenship Act is an important marker in Canadian identity politics after WWII because it placed immigrants on equal footing to people born in Canada, so that immigrants from Britain and Commonwealth countries were made to wait five years before becoming Canadians. The Citizenship Act was the precursor to official multiculturalism (Knowles, 1997), which would be institutionalised by the effect of Quebec Nationalism in the 1960s. The Citizenship Act was subsequently revised in 1977 to reflect the shift in immigrant numbers and source countries occurring after deracialisation of the immigration legislation in 1962 and 1968. Over the 1950s, Canada invested more in recruiting immigrants from the UK than any other country, and the UK and the US continued to represent a large proportion of immigrants; however, the majority of Canada’s new arrivals were from continental Europe (Knowles, 1997). The British in Canada were the dominant group between the Charter nations, and the French constituted a territorially bounded, homogenous and relatively isolated population. This bi-nationalism and bilingualism existed as “two solitudes”, and it was not until September 1948 that France was included on the list of preferred immigrant source countries along with Britain and America (Driedger, 2003, pp. 96-101; Smith, 1993; Knowles, 1997). While the numbers of immigrants escalated in the 1950s, immigrants were still selected by “race” (Smith, 1993, p. 55), and in fact the 1952 Immigration Act gave powers over selection and admission of immigrants to the cabinet to exclude visible-minority commonwealth migrants, exemplifying the prejudice in Canada’s post-war immigration policy. Immigration policy served two goals in this period, which have been characteristic of Canadian immigration legislation since: to increase the country’s population over the long term, and to manage labour force needs (Veugelers, 2000, p. 2), but these goals were not entirely reconcilable. Post-war legislation gave little thought to refugees, asylum seekers, or indeed the country’s humanitarian role in the world. Instead, it focused on using the impetus from the post-war boom for economic growth. Indeed, it

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was not until Canada introduced a Bill of Rights in 1960 that legislation was enacted that could have a large effect on newcomers. However, it was not pressure from newcomers that generated the Bill, but rather domestic pressure from Quebec nationalists who demanded equality in French Canada’s role in nation building, particularly in light of the increasingly diverse population. The 1960 Bill rejected “discrimination by reason of race, national origin, colour, religion or sex” and introduced two fundamental rights, which subsequently would inform Canada’s refugee determination process in the enactment of the 1988 Charter of Rights and Freedoms: “(a) the right of the individual to life, liberty, security of the person and enjoyment of property, and the right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of law; and (b) the right of the individual to equality before the law and the protection of the law” (1960 Canadian Bill of Rights, s.1 (A. B.)).

Canadian immigration legislation from 1962 to 1988 Following the abolition of discrimination and the commitment to equality guaranteed under the 1960 Bill, the government abolished racial discrimination from Canadian immigration policy in 1962. Section 31 of the immigration regulations emphasised education, training, and skills as the major factors for admission into Canada, which meant that intended immigrants who met these criteria would be considered without regard to racial origin. The regulations were criticised for substituting “one set of criteria for discrimination for another” (Pickersgill, House of Commons, Debates, 19 January, 1962, 11) which would poach from Third World countries the best skilled, who were in shortest supply (Knowles, 1997). Moreover, the regulations still permitted Europeans to sponsor a wider range of relatives, and so despite the opening of the regulations from 1962, until 1976, America and Europe dominated the top ten source countries of immigration to Canada and in 1976 Britain still was the number one source (Driedger, 2003, p. 54). Following these changes, skilled and professional people from the Commonwealth countries of Africa, India, Hong Kong and West Indies became eligible to migrate, and most who applied to come to Canada had better skills than the average applicant from Europe (Driedger, 2003; Reitz, 1998). This is essential to understanding the economic preconditions for deracialising immigration regulations. While European migrants had previously been important in supporting Canada’s agricultural and primary resource industries, a secondary economy based

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on manufacturing required more immigrants and stronger skill sets. However, immigrant numbers still did not satisfy population and labour force targets, so in 1967, the “point system” was introduced. The point system was planned to select immigrants whose qualifications and skills made them likely to be “successfully integrated in Canadian society” (Reitz, 1998, p. 74). It gave specific value to criteria such as education, age, health, language, and work prospects, and from 1968 to 1974 nearly three quarters of the immigrants to Canada entered as marketoriented entrants, which was enormous when compared to the US where less than 10 percent arrived by this route (Reitz, p. 77). In 1969, Canada affirmed its commitment to equality and human rights by signing the 1951 Convention on the Rights of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol, though this did not become a part of legislation until 1976. Canada’s period of racial conformity was phased out with the 1960 Bill of Rights and subsequent immigration regulations, but its period of cultural assimilation came to an official end with the announcement of a federal multiculturalism policy in a bilingual framework in 1971. Two main pressures resulted in the official policy of multiculturalism. The foremost arose in the 1960s’ “Quiet Revolution” (Kelley and Trebilcock, 1998) with Quebec nationalism and a tide of political upheaval and violence that emanated from what Quebeckers believed to be a policy of exclusion and economic marginalization to force assimilation with Anglophone Canada (Burnet, 1979, 1988). The Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (RCBB) was set up in 1963 to inquire into the use of French and the status of French Canadians in Canada. Volumes I to III, published in 1967, presented recommendations that led to “a conscious effort on the government’s part to correct any bias against the French language and culture” (Trudeau, 8/10/71, House of Commons), and in 1969, the government enacted the Official Languages Act, declaring Canada a bilingual nation, which meant that federal departments and agencies would be required to use and promote both languages. The pressure that was placed on the government by non-Charter-group minority ethnics as a result of the enactment of bilingualism was enormous. Western Canada balked against official bilingualism since the French were a small minority in those provinces, yet due to bilingualism in Federal government departments, they assumed the majority of positions within

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the bureaucracy. The 1969 Act was interpreted as official erasure of the value of the majority non-French or British Europeans in Western Canada. Minority ethnics sought an evolution from the old dualism of EuropeanBritish and French nations, and demanded that other minority-ethnics be heard and have equal rights, supported not within a duality, but within a mosaic (Burnet, 1988; Kelley and Trebilcock, 1998). As a result of the outcry from minority-ethnics in western Canada, Volume IV of the RCBB was commissioned to focus on “The Cultural Contributions of Other Ethnic Groups” whose origins were not British, French or Native. It was published in 1970 and recommended the “integration”, not assimilation, of non-Charter ethnic groups, with full citizenship rights and equal participation in Canada’s institutional structure. This culminated in Trudeau’s joint declaration of a Canadian “policy of multiculturalism within a bilingual framework… as the most suitable means of assuring the cultural freedom of Canadians.” He stated: [A]lthough there are two official languages, there is no official culture, nor does any ethnic group take precedence over any other. No citizen or group of citizens is other than Canadian, and all should be treated fairly. … The government will support and encourage the various cultures and ethnic groups that give structure and vitality to our society. They will be encouraged to share their cultural expression and values with other Canadians and so contribute to a richer life for us all… (Hansard, Routine Proceedings, House of Commons, Prime Minister Trudeau, 8 October 1971, my emphasis).

The idea of Canada as a multicultural country and country of immigrants was formulated in the context of European migration and white “multicultures”. Trudeau’s declaration was made law in 1988 with the Multiculturalism Act, and it continues to complement a national identity based on equality within diversity. The 1988 Multiculturalism Act states that it is the policy of the government of Canada to: 3.(1)(a) Recognize and promote the understanding that multiculturalism reflects the cultural and racial diversity of Canadian society and acknowledges the freedom of all members of Canadian society to preserve, enhance and share their cultural heritage; (b) Recognize and promote the understanding that multiculturalism is a fundamental characteristic of the Canadian heritage and identity and that it provides an invaluable resource in the shaping of Canada's future; (c) Promote the full and equitable participation of individuals and communities of all origins in the continuing evolution and shaping of all aspects of Canadian society and

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assist them in the elimination of any barrier to that participation (excerpts from the Canadian Multiculturalism Act, July 1988).

Immigration Ministers, past and present, have relied on this multicultural heritage as the basis of a comprehensive immigration programme: the “…shared immigrant experience is central to how Canadians see themselves and to how the rest of the world sees Canada” (Caplan, 2000). Multiculturalism was an ideology, begun in Canada, that stemmed from the observation that immigrants such as the Doukhobors, Mennonites, Mormons, German Catholics, and French Canadians, did not reduce their ethnic distinctiveness over time, and this distinctiveness, in and of itself, did not reduce communities’ political, social, or economic contributions to society. In other words, their group identity seemed to gird, rather than detract from, their Canadianness. Instead of advocating assimilation, therefore, the government supports the maintenance of group cultural, national, or religious identities, as long as they do not contradict the public good or human rights. In Canada, multiculturalism has faced a number of criticisms. It has been accused of over-emphasising difference to the neglect of commonalities, presuming a desire to remain distinct, and essentialising and homogenising ethnic groups, which in reality are no more unified than the mainstream (Reitz, 1998, p. 4). Bissoondath (1994) argues that instead of “Canadianising” newcomers into a binding social fabric, official multiculturalism encourages them to cling to their traditional culture and the ancestral homeland and to believe that there is more important than here. In this sense, he suggests that immigrants are constructed within a multicultural ideology as being different, and are denied the possibility of being anything but a hyphenated Canadian. Additionally, there is a danger that self-segregation around a “consciousness of kind” (Driedger, 2003, p. 5; Rex, 1983) may buttress one type of identity, while forming a barrier between groups. By encouraging ethnic and cultural groups to perpetuate their distinctiveness, it has been argued that multiculturalism policy prevents them from being integrated into mainstream society, but those who resemble the Charter groups in culture and appearance are more readily accepted. Therefore, the idea of the regional mosaic that was born from the RCBB has been described as a “vertical mosaic” (Porter, 1965). As mentioned earlier, Porter found that the British were still heavily concentrated in the decision-making roles of the economic and political elites, while other ethnic groups were more heavily represented in the lower classes. Porter argues that the idea of the ethnic mosaic, as opposed

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to the idea of the melting pot, impedes the process of social mobility (Porter, 1965, p. 71) and supports a tradition that gives ideological support to the high status of the British Charter group (p 71). However, other academics have shown that institutional structure and skills selection influence the arrival of immigrants at all levels of occupations. Some immigrant groups enter at higher levels to begin with, some move faster and aspire to further education than others, and there is huge variegation within ethnic groups, and within a period of arrival (Tepperman, 1975, p. 149). Reitz and Breton’s comparative study of American and Canadian societies has shown that, despite official multiculturalism, Canada is no less assimilating than America with respect to the behavioural profiles of immigrants and their children in relation to other members of society (Reitz and Breton, 1994, p. 118), suggesting that the normative forces of Canadian society are underestimated by academics who accept and defend multiculturalism. Amongst the supporters of multiculturalism, Parekh (2000) argues that multiculturalism as a policy recognizes diversity, and reflects this in state structure, regulations, and conduct of public affairs. Also amongst multiculturalism’s proponents, Modood (2004) states “Naturalised citizens and their children in Canada, a pioneer of liberal multiculturalism, feel more included and more Canadian than their counterparts in Britain” (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,1189775,00.html). He argues that multiculturalism in Canada has given permission for a hyphenated nationality that does not challenge the bonds of nationality and citizenship, while Britishness has remained a “quasi-ethnic” term associated with “whiteness” (Modood, 1992, p. 5). Since WWII Canada has resettled over 700,000 Convention refugees and persons in refugee-like situations (CIC, 2003, p. 10). In the 1970s and 1980s, Canada received an inflow of refugees including Americans fleeing conscription, Ugandans, Asians, Chileans, and Vietnamese who settled in Canada. Throughout this period, the admission of refugees was based on ad hoc decisions. The 1976 Immigration Act, the cornerstone of contemporary immigration legislation, made it mandatory for the minister to consult with the provinces to manage future immigration, and make target announcements annually to parliament. The act recognizes three categories of migrant:

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family class, humanitarian class, and independent class. The act also instituted the point system as law to be applied mainly to independent class applicants, but also a modified version to other applicants. The 1976 Act created a distinct class for refugees outside of the immigrant class, acknowledging their special needs and Canada’s humanitarian duty toward them. The humanitarian category established provisions for refugees to enter, either resettled from abroad or through making a claim in Canada. The Act also made it possible for people in refugee-like situations to be resettled through “designated classes”, thus expanding and formalizing the humanitarian potential of the immigration program. In the last 20 years, most refugees came to Canada through the resettlement process, rather than making a refugee claim there (between 1979 and 1997, 367,700 refugees were resettled to Canada, while 106,000 became permanent residents after being recognized as refugees in Canada) (Canadian Council for Refugees, 1998). However, in recent years the proportion has been reversing itself. For the first time, in 1992 more refugees received permanent residence after having made a claim in Canada than were resettled (21,800 inland versus 15,100 resettled) (Canadian Council for Refugees, 1998). Through the late 70s and 1980s, Canada granted safe haven to more than 150,000 individuals from refugee camps abroad, more per capita than any other country (Knowles, 1997, p181), and this was recognized in 1986 by receipt of the UNHCR’s Nansen medal for the Canadian people’s “major and sustained contribution to the cause of refugees” (UNCHR.ch) Canada was the first country ever to receive such reward. However, the self-interest or pragmatism through which Canada implemented its point system for economic migrants in the 1960s is evident even within its resettlement programme. Canada was one of the first countries that created a resettlement initiative with the UNHCR, and is amongst the few in the world to operate a continual programme of resettlement from camps1. Although refugee resettlement is integral to 1

Ten countries: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States, have, since the 1970s, set annual targets or ceilings for resettlement visas. Belgium, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom accept refugees for resettlement on an ad hoc basis, though the UK has recently begun limited resettlement as a part of its managed migration programme.

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Canada’s international repute as a humanitarian country, to be eligible for resettlement from refugee camps applicants must: … show potential to become self-sufficient in Canada within a 3 to 5 year time frame. Factors such as education, presence of a support network (family or sponsor) in Canada, work experience and qualifications, ability to learn to speak English or French and other personal suitability factors such as resourcefulness will be taken into account by visa officers (UNHCR, 2004, Resettlement Handbook, Canada Chapter, p. 315).

This relaxed point system allows Canada to select those people most able to succeed even from amongst the most vulnerable populations. In terms of human capital, therefore, the refugee resettlement programme is a benefit to Canada, rather than a drain on resources. In 1982, Canada enacted the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and all laws in Canada, including the immigration acts, are bound to it, as determined by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1985 in the ruling on Singh v. Minister of Employment and Immigration. This is a landmark case in Canadian immigration and asylum determination because it extends Charter protections to all persons physically present on Canadian soil. The Minister of Employment and Immigration had determined that a group of claimants were not Convention refugees and this decision was taken to the Immigration Appeal Board, which denied subsequent applications for re-determination of status without providing an oral hearing to the claimants. Attempting to manage a significant backlog of asylum applications, authorities reckoned that the denial of an oral hearing on appeal was justified in cases that were deemed clear-cut refusals2. At issue in the 1985 case was whether the appellants could rely on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to guarantee “fundamental justice” under Section 7 of the Charter3. The procedure for determining refugee status claims, established in the 1976 Immigration Act, was found to be inconsistent with the requirements of fundamental justice because it should have provided refugee claimants with the chance to state their cases 2

The absence of an oral hearing is still employed in expedited cases in Canada, however only in circumstances of clear cut admission (See Chapter Five). 3 Section 7 of the Charter guarantees “everyone ... the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.” The term “everyone” includes every person physically present in Canada and by virtue of such presence amenable to Canadian law (www.parl.gc.ca/information/library/PRBpubs/#immigration).

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and to comment on the advice from the status advisory committee (Dolin and Young, 2002). The court ruled that refugee claimants in Canada were protected by the Charter and therefore had to be treated in a manner consistent with the principles of fundamental justice. This was crucial to the treatment of refugees, since the Charter upheld equality. As a result of this decision, separate systems of conduct in law or welfare could not be applied to ethnic or national groups unless it was to their advantage. This distinguishes the Canadian determination process from systems worldwide, including the UK, where asylum seekers do not have the same rights as citizens and are presided over by separate welfare systems with limited entitlements. The 1980s marked Canada’s “refugee challenge” (Knowles, 1997, p. 179). In 1988 asylum applications jumped to 48,000 from 13,000 in 1985, in contrast to the UK’s relative stability where applications shifted from 4,389 to 3,998 in the same period. Stemming from the assertion of fundamental justice with the 1985 Singh Decision, there was widespread concern about the feasibility of managing an immigration programme where aliens were entitled to the same rights as citizens. This led to the creation of the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) in 1988, an independent, quasi-judicial tribunal that determines refugee status and hears appeals. Since its implementation in 1989, the IRB has been upheld as a “model of a statute-based decision-making authority” (House of Lords, 2004, Appendix 8; National Audit Office, 2004), and it has been recommended as a best practice on fair, efficient decision-making, in accordance with the law. However, Canada, like the UK, has struggled with the need to manage access to its determination system and to appear in control. Chapter Five examines Canada’s deliberation and pursuit of stricter enforcement and border management practices from the 1990s and demonstrates its convergence with a global pattern of deterrence. Immigration policies in the UK and Canada have evolved from particular histories and national identities based on international positions and domestic concerns. This chapter examined the immigration histories of the UK and Canada, arguing that their different international roles and worldviews have been expressed in their attitudes toward immigration.

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Imagined national communities act to support and justify migration programmes and influence popular perception of immigrants. Canada’s multicultural and welcoming ethos, the evolution of the Charter of Rights, multiculturalism as official policy, and deracialised immigration policies can be traced to its history of bi-nationalism and plural beginnings, a new place in the world order after WWII, insatiable labour demands, and the tango of bi-nationalism with the Francophones. On the other hand, the UK’s exclusionist/protectionist ethos originates from its imperial legacy, colonialism and demands to maintain the interstices between ‘us’ and ‘them’. From the late 1960s, Canada began to develop a forward-looking strategy of migration based on published rules. The rationalisation of immigration created three separate doors for independent, family and humanitarian class migrants, coinciding with the country’s economic, social, and political goals, respectively, though not exclusively. However, with the rise of international competition for states to capitalise on the tide of globalisation, migrant classes came to be viewed hierarchically according to the perceived worth of their contribution to the country, with the humanitarian class on the bottom. Canada strives to secure its future by viewing migration as an opportunity for economic growth supported by demographic and social stability (Reitz, 1988). Despite the rhetoric of magnanimity, the warmth of the welcome, and the re-formulation of Canada as a multicultural country of immigrants, Canada’s policies of immigrant selection and welfare demonstrate another side of the country: a practical laissez-faire approach towards federal involvement in the support of ‘temporary migrants’, including asylum seekers. Entitlements, processes, and structures for asylum seekers are discussed in Chapter Five, demonstrating the merging of British and Canadian responses in the face of moral panics associated with numbers of asylum applications, and after 9/11, domestic security. Essential to this discussion, however, is not only the way in which government constructs immigration, but the way in which the public perceives it, and migrants believe it. Comparing the heights of immigration flows in Canada and the UK and public attitudes, Reitz has demonstrated that Canadians remained more positive than Britons although Canadian immigration far exceeded that which generated intense debate and restrictions in Britain (Reitz, 1988). This is the result of a

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number of processes, including the diffusion of pre- and immediate postWWII racial exclusivity by the domestic threat from Quebecois nationalists, which, along with economic necessity, opened the doors to non-Europeans (Richmond, 1976). Peach (1968) and Richmond (1976) suggest also that the difference in attitude reflects the excessive competition for low-cost housing and jobs in the UK. Dearth of opportunity in the labour market and relegation of the working class to Britain’s aging, often unfit for habitation, housing stock contributed to inter-group hostility, particularly in the post-war recession, while Canada’s emphasis on skilled migration reduced minority-ethnic concentration in specific industries while offering accommodation in newer, higher-quality housing. In addition to housing and employment, Richmond (1976) underscores the importance of Canada’s unique historical experiences in nation formation: Canada’s bi-national structure, multi-ethnic population, and official policy of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism in particular promotes a feeling of belonging and deservedness amongst newcomers that is crucial to their desire to settle and integrate. More than asserting equal citizenship through status and rights however, the principle behind multiculturalism and its perpetuation in Canadian society is a mutual sense of duty since …commitment or belonging is reciprocal in nature. Citizens cannot be committed to their political community unless it is also committed to them, and they cannot belong to it unless it accepts them as belonging to it (Parekh, 2000, p. 342).

This feeds into prospective immigrants’ expectations and imagined prospects, asylum seekers included. In contrast, domestic and external notions of Britishness developed into a defensive definition of nationhood detached from multiracial empire and multicultural commonwealth, so that by the 1960s, Britain’s migration strategy was founded on the principle of racial exclusion (Smith, 1993). Immigration to Britain is perceived to be a threat to British traditions, a disruption of the fixed space Britain created for itself through its imperial legacy, and a mechanism of undermining the nation’s social and economic wellbeing (Smith, 1993), perceptions that were rooted in white superiority, and which erupted with the arrival of coloured migrants after WWII. British immigration policy was drawn with designs toward national security, and sought to protect the country’s national identity, economic prosperity, and social welfare, by controlling access to citizenship.

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Legislation enacted from the 1960s, and the manifestation of racism in the 1970s and 1980s was, according to Kushner (2003), a defense of Englishness against the foreignness of alien cultures and black skin, which remains a theme of contemporary asylum legislation (Diene, 2006) and is also found at another scale in the defense of the neighbourhood against its “disfigurement” (Kushner, 2003, p. 271) by immigrants’ presence (See also Smith 1989). In British and Canadian immigration policies, the periods circa 1945 and 1960, respectively, mark an era of mass racial minority immigration. Tables 4.1 and 4.2 summarise the institutional structure of migration and underlying concepts of racial equality outlined in this chapter and raised by Reitz (1988). Historically, the different worldviews that influence the institutional structure of migration emanate from unique geographies and positions in the international order, which define different sets of policies. Table 4.1 compares responses to the phenomenon of mass migration, which occurred at different times for each nation and was therefore treated according to each nation’s socio-political context, capacity to manage flows within an existing international system, and domestic needs. Ultimately, the countries’ legislative trajectories evolved in opposite directions, Canada seeking to capitalise from this population on the move, and the UK seeking to restrain it. Table 4.1: Institutional Structure of Immigration in Britain and Canada Showing Developments Prior to Mass Racial Minority Immigration

Goals Immigration Policy Citizenship Policy Expectations for permanent settlement Participation in institutional structure Concept of Racial Equality

UK (c. 1945) Fulfilment of obligations to British Subjects Open door for all British Subjects Common citizenship throughout Commonwealth Small numbers (implicit)

British Subjects and member states throughout the Commonwealth Maintain lack of racial barriers to free movement

Canada (c. 1960) Social and economic development of Canada Rigorous selection criteria National Citizenship Large numbers (explicit)

Canadian Citizens only

Remove all racially discriminatory selection criteria Adapted from Reitz, 1988, The Institutional Structure of Immigration, p. 127.

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Table 4.2 illustrates the traditions of control in Canada and the UK by comparing the result of different trajectories for the period from the 1960s to the 1990s. Table 4.2 demonstrates the integrated relationship amongst national identity, immigration policy, and the meaning of citizenship, which has been discussed in this chapter, where traditions of control in the UK derive from imperial geographies and post-imperial decline, in contrast to nation building in Canada, which derives from the harmonisation of diversity, economic selection, and citizenship in a much later period. Table 4.2: Traditions of control: Britain and Canada Post 1962

Origins of Nationhood Achieving National Identity

UK History, Tradition, Stability

Canada Immigration and change

Ascribed through birthplace and lineage

Acquired/achieved through residence in Canada and participation in Canadian life Role of Control entry to protect the Regulate entry to construct national identity using the a Canadian future, using Immigration Legislation principle of exclusion the principle of selection The immigration status of The citizenship status of Key Immigration citizens immigrants Debate Citizenship for some but not Citizenship for sale, Consequence of others, despite economic irrespective of cultural Policies costs conformity From Immigration/Nation Building in Canada and the UK, S.J. Smith, Chapt 2 of Constructing the Nation, 1998. Italics not in original, used to highlight the emphasis of this Chapter.

Following from the historical ties and the development of immigration policies based on unique worldviews, apparent rhetorical differences and political motivations between Canada and the UK mask what are increasingly convergent trends toward restrictionism (Richmond, 1990; Ucarer, 2001; Gibney and Hansen, 2003; IOM, 2002). The next chapter compares major trends in asylum and immigration since 1990, to demonstrate how flow management has developed with respect to asylum seekers in both Canada and the UK.

CHAPTER FIVE CONTEMPORARY TRENDS AND ASYLUM LEGISLATION IN CANADA AND THE UK

Once, ‘they’ demonised the Blacks to justify slavery. Then they demonised the ‘coloureds’ to justify colonialism. Today, they demonise asylum seekers to justify the ways of globalism. (Sivanandan, 2001, p. 2)

Having discussed the history and traditions of immigration, asylum and settlement in Canada and the UK as matters of nation building and control, this chapter examines the mechanisms of migration management and settlement provision for asylum seekers across a ten year span, from 1990 to 2001, accounting, where appropriate, for national differences. Canada and the UK are tied by more than Canada’s colonial and political beginnings: they also share a belief in universal human rights, equality, justice and democracy, which they have demonstrated as signatories of the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol1. Additionally, they embody a rule of law that asserts the rights of individuals outside their countries of nationality through Canada’s 1982 Constitution Act and the UK’s 1998 Human Rights Act. However, through the 1990s concerns about the number of refugee applications to the West has developed into something akin to a moral panic, compounded by events of 9/11, which has forced countries to question whether asylum, as a route to the West, could be a threat to domestic security, and to reassess the best way to balance and manage domestic and international pressures and commitments. As discussed in Chapter Four, Canada has defined itself as an officially bilingual and multicultural ‘country of immigrants’ united in a vision of democracy, equality, and universal human rights. In contrast, in the UK, ‘Britishness’ is debated in the realities of a reluctant multiracial and multicultural condition (Phillips, 2005; Goodhart, 2004). The UK has defined itself territorially in opposition to continental Europe and 1

Signed by Britain in 1954 and Canada in 1969.

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historically in relation to the extent of dominion (Smith, 1993; Paul, 1997), it has faced criticism for its ‘keep-them-out’ policy towards asylum seekers (Crisp, 2003; Pirouet, 2001; Joly, 1996; Schuster, 2003) and it has been condemned by the UNHCR for “fuelling a climate of vitriol”, xenophobia and violence towards asylum seekers (UNHCR Briefing Notes, 10 Aug, 2001). In both Canada and the UK, criticisms of the asylum system include beliefs that it is too easy for people to deceive the system; the expense of the system outweighs its benefits since the majority of forced migrants are unable to seek asylum in the West; it unfairly rewards queue-jumpers; and more recently, it is seen as a passageway for terrorists. In times of intense migration pressure and limited opportunities, asylum systems in Western countries have constrained their use as a migration channel (Malkki, 1996), but this does not discharge states of their moral imperative towards those in genuine need. It follows, therefore, that one of the challenges for the modern state is to distinguish the deserving from the undeserving in a world where such distinctions appear artificial at best since some people will risk their lives for the opportunity to work in the West and others will forsake their livelihoods to live destitute but safe from persecution. National legislation and politics have significant influence on who enters the country and how, whether they remain, and if and how they settle A state’s place in the world, political vision, and institutional structures have an important impact on perceptions and attitudes toward asylum seekers and legislation (Reitz, 1988), which in turn affect refugee integration and the move toward citizenship. This imposes a tremendous moral burden on countries in addition to the economic costs of asylum. However, asylum is neither simply a burden to bear nor merely a charitable act; states also benefit from asylum. The international asylum regime has continued for over fifty years because asylum serves as a tool of foreign policy, which promotes national economic, ideological and humanitarian interests (Schuster, 2003). Despite apparent differences in the warmth of the welcome (Reitz 1998) in Canada and the UK, both countries have asylum recognition rates near 50 percent, including 12 percent of claimants not recognized as refugees in the UK but granted exceptional leave to remain (ccr.web.net; Home Office, 2000). Therefore, despite the policy discourse in the two countries, which is manifest by UK’s firm stance on asylum seekers and Canada’s appearance of generosity, the asylum outcomes are similar.

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As discussed earlier, asylum can be viewed along horizontal and vertical vectors: the former representing flight and the movement from place to place, and the latter less obviously evident in the movement through social space, represented by settlement trajectories in the country of asylum. This chapter conforms to this structure, first providing an overview of refugee numbers and origins, before examining persecution as an extreme push factor, and the structuration of flight and arrival. The chapter then turns to the legislation, policies and institutions that structure determination, settlement, and the reorientation of home. People fleeing persecution and states’ obligation to manage migration and protect their borders are often at odds, producing results that are undesirable for both asylum seekers and receiving nations, namely destitution, social exclusion and increasingly high-risk travel and entry. This chapter concludes in a discussion of how each country’s practices both support and undermine residential stability.

Asylum Flows: The Globalization of the Refugee Problem and Grounds for Defensive Migration Policies There is nothing more controversial, and yet more natural, than men and women from across the world seeking a better life for themselves and their families. Ease of communication and of transportation have transformed the time it takes to move across the globe. This ease of movement has broken down traditional boundaries. Yet the historic causes of homelessness, hunger or fear – conflict, war and persecution – have not disappeared. (David Blunkett, Secure Borders, Safe Haven, Home Office white paper, 2002)

Refugee Numbers amidst Western Defensive Measures: Locating the Problem Despite the number of refugees being at its lowest in twenty-five years, asylum seekers continue to flee to the West, enduring desperate, sometimes fatal attempts to arrive to safety. On arrival, they may find themselves struggling to turn survival into settlement success amongst Western countries’ own displaced and destitute populations. Homelessness, hunger, and fear are not confined to warring and unstable regions in the Third World but are also found in cases of extreme disadvantage in the West on the streets and in low-end housing. Increasingly, asylum seekers arriving to deterrent asylum policies in the West find themselves occupying these same spaces.

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Asylum policies constitute part of a strategy to manage migration and reinforce the meaning of borders: sovereignty and control. Managing migration is based on two cardinal principles, both of which demand restricting asylum (Pearl and Zetter, 2002, p. 229): limiting public expenditure, particularly personal benefits; and maintaining an image of toughness. Variability amongst states’ responses to asylum seekers depends on factors including states’ ability and willingness to incorporate migration within their histories, traditions, and roles in the world. Gibney and Hansell (2003) argue that states limit asylum migration in four ways: preventing access, managing arrival, limiting stay, and deterrence (Figure 5.1). Although states generally employ a combination of all four measures to control asylum and immigration, some countries’ policies are dominated by reliance on a single measure or are characterised by attention and debate on a single measure. Canadian policy is focussed on settlement by selection, and manages its system through an immigration point system and overseas refugee resettlement programme, complemented by territorial asylum, while Britain has focused on deterrent measures, based on separate and unequal access to welfare and restrictions on choice and mobility (Gibney and Hansell, 2003). Variations in migration management influence access to territorial determination and settlement, and are important to citizenship and belonging. Fig. 5.1 State Measures to Control Asylum and Immigration International Policy Measures

1. Prevent Access to Territory e.g. Australia

2. Manage Arrival e.g. Canada

3. Limit Stay

4. Deter Arrival

e.g. Germany

e.g. Britain

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In Canada, asylum is nestled within a larger strategy for Canada’s economic, demographic, and political future, and is therefore a small portion of the 250,000 or so immigrants Canada plans for each year. In contrast, Britain argues that asylum numbers cannot be forecast and its resources for immigration have been consumed by the expensive asylum determination and support process. Consequently, the government has tried to limit public expenditure while demonstrating control of the ‘asylum burden’ through policies that remove choice to asylum seekers and support them in a segregated and unequal system, discouraging ethnic concentrations. Canada appears to be more tolerant of spontaneous migration than the UK, but manages its asylum flows through distance and cost, neither products of government; and asylum seeking is considered an essential component of Canada’s larger immigration programme, which helps the government appear in control. The UK, by comparison, is not only closer to sources of conflict than Canada and more accessible to people fleeing (Map 5.1), but many people arrive overland, requiring less cost and documentation. The UK receives about twice the number of claimants as Canada. Map 5.1 shows the global proliferation of socio-political instability and violence, which has produced an unprecedented geographically diverse population of displaced people.

Map 5.1 Human Development and Armed Conflict 1993 – 2002, and top refugee source countries to Canada and the UK (2002)

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By the end of the 1990s, twenty-five countries andd territories were w each producing a half-million or more uproo oted people, ccompared to thirteen at the start of tthe decade. In total, at year-end 19999 more thaan thirty-five million peo ople were uprooted frrom their hoomes, the majority m of w whom were internally i displaced, annd 14 millionn were refugeees and asylum m seekers (USC CR 2001, UNHCR 20000; Graph 5.1). Graph G 5.1 R Refugees and asylum seekeers worldwidee (1991 to 200 05)

m statess (EUMS) received 5.7 During 19800-1999, Europpean Union member million asyllum applicatiions (90 perccent of Europpe’s applicatiions) and Canada and the US receivved 2 million, respectively rrepresenting 66 6 and 24 percent of appplications loodged in indusstrialised counntries (UNHCR, 2001). Between 19992 and 2001, 86 percent of the worldd’s refugees originated o from develooping countriees, which also o provided assylum to 72 percent p of the global reefugee populaation (UNHCR R, 2002). Sevven of the ten countries with the higghest “refugee burden” aree less developped countriess (LDCs), mostly locaated in sub-S Saharan Africca (UNHCR, 2003). Indeeed, many countries onn the lower half h of the HD DI have the dubious distinction of being both host to and source of “p persons of cooncern” (POC C) to the UNHCR. It is clear not only o that the problem of rrefugees lies mainly m in countries wiith the lowestt HDI, but so do the solutioons because ultimately, asylum seekking is an exxceptional response to an extraordinary y form of push-migrattion.

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Compared with Canada, the UK attracts many more asylum seekers, due in part to its colonial past, its proximity to refugee source countries within Eastern Europe and West Asia, and the opportunity of arriving overland. Although common sense dictates that it may be cheaper and easier to travel overland to the UK than to travel by air to North America, little research to date has looked at the costs and benefits of smuggling transportation routes or networks. Routes overland pass through a number of EU and non-EU states, and may require various types of forged documentation, accompaniment by the agent or smuggler, and an extensive transportation network with varied and circuitous routes, which may be equivalent to the costs of air smuggling. Compared with UK, there are far fewer routes to Canada that can be travelled cheaply, without documents, or overland, and the relative expense of arriving to Canada means that fewer manage it, and many who do are of a class that has had an opportunity for international justice. This has some effect on the source regions of asylum seekers, for example one Canadian MP noted: …[V]ery few people come to Canada from African countries which, heaven only knows, have millions of refugees. One of the main reasons why so few of them come here is that they cannot afford to (Hansard, Canada, Ms. R Folco, Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, 1750, March 25, 1998).

Whereas the UK’s proximity to the rest of Europe influences both its numbers and source countries, Canada’s proximity to the US affects its numbers more than its source countries by using its visa system as a staging ground to enter the Canadian asylum process [Cadman (Surrey North), Hansard Canada, Commons, 27/02/02,37,150].

Europe and North America: The Figures Abridged In the 1990s, the largest source of asylum applicants in Europe was Europe (42 percent of all applicants) (UNHCR, 2001). These applications were generated by the cascading effects of the dismantling of the Berlin wall, political changes in Eastern and Central Europe, and hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the war-torn Balkan states. The top countries of origin included the Former Yugoslavia (877,000 applications, a quarter of the claims lodged in the 1990s), Romania (402,000), Turkey (337,000) and Iraq (229,000) (UNCHR, 2001). Canada’s top ten source countries comprised only 46 percent of its claimants between 1990 and 2001, in contrast to the US, where the top ten

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countries reepresented 700 percent of applications a ((Castles and Loughna, 2003). Canaada’s main asyylum-seeking nationalities during the 19 990s were diverse, inclluding Sri Lannka (12 perceent, 34,186); S Somalia (19,5 568); Iran (14,055) annd China (13,383) (UNHC CR, 2001 bassed on CIC statistics; UNHCR new ws, 2002). As in Canadda, Somalis and a Sri Lankaans consistenttly representeed a large proportion oof UK applicants (around 7 percent eac ach, 28,000 ap pplicants) (UNHCR, 22001 based onn Home Officee statistics). Inn total over th his period, Canada received nearly 70 percent (355,425) off the total nu umber of applicationss submitted in the UK (525,755) thhroughout the 1990s, compared too 57 percent inn the last five years of the ddecade (Graph h 5.2). Graph GGraph 5.2 T Total asylum applications a lodged l in Can nada and thee UK (1991-2005) (

It is notablee that while Canada received a slow aand steady in ncrease of asylum appllications, the UK’s applicaations fluctuatted, soaring 37 percent between 19996 and 20000 before breaaching the 1000,000 mark in 2002. Furthermoree, between 20001 and 2005 Canada receiived just undeer half of the number of applicants of the UK (16 61,000 and 3226,000, respecttively).

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This difference is important to understanding the institutional, political, and public responses to asylum migration in the 1990s. In addition to the numbers of applicants, differences in the origin of asylum seekers between Canada and the UK (Charts 5.1 and 5.2), and perceptions of race, may underlie the UK’s intense rhetoric of exclusion and Canada’s more subtle administrative barriers. Racially encoded practices of deterrence and prevention of asylum migration are prevalent despite Western nations’ humanitarian obligations and heightened regional conflict (Appleyard, 2001), and ‘othering’ the foreigner has long histories in both countries (Chapter Four). Taking a snapshot of origins of asylum applicants (1995-1999), Charts 5.1 and 5.2 illustrate the difference that geography and history make to asylum flows. This is particularly evident in the percentages of European and Latin American applications, which as expected, are largest in the country with the greater proximity. There is a perception that refugees from some origins, e.g. Europe, are more adaptable than refugees from different climactic, racial, and religiocultural backgrounds; however, geographical or cultural determinism is a weak explanation for variability in integration, which is better seen in the context of experience, degree of trauma, social and human capital, and expectations along a continuum of settlement, which includes variable indicators. While the figures present a picture of overall asylum flows and marked differences between the numbers of applications in Canada and the UK, they fail to convey the proportion of asylum seekers to the national populations of each country. This is important because it is an indicator of absorptive capacity of countries and is essential to calculation of the socalled “refugee burden”. In fact, the ratios of asylum seekers per 1,000 inhabitants are very similar. Between 2001 and 2005, Canada had 5 asylum seekers, and the UK 5.5, per 1,000 (UNHCR, 2006).

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Comparing the “Refugee Burden” A focus on statistics can disembody the asylum seeker from her plight and separate countries from their international duty and humanitarian role, supporting specious arguments against asylum migration. Government and media can contribute to public concern that immigration will transform society and submerge traditional national cultures. According to Dummett (2001), submergence occurs when the number of immigrants increases to a size that threatens the indigenous population’s culture (for example East Timor, Tibet, Israel-Palestine), but in the UK and Canada “…it is a distortion of reality to suggest that an immigrant total of 7 percent or 18 percent is capable of swamping the native 93 percent or 82 percent” (Dummett, 2001, p. 53). Importantly, countries have a right not to be submerged, and national immigration policies uphold the sovereign right of the state to protect its borders, regulations, and culture (Carosa, 2004). While there is no right to immigrate, paradoxically, people do have the right to emigrate. Since asylum seekers are often racial minorities, on arrival to the West they are visible even in small numbers, and racisms can underlie anti-asylum policies. Fig. 5.2: Typology of the (Un)welcome

B

A. CONSPICUOUS

UNDOCUMENTED

C SPONTANEOUS

The convergence of undesirable or unmanageable characteristics undermines the appearance of control.

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Figure 5.2 presents a typology of the unwelcome, and illustrates that certain characteristics of migration can combine to create public concern, or incite moral panic, against asylum seekers. The variables are tied to the notion of control. The conspicuousness of migration, in terms of volume (e.g. statistics); visibility (e.g. Sangatte media coverage; boats of refugees arriving at Canadian ports); and ethnoracial characteristics different from the dominant group, heighten visibility and swell the significance of numbers and flows beyond their actual effect on the state and its indigenous populations or culture. Conspicuousness is a variable that relates to a country’s absorptive capacity, and therefore it also includes public expenditure on asylum determination and support. Along with conspicuousness, the lack of genuine or legitimate documentation undermines public trust in the asylum process and in the legitimacy of claims of persecution. It is seen as a feat of deception rather than survival, and not contextualised in the fear and immediate need for escape that underpins asylum migration. Thirdly, spontaneity of flows tests the capability of the system to manage asylum determination and enforcement. Asylum flows, though part of a managed migration system, comprise irregular forms of entry, which states try to limit by various means (Figure 5.2). These three factors weaken public support for asylum, and represent the root of state attempts to implement new asylum models that include organised and selective refugee acceptances from camps, extra-territorial processing, and punitive policies to deter people from circumventing more rational systems of entry. In addition to the relative visibility, spontaneity, and undocumented entry of asylum seekers, “refugee burden” is used by the UNHCR to describe countries’ capacity to host refugees. It is assessed on the relation of total Persons of Concern (POC) to the UNHCR to three characteristics: GDP per capita; total population; and total land area (UNHCR, 2003). Between 1998 and 2002, the top ten countries in each of these categories were comprised almost exclusively of non-industrialized nations, the two exceptions being Cyprus (ranking 8th under demographic pressure at 69 people per 1000 inhabitants) and the Netherlands (ranking 8th under territorial pressure at 6500 POC per 1000 sq km). The burden on industrialised countries is less than LDCs because for the former, the territorial size has limited relevance in determining the capacity to host refugees due to the relative urbanization of their economies (UNHCR, 2003, p. 64); countries with large populations may absorb refugees more

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easily than small populations; and because of their relatively large GDP per capita and small number of refugees in global terms, industrialised countries have a relatively small refugee burden. Consequently, the UNHCR underscores the responsibility of industrialised countries to contribute to refugee protection (UNHCR, 2002, pp. 12-13) in a variety of ways, including hearing asylum claims. In terms of economic and demographic pressures of hosting refugees, the UK and Canada are extremely similar (Table 5.1). Table 5.1: Canada and the UK’s Relative Refugee Burden (1998-2002)

Canada UK US Germany Highest Burden2

Economic /GDP Rank (1-154) 9 77 11 74 31 58 51 51 (1) Pakistan 4,478

Demographic /1,000 Rank inhabitants (1-163) 6 54 5 56 4 67 15 31 (1) Bosnia-Herzegovina 207

Territorial /1,000 Rank km sq (1-160) 20 104 1,205 29 119 68 3,457 14 (1) BosniaHerzegovina 16,711 Source: UNHCR statistical yearbook, 2002

In relation to GDP per capita, Canada hosts nine POC and the UK eleven (ranked 77 and 74 respectively); per 1,000 inhabitants, Canada hosts six POC and the UK five (ranked 54 and 56 respectively) (UNHCR Statistical Yearbook, 2002). In contrast, Canada ranks 104th in terms of territorial pressures, with only twenty POC per 1,000 km sq, while the UK ranks 29th, with 1,205 (Map 5.1). Although the UK’s urban areas are significantly denser than Canada’s, Canada has only twelve percent arable land and ninety percent of the population of 30 million live within 300 kilometres of the Canada-US border. Table 5.1 includes indicators for the largest contributors to refugees in the respective regions, Germany and the US, which have greater economic pressures than Canada or the UK. Germany, however, outstrips each in terms of its overall contribution. Additionally, the table demonstrates that 2 The lowest ranked countries included Singapore in terms of GDP (154), Cape Verde in terms of population pressure (163), and Suriname in terms of area (160).

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the refugee burden faced by Canada or the UK is minimal in contrast to that faced by other countries. Asylum is an expensive institution to uphold. According to Millbank (2001) the UK spends 1.5 billion pounds (USD2.2 billion) on processing and support, surpassing the UNHCR budget of USD1.7 billion, which is supposed to protect the world’s twenty-two million refugees. In comparison, Canada spends USD500 million on asylum processing and support, meaning that even if Canada were to have the same number of asylum seekers as the UK, it would still spend less, due in part to the UK’s costly regime of detention, dispersal, vouchers, and ineligibility for employment until refugee status is granted (National Audit Office, 2004). Since guaranteeing rights entails public costs, it is in nations’ interest to control who claims such rights (Baubock, 2005, pp. 6-7). Additionally, border control is fundamental to the sovereignty of states (Gibney and Hansen, 2003). Immigration management, therefore, has two main mechanisms of control, keeping people out (interdiction) and getting people out (deportation). Moreover, states may be more willing to respect migrants’ rights if they feel able to control the arrival of non-citizens into their territory (Gibney and Hansen, 2003, p. 57). Asylum is problematic for Western governments, not only because large numbers of spontaneous migrants challenge their sovereignty and borders, but also because refugee flows have forced governments to ask why asylum numbers continue to rise in industrialised countries3 (UNCHR, 2003), while global numbers decline. For many states, the answer is not located in the turmoil and targeted violence faced in source countries and regions (Map 5.1) but rather in outdated international protocols, opportunities to work in advanced Western economies, and generous welfare systems. Accordingly, asylum has been re-constructed as a window of opportunity, rather than a last resort for people fearing torture and persecution, although in reality it is more likely both. Following on from this overview, the next section examines how refugees get to the country of asylum and the institutions and structures that enable and constrain them throughout their journey.

3

Thirty-seven countries identified by the UNHCR (2003) as being ‘”mostly industrialised.”

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The Structuration of Flight and Arrival We talk of people being forced to flee persecution in their home countries. But the brutal truth is that no-one is forced to flee. Fleeing is what you do if you have the guts to leave (Mark Haddon, 27 Feb, 2005).

Examination of refugees’ trajectories to settlement is important to understanding asylum seekers’ settlement because it demonstrates the opposing interests between refugees and states during flight, transit, asylum and settlement and the ways in which international, regional, and national structures affect the right to claim asylum. This section follows this horizontal trajectory (Figure 5.4) beginning with asylum seekers’ forced migration, before discussing the impact of institutions and geopolitical structures on flight and arrival. The section concludes by suggesting that national and multi-lateral attempts to deter asylum migration increase the vulnerability of asylum seekers to exploitation, danger and exclusion.

Persecution as a Push Factor against the Inertia of Home and Rootedness The concepts of access and isolation are key elements of the geography of asylum and refugee settlement. Accessibility may be defined as the physical quality of “affording entrance”, being easy to “go to, come into the presence of, reach or lay hold of” as well as being “open and practicable” (OED). At one level the international asylum regime makes flight and sanctuary possible, at another level national systems of migration management provide a window for asylum while fortressing against the proverbial tide of refugees, and finally asylum seekers’ resources and contacts influence their ability to flee. Improving accessibility means reducing the friction of distance and overcoming the inertia of rootedness both of which are natural barriers to migration, capturing pragmatic and psycho-social dimensions for not fleeing. While migration may have multiple motivations, including family reunification, career opportunities, overall dissatisfaction with one’s environment, etc., persecution distinguishes asylum migration from other forms of migration, and acts as the primary lever against friction and inertia. Consequently, in the asylum regime distance may be better understood as a first step to access safety and security, which cultural, political and physical proximity to the country of origin might threaten

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through inadequate security conditions, deportation, imprisonment, and physical harassment (Barsky, 2000; Loescher & Milner, 2003, p. 4). On the other hand, the direction and distance of asylum seekers’ flight is influenced by pull factors such as historic ties, macro-economic conditions in the destination country, a liberal reputation, physical and legal accessibility, and most importantly, the presence of family and friends (Thielemann, 2002; Bocker and Havinga 1998; Segrott and Robinson 2002). Furthermore, Koser (1997a) reveals that the majority of asylum seekers are smuggled into the UK and smugglers take people to countries that are accessible to them. Pull factors common to Canada and the UK include social connections, such as the presence of friends and family members, a liberal democracy, and the ability to speak and learn English, and in Canada also French. Additionally colonial ties are important to the UK (Edgar et al., 2004; Robinson and Segrott, 2002), while in Canada humanitarian values and entitlements are contrasted favourably against the US, including fundamental justice, legal aid, welfare, and the right work and study [Hansard Canada, Commons, 17 February 2002, 37, 150]. To justify seeking asylum abroad, asylum seekers must not only establish a well-founded fear of persecution once they arrive to the country of determination, they must also demonstrate that they sought, but were unable to enjoy, protection from their own state authorities (Article 1(a) Refugee Convention), and that local solutions were tried and failed. In Figure 5.4, the “first country” is the country of origin; the “second country” is where refuge is sought; and the “third country” is the last country passed through, where a claim could have been lodged but was not. The complexities of the geographies of asylum therefore begin at a local level, in the country of origin (Figures 5.4, 5.5), where a person may have already undergone a number of forced migrations within her state’s borders to evade her persecutors and achieve stability locally (Figure 5.5).

Fig 5.4 Refugees’ agency is enabled and constrained in various ways, at various scales in the asylum process

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The geographical outcome of this pre-flight stage is that the majority of a country’s citizens remain in situ, with most of those who exit the country remaining in the region, and a minority being able to seek asylum in the West. Bridging distance requires resources, the lack of which is itself the greatest barrier to asylum and settlement. Consequently, asylum seekers who arrive to the West represent the most privileged and capable members of societies in turmoil.

Questioning the Direction and Distance of Asylum Seekers’ Journey The presence of means and resources does not signify that people are illegitimate refugees or any less persecuted than those who remain in the region, or vice versa, nor does the ability to attain and enter a country with false papers negate the legitimacy of the refugee claim. Nevertheless, questioning the movements and motivations of asylum seekers is often juxtaposed to what is perceived to be the greater suffering, and therefore deservedness, of the “camp refugee” (ccr.web.net; Malkki, 1995; Hansard Canada, 23/10/01, 37th, 1st session, number 100). Despite challenge by a number of researchers (Dummett, 2001; Back, 2003) this dichotomy of the queue-jumping asylum seeker and long-suffering camp refugee propagates the myth that those who are capable of requesting asylum abroad must be least deserving of receiving it (Neumayer, 2004; Middleton, 2005; Thielemann, 2002; Kushner, 2003). Consequently, asylum seekers’ intentions in migrating, particularly if they arrive having bypassed third countries, smuggled without documents or with fraudulent documents, are linked to abuse of the welfare state and are perceived to usurp the position of genuine refugees. Despite popular misgivings, the 1951 Refugee Convention demands that every asylum claim be assessed on its merits and not negatively prejudiced by the desperate means and circuitous routes people undertake to survive. According to Robinson and Segrott (2002), asylum seekers described agents as life-preserving more than exploitative; however, the range of help varies considerably and choice often depends on ability to pay (Koser, 1997b). Smugglers and agents’ services include documents, accompaniment on the journey, safe routes and transit, and contacts in the country of asylum. As a means of making asylum accessible, smugglers and agents are increasingly necessary to circumnavigate expanding mechanisms of border control.

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Deterrent measures are not just matters of border enforcement and restrictions to asylum seekers’ ability to travel; at a domestic level, some states attempt to control asylum seekers’ travel by attempting to eliminate any perceived incentives to use the asylum category fraudulently. In the UK such measures have included limiting access to benefits, the implementation of vouchers, no-choice dispersal, and detention. The idea behind such measures is to exploit chain migration effects and social networks to transmit the disadvantages of various options. Examining the relationship between asylum statistics and deterrent measures in the EU from 1988-1997, Bocker and Havinga (1998) concluded there was no clear correlation to support the effectiveness of the measures, and where there were effects, they were transient (pp 263-264). According to Thielemann (2002) restrictive measures fail to deter displaced persons and economic migrants because people are imperfectly rational and lack good information (Ibid., 2002, p. 21; see also Schuster, 2002). These conclusions were confirmed by the Institute for Public Policy Research, which found no evidence that asylum seekers migrate because of generous welfare state benefits (Ardittis et al., 2005)4. Evidence in the House of Lords also showed: 8. … Deterrence, prevention and other punitive measures, while increasing the hardship on people fleeing violence and persecution, have had little discernable effect in terms of reducing the numbers of asylum applications (JUSTICE, House of Lords, European Union, Written Evidence, 20 April 2004).

However, this is not to say that benefits were of no concern to asylum seekers. Rather, Robinson and Segrott (2002) demonstrated that asylum seekers had multiple reasons for choosing their destination, and benefit was not a pull factor on its own. On arrival to the UK, asylum seekers were more concerned with finding employment than accessing either housing or benefit (Robinson and Segrott, 2002). Therefore, migration management measures relying on “deportation, detention, and dispersal” and destitution (Bloch and Schuster, 2005, p. 1) to deter would-be asylum seekers are prone to failure because they address neither why people leave nor why they choose Canada or the UK. Schuster (2002) concludes that the use of such policies despite a lack of evidence 4

Middleton (2005) demonstrates that there are conflicting research findings on this matter.

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for their success means that such measures must be punitive rather than deterrent and geared to the domestic public rather than addressing the issue of asylum (Thielemann, 2002; Pearl and Zetter, 2002; Kissoon, 2010).

Enabling the right to seek asylum: International and national institutions This section lays out the pre-arrival structures that constitute the asylum regime, while the next section examines the national and local structures that affect settlement. The structures that dominate asylum migration include: a) international conventions; b) regional boundaries and policy harmonisation; and c) national entry requirements, all of which bear on asylum seekers arriving in either Canada or the UK. It is a state’s right to determine who enters its territory, but this right is not absolute (Schuster, 2003a). Transnational citizenship describes the ability of individuals to claim rights across borders (Soysal, 1994; Sassen, 1998) and it erects limits on the state’s ability to exclude. States are bound to international humanitarian instruments, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948 UDHR) and the Convention on the Rights of Refugees (1951 Refugee Convention), regional institutions such as the EU, and national constitutions and human rights law such as Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which regulates the treatment of citizens and third-country nationals and guarantees “fundamental justice” i.e. due process for everyone on Canadian territory. Organizations and structures, operating at different scales, support the right to claim asylum, regulate access to territory and guarantee basic human rights that enable flight and settlement, affect asylum seekers’ life chances, and constitute the foundations for the reconstruction of home (Table 5.2). A highly interwoven relationship exists between the state as the mediator of domestic policy and the demands of supranational and intergovernmental organizations (Figure 5.6). Consequently, differences in a state’s history, economy, role in the international community, and national identity affect the ways in which it interprets and implements its duties.

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Table 5.2: A Select List of Human Rights Instruments at Different Levels A. International 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees 1966 Convention on Civil and Political Rights 1966 Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 1984 Convention against Torture B. Regional 1950 European Convention of Human Rights 2000 Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union C. National 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms 1998 UK Human Rights Act

Fig 5.6: Navigating the Asylum Structures

International structures The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees and 1967 Protocol form the basis of the asylum regime. The UDHR is an important moral instrument because it establishes the right to migrate within the borders of one’s own state, to leave any country, to return to one’s own country and, crucially,

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to seek and enjoy asylum from persecution in other countries (Articles 13 and 145, UDHR6), and the 1951 Convention is the only instrument available in international law to implement the right of movement. Unlike the UDHR, the Convention is dedicated to defining the rights of asylum seekers, including who is eligible to claim asylum, and the role of the state in administering the right to claim. The 1951 Convention obliges signatories to assess every asylum claim on its merits. Since the Convention was only intended to address the situation that was a result of events occurring before 1951 (Malkki, 1995), the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees was created to remove the Convention’s innate Eurocentrism and geographic limitations linked to its war-time origins. By expanding its remit to meet the changing sources of conflict, the UN made the Convention, its rights and protection universal. More than fifty years after its adoption, the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol remain the only international instruments for the protection of refugees (Malkki, 1995). These two instruments constitute the foundation of the right to flee which is crucial to those who face persecution because it allows people to take advantage of distance and their own agency as a means of self-preservation. The Convention protects asylum seekers’ right to a) seek asylum in any state, despite its physical distance, the number of asylum applications already in queue, or cultural differences; b) seek asylum without penalty for unlawful entry or presence in the country of asylum; and c) seek asylum at a time favourable to them rather than prospective states. In this way, the Convention is a tool of individual empowerment, and constrains the state’s powers of exclusion. By allowing people to seek asylum when and where they can, or indeed want, it has an important role in the first stage of home-making: arriving to safety. Essential to this right of flight are Articles 31 and 33 of the Convention, which ensure the right to claim asylum and have that claim determined by the appropriate authority 5

These instruments of protection also limit the right to seek asylum, which may not be invoked, for instance, in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations (1948 UDHR Article 14(2)). 6 Seven UN human rights treaties which give legal effect to the rights in the Declaration (see GCIM, 2005), including the 1984 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, which Canada uses to determine persons in need of protection.

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regardless of the manner of arrival or whether the individual holds valid documents7. It is understood from the experiences of refugees from the Second World War that false, missing, or destroyed documentation is not necessarily an indication of a false claim as people with a well-founded fear of persecution may succumb to desperate measures to save their lives and the lives of their family members. Consequently, the implementation of policies that penalise asylum seekers carrying false documents is morally questionable. The UNHCR’s role is to enable states to meet their international humanitarian obligations towards asylum seekers and by doing so to ensure a route to refuge for the persecuted (Loescher, 2001; Hyndman, 1997; www.unhcr.ch). In monitoring nations’ compliance with the Convention, the UNHCR has three functions: protection, resettlement and public information.

Regional institutions Regional institutions tend to constrain asylum more than enable, e.g. “fortress Europe” referring to the impenetrability of Europe’s borders and indicating the impact of policy harmonisation and border agreements, generally. Therefore, the relationships between the UK and the EU and Canada and the UK are discussed later as barriers to asylum migration. However, enabling asylum seekers’ right to claim asylum is the cascading incorporation of the international rights regime, institutionalised at the regional level in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and in national legislation in the 1998 UK Human Rights Act and 1982 Canadian Constitution. Regional human rights conventions have optional 7

“Contracting states shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who… enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence” (Article 31, on Refugees Unlawfully in the Country of Refuge); No contracting State shall expel or return (‘refouler’) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion” (Article 33, on Non-Refoulement). The non-refoulement principle is not limited to states party to the 1951 Refugee Convention; non-refoulement has also evolved into a norm of customary international law (Brouwer and Kumin, 2004).

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protocols, which aid governments’ acceptance of a set of norms to comply with international standards and lay the groundwork for policy harmonisation while retaining state sovereignty. All Council of Europe (COE) Members are party to the ECHR, but being a signatory does not presume the state is a ‘safe third country’ (STC) to which an asylum seeker may be returned for determination (e.g. Turkey, Azerbaijan, Serbia, and the Ukraine are COE members, but also represent countries of persecution for refugees in this study). In addition to the incorporation of human rights, meetings of the European Council on asylum and immigration at Tampere (1999) and Seville (2002) articulated a commitment to the right to asylum and full application of the 1951 Refugee Convention (unhcr.ch, 2005, press release; Edgar et al., 2004).

State structures States act as the primary guarantors of rights, and use international treaties and conventions as markers of liberal democracy (Baubock, 2005). Consequently, human rights have political significance that goes beyond the protection of the individual (Schuster, 2003a). At the international level, the establishment of a community of nations has brought states closer together through harmonisation and collective responsibility, and this responsibility comprises the basis for asylum programmes. In the UK the Home Office is basically a “safety ministry”, whose mission is to “protect the public, and build a safe, just and tolerant society” (homeoffice.gov.uk), with responsibility for crime and victims, security, anti-social behaviour, drugs, communities, equality and diversity, the police, justice and prisons, and passports and immigration. The last is housed within the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND). That immigration and asylum, communities and diversity are based in the same organization as prisons, drugs, and crime undervalues the role of immigration to nation-building in the UK and developing the benefits of managed migration to the country’s future because of the negative association. The Home Office enables and constrains the right to seek asylum in different ways, and in its pursuit of border security and the appearance of control, the IND continues to adhere to the letter, if not the spirit, of the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1998 Human Rights Act. By contrast, in Canada responsibility for immigration and asylum is housed in one government department, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), which views asylum as the humanitarian component of a

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larger migration strategy along with overseas refugee resettlement.. Asylum determination is managed by an independent quasi-judicial body known as the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), instituted to guarantee due process to anyone on Canadian soil, including full right of appeal. Claimants in Canada who are deemed eligible to apply for asylum are referred to the Refugee Protection Division (RPD) of the IRB and if found in need of protection are given Convention refugee status, which makes them eligible to apply for permanent residence in six months (Flowcharts of the asylum process in the UK and Canada are provided in Appendix B). More than this, however, the state is the vehicle for national identity, and Canada’s identity is based on its image as a country of immigrants, liberalism and humanitarianism, concretised in its history and established migration population. Consequently anti-immigrant sentiment can lose elections. For instance, when boatloads of Tamil, Sikh and Chinese migrants arrived off the coasts of Canada in 1986, 1987, and 1999, respectively, the crisis of the highly visible ‘puncture’ of Canada’s geographical isolation gave rise to proposals to curb these spontaneous movements including fingerprinting, detention, streamlining refugee determination, a safe-third country provision, and a new ministry for immigration known as the Department for Public Security (Henry and Tator, 2000, pp. 64-69). However, because of the proposal to house responsibility for immigration within a Department for Public Security, the Conservative government was accused of “incitement to racism” (Knowles, 1997, p. 199) and lost the 1993 election. This is in direct contrast to sentiment in the UK, where the state, as vehicle for controlling access to Britishness, employs the rhetoric of exclusion to win popularity.

Provincial jurisdiction In Canada, immigration is a matter of shared jurisdiction between the federal and provincial levels of government, according to the 1867 Constitution Act. Most of the provinces have immigration agreements with the federal government, or are negotiating such agreements; however, Quebec is the only province to have established its own provincial immigration department, with its own selection of overseas refugees for resettlement, and point system emphasising the goal of the integration of immigrants into Francophone language and culture. Cities, on the other

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hand, bear the responsibility for managing asylum seekers’ immediate settlement and integration. Since the 1976 Immigration Act, provinces have been involved in consultations setting immigration levels with the federal government according to absorptive capacity and regional demographic and labour market requirements. CIC aims for a 60/40 split between economic and non-economic migrants (Chart 5.3). Asylum seekers constitute a form of spontaneous migration for which quotas cannot be set, and consequently some Provinces, particularly those with the country’s largest cities, receive the majority of claims. Ontario, for example, received 55 percent of Canada’s asylum seekers between 1995 and 2004 (CIC stats, 2006), most of whom reside in Toronto. The consequences of this inter-jurisdictional matter affect asylum seekers’ daily lives, trajectories into homelessness, housing mobility and characteristics, and relationship to the state. Canadian Immigration Levels—Target Ranges, 2004

Chart 5.3

One solution to the issue of inter-jurisdictional responsibility in Ontario has been the 2004 Letter of Intent for an immigration agreement signed by the province and federal government, which “…paves the way for municipalities to have a voice in immigration issues” and recognizes “… the importance of cities and the urban reality of immigration” (www.gov.on.ca/citizenship/). Cities bear the responsibility for managing asylum seekers’ immediate settlement and integration. Canadian cities are under provincial

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jurisdiction, and their role in settlement and integration is examined later in this chapter. The structure of Canada’s migration system is important to the government’s appearance of being in control of who arrives in the country, for how long, and for what purpose. By allaying public fears through a rational and fair system, the state and its partners make room for asylum. Consequently, asylum flows are not as characterised by volatility as they are in the UK, where terms such as swamping and flooding are common in the popular press. This section focused on Canada as the UK has no tertiary level of government, and responsibility for asylum is borne between the national government and local authorities. This is important because it allows direct negotiation between local and national governments on the support, maintenance, and distribution of asylum seekers across the UK. Their role in settlement is discussed later.

Localities The non-profit sector plays an important role in service delivery of federal and provincial programmes, and in providing immediate support for asylum seekers’ complex needs beyond governmental provision. Exemplars of this work include the Canadian and British Red Cross, Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture and Medical Foundation in the UK, and specialist centres providing legal and housing help in the small number of Toronto’s refugee homeless shelters and in London’s B&B support centres. In addition to support however, the non-profit sector lobbies on behalf of asylum seekers and the right to asylum, and this is particularly evident in the work of the Canadian Council and British Council for Refugees (CCR and BRC). While the CCR is an umbrella organization advocating for asylum seekers, the BRC provides frontline services and partners with the government to manage services, such as its Brixton One-Stop Shop basic needs referral, and emergency transit accommodation.

Constraining the right to seek asylum There are a number of ways in which the right to seek asylum is constrained, including border cooperation agreements, visa requirements, carrier sanctions, etc. and deterrence through the elimination or reduction of social services and assistance on arrival, detention, dispersal, and

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induction centres (Gibney and Hansell, 2003; Ucarer, 2001; Geddes, 2001; Zetter et al., 2002). Each constitutes management of international forced migration, arguably demonstrating the value of control above humanitarian considerations. Border control is fundamental to the sovereignty of states, and immigration has become a threat to sovereignty due to the seeming absence of control (Gibney and Hansen, 2003). In the first stage of asylum seeking (Figure 5.5), the barriers to asylum, including administrative barriers erected by industrialised countries, are enforced at the point of flight. Asylum seeking is a particular form of uninvited migration, which began as a humanitarian commitment amongst nations but has transformed to crises of numbers management and infringement on sovereignty, national identity, and the entitlements of citizenship. One must not only keep in mind that a state’s first duty is toward its citizens but also that there are significant challenges to asylum including: 1. The Convention was not designed with today’s mass refugee movements in mind, and is arguably an outdated instrument. The right to seek asylum originates from European charters (1948 UDHR and 1951 Refugee Convention) in the socio-political geography of postWWII European displacement (Hyndman, 1997; Malkki, 1995; UNHCR.org, Convention Plus); 2. Although people have a right to seek asylum, asylum is a right of states and it is the prerogative of each state to decide whether or not to comply with international standards. Power rests primarily with the state as the guarantor of rights (Schuster, 1998; Sassen, 1999); 3. States have a right not to be submerged by migrants (Dummett, 2001); and 4. Asylum determination is an expensive system that benefits a minority of the world’s displaced (Millbank, 2000).

Policy failures have additionally led to people questioning the benefit and utility of a human rights standard for society, and there is a danger that governments will take the opportunity to derogate from their obligations rather than strive to educate the public on the importance of a ‘human rights culture’—a term which itself has become a pejorative description of society in the contemporary period. Securitization against asylum seekers is increasingly common in rhetoric and policy, justified by the swell of

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applications to industrialised countries since the 1990s and the fear of terrorists claiming international rights in order to access national territory. The 1951 Refugee Convention protects the individual’s right to seek asylum but also allows states to defer responsibility to other signatories of the Refugee Convention on the principle of fair minimal standards of procedural justice and settlement opportunities. Furthermore, human rights law offers justice in situ for citizens of all nations and in the asylum regime it provides a route to protection for forced migrants from a place of persecution to a place of sanctuary. Unfortunately, just as the source countries of refugees differ in their human rights abuses, signatories to the 1951 Convention differ in their ability and willingness to respond. Contracting towards minimal adherence at the national scale, governments tighten admission policies, asylum determination criteria, and access to settlement and citizenship. What this means is that while citizenship, human rights, treaty rights etc. may be expanding, they are not expanding evenly, and while assessing the legitimacy of resettlement, burden sharing, and STC provisions, it is necessary to keep in mind that the interpretation and incorporation of human rights, even amongst Western European nations, is uneven. Before examining the impact of regionalisation and harmonisation on the access to territorial asylum, it is important to stress that even institutions designated to provide access can constrain it. The 1951 Convention, for example, enables individuals to seek asylum, but also limits the application of asylum to someone in need of protection from persecution on the grounds of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion. Groups not included under the definition include people fleeing because of external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or events seriously disturbing public order, poverty, or environmental disaster. The definition of a refugee is used by states to limit asylum and provisions to asylum seekers. Definitions offer a basic parameter by which to exclude, and therefore are the first level of restriction to asylum. (For further discussion on the use and abuse of the Convention and UNHCR see Goodwin Gill, 2001, 1999; Loescher, 2001.) The EU provides a ‘supranational migration framework’ (Edgar et al., 2004), to harmonise immigration measures, and in particular enhance the control of migration through policing borders, sharing information, and developing a common determination policy. The EU addresses the issue of asylum at the intergovernmental and supranational framework of the 1992

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Maastricht Treaty (MT), 1997 Dublin Convention (DC), 1999 Treaty of Amsterdam (TA) and the Schengen Accords. However, because the EU is composed of ‘old states’ without founding principles of immigration, many member states are reluctant to accept the benefits of migration and integration, instead viewing migration as a temporary problem, or in some cases a short-term economic fix, which has obvious implications for policies supporting asylum seekers’ welfare and integration. Fig 5.7 Treaty of the European Union (1991) Maastricht Treaty

The MT was founded on three pillars, the third of which, Justice and Home Affairs, addressed issues of asylum and migration (Figure 5.7). The 1999 Tampere Agreement provided a roadmap to immigration policy in the EU, defining a common legal framework to develop coordination, cooperation, and information sharing between EUMS. The DC was instituted to harmonise the asylum process amongst EUMS and in

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particular to determine which member state would be responsible for examining an asylum claim. It replaced the asylum Chapter of the Schengen Convention, essentially acting as a ‘STC’ provision. The DC necessitates that the first state through which an asylum seeker passes assumes responsibility for their determination and support. Consequently, the DC removes the choice of where to lodge a claim from asylum seekers and attempts to prevent situations of ‘asylum seekers in orbit’, which occur when no member state is willing to take responsibility for a claim. The Schengen area enables freer movement between member states, accomplished through common policy on visas, the end of checks for flights between signatory countries and the free circulation of non-EU citizens. The treaties affect asylum and immigration in a fundamental manner, incorporating the sometimes-divergent motives of fifteen member states. For instance, although the UK and Ireland have agreed to cooperative policing under Schengen Convention, they have declined to join the Schengen area, and consequently, many asylum seekers have been able to move through the EU without check until arriving to points of departure to the UK, the most recent and notable of which is Calais. The congregation of migrants in Calais waiting for an opportunity to move on to the UK resulted in the homelessness and encampment of hundreds of “illegal migrants.” Rather than deport them, the French government was accused of ushering the migrants onward to the UK, from where in theory, many would be deported to the DC signatory country through which they first entered (most probably not France). According to Customs and Excise officials, in 2000, each month as many as 2,000 people were caught hiding in or under freight lorries (BBC news, 22/03/01). The same year, according to Eurotunnel authorities approximately 150 asylum seekers per day attempted to sneak aboard trains from the French side (Ibid.). In 1999 French authorities had requisitioned the Sangatte refugee centre, originally built as a warehouse during construction of the tunnel, to house asylum seekers fleeing to Britain, many of whom were Iraqi Kurds, Afghans and Iranians. In February 2002, Sangatte hosted 1,400 people, though the camp was designed to hold only 600 (BBC news, 01/02/02). A year later, the camp was shut, not for reasons related to migrant welfare, but because Eurostar operators argued that migrants were a threat to security and were a heavy

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cost-burden to the company due to carriers’ liability (Cohen, 2004). The irony of this example of interdiction is then Home Secretary David Blunkett’s recognition of “the nonsense of the claim that people coming through the Channel Tunnel, or crossing in container lorries, constitutes an invasion when it patently demonstrates how difficult people are finding it to reach this country” (Secure Borders, Safe Haven, 2001). In response to this apparent vulnerability in the UK’s border defenses, British immigration officers now operate in Calais, Ostend and Zeebrugge for example, extending the UK’s borders into EUMS. Under the terms of the DC, states on the borders of the EU would be expected to receive the highest number of asylum applications, but Middleton (2005) shows that this is not the case, particularly for Southern Europe, which seems to be an “access zone” or “boundary of vulnerability”8. By contrast, Eastern and Central European countries have at least a triple geographical role for EUMS: as “transit countries” for people who want to travel further west; as a “buffer zone” between Western Europe and poorer unstable parts of the world; and as the “frontline of prevention” where the accession states police against illegal migrants to aid in combating human smuggling and trafficking. Throughout the 1990s, estimates of illegal migration in the EU soared, so that in 1999 it was calculated that 400,000 people were smuggled into Europe, compared with 50,000 in 1993 (Heckman et al., 2000 quoted in Salt, 2002, pp. 36-37). These figures are based on apprehension data and it is estimated that for every one person caught, two pass. In 1999, 260,000 people were caught entering the EU illegally (Salt, 2002, pp. 36-37). In North America, under the Free Trade Agreement, citizens of Canada, the US and Mexico, can gain quicker, easier, temporary entry into the other countries for business-related activities, but in contrast to the Treaty of the European Union, it has no bearing on asylum or immigration. Although refugee-serving organizations in Canada feared that NAFTA’s implementation in 1994 would lead to the dilution of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the implementation of the STC agreement with the US, NAFTA’s influence over immigration and settlement has been slight. The Canadian Council for Refugees was the foremost lobby group against an STC agreement and policy harmonisation with the US, highlighting the 8

For implications to the regional barriers in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, see Ucarer, 2001.

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US’ egregious record of detention, discrimination against Central and South American claimants, particularly Colombians and Salvadorans, and Canada’s wider consideration of persecution under the Convention against Torture as well as gender-based claims (CCR, 1999). The US reaction to 9/11 is beyond the scope of this study; however, the 2001 attacks had a profound impact on borders, boundaries, the location of asylum claims, and state cooperation (Chapter Nine). Canada was accused of being the back door to the US9, and like the UK’s emphasis on Eastern Europe as the weak frontline, the US placed Canada under pressure to harmonise their border controls. Accordingly, an STC agreement was signed in 2002 and implemented in 2003. Even before the implementation of the STC agreement, Canada began “directing back” claimants to the US with the consequence that people, particularly Muslims, who were fleeing the US because of new compulsory registration and a climate of fear and uncertainty, were returned to indefinite detention (participant observation with CCR, Buffalo, 2003). That same year, Canada also formed the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), which expanded Canada’s security perimeter and placed much of the responsibility for preventing illegal migration overseas (CBSA, 2005). The CBSA is fundamentally an interdiction service. In 2005, Canadian immigration officers overseas reported the interception abroad of approximately 5,400 improperly documented Canada-bound persons. Effectively, therefore, the Canadian border, like the UK’s, has expanded internationally through integration and cooperation with other government departments, international partners, local immigration and law enforcement agencies and airlines. In addition, both Canada and the UK impose visitor visa requirements on individuals from countries that produce significant numbers of claimants; carrier liability10 amounting to thousands of dollars in fines and legal charges for transporting undocumented individuals; and a network of overseas immigration officers whose purpose is to prevent people from travelling without valid documents. These are examples of policy convergence on issues of asylum despite the divergent traditions of immigration in nationbuilding described in Chapter Four. 9

Interview, Director of Strategic Policy, CIC, May 2003. The UK Immigration (Carriers’ Liability) Act 1987 provides for the imposition of a fine (£2,000 per passenger), on any transport operator bringing passengers lacking valid travel documents or a valid visa where one is required. From March 1987 to 1997, fines totalling over £89million have been imposed on airlines and shipping companies (Amnesty International, 1997). 10

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In Canada, as in the UK, regionalisation and securitisation are the core of multilateral measures (Home Office, 2002, p. 88). However, there is a great deal of circumstantial evidence showing that the obstacles erected by states force refugees to use illegal means if they want to access Europe or Canada (Crosland and Morrison, 2001; GCIM, 2005; IOM, 2002). The Canadian interdiction strategy may or may not be achieving reductions in the levels of smuggling, but it is succeeding in making it more difficult for asylum seekers to leave their countries of origin. Such government strategies have been called “ineffective and counter-productive” and creating greater risk to people who demand entry in the face of extreme poverty or persecution (Bronskill, cnews.canoe.ca, 2005). In a pernicious feedback loop, the Canada-US security perimeter, remote control and third-party policing, force asylum seekers to escalating dangers and illicit means en route to achieve safety, which in turn is used by states to justify further restrictions. Multi-lateral restrictions and their implications for asylum seekers’ access to territory not only put their lives at risk on the journey and in the possibility of refoulement, but also erode their wellbeing creating a more vulnerable population of asylum seekers arriving in the West. In the UK, six pieces of immigration and asylum legislation have been enacted in a fourteen year period spanning from 1993 to 2007 (the 1993, 1996, 1999, 2002, 2004 and 2006 Acts) in attempts to appear in control of and limit asylum applications and develop a managed migration strategy. Until 1993 the UK had no specific asylum legislation, and until the 1993 Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act (AIAA) immigration legislation was more concerned with regulating access to British citizenship than managing asylum flows (Schuster and Solomos, 1999, p. 57; Gibney and Hansel, 2003). The 1993 Act anchored the 1951 Convention in domestic legislation for the first time and focussed on curtailing access to territorial asylum, in contrast to subsequent Acts, which focussed on welfare and entitlements. The 1993 Act introduced STC removal; extended the 1987 Carrier Liability Act to require transit visas and increase sanctions; introduced fingerprinting and indefinite detention during determination; and widened appeal rights for failed asylum seekers who were required to lodge claims within 48 hours of a negative decision. The NGOs the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI, House of Commons, Home Affairs Written Evidence, 24, 13 Jan 2004) and JUSTICE (the British section of the International Commission of Jurists)

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voiced concerns that asylum policy was being constructed as a policy of prevention, rather than protection, and deliberate destitution, rather than humanitarian principles. A “white list” of safe countries of origin (SCO) was produced to fast-track determination and appeals by identifying countries with little risk of persecuting its residents. These are known as non-suspensive appeals (NSA)11 (Appendix B). The white list was introduced to increase the efficiency of asylum determination and deter blatantly false claims. A list of safe countries is controversial because according to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1948 UDHR, everyone has the right to seek asylum without prejudice of nationality or origins. The white list was therefore eliminated in the 1999 Act, but reinstated in the 2002 Act. Opponents suggest that it understates the risk associated with being a member of particular groups, such as women and homosexuals; being a victim of organized crime and gang violence; and, since Europe and the accession states are included in the list, it precludes the legitimacy of claims by Roma who, for instance, are the most persecuted group in Europe (UNDP, 2003). The government argues that the countries on the list are democratic, and therefore no one originating from them can be considered a refugee. In 2002, asylum applications from many of the countries specified on the SCO list had relatively high success rates, especially those from Macedonia (33 percent), Serbia and Montenegro (30 percent), Bangladesh (28 percent) and Albania (24 percent). Meanwhile, in 2002, a number of appeals were upheld in favour of applicants from the former Yugoslav states, Sri Lanka, former USSR states (including the Baltic states), and Macedonia. There are now 24 countries on the list whose human rights records are significantly worse than those of the EU Accession States that originally appeared in the Act and on which parliamentary debate focussed during the passage of the Bill (House of Commons Research Paper, 2003). This list is controversial as it might result in refoulement since some of the countries on the list are also major refugee-producing zones e.g. Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and Turkey12.

11

Non-suspensive appeal means that an appeal does not suspend the applicant’s removal from the UK, and appeal rights can be exercised only from abroad (i.e. after removal). 12 According to 2004 National Auditor’s Office Report, countries included Albania, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Hungary, Jamaica, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova,

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The 1996 Asylum and Immigration Act incorporated Community Law into its legislation, requiring cooperation amongst EUMS and cementing the STC provision to ensure claimants passing through EU states to the UK would be returned directly to that state for processing (Levy 1999, Harvey 1997). As a result of the barrage of legislation, the UNHCR in the UK expresses concern with the protection of the rights of asylum seekers under increasingly restricted policy directions. The 1993 and 1996 Acts made welfare rights contingent on status and characteristics of entry (Zetter and Pearl, 1999, p. 65), thereby also creating a domestic deterrent to international migration. The increasing backlog of applications for asylum determination alongside increasing numbers of new applicants in the 1990s led to accusations of systemic incompetence towards the Labour government as turning the UK into the “asylum capital of Europe” [UK Commons Hansard, 31 Jan 2001, Col 299; Commons Hansard, 14 Feb 2001, Col 312, speaker: Hague], a charge that compelled further restriction of asylum and welfare regulations to signify the government’s control over the situation. In contrast to Canada, restrictions receive popular support from the British public originating in part from an exclusive national imaginary (Chapter Four). The UK government argued that policies of interdiction and prevention benefited genuine refugees by making a black and white distinction between people who entered clandestinely and others who entered openly as asylum seekers. In fact preventing access to asylum constrained both groups. The global figures have demonstrated that the singularly most effective variable in reducing asylum applicants is improvement to the political, economic and social infrastructure of source countries, which western democracies can support (Thielemann, 2002). In 2005/2006, the number of asylum seekers worldwide is its lowest in twenty five years (unhcr.org), attributed not only to domestic management strategies amongst western countries, but also to the achievement of peace and stability in traditionally refugee-producing countries. For Canada and the UK, the appearance of control is imperative to a successful immigration and asylum system. Canada achieves this through a managed migration system, while the UK has so far implemented

Poland, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Ukraine.

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deterrent and reactive strategies, which have consistently undermined public confidence in the ability of the Home Office to regulate the country’s borders and nationality. However, for Canada “[t]he contradiction between having a refugee status determination system recognized as one of the best in the world, while at the same time making strenuous attempts to block access to it, is real and irresolvable” (Dolin and Young, 2002). Therefore, while Canada’s approach to refugee arrivals seems to converge with the UK’s preventative strategies, the UK’s integration and social cohesion plans for migrants is possibly converging with Canada’s ideas of citizenship through citizenship tests and ceremonies, permanent resident cards, a point system for skilled migrants, and overseas refugee selection. Overall, Canada’s record of humanitarianism is exemplary, partly because in a country where one in six people is an immigrant, the government is highly sensitive to questions of migration (Brouwer and Kumin, 2004). Nevertheless, the country uses stringent immigration control mechanisms that are not distant from the UK’s. In both Canada and the UK, the ability and willingness to manage their 1951 Convention obligations is debated against the size and nature of asylum flows, the porosity of their borders, and the effectiveness of present administrative systems. Support for immigration appears strongest when the numbers, access to the system, and the system itself give the impression of being regulated efficiently by the state. On the other hand, opposition appears to arise from perceptions of the state’s inability to manage the basic elements of nationality, state boundaries and the distinction between citizens and non-citizens. Essentially, international migration laws establish limits: the limits of state control and state cooperation over migration; and the limits of state duties toward migrants. The relationship between extraordinary migration and extraordinary measures to prevent migration is a vicious circle between “illegalized migrants” and the state (Dauvergne, 2008; Mountz, 2010), the latter justifying increasing measures to dissuade and penalise “illegals”, while the former risk their lives in desperate attempts to circumvent increasingly strict controls. The rise in illegal migration is a contemporary trend in asylum flows. Illegalization runs parallel to, and is arguably a product of, government attempts to manage migration through restrictions on movement, and it poses tremendous costs to life (Richmond, 2001; Crosland and Morrison, 2001; Back, 2003; Okolski, 2000; GCIM, 2005, p. 33; Castles, 1998), as well as potentially compromising settlement and integration.

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The Structuration of Settlement and Home Contracting states shall accord to refugees lawfully staying in their territory treatment as favourable as possible and, in any event, not less favourable than that accorded to aliens generally in the same circumstances (Article 21, Housing); and Contracting states shall accord to refugees lawfully staying in their territory the same treatment with respect to public relief and assistance as is accorded to their nationals (1951 Refugee Convention, Article 23, Welfare).

The 1951 UN Refugee Convention protects the right to seek asylum and Chapter IV of the Convention provides guidance on asylum seeker welfare, which allows a common denominator to evaluate Canada and the UK’s treatment of asylum seekers. This discussion, however, steps out of the international frame and into domestic considerations beginning with the role of the state in structuring refugees’ opportunities and experiences. Once asylum seekers have arrived in the countries of asylum, the stress of the journey is replaced with the uncertainty of the determination period and the struggle to subsist. This is the first of three phases of settlement an asylum seeker will experience before transcending needs-oriented matters. Others include perseverance and despondence over initial settlement instability (Chapter Six). This section focuses on legislative trends and structures affecting asylum applicants in the period between 1993 and 2002. Refugees participating in this study made their claims between 1996 and 2001, and so this discussion is situated to capture the most relevant trends to the sample population. In both Canada and the UK, policies constrain and enable refugees’ agency, but they do this in different ways—in Canada through an undifferentiated system that provides equality and freedom, but fails to support asylum seekers’ complex needs, and in the UK within a system of segregated support that strips refugees of choice but prioritises the most vulnerable. However, this simplification of national differences fails to capture difficult realities. State policies can ameliorate and exacerbate different individual vulnerabilities to varying degrees; and mediating structures, human capital, and refugees’ past experiences have a bearing on the effects (Chapter Six). The fourfold typology in Table 5.3 generalises states’ treatment of asylum seekers and their effects. The dashed lines between quarters indicates the

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complexities of settlement policies, which may support or undermine different categories of people simultaneously, may represent initiatives by different layers of government, and symbolise possibilities for change in a government’s position, based on refugees’ refugees’ needs and public support. However, the ultimate position in the chart lacks political will: the development of policies that fast-track refugee enablement on the path to integration while offering social support. Table 5.3 State Effects on Personal Agency and Individual Vulnerabilities

Personal Agency

Individual Vulnerabilities Ameliorated Exacerbated Supported

Undermined

The State supports personal agency and ameliorates individual vulnerabilities [?] The State undermines personal agency but ameliorates individual vulnerabilities [Sweden?]

The State supports personal agency but exacerbates individual vulnerabilities [Canada] The State undermines personal agency and exacerbates individual vulnerabilities [UK]

However, different scales can also have opposing interests. For example, while a national government may support a heritage of immigration, multiculturalism, and belonging, localities, gatekeepers, and neighbours may be averse to integration, discriminatory, and downright racist. Canada responds to asylum seekers’ needs based on universal human rights. Asylum seekers have a choice of where to live, what to rent, and where and how to spend their income. They exist within the same system of welfare as Canadians. However, the absence of the national government in asylum support fails to take asylum seekers’ special needs into consideration, as alleged torture victims, subjects of persecution, and people whose state of anxiety and uncertainty about their status is amplified by their lack of family, friends, or social support network, and so the vulnerability with which they arrive may be exacerbated within the Canadian system. In Canada, asylum seekers do not have a coherent system of support amongst municipalities, and municipalities’ efforts to meet asylum seekers’ needs are not specifically funded by higher levels of government with responsibilities for immigration.

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Britain, in contrast, has designated specialist support for asylum seekers, the National Asylum Support Service (NASS)13, embedded in a system that aims to convince the world and the British people that the government is not a ‘soft touch’. Consequently, the specialised network is constructed as a service that offers separate and lesser support for asylum seekers. The National Asylum Support Service has institutionalised the difference between citizens and ‘others’, and overall asylum process and welfare policies eradicate choice and intensify problems for the majority of asylum seekers arriving as single people. “Institutionalisation,” argues the Director of Positive Action in Housing, “severely compromises [refugees’] chances of successful integration” (Qureshi-Rooker debate, 2002, paih.org). Before examining the trends in legislation, we first need to understand how homelessness is defined and its policy implications in each country. Some traits of the housing systems in each city are presented, including general housing structure and access to social housing before turning to examine how this has been shaped by asylum legislation.

Housing and Homelessness Structures There is a close relationship between housing provision for refugees and asylum legislation. Housing and homelessness provision and assistance for refugees are linked to a state’s policies on asylum and their traditions of immigration and equality. Consequently, housing provision is a form of spatial, social and economic control and, with homelessness, comprises an indicator of integration. In the UK, this relationship is made evident through its policies of dispersal, unequal access to the social housing registry, and insecure tenancies. In Canada asylum seekers are given equal access to housing and homelessness provision in association with the Charter of Rights.

Refugees and Homelessness In the UK, homelessness is a legally defined category that obliges local councils to house people who are in priority need. In Canada, homelessness is largely a municipal-provincial issue. However, in 1999, swelling numbers of homeless people in Canada’s largest urban centres, a number of street deaths, and increasing families and newcomers in the shelter system resulted in the government’s recognition of homelessness as a national crisis. The National Homelessness Secretariat was formed, and a 13

Dissolved into the Border and Immigration Agency since April 2007.

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Minister responsible for homelessness was appointed. Since that time, inter-jurisdictional cooperation has allowed the federal government to fund a number of community initiative projects, which before was constitutionally prohibited. The City of Toronto has defined homelessness as: “a condition of people who live outside, stay in emergency shelters, spend most of their income on rent, or live in overcrowded, substandard conditions and are therefore at serious risk of becoming homeless” (City of Toronto, 2001). This definition represents a continuum of homelessness (Watson and Austerberry, 1986; Daly, 1996), which can be divided into three main categories, borrowed from a GLA housing-need typology (New Policy Institute, 2004): rooflessness, insecure accommodation, and inadequate accommodation (Figure 5.8). Fig. 5.8 Continuum of Homelessness: Toronto Not Homeless

Low income and spend more than 50% on rent Substandard Conditions Overcrowded

INSECURE ACCOMMODATION About 120,000 tenant households at risk of homelessness

INADEQUATE ACCOMMODATION About 33,000 different people in 2002

Sofa Surfing Shelter Occupants ROOFLESS Squatters

About 3,500 to 5,000 people

Rough Sleepers Homeless

Source: City of Toronto, 2003

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Broad definitions may seem problematic to structuring services for Toronto’s homelessness; however, the City argues that homelessness does not begin with rooflessness, and the most effective way of preventing homelessness is to keep people housed. Their approach therefore is three pronged, reflecting a continuum of needs, from emergency shelter to income support schemes, rent-banks, and food-banks; and lobbying other levels of government to address supply issues. No policy distinction is made between the homelessness of citizens or foreigners. Toronto receives about 5,000 refugee claimants per year, tending to live in poverty in overcrowded and unsafe housing, making them “particularly vulnerable to homelessness” (City of Toronto, 1998, p. 10)14. In 2000, 27 percent of people cited “refugee claimant” as a reason for admission to a homeless shelters in Toronto (City of Toronto, 2001, p. 8), and if this proportion is similar to the last point prevalence count of Toronto’s homeless (April 2006), 970 beds of 3600 may be occupied by asylum seekers at any given point, meaning 20 percent of new claimants may be entering the shelter system each year (www.toronto.ca/housing/ streetneeds.htm). In the UK, homelessness became a legal term under the 1977 Housing (Homeless Persons) Act, and the 2002 Homelessness Act uses the definition from the 1996 Housing Act to oblige local authorities (LA) to give certain people a statutory right to housing (statutory homelessness). People who are roofless or under threat of rooflessness are statutorily homeless if they are also in priority need, unintentionally roofless, and have a local connection (Figure 5.9). People who do not fulfil these criteria, generally single people or couples without children, have no statutory right to housing, but do receive assistance. Referring to a homeless household in the UK implies that an application for support has been lodged to a local authority, which has accepted responsibility for accommodating that household, or if not in priority need, for assisting the household in housing search.

14

Toronto has 7 refugee shelters with a total capacity of about 256 beds. Most of these shelters were founded in the early 1990s in response to increasing levels of newcomer homelessness, however only three of the shelters receive government funding (on a per diem basis 80/20 cost-shared by the province and city).

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Fig 5.9 Factors Comprising Statutory Homelessness Duties in the UK

In the UK, LAs have no duties to house homeless asylum seekers who, since the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act, are supported by NASS if they can prove destitution. On receipt of a positive decision, however, LA duties include assessing and providing for refugees. London boroughs also supported 32,000 asylum-seeking households and hosted 24,000 asylumseeking households making their own housing arrangements (Fig 5.10). The relationship between immigration and social assistance is a quintessential difference between the British and Canadian systems. Unequal treatment under the law and tangible distinctions amongst degrees of citizenship are elements of Britain’s asylum and immigration legislation post 1990. In comparison, Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees equality under the law for all people, upheld by the 1985 Singh decision (Chapter Four), and suggestions of a tiered welfare system based on immigration status is unconstitutional. It could be argued that Canada does not provide enough support for asylum seekers. Asylum seekers are left to fend for themselves on arrival and during determination of their claim, a period of extreme stress.

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Fig 5.10 Homeless Asylum Seeker Households in London as a Proportion of other Households

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The absence of national asylum programmes in Canada, absence of dispersal, and emphasis in equality in welfare services means that asylum seekers have both choice and personal responsibility, but have to compete with Canadians for space and resources. A national system of support for asylum seekers, similar to the UK’s but based on choice and equality, could provide an alternative to the homeless shelter system for newcomers and ameliorate conditions on arrival for many. According to the director of a successful refugee shelter in Toronto, “It’s important for refugees to be able to integrate into a mainstream neighbourhood, where they can meet people who have connections and not be ghettoized” (Mary Jo Leddy, Romero House Founder). As well as an outcome of the market system in Toronto, where asylum seekers cluster at the bottom end of the housing ladder in dense, poor, ethnically concentrated areas, this could also describe the clustering of asylum seekers in deprived dispersal areas in the UK. Vaughan Jones, director of Praxis, a refugee-serving NGO in London, asks Where do people get housed? Are there estates made up of refugees and asylum seekers? And the answer is, on the national scale, yes! And those estates-- why are they made up of refugees and asylum seekers? Because they are the poorest accommodation (Jones, interview, London, 02-03).

Compared with Canada, the spaces in which asylum seekers can actualise decisions are severely restricted by policies of inequality.

Refugees and tenure Most refugees live in the rental sectors in Toronto and London. However, reflecting the proportions of social and private housing, in London many are found in housing association and council properties, which comprise 38 percent of the rental market (Chart 5.4); while in Toronto the majority of refugees are located in the private rental market, comprising 75 percent of rental stock (Figure 5.11). In London and the southeast, the area that faced the greatest housing pressures from asylum seekers, 36 percent of social housing is “non-decent”, compared to the national average of 31 percent (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2006).

(Source: 2001 Key Statistics Tables)

Chart 5.4 Household Tenure in Inner London Boroughs 2001, Showing 60% in the Rental Sector

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Fig 5.11 Housing Tenure, Toronto (2003), Showing 75% in Private Sector

In the private rental sector, however, 43 percent of housing was nondecent (Ibid., 2006). Discrimination and a policy of housing insecurity mean that asylum seekers are often relegated to the worst end of the rental market. In Toronto, the private rental market consists of purpose-built and improvised dwellings, e.g. rooms in houses and basement flats. Typically,

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improvised dwellings, because of their informal nature also have the most flexibility for refugees, and the greatest insecurity (Fig 5.11). In contrast to Canada, eligibility for social housing in the UK is decided nationally and laid down by law and regulation, while social housing is provided locally by borough councils, who decide within the law who gets priority (Lukes, e-interview, 04-07). In both places the most disadvantaged groups warrant priority for units: victims of violence, terminal illness and disability, homeless people and youth aged 16 and 17, amongst others. In Toronto, however, newcomers, including asylum seekers, who had been in the country for less than one year were given priority, while in London this group was not eligible for council housing, but was housed by NASS. Conversely, in London, people with dependent children were given priority, while this group was seen as neither disadvantaged nor in priority need in Toronto. In Toronto, newcomers accounted for 46 percent of disadvantaged households, and less than 3 percent of the entire waiting list for social housing in 2002 (Toronto Social Housing Connections, 2003). One in seven placements from the social housing waiting list goes to someone in the disadvantaged category. The problem of social housing in Toronto is a matter of supply, where for large families the wait could be as long as 22 years (City of Toronto, 1998, p. 22). Although researchers suggest there are similar waits for large families in the UK (Lukes, einterview, 04-07), it is notable that amongst respondents in this study, 57 percent in London were in a housing association or council flat, compared with 17 percent in Toronto (Chapter Six). Moreover, some asylum seekers in Toronto presume, perhaps rightly so, that the homeless shelters are a fast-track to social housing (Chapter Eight, case study 1).

The UK: Asylum Legislation 1993-2002 Local authorities have limited duties towards asylum seekers. Until 1996, asylum seekers were housed if homeless like anyone else, but most were not because they were childfree and not ill/disabled enough to be in “priority need” (Table 5.8) so they found accommodation through hostels, private renting, or friends. Also, there were restrictions on getting longerterm housing, imposed by the 1993 Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act (AIAA) because it allowed local authorities to refuse to put asylum seekers on the housing waiting lists (Lukes, e-interview, 04-07). The 1993 Act created a major distinction for the first time between asylum seekers and refugees. Before the 1993 Act, asylum seekers and refugees were treated a single group, but with its enactment, asylum seekers were withdrawn from mainstream entitlements. In 1996, the Asylum and

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Immigration Act (AIA) and then the Housing Act made immigration status a condition for getting housed as homeless, and asylum seekers who applied in-country, whose claims had failed, and who were in the appeals process were excluded. Families with children were to be housed and supported by social services under the Children Act 1989, and as an outcome of court challenges, childfree asylum seekers won back that right to be housed under the 1948 National Assistance Act, also by social services (Figure 5.10). As a result of these rights, challenges, and the large numbers of applications for asylum, housing chaos resulted from the pressures on social services in London and the Southeast. Informally, LAs were dispersing people to surrounding boroughs in an attempt to manage their duties; however, the shortage of affordable housing meant that landlords were also making millions from the asylum-housing crisis in London. In response to the pressures, the government enacted a system of dispersal under the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act (IAA), which assumed duties for asylum seeker support under the National Asylum Support Service. The 1999 IAA regularised the social services interim arrangements. Implemented in 2000, NASS initially took all new asylum applicants who applied for asylum on entry, and by the end of the year were taking all new asylum applicants and all those who were refused and went on to appeal. However, by this time the backlog in the asylum system had grown so that thousands remained in the system housed by London LAs (Figure 5.10). Since then, a two-year programme transferring these cases has recently been completed, so theoretically now there should be no asylum seekers housed by Social Services in London (Lukes, e-interview, 04-07) except for a small number of adults housed under community care provisions due to illness or severe disability. When NASS began its operations to house people outside London, they did so by contracting with private landlords and consortia in each region led by local authorities, and people were dispersed on a no-choice basis to locations where there was a lower demand for council housing (Home Office Accommodation Subgroup; Garvie, 2001; Phillips, 2006; Thielemann, 2002). The consortia often provided housing in unused, hardto-let local authority homes, as well as housing association flats and private lettings all contracted by the Home Office. In theory, the dispersal areas were not only determined by the availability of housing, but also by cluster areas to provide a social link for dispersed asylum seekers.

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However, it was clear that the former was prioritised above the latter. Although people were supposed to be dispersed to cluster areas with established members of their ethno-lingual group, often this was not possible, and organizations to help refugees did not necessarily have the same level of expertise that could be found in larger urban centres with larger and more established RCO-NGO networks (Zetter et al., 2005). Moreover, perceptions of fairness and confidence in the asylum process and case representation were diminished by a lack of interpreters and availability and trustworthiness of legal experts. When 1 in 5 asylum decisions are overturned on appeal (National Audit Office, 2004), the room for representation and decision-making to go wrong is a serious concern and could mean return to torture or death. Dispersal transferred asylum seekers to areas of the country that were marginalised (Edgar et al., 2004; Pearl and Zetter, 2002) and characterised by high unemployment and poverty. Asylum seekers were made to occupy undesirable units in areas away from close social ties for the duration of their claim, which could take years. The uncertainties of being dispersed to a strange area away from one’s networks made people feel powerless, afraid and isolated, and these feelings were compounded by rising local tensions as the look of neighbourhoods changed. In the two years since the implementation of dispersal, there were 2,000 racist incidents against asylum seekers (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3087569.stm), because “Once asylum-seekers are set apart from mainstream society and placed in hard-to-let public housing and reception centres, they become sitting targets for racist attacks” (paih.org, Rooker-Qureshi debate, 2002). In 2003, NASS supported 50,000 asylum seekers in dispersal accommodation across the country, and about 25,000 people choosing to live on subsistence support only in London (citizensadvice.org.uk; london.gov. uk). For subsistence, the 1999 IAA introduced a system of vouchers for asylum seekers in the UK (approximately £35 per week including £10 cash). There were numerous problems with the system in addition to its administrative expense, such as the stigmatisation of asylum seekers, embarrassment, and impracticality. People could not use vouchers in ethno-specific shops or markets where food was cheaper and more familiar; change was not returned from voucher purchases; vouchers distinguished asylum seekers from other shoppers; and consequently they began to be traded for cash creating an underground currency nicknamed “the asylo”. As a result of these problems, the expense of administering

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vouchers, and accusations of deliberate policies of destitution against the government (by the MFCVT, 1999 for instance), they were eventually abolished. In addition to the distinction between asylum seekers and refugees in legislation, another was made between in-country applicants and those who applied at ports-of-entry, where in-country applicants were disentitled from welfare (see Appendix C, legislative distinctions between inland and POE claims). However, research shows little correlation between the success of the application and where it was lodged. Three quarters of all successful asylum applications were made inland in 1997 (Bloch, 2002; Zetter and Pearl, 1999). Subsequent attempts to withdraw benefits from undocumented and failed asylum seekers (s.55 of the 2002 Act) have been challenged under the Human Rights Act. Nevertheless, it demonstrates the government’s attempts to limit its financial, moral and social obligations. Despite the attempts to use domestic legislation to curb asylum flows and expedite removal, the period between 1993 and 2002 continued to face the pressures from overseas instability and conflict. In combination, NASS no-choice dispersal, vouchers, and other means of control or disentitlement limit asylum seekers’ agency and negatively affect their settlement trajectories, while endangering the development of a sense of home at a national level of citizenship and belonging and at a local level of dwelling and satisfaction. Parallel to these policies, the government has, however, maintained its commitments to provide universal healthcare, and take disability and children’s needs seriously. Finally, on receipt of a positive decision, logistical/administrative gaps between NASS, Social Services and Local Authorities left refugees at imminent risk of homelessness, with only 7 to 28 days to leave accommodation. Consequently some people were left without housing and many returned to London where they could tap social networks in the absence of formal welfare provision. Increasing restrictions on welfare assumes that all asylum-seekers are abusing the system or are benefit burdens (IPPR, press release, 26/11/03). This assumption not only has negative implications for social and functional integration for refugees, but according to the Institute for Public Policy Research, “The government’s continuing assault on the asylum process reinforces negative public attitudes towards immigration and undermines the government’s efforts to deliver managed migration” (IPPR, press release, 26/11/03). However, according to Home Office

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Minister Beverley Hughes, the intention of the policies is jointly deterrent and incentive i.e. to deter migrants from submitting frivolous asylum or benefit applications and to encourage them to cooperate with the Home Office during determination of their claim and to follow procedure (Hansard, Home Affairs Committee, Asylum Applications, 19/11/03).

Canada: Contemporary Asylum Legislation In contrast to the UK, Canada operates within a system without federal government support for asylum seekers. Consequently the local government and NGO networks constitute the principal sources of help toward meeting asylum seekers’ basic needs, and asylum seekers have no option but to compete for affordable rental accommodation, apply for social housing, or depend on social ties for material and informational support. Because of the absence of federal level support, Chapter 9 takes particular interest in key-informants’ perceptions of responsibility of care in asylum and integration in Canada. Asylum seekers can apply for and receive the same welfare assistance from the provincial government as Canadian nationals. However, despite the formal equality of treatment for meeting basic needs, settlement services, including federally-funded language (LINC) classes and other programmes, are reserved for permanent residents. Also, Canada provides free health care for asylum seekers only in emergency cases, and although eligible to work, asylum seekers are issued a temporary national insurance number, conspicuous to employers or landlords. When the refugee decision is won, free health care is available through provincial health insurance, consequently making the UK a better place for people with health concerns (Figure 5.12). The most recent immigration legislation, the 2002 Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), seeks to promote the successful integration of permanent residents into Canada, while recognizing that integration involves mutual obligations for new immigrants and Canadian society. The Act links newcomer integration to the goal of building an inclusive society, however, integration begins with a positive refugee decision. This means that in Canada, like the UK, asylum-seeker status is a form of limbo, where people are presumed to be temporary until proven otherwise. Before the 2002 IRPA, a positive determination of “convention refugee status” resulted in eligibility to apply for permanent resident status. There were other grounds for protection under case law; however they could not

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result in “convention status”. Under the 2002 Act, grounds for refugee status are consolidated so instead of claiming for convention status, asylum seekers claim “refugee protection”, which is granted on wider grounds, including the Convention Against Torture. Routes to permanent residence can also be achieved by a positive decision as a “protected person”. By comparison, before 2003, the UK also had two statuses for persons in need of protection: indefinite leave to remain (ILR), which is comparable to “convention status” in Canada; and exceptional leave to remain (ELR), which is similar to “person in need of protection”. However, the major difference between the two systems is that in Canada, protected persons are assumed to be permanent, while in the UK, every effort is made to restrict permanent residence to the smallest number of asylum applicants. ELR is a temporary but renewable status1, and since 2005 the policy of temporariness has expanded to people with ILR who, rather than be granted indefinite leave, are given five-year limited leave, subject to review on application for settlement. Other than this insecurity, people granted leave to remain are entitled to apply for state benefits, seek work, healthcare, education, and are eligible for support under housing and homelessness legislation. They also have the same legal rights as citizens in the UK. In Canada, one cannot speak of a continuum of equality for asylum seekers, refugees, permanent residents, and citizens because neither justice nor welfare is contingent on status. Canadian asylum seekers and refugees have access to welfare entitlements and benefits equal to that of citizens. Once a person has filed an asylum claim and completed their medical examination, they are eligible to apply for student authorization so they can attend school while awaiting a decision on their claims. Moreover, asylum seekers are eligible for emergency shelter, social housing, and for employment authorization if they would otherwise subsist on public assistance. In contrast, the UK pursues a policy of deliberate inequality between asylum seekers and other residents (Figure 5.12). Unlike the reactive pieces of legislation that defined the contemporary period of asylum migration in the UK, Canada’s structures are relatively laissezfaire and unflinching. As discussed earlier, this is due in part to the differences in the character and size of asylum flows to each country, and 1 Since 2003, ELR has been replaced by discretionary leave (DL) and humanitarian protection (HP), for which removal would breach the 1950 ECHR.

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of course their overall view of the role of asylum in nation-building and the national imaginary. Figure 5.12 illustrates a number of barriers to integration inherent to refugeeness, and common to asylum seekers to either country. These include feelings of nostalgia, the inversion of status, isolation, uncertainty, and ineligibility to certain integration programmes. Each side of the diagram provides examples of policies that influence people’s ability to overcome these barriers, or remain transfixed by them. The elements depicted in Figure 5.12 could be deemed basic necessities, such as income, housing, and health eligibilities, and relates most to the initial period of arrival and determination. Once these initial needs are met, others take their place, and over the asylum-settlement process refugees’ needs may shift in priority and characteristics. The policies and legislation that define Figure 5.12 originate from particular responses to migration and a notion of citizenship that in the UK is protectionist, and in Canada is expansionist. Place matters to people’s life chances, and immigration history, traditions of control, and national identity are reflected in national policies toward asylum seekers. Therefore a systematic comparative examination of traditions and politics of migration is a basic starting point to understanding refugees’ sense of home amidst their houselessness and forced migration. This chapter examined the institutions and structures framing both the asylum regime and asylum policies in Canada and the UK. The first part of the chapter focussed on providing a contextual overview of asylum migration to each country within the wider context of global and regional trends. The discussion emphasised differences in the sources and flows of migrants, and suggested that each country’s place in the world and role in the asylum regime influenced its numbers, visibility, and characteristics of migrants. Regional cooperation and multi-lateral responses to migration, particularly amongst EUMS, also affect the arrival of asylum seekers to the country. However, amidst escalating numbers of asylum seekers driven by the proliferation of conflict, and parallel measures of deterrence and interdiction, people were taking increasing risks to arrive in the West. Although countries may think that they are under siege by asylum seekers, due to conspicuous, undocumented, and spontaneous arrivals, the calculation of the “refugee burden” shows that rhetoric of “flooding” and

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Fig 5.12 Barriers to Integration for Asylum Seekers

“swamping” is politically motivated rather than based on demographic, economic, and territorial considerations.

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The next two sections of the chapter examined the structuration of flight, and the structuration of settlement. The section began by looking at refugees’ agency in leaving their countries of origin and embarking on trajectories to sanctuary. Using geo-political scale as an organising feature, the structuration of flight examined various institutions and their relationship to constraining and/or enabling refugee migration. The section argues that even institutions that appear to be focussed on enabling asylum, e.g. the 1951 Refugee Convention, or the 1948 UDHR, actually have a flipside in their protection of state sovereignty. Moreover, refugee integration begins with the idea of sanctuary in the country of asylum, and with future projections and expectations, and settlement begins on arrival, with or without state assistance. If expectations are met and human capability is empowered by state institutions, then integration is accelerated; however, if they are not, barriers to integration erected by state policies or the lack thereof, sabotage the potentiality of human capital unfurling (Chapters Six and Eight). Finally, the structuration of settlement discussed the ways in which UK asylum legislation variably eroded the rights and entitlements of asylum seekers and their choices over housing, using housing and access to services as a mechanism of control, invisibility, and deterrence. The Canadian government, in contrast, takes a hands-off approach to asylum seekers, leaving them to eke out their survival amidst their social networks, homeless shelters, and the housing afforded to them on welfare. The benefit of such an approach is the appearance of equality and control; however, it forces people with unequal capital, resources, and knowledge to compete with others with the advantages of citizenship. The section provided a snapshot of housing and homelessness in each country and argued that Canada could adopt lessons of support from the UK, and the UK could allow more choice and flexibility for asylum seekers, which could ameliorate homelessness, and in the long term foster more resilient future citizens. While the next few chapters examine individuals’ characteristics and agency amidst constrained choices, the onus for ameliorating living conditions amongst the poorest citizens and non-citizens in any given territory lies with the state: “Because it can make a difference there is a moral imperative that it should” (Jencks, 1996, p. 122).

CHAPTER SIX REFUGEE RESPONDENTS’ CHARACTERISTICS AND HOUSING TRAJECTORIES

Seeking refuge is finding sanctuary. It is sanctuary. So, I have no qualms in being a refugee, what I may have qualms about is the way they tend to put a social stigma around refugees. [Benjamin, Zimbabwe, former UN consultant, father of three, currently unemployed in Toronto]

Refugees are a heterogeneous group, varying in primary characteristics, background, experiences, and reactions to their displacement. Although the most vulnerable migrants are often fleeing both persecution and poverty, refugees are not equally affected by these factors since human agency and social capital are intrinsic to the processes involved in escaping to safety and rebuilding one’s life. As demonstrated in Chapters Four and Five, these structures are social, political and economic constructions that differ from place to place and both enable and constrain refugee resettlement in particular ways. This chapter bridges the two parts of this research by examining the interface of the macro (Chapters Four and Five) and micro (Chapters Seven and Eight) understandings of asylum and settlement. By examining respondents’ demographic characteristics alongside the transversal effects of forced migration and asylum policy, this chapter analyses the ways in which the structural factors outlined in Chapter Five and refugees’ personal characteristics create vulnerabilities to homelessness and barriers to re-constructing a sense of home. The gauntlet through which refugees manoeuvre their way to better, safer and more secure lives does not end on arrival. Rather, the UK and Canada provide the structural context for refugees to begin to recover from the trauma of flight, re-orient themselves to their environment, and reestablish severed careers while forging new social connections. Earlier in this book, the asylum-seeking process was referred to as a horizontal ‘race for refuge,’ which changed direction on receipt of a positive decision in the country of asylum to become a ‘settlement climb’. While the race refers to the international journey to safety, the climb refers to refugees’

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struggles to ascend multiple career ladders against social, political, and economic odds. To some extent, asylum seekers’ vulnerability is situated at the intersection of these trajectories. At this intersection is a contradiction between the legitimation of asylum in the international community, which structures the ‘race for refuge’, and the de-legitimation of asylum in national politics, which structures the ‘settlement climb’ (see Chapter Five). This contradiction is expressed by a London respondent who asked, “If they are going to treat us this way, why do they take us?” [UK002, Hyacinth, Rwandan widow with two children]. The discussion that follows focuses on refugees’ background and characteristics and their intersection with asylum and settlement structures, which affect refugee integration. The asylum process is broken down into two phases to help organise the discussion. Beginning with the ‘race for refuge’, the chapter examines refugees’ international experience and the start of their journey, their ‘choice’ of destination, expectations, and use of contacts on arrival. The discussion of contacts links the importance of existing social networks to the direction of flight and the settlement experience, first in terms of barriers, and then the ‘settlement climb’ in terms of eight primary characteristics and their intersection with refugees’ housing experiences. Finally, refugees’ housing is discussed in relation to pathways to and exits from homelessness and how these differ in Toronto and London. The chapter concludes with a discussion of coping mechanisms in theory and practice.

The Race for Refuge Internationality, Flight, and Routes to Asylum At a basic level the refugee is associated with forced migration. However, the route to asylum is a single journey within a complicated reality of travel. In a globalised world underpinned by social and communication webs, information and capital networks, transnational relations are increasingly commonplace, and with them the opportunities of travelling for business, holiday, or study. This may be a reality reserved for the world’s elite, yet, if country conditions change, a round-trip may suddenly become one-way, and a voluntary journey abroad may result in forced settlement. Labour migration, like asylum seeking, can also be a life-or-death journey to the West (Berger and Mohr, 1975; Stalker, 1994; Harris, 1995; Sassen,

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1999; Smith, 2006), as well as an unremarkable trek within ancestral lands, where ethnic boundaries may not correspond with state boundaries. Internationality, therefore, may be a part of refugees’ lives before they consider embarking on the long journey to sanctuary. Migration is important to integration in opposing ways. While prior association with Western countries may make it easier for one to adapt, it may also foster unreasonable expectations. In terms of a migration trajectory, a total of nine respondents (15 percent) were not born in the country from which they claimed asylum (Table 6.1, column one, Birth). Respondents represented twenty-six different source countries (Table 6.1, column 2, Origin), amongst which five, identified by an asterisk, were common to both Canada and the UK (Burundi, Eritrea, Iran, Rwanda and Somalia). Co-nationals in Toronto or London with unique international migration experiences are identified by a superscript, which shows, for instance, that person ‘a’ was an Eritrean asylum seeker born in Saudi Arabia who had lived in Ethiopia prior to arriving in Canada. In columns 3 and 5, which show previous residences, individuals are separated by semicolons and individual trajectories are separated by forward slashes. Thirty-seven percent of respondents had lived abroad prior to claiming asylum, half of all Toronto’s respondents compared to 23 percent in London. In London, all of those who had lived abroad had done so within their regions of origin; however, in Toronto over half had previously lived in Europe or North America. Consequently, there was a high level of expectation amongst people who arrived in Canada generated by the opportunity for direct comparison. Those refugees without prior experience of the West may have a different interpretation of their achievement after arriving in the country of asylum. A detailed study of refugees’ migration and its association with degrees of expectation and satisfaction offers an avenue for further research. Routes to asylum are another form of internationality; however, unlike the familiarity with strangeness that might contribute to a person’s ontological security and confidence with getting to know a place, flight from persecution can be psychologically scarring. On long, particularly clandestine journeys, there is risk of death or exploitation, a sense of homelessness or despair, as well as constraints on decision-making (Lacroix, 2004; Rivlin and Moore, 2001).

Belgium Saudi Arabia(a) Tibet

Lebanon

Cameroon

DRCongo

Birth Country

Kosovo Mexico

DRC *Eritrea India *Iran Iraq

Afghanistan Algeria Angola Azerbaijan Burkina Faso *Burundi Colombia Congo Cote D'Ivoire Cuba

Source Country

UK/ E.Germany/ Hungary/ Romania/ Ireland/US Canada Ethiopia(a); Sudan

US France/ Belgium/ Italy

Congo

Pakistan

International migration experience before refuge in Canada

††2

„1 †„(a)2 „1 „„„3

†1

„1 †††3 †1

„1

†1

Canada (Asylum)

Kuwait/ Thailand(g) Macedonia

Ethiopia

International migration experience before refuge in UK

„„2

†„„„„5 {(g)„„3

†„2

†1

†1 „1 „†2

{1

UK (Asylum)

Total

Table 6.1 Participants’ International Migration History: Smuggling Indicated Between Country of Origin and Asylum

Refugees’ Characteristics

3 2 2

1 1 4 1 8

1 1 1 1 1 3 3 1 1

155

South Africa/ Switzerland/ UK/ US {No Answer = 2 „SMUGGLED †NON-SMUGGLED

Kenya; Kenya/ Tanzania/ Rwanda Soviet Union(e) India/Nepal/ US; US(f)

*Somalia

Sudan Tibet Turkey Uganda Ukraine Zimbabwe

Uganda(b)

International migration experience before refuge in Canada

n=30 16 (53%) 14 (47%)

†††3

† (e)„„3 „„(f)2 „1

„„2

†(b)1

„1

Canada (Asylum)

Chapter Six

*Rwanda

Rep of Guinea

Source Country

KEY *Common Source Country Individuals: (a -h)

Nepal(f)

Kenya(b); Uganda(c)

Birth Country

156

Kenya(c); Zaire/ Tanzania/ Kenya (d) ; South Africa/ Zimbabwe(h) Ethiopia

International migration experience before refuge in UK

21(75%) 7 (25%)

n=28

„„2 †1

„„„3

†„„ „(h)„(c)„ (d) 6

UK (Asylum)

5 3 2 1 2 1

7

1

3 N=58 37 (64%) 21 (36%)

Total

Table 6.1 Continued

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In many cases smugglers were refugees’ only option to exit their country. Sixty-four percent of all respondents relied on smugglers to arrive in Canada or the UK (53 percent and 75 percent, respectively) (Table 6.1). The difference reflects the high levels of internationality evident amongst Toronto respondents, where a track-record of international travel is rewarded by easier access to visas, passports and other relevant documents. At considerable cost, smugglers provide these and other services to those who cannot access them legally. Routes to asylum reveal a complicated web of travel: few people flew directly from their countries of origin to Canada. Most international movement en route to the UK took place in the regions of origin. UK airports are major thoroughfares, as well as destinations, for international travel, and many Toronto interviewees passed through Western Europe. While hundreds of flights link airports in refugee source regions to Heathrow or Gatwick, none had direct flights to Toronto. Under these conditions, every stop before the final destination is a potential point of detection and return for travellers on false papers. Particularly when passing through safe countries there is a high risk of return to a safe-third country or refoulement. These routes demonstrate the structurally imposed risks people undergo to flee their countries, often necessitating circuitous and clandestine journeys.

Choosing a Destination A destination represents a place of safety, and also opportunity. Once refugees’ basic needs, including security, are met, other goals and ambitions surface, and actualising this “series of discrete purposes and projects” (Giddens, 1990, p. 89) can help to nurture feelings of belonging, participation, and overall satisfaction. By using this language of purposes and projects, Giddens demonstrates that people constantly assess their circumstances, change their minds and make active decisions despite appearing to ricochet from the country of persecution to the country of asylum. People do not just make a decision to leave, but also consider where to go. Safety is a clear consideration, but a destination of asylum may also comprise their hopes and dreams for the future. Half of London respondents and 43 percent of Toronto respondents said the country of asylum (UK or Canada) was their first and only choice of destination. Thirty-six percent would have chosen a different country, all but one an advanced industrial Western nation. People’s perceptions were

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very general; however a trend was evident in people’s descriptions of Canada, if they were in the UK, and vice versa. It was clear that the UK’s deterrent measures and exclusionary rhetoric had been transmitted across social networks: I know many Sudanese [in the UK] from our party. They help children, especially give children houses. I was a member of Sudanese women’s union and now our president lives in the UK. She came to visit the Sudanese women’s branch in Canada, and when she saw our apartments she said, ‘You live in a high standard of living in Canada. In the UK, refugees suffer in small apartments and not very good conditions.’ She feels there is some discrimination. Once on a bus she was told, ‘You come here and make it difficult for us to have a good life’ [C016, Aenid, former lawyer and bank manager, lone mother of four in Toronto].

Other perceptions of people in Toronto about being a refugee in the UK included, “Forget about being a citizen” (C001), and “From a procedural point of view, it’s smoother than Canada, but from a view of facilitating independence, I wouldn’t say it’s that good” (C023). Some refugees without contacts in Britain said they had heard, for instance, “England is a nice place to live with nice welfare and castles around…England’s welfare is good so you can buy many things” (C015). The quality and type of information that people receive may reflect of their internationality, education, and networks. By contrast, responses reveal confusion about the British and Canadian government’s systems for economic migrants and humanitarian migrants. Very few people knew anything about claiming asylum in Canada. People had heard of the “point system”, but did not understand the distinction between “independent class” and refugee migration, the former of which is skill dependent while the latter contributes to the state’s political and charitable goals. Encapsulating this mix-up, one London refugee explained, “People have said the Canadian refugee system is better if you are qualified. The system is good and you get better treatment and because of the point system, you don’t wait so long for your claim” (UK 014). Government-sponsored publicity portraying multiculturalism and immigration as foundations of Canada’s culture had also been transmitted; however Canada was not as popular as the UK because of distance and climate. Furthermore, twice the number of UK respondents said their destination was not a choice (21 percent), compared to respondents in Canada (10 percent), and while 23 percent of refugees in Toronto had

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considered the UK as a destination, 43 percent of refugees in London had considered Canada. This is because refugees in Toronto had more information about the UK from social networks and media, which allowed them to reject the UK as an unsuitable place to enable their skills and social status, and refugees in Toronto were not as dependent on smugglers, making an active decision to continue their lives in Canada. In contrast, refugees in the UK had considered Canada; some had rejected it because of distance, climate, and smuggling costs and accessibility, while others had tried to get to Canada but were detained at UK airports. Figure 6.1 reveals refugees’ selections of reasons they chose their country of asylum. Two trends are evident. First, Toronto’s respondents referred to their social networks, Canada’s reputation for immigration from the media, welfare benefits, and language. Fig 6.1 Why claim asylum in the UK/Canada and not elsewhere

Second, just over half of London’s respondents indicated they pursued safety above all other factors: taking the first flight from the country of origin, or relying on smugglers for the destination. These responses relate to the imperative of flight and related pull factors, which influence the level of expectations.

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Expectations Having reached their country of destination, over half (53 percent, 16/30) of Canadian respondents reported “high” expectations compared to 20 percent (6/30) in the UK. Expectations are higher and disappointment greater for people with higher education and established careers in their countries of origin. Table 6.2 illustrates the interweaving of levels of expectation and the reality of the country of the asylum. Generally, expectations can be characterised along a continuum of high to low prior to arrival, and on arrival people’s expectations may be met, surpassed, or disappointed. In this case, middle expectations and realities reflect the mixed importance of different aspects of society and some expectations may be met while others may not be. Refugees’ expectations of advanced industrialised nations is much greater than vis-à-vis their own or other developing countries. This is important because satisfaction is integral to a sense of home and belonging. Unlike in the UK, a number of respondents in Canada had experience of living in the West, and four respondents who visited their country of asylum prior to making a claim were in Toronto. However, this did not necessarily make perceptions more realistic. It was not until people arrived in Canada as refugees that the reality of their situations and career setback became clear: It’s a dream. I used to come here on vacations, meetings, I was a tourist. It’s not like living here when you see dirty Sherbourne and Yonge. From outside of Canada, it seems like a nice country, you can do whatever you want: go to school, get rich, get a job. Too many people come here with big hopes. But when you get here you have to start from the bottom [Michel, 41-year-old lawyer from Congo, married with four children, employed as a settlement worker in Toronto, C017].

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Table 6.2 Expectations and Reality: A Mixed Continuum

Level of Expectation

High

Mixed

Low

Low I thought the country was a cultural and industrial country, rich, and must be better than Iran in many ways. That everything would be legalised and organised, but no (UK007). I thought it would be a lot easier than it has been. Not terrible, but it’s been harder. I didn’t think about race issues, but now I do a lot (C009). Didn’t think about it. I had everything in my country. Here I have nothing (C028).

Lived Reality Mixed Freedom and good government, but hard to find housing, work, and the language (C010).

Good I always thought everywhere people can succeed and make life easy if they can use their brain and be motivated… the first thing to do is study (UK014).

I’m not a kid. I knew it wouldn’t be easy to start a new life. … (C017).

My priority was a safe haven. Other things were quite secondary (UK003).

No illusions. I knew it would be difficult, but I thought there would be more help (C013).

I heard there was no safety, attacking, racist. Very difficult (UK018).

The inversion of social status that people experience on arrival to the country of asylum is an unexpected blow. In Canada this was made worse by conflation of the humanitarian and independent immigrant classes in refugees’ minds. Furthermore, in Canada, social ties had a greater role in feeding expectations than in the UK. While the majority of respondents in Canada with contacts reported high levels of expectations, the opposite was true in Britain, where despite having contacts in the country, people still reported having no expectations. People’s expectations provide insight into the aspects of their destination they think are important. Some emphasise freedom, safety and security (C010, UK003, UK018 in Table 6.2). Others emphasised the economy, work, housing and the ability to function in society (UK014, UK007, op.

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cit.). Still others had no expectations. While lowered expectations might enable coping, not thinking about arrival is a form of repression that disables strategising and dealing with the stress of challenging environments. Having no expectations is strongly correlated with smuggling, both epitomising the constraints of refugeeness on integration.

Contacts, First Nights, and Homelessness The expectations of the refugee are quickly confronted with reality on arrival at their destination. Contacts in the country of asylum have emotional and practical roles to newcomers, linking the feeling of home to the location and characteristics of housing. According to Granovetter (1983), social ties exist along a continuum from weak (acquaintances) to strong (family members). The word tie is used to connote an obligation, not simply a relationship: as Robert Frost said, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” The strength of the tie is associated with the strength of that obligation, which provides a network of resources and a safety net on which refugees can rely for different needs at different times (Kunz, 2003). Social ties feature explicitly in integration literature as a facet of immigrant communities, and a system of support in the face of limited entitlement, discrimination, and other disadvantage, and a factor in mental and emotional resilience in the initial stages of asylum determination and settlement (Koser, 1997; Zetter et al., 2006; Hiebert et al., 2006). Weak and strong ties represent two kinds of social capital: bridging and bonding. Bridging capital refers to the ability to unify different social groups, while bonding capital pertains to intra-group solidarity (See Table 6.3 for a synopsis of a social network). Table 6.3 An Example of a Social Network in the Country of Asylum Comprising Strong and Weak, Formal and Informal Ties

Formal Informal

Weak (Bridging) Social Services, NGOs Friends’ friends

Strong (Bonding) Church, RCOs Clan, Family

For the sake of this discussion, bridging capital includes ‘linking’ capital (Putnam, 1996), which extends refugees’ social world beyond the boundaries of their kinship ties.

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Different ties are useful to particular circumstances. For instance, weak ties may be better sources of information and assistance during the determination process, bringing the refugee together with formal state mechanisms of determination and welfare entitlement. Unrelated acquaintances may also be useful in acting as referrals, intervening on behalf of the refugee during disputes, and relating socio-cultural nuances that help the process of integration. Strong ties may be clan-based or centred around religious institutions, where, like kinship ties, feelings of solidarity are fostered intra-group (Kilbride, 2006; Zine, 2002). Such bonds may be helpful in phases of deep or extended need. In Canada and the UK, most respondents (around 60 percent) reported knowing someone in the country of asylum before arriving. These contacts helped keep people from homelessness on arrival. Forty-seven percent of refugees in London and 37 percent in Toronto spent their first night in the country of asylum with family and friends. However, unlike London respondents, 30 percent of refugees in Toronto entered homeless shelters on arrival, and 70 percent entered the shelter system at some point. The remaining respondents in the UK were in pre-arranged accommodation with their agent or in hotels and B&Bs, transit centres, or detention. Two people slept rough on arrival. Figure 6.2 shows the importance of social ties in provision of accommodation. Nearly everyone who had social ties relied on them for accommodation at some point. The nature of the tie and its obligation is most evident in the first three categories, where refugees were hosted for a night, a week or so, or many months prior to finding their own accommodation. In addition to the association of medium/episodic and long-term stays with informal bonding capital, bridging ties offered short stays, which facilitated links between refugees and formal accommodation providers, like shelters, local authorities, and NASS.

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Fig 6.2 Tapping Social Ties: Duration of Stay with Contacts

Eighty percent of continual or long-stay housing support was offered by close relatives to single women, on the one hand preventing them from entering shelters and hostels, but on the other hand making them invisible for help and contributing to the housing stress of overcrowded households (Hiebert et al., 2006). In London, a young woman described feelings of guilt and despair on arriving in the UK from Kosovo with her husband only to spend her first two months in a two-bedroom flat with six other people. She was pregnant at the time: “Everything was on my brother”, she said, “I felt really bad. My brother had four kids, and we came as a problem. Two months felt like two years. I didn’t want to stay. The family of four kids were just in one room,” (UK016, Baraka, divorced mother, unemployed in London). Another woman in the UK shared a bed for three months with a friend. She was unable to sleep or wake when she wanted, was forced to do chores and take the children to school, could not prepare her own meals, and paid £20 pounds a week from her savings. She not only felt homeless, but also threatened: “She said if she moved out of the flat I would be homeless because I can’t pay rent. So I was trying to satisfy her” (UK013, Shahara, single 28 year old woman from Somalia, applying for jobs as a housing officer).

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Discrimination and other Barriers: Refugees’ Characteristics in the Structuration of Settlement The Settlement Climb Canadian research has shown seven common barriers to integration amongst refugees and immigrants, some of which are “external” (objective and situational), and others “internal” (subjective and emotional) (Tian, 2000, pp. 254-267). External barriers include separation from one’s family, uncertain legal status, loss of achievements, and a mismatch of living skills to their new society. Of these, family separation was the most immediate and intense sense of loss. Worry about status and the determination of the refugee claim status also created anxiety and exacerbated mental health problems. Amongst internal barriers, such as the conflict between expectation and reality, nostalgia, and discrimination, nostalgia was the most important because it resulted in homesickness, culture shock and confusion, and mourning for a “lost home,” particularly amongst people from rural areas with low levels of formal education (Ibid., p. 261). Educated people reveal lower levels of satisfaction because of unmet expectations. These barriers can be mediated, or exacerbated, by personal attributes. For instance, sentimentalised notions of the country of origin are not as prevalent amongst educated refugees with urban experience (Mahler, 1995). In addition, newcomers with access to ethnic, social and shopping enclaves expressed less nostalgia and better integration (Montgomery, 1996; Beiser, 1987). This indicates the powerful role of social networks and belonging in newcomers’ integration. However, refugees are less likely than other migrants to have strong and reliable networks in the country of asylum, since their migration, rather than being planned, is a reaction against the threat of persecution. Racism and discrimination are structural barriers that create difficulties for refugees, depending on the institutionalisation of such racisms, the prevalence of “unwitting racisms”, and the conspicuousness of traits that ‘other’ refugees in society. Researchers have distinguished refugees’ characteristics as primary and secondary in nature (Chambon et al., 1999; Murdie, 1997; Murdie et al.1999). Primary characteristics are those that do not change (easily), and these include skin colour, language and accent, gender, age, ethnicity, culture, religion, and family size and constitution, and formal academic training. Secondary characteristics are changeable:

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income; knowledge of the housing market, institutions and culture; and level of experience with the dominant culture. Discrimination is generally based on primary characteristics and it can be systemic (Chambon et al., 1997; Murdie, 1999; Hulchanski, 2002; Junaid, 2002; Zine, 2002; Hiebert et al, 2006), hence refugees often rely on social capital and improvements in their secondary characteristics to improve their housing careers over time. Positioned at the bottom of an immigration hierarchy, refugees’ personal characteristics affect housing chances by negative stereotyping, prejudice and ethnocentrism (Junaid, 2002). People with higher education more often claim perceived discrimination, partly because they have had more interaction with the state and nationals in trying to have their qualifications recognised and to repair severed careers. The loss and resentment associated with the inversion of social status can be pronounced for people who have to start from the bottom of the career ladder. The loss of status may be interpreted as a result of race, nationality, and/or immigration status, amongst other factors, rather than a systemic form of economic protectionism. In addition, internal barriers of self-esteem and stress can delay integration. Refugees’ self-esteem may be weakened by forced migration, and this is important because positive self-image is integral to the ability to integrate in society (Espin, 1987; Finch et al., 2000; Westermeyer et al., 2000). The main attribute of refugees’ migration that distinguishes it from other migrants is the lack of control and choice involved in decisionmaking (see Chapter Two). On arrival to the country of asylum, refugees are not only faced with loss of social position, but also movement to a minority position, a “rejective attitude” from the domicile population (Espin, 1987; Finch et al., 2000; Noh et al., 1999), change of gender roles since women find jobs before men (Espin, 1987), threatening men’s traditional role as breadwinners, and inefficient social support. Compared to other migrants who often have some economic and social support on arrival, asylum seekers often face the insecurity of major gaps in both. However, some people are more adept at fulfilling these needs than others regardless of state assistance. The relationship between the state and refugees as actors is complicated: the state can ameliorate or exacerbate refugees’ settlement trajectories by privileging certain vulnerabilities above others, or ignoring some altogether. As discussed in Chapter Two, the defining lines between those deserving of help and those receiving help are contested and can have major implications.

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Refugees’ Characteristics and their Intersection with Housing Experiences Any individual’s chance of overcoming barriers to housing depends on their skills, social ties, resourcefulness, addictions and vices (Jencks, 1996). All respondent households will be influenced by low incomes; and will be shaped by their refugeeness, both of which intersect with other structural issues, such as housing supply, location, cost, and management (discussed in Chapter Five) to frame their housing context. Refugees’ housing trajectories consist of three stages: finding housing; stabilising housing (being able to remain in shelter that is affordable); and improving housing (increasing the conditions of one’s shelter). During the first stage refugees may be dependent on formal and informal networks for accommodation, including shelters or family. In periods of acute stress, refugees tend to focus on the here-and-now (Beiser, 1987). In the second stage, refugees move from dependency to greater independence, initiated by receipt of welfare or employment income. Once surviving and meeting essential needs are in control, people begin to focus on the future. During this stage, housing usually moves from dependence to independence. In the third stage of housing, accommodation evolves toward meeting refugees’ wants, ambitions, and sense of self (Cooper, 1974). This section discusses eight individual characteristics: disability; age; family size; single parents; gender; race-ethnicity; language ability on arrival; and education, which are contributing factors to vulnerability and lack of security at each of the three stages. These primary characteristics are identified as important in identifying priority need, housing discrimination and disadvantage in the housing market (CERA; City of Toronto, 1999; Edgar et al.2004; Somerville and Steele, 2002; Shelter, 2006; Hulchanski, 1994; CMHC, 2002). Individual traits can affect relationships with gatekeepers and landlords and can compound to create relative disadvantage in the rental-housing market. Immigration status impinges on incorporation in the labour market, where restrictions on asylum seekers’ employment create further vulnerability to exploitation (Ryan and Woodill, 2000; Hiebert et al., 2006; Klodawsky et al., 2005; and Kilbride and Webber, 2006). In addition to refugeeness and low-incomes as housing constraints, black people, women, single mothers, young, the elderly and disabled also face discrimination in the labour market, have disproportionately low incomes, and are therefore seen as

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higher-risk tenants (Hulchanski, 1994, pp. 13, 38; Murdie et al., 1996; Murdie, 1999). People’s difficulties are magnified if these individual characteristics intersect. Since vulnerability to homelessness is a social condition, how traits impinge on people’s ability to sustain themselves or actualise their ambitions is determined in part by social context, mediating structures, and human capacity to overcome disadvantage. In addition the complexities of society and personality mean that the same trait can have different meanings for different people in different circumstances, and is a contextual disadvantage or advantage. For instance, large families may be desired in Somalia but seen as aberrant in the UK. Even within a single society, each characteristic has its own nuances and is not one thing all the time, meaning that a trait that appears negative may be constructed positively in some housing contexts, and this is particularly true in the social rented sector where vulnerability is prioritised.

Disability First thing safety. Now health. The two are the same. I cannot go up many floors. I was shot. I use a stick. It is difficult to get a house. I cannot go shopping. It is difficult to go to the hospital. [UK022, Asaf, Cote D’Ivoire, married with children, former lumberjack]

Two refugees in Canada suffered debilitating illnesses, restricting their housing options and limiting their enjoyment of the flats they were in. Sham (C024), a single mother from Iran, was coping with severe aftereffects of gender persecution and the side-effects of terminal illness (see case study 3, Chapter Eight), and Lobsang, from Tibet (C008), shared a flat in Toronto with two other men while being treated for tuberculosis. Lobsang’s main housing problem was matching accommodation to roommates to maximise his affordability while minimising health risks to himself and others. In the UK, six respondents (20 percent) discussed their disabilities. In contrast to Toronto, each person was severely mobility-impaired due to loss of limb or other maiming in the country of origin. In all cases their disability posed significant challenges in finding housing, necessitated coping with inadequate housing, and prolonged residence in housing inappropriate to their needs because of problems with the supply of accessible properties, difficulties the housing search process, and the daunting task of moving.

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One respondent, Sami (UK018), was referred by the Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture to a ground-floor flat in which he lived alone, independently, and in conditions much improved from a series of temporary local authority dwellings. Sami’s spine had been permanently damaged by torture, and he was reliant on a walking frame. However, his flat’s bathroom had not been retrofitted for his disability, and consequently he felt anxious every time he needed to use the toilet or shower. He felt imprisoned in his body, and although he recognized his freedom and safety in the UK, his daily difficulties made him feel that his torturers had won. Respondents in London claimed that disability did not ensure special treatment from NASS or social services, however, certain disabilities can put a stay on dispersal and make one eligible for certain social allowances/benefits. Nevertheless the perception originated from the inappropriateness of referrals, protracted waits for suitable accommodation, and frequent moves to different temporary accommodation while waiting for accommodation, with little apparent regard for people’s personal difficulties. Due to the supply-based barriers to housing and a greater dependency on socially-provided accommodation, people who mentioned a disability that placed a severe limitation on their housing choice, access, and satisfaction were more vulnerable than people who cited less-visible disabilities, such as mental illness, which may be easier to conceal from gatekeepers.

Age It would be fine if I had come to Canada as a child, where everything would be familiar […]. It’s difficult for someone who came as a grown up to create a space for themselves they can call a real home. [C026, Ali, Somalia, Writer]

In a very tight rental market, migrants over 50 and under 24 face discrimination as people with the weakest economic position at the time of migration and in the country of asylum (Edgar et al., 2004, p. 159; Bloch, 2002) and with a relatively higher dependency on welfare income. Age may bring experience, wisdom and strength, but does not necessarily improve accessibility and market chances. Some research has concluded that age is inversely related to sociocultural adaptation making older refugees a high-risk group (Montgomery, 1996, p. 697), and elderly refugee dependants can also be subject to abuse and negligence from younger family members. The younger cohort faced similar issues of

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family strain and breakdown. In addition people under 25 are likely to be dependants in households, in full- or part-time education, and financially dependent on their parents, particularly in traditional cultures where children do not leave the parents’ household until marriage, so the shock of youth culture and independence in the West can be a difficult adjustment. In Toronto, youth shelter eligibility is up to the age of 24, which supported this age as being vulnerable. There was little difference in the age structures of respondents between countries. The oldest and youngest group accounted for 22 percent of respondents in London and Toronto. The majority of respondents, 58 percent, were 25 to 40; this group has the greatest promise of adaptability, flexibility, and skills acquisition. Unlike younger cohorts, this group is also more likely to have completed their education and skill training, have full-time careers, and have independent housing experience. People in their 40s accounted for 20 percent of respondents. They were likely to have forfeited an established career and livelihood to seek asylum, and therefore have the greatest sense of loss and inversion of status to overcome. It is much harder for a 45-year old to re-train, whether she was a householder or attorney, than a 25-year old. Participants in Toronto were at a slightly later stage in their life-cycle than those in London, and theoretically, therefore had more established careers on emigrating and greater inversion of status on arriving to the West. Youth in Toronto and in London complained that student loans diminished their benefits, making it difficult for them to study and to retain their accommodation. Two youths, one of whom was attending University in London, were in homeless shelters at the time of the interviews, while others had attained social housing tenancies after moving through the shelter system and social services. Refugees over 50 were treated with sensitivity within the shelter system and were often deemed vulnerable as result of trauma, age, and lack of English ability. Poor physical health was often an extension of the difficulties they endured in their countries of origin. Old age was rarely mentioned as a factor of discrimination or assistance with housing.

Family Size You have what I would call hidden homelessness in that this is a onebedroom apartment and my family is grown big, but because I can’t afford some other establishments, I have to hang on and maybe we can get a two

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bedroom now that my wife is working, but that is still not ideal, we need something bigger. [C013, Benjamin, former UN Consultant, Zimbabwe]

Amidst an extremely low vacancy rate for large rental units in Toronto, it was estimated that the wait for social housing for large families could be as long as 22 years (City of Toronto, 1998, p. 22). In London, research found that councils were having difficulty meeting the needs of refugee applicants because nearly 60 percent required a three-bedroom or larger house, compared with 20 percent of all other applicants (Quilgars, 1993, p. 28; Sim, 2000). Moreover, refugees were often being allocated poor quality or hard-to-let dwellings, which they had little choice but to accept (Quilgars, 1993, p. 28). As a result of this incompatibility, between supply and demand, families with 3 or more children were more vulnerable than those with no children, since singles had the greatest choice and flexibility to make their own arrangements. Although the majority of respondents were single without dependants (57 percent in London and 63 percent in Toronto), large families accounted for 7 percent of households in London and 17 percent in Toronto. Twenty-nine children were supported in 11 refugee households in Toronto, and 9 households in London supported 23 children. Moreover, in London the presence of children in the household is the difference between eligibility for social housing and managing to find accommodation in the private rental market with housing benefit. Family size was related to other issues that, along with housing constraints, affected refugees’ sense of home and belonging: separation, bereavement and loneliness. Separation from family members was a common source of anguish: 23 percent of respondents (the majority of whom were men) arrived without ‘intact families’ excluding respondents who arrived as unaccompanied youth (12 percent). One Angolan respondent (C020) explained that although he was living in Toronto as a single person he was married. His wife and two young children had been on their way to Canada when the authorities detained them and they were forced to claim asylum in the UK. It had been two years since he had seen them. Another respondent in Toronto was trying to reunite with his two daughters, wife, and teenage son. Despite proof of paternity he had been waiting more than two years since receiving his status (C007). More single people were dissatisfied with their dwellings because not only were they without their families, but they felt relegated to the least desirable areas and units, which they were forced to share with undesirable

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strangers because of their income source, and gatekeepers’ discrimination. In Britain, this includes not being in priority need, and therefore ineligible for social housing. In contrast, intact families often complained about unit size in relation to health concerns and the well-being of their children or spouse. Although research on immigrant settlement has not established the facilitating effect that children have on parents’ integration, some research has shown that parents’ adaptation is an influential factor on their children’s integration1 (Pepler and Lessa, 1993; Barankin et al., 1989). For the families interviewed, satisfaction in the country of asylum was tied to perceived opportunities for children’s education and language acquisition and children’s adaptation gave parents affirmation that the race for asylum was worthwhile. Families moved to improve their housing and neighbourhoods for their children, and when this was achieved there was a high degree of satisfaction. Inversely, where children seemed depressed and unable to cope with social pressures, parents not only regretted the decision to flee, but were also less satisfied with their housing and neighbourhood, which they associated with bad schools and a poor study environment at home.

Single Parents There is a dilemma in lone parenting because they feel disrespect for women as ‘failing’ to upkeep the family. [UK002, Hyacinth, Rwanda, former manager in agricultural sciences, referring to perceived discrimination from the Council]

Fragmented households are often a result of forced migration, where one parent will flee with the children, or leave behind a spouse to survive as a single parent while the asylum applicant lays the ground for reunification. This may be influenced by financial limitations, fear of detection, inability to acquire documents, and calculation of one’s best chances in the country of asylum. On the other hand, some single parenting was due to a spouse’s death, imprisonment, disappearance, or their involvement in fighting. Single parenthood must also be understood as an issue inherently related to family size and gender.

1

The relationships have been identified, but causal links are difficult to assert.

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According to a major overview of homelessness in Toronto (City of Toronto, 1999, p. 52) more single parents than two-parent families accessed homelessness services and the hostel system (City of Toronto, 1999, p. 52, homelessness action task force). Because of their higher propensity to homelessness, single parents were more vulnerable to homelessness than couples with children. Single parents accounted for 20 percent of all participants (17% in Canada and 23% in the UK). Abused women and women with children are particularly vulnerable to homelessness because of the lack of primary social supports (Klodawsky et al., 2005), and according to Rose (2004) being a sole-support parent places refugee women at a high risk of homelessness because of housing constraints imposed by family responsibilities, as well as discrimination. The heads of single-parent households were commonly women; as a circumstance of forced migration, this presented profound challenges for women alongside the opportunity for safety and a new life. The unequal vulnerability of being a single parent is doubled by the prejudice and discrimination faced by women. One interviewee in London asked that I revise her marital status to show that she was not a single parent, but rather was surviving the devastation of widowhood (UK002, Hyacinth, Rwanda, mother of two, quoted above). This was important for her because she observed that black mothers were treated with disdain by local authorities and gatekeepers because their situations were viewed as a ‘lifestyle’. Another interviewee in Toronto (C011, Qadaf, Sudan, mother of five, two of whom remained with their father) lived with her children in a quiet detached house in the suburbs, but spoke of her separation from family as debilitating anxiety. She described her husband as the rightful head of her household, and this role reversal was upsetting and stressful. Chant (1992, p. 200) refers to women like Qadaf as ‘reluctant’ heads of household, forced to fend on their own because there was no other choice. Other women had no partners or had fled their partners and were living with a different kind of hope, one which depended on their resourcefulness, adaptability, and resilience. Single parenthood was not exclusive to women respondents. Men also faced the asylum and settlement process alone with responsibility for children. One Rwandan respondent in the UK arrived as a single applicant

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and was living in all male temporary accommodation when his young daughter arrived. They were asked to share a bedsit until more suitable accommodation could be retained. This father was humiliated by not being able to provide for his children, but he accepted it as a part of the asylum process, saying “even though the accommodation was unsuitable for myself and my daughter, we had a place to sleep at least” [UK003].

Gender I had no one. Completely no one. No English. No one around. I was praying hard to find an Iranian in the street for help. […] My mind wasn’t safe and no one was listening and no one helping. I spent all my time in my room. I was too scared to go out in the unknown. […]Then I met my exhusband. I married quickly because I was depressed and vulnerable. I didn’t want to be alone and I needed help. [UK009, Sara, Iran, lone parent]

Although issues of gender are woven throughout this discussion, this section describes the particular vulnerability of refugee women, who account for approximately half of the world’s refugees (UNHCR, 2006; Boyd, 2004), and 25-35 percent of principal asylum applicants in the UK and Canada (Home Office Asylum Statistics, 2002; Boyd, 2004). Women comprised 33 and 40 percent of respondents in Toronto and London, respectively. Seen as a highly vulnerable population, “Stripped of the protection of their homes, their government and often their family structure” (UNHCR, 2006) the UNHCR described women as being at risk of “manipulation, sexual and physical abuse, and exploitation” (UNHCR, 1991). Primarily this vulnerability is a result of poverty, childcare, cultural constraints, lack of education, lack of control over their environment, and fear. Women may have also faced gender-related persecution in their countries of origin. Despite the courage respondents demonstrated throughout the asylum and settlement process, women seemed to be more susceptible to unequal treatment and mistreatment at every stage, and so women were assessed to be the more vulnerable sex in the rental housing market. Being the principal applicant in the asylum process may be especially difficult for a woman who may lack literacy, education past primary school, or work experience. Moreover, women may lack experience negotiating housing or making decisions as a head of household. Despite seeking asylum overseas, a major act of capability and drive, not all women felt capable of managing a new and complicated life-start and the stress of preparing for a quasi-judicial hearing on their claim.

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Sara, a single mother from Iran, quoted above, had recently escaped domestic violence through the hostel system, which she explained was the result of a hasty marriage precipitated by desperation for help and comfort in the asylum process. During her marriage, Sara was homeless at home because she felt she must endure abuse to keep herself and her child from sleeping on the street. Sara’s circumstances illustrated a combination of problems including isolation, a lack of English, no help, and fear of the unknown, which she sought to resolve through marriage. Instead of helping, the relationship added to her difficulties. Landlords were also more often a source of intimidation than helpfulness for women. One woman in a Brixton hostel shared her room with her two young children and the w/c and kitchen with six other families. Because there was no other room for her children to play, she would sometimes let them into the corridor. In doing so, she was breaking a rule: “[…] he said I should be grateful and threatened to evict me… I cried” (UK002, Hyacinth). For a woman in a new country with no means of support or contacts, dependants, and uncertain status, confrontation and its imagined consequences can be traumatic and terrifying. Moreover, refugee women faced greater discrimination and risk in the housing market, contributing to their over-representation amongst homeless new immigrants (Novac, 1996). Because of their uncertain status and low-incomes, women’s refugee status placed them at risk of sexual harassment and abuse, such as landlords’ suggestions of payments ‘in-kind’. In addition, unwillingness to confront landlords meant that women often accepted poorer maintenance and service to their accommodation (Kilbride and Webber, 2006). Even when landlords were not purposely threatening, their authority and power made some respondents feel afraid, perhaps reflecting their experiences with men, authority figures, and lack of experience with gatekeepers. Women tended to rely on extended networks or hidden homelessness to avoid absolute homelessness. Women’s sharing was a dubious benefit, however, sometimes resulting in misinformation on matters of entitlement and asylum procedure, and mistreatment leading to relationship breakdown. Bed-sharing amongst female relatives, or sharing rooms with young children, was not exceptional, and the intimacy of arrangements strained close ties and caused other problems. It has been said that women typically lack the resources and contacts that men have in the asylum process (Chant, 1992, pp. 2-8), but respondents’ housing and settlement suggest that women’s relationship with the ‘private sphere’ of domestic

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life generates stronger social bonds compared with men’s more formal and extended relationships with contacts.

Race-Ethnicity In my country they say how long a timber can last in the sea it will still remain a timber, it will never become a fish. So, I am an African in the UK. […] It can never be a part of you. I can never become English. I can be British, but not English. [UK014, Maurice, Burkino Faso] Impossible to even find a decent place, the building managers and small houses hear an accent, name, and discriminate—racism—to hell with it— finding an adequate place and affording it is very difficult. It’s difficult to have access to the kind of housing that people who are born here have access to. It’s a cold racism. [C026, Ali, Somalia]

Race and ethnicity are social constructs used to identify ‘us’ and ‘them’, belonging and otherness. Ethnicity is often used as a euphemism for race, and race and ethnicity may be used as synonyms to distinguish between the dominant group and minority ethnics. Maurice, a refugee from Burkino Faso in London, explained that his foreignness meant that his claims for participation and equality could never be equal to those of people who were born in the UK, because he was “naturalised, not natural” (UK014). The term “visible minority” is the Canadian way of describing racialised others, everyone “other than Aboriginals who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour” (Employment Equity Act). In the UK, non-whites are referred to as “black and minority ethnic” (BME) groups or ethnic minorities. Both of these terms relate the majority to the minority, and in both countries, the majority position has social, economic, cultural and political dominance creating an inequality gap between the majority and minority groups, the ‘ever-belonging’ and the ‘never-belonging’ respectively. Ethno-centrism, stereotypes and prejudice result in real barriers that affect the housing chances of visible minorities and result in unequal incorporation (Murdie et al., 1996). This is especially true for immigrants who are unfamiliar with their rights, the housing market, and may have language difficulties. Consequently, BME groups represented 52 percent of homeless households in London (London Housing Statement, 2002) and are overrepresented amongst the homeless in Toronto (Daly, 1996) (Chapter Five). In addition to access to social housing in deprived areas, through dispersal

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for instance, has resulted in some of the worst forms of racial exclusion, the harassment, assault and murders of those whose refugeeness is targeted by their racial or ethnic visibility (e.g. the murder of Firsat Yildiz and others in Glasgow, BBC news online, 2003). There were also assumptions that people’s belonging to a minority-ethnic group would cocoon them from unemployment and homelessness within an informal social network. Practitioners sometimes over-estimated the preparedness and ability of social networks or relatives as a result of stereotypes (Harrison and Phillips, 2003, p. 56), and lack of demand for services does not imply a lack of need (Ibid., p. 56). Hiebert et al.(2006) underscore this latter point by showing that the socio-economic profile of households providing and receiving assistance did not differ substantially and the instability of both households was rarely acknowledged by service providers, who may provide housing help or advice to the guest household but not the host, and therefore intensify hidden homelessness through the stereotype of feasible ‘community’ support (Ibid., pp. 122-123). Furthermore, racial or ethnic discrimination sometimes took the form of demand for Canadian or British experience in housing, work, or education despite evidence of proficiency from the country of origin, and presumptions of ignorance of Western customs and technologies. As a result of these prejudices, which intensify the vulnerability of newcomers in the housing market (Somerville and Steele, 2002; Edgar et al., 2004; Murdie et al., 1996; Chambon et al., 1999; Harrison and Phillips, 2003), black people in the UK are three times more likely to experience homelessness in their housing careers than whites (Burrows, 1997). Therefore black asylum seekers are more vulnerable to homelessness than other minority-ethnics or whites. Fifty-three percent of participants were black, 17 percent were white, and 30 percent were other minority-ethnics.

Language Language is the most important thing, the more you learn, the better you feel. [UK011, Toshie, Azerbaijan, lone parent, former petrochemical engineer] Maybe because I speak more English, I can communicate my ideas and so people see you in a different way and treat you in a different way. [C030, Jose, Colombia, married with two young children]

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Language is the primary means of participation in society and is also a mechanism of social exclusion; being able to read, write, and speak the majority language is key to the housing search process and is an essential component of functional integration. Without the majority language, refugees’ range of housing opportunities is limited. More than this, the ability to speak English has been referred to as part of the social “duty” of integration into a shared national identity and according to PM Blair, “…a matter both of cohesion and of justice” (Blair, speech, 2006). NonEnglish-proficient refugees are also at a disadvantage in work, social life, and accessing services. Quilgars (1993) demonstrated that interpreters and the need for translation led to delays and jeopardised cases for housing services. Tenants, therefore, sometimes depended on informal translation and interpreters, children or friends, who due to unfamiliarity with the technical language of housing rights and responsibilities could place people’s housing at risk. Although Canada has two official languages, French and English, Francophone speakers in Toronto can have as much difficulty negotiating the rental market as speakers of neither official language. Refugees’ accents were often pronounced, even if their English was standard, and this was a sign of newcomer status, which could prejudice some Landlords against them. There was a marked difference in English ability between Toronto and London respondents. In Toronto, 40 percent reported speaking English very well on arrival while 33 percent spoke no English, compared to 17 percent and 37 percent, respectively, in London. Although the ability to speak English was most prevalent amongst those with advanced formal education, a lack of proficiency in English was common. On the other hand, the multi-positionality of identities means that proficiency in one’s mother tongue is also cultural cache to prop one’s housing search in the private sector amongst small landlords, and it can also facilitate one’s entry into an informal labour market (Granovetter, 1983). Montgomery’s research (1996) revealed that 96 percent of refugees in Canada for five years or less were in occupations, such as factory work, food services, janitorial services, art, and computers, not requiring much English skill.

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Education and Employment You suddenly realise that whatever qualifications you have earned from home are suddenly useless because you need local qualifications and Canadian experience, and you get jobs in factories that don’t give you any useful experience. [C013, Benjamin]

Asylum seekers are often more educated than the majority population (Bloch, 2002); however, their jobs are not commensurate with skills, education, and experience earned overseas. Nevertheless, higher education gave people an advantage negotiating formal networks and accessing mainstream resources. According to Montgomery, higher-educated newcomers adapt better but they do not necessarily feel better about the experience (Montgomery, 1996). Fifty percent of respondents in London and 67 percent in Toronto were University educated. Twenty percent of respondents in London and 7 percent in Toronto had a primary education or less. The most frequently cited type of employment amongst participants before emigrating were professional (21 percent), teacher (16 percent), and student (16 percent). To better understand the problem of skills recognition, Tables 6.6 and 6.7 list respondents’ former and current occupations. Refugees’ human capital base is skewed between respondents with less than high school and others with university degrees. The overwhelming majority of those with high school or less are unemployed. Although employment is not commensurate with experience, highly educated refugees are better able to enter the labour market and have jobs that do not require discretion. Education and trauma also made a difference to people’s ability to cope with their new society. According to Swedish research, people with direct trauma and less educational level reported more psychopathology than refugees without trauma and with a higher education (Ghazinour et al., 2003).

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Table 6.6 Human Capital: London

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Table 6.7 Human Capital: Toronto

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Resilient refugees also had strong problem-solving skills, high self-esteem, and self-direction, and a high degree of cooperativeness, characteristics that enabled people to find social support. Even amongst refugees with equivalent human capital background, experiences and personality make people differently able to cope with the stresses of uprootedness and settlement and therefore have different outcomes (Ghazinour et al., 2003). Personality and refugee resiliency are important to settlement and integration, but asylum seekers also face constraints that affect them as a group, and individual agency cannot replace the moral responsibility of the state to address systemic barriers.

The Interplay of Characteristics Exacerbate Housing Constraints Refugee men, by and large, they’re highly motivated, they’re highly skilled, they’re usually educated, they’re very goal directed, where Canadian born homeless-- refugees within their own country-- or First Nations people, there’s a series of things that have brought them into this state of homelessness. […] They are more damaged than the refugees we see, by and large. When we do see a refugee with mental health problems, well, it’s his mental health problem that’s the impediment, not his refugee status. [Interview, 05/03, Seaton House homeless shelter Manager, Toronto]

Navigating the housing market is influenced by a combination of the aforementioned characteristics that provide a picture of each respondent’s relative disadvantage in the private rental market. It is important to keep in mind, that two characteristics of all respondents are their refugeeness and low-incomes, both of which should improve over time as refugees take active steps in moving from an immigration status they perceive to be unstable to citizenship status that, in theory, has greater social, political, and economic rewards. Likewise, refugees will engage in the labour market, often endeavouring to get new experience, to re-fresh or validate their skills and to learn new skills. Along with such practical steps, immersion in their localities and neighbourhoods over time will help to heal trauma and feelings of refugeeness. Over time, therefore, the characteristics that acted as barriers may be overcome by interaction with mediating structures, e.g., housing associations, refugee community organizations, settlement services, and social or ethnic networks. Least vulnerable respondents still faced racial prejudice in the housing market. Theoretically, the least vulnerable person interviewed was a single MA student from Cuba at the University of Toronto (C002, Kevin).

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However, other vulnerabilities such as a criminal record, gambling, or drug and alcohol addictions are exacerbating factors. Kevin suffered from the last, using alcohol to escape from his past as a Cuban army officer. This escape, he felt, was more necessary than even housing. Overall differences in vulnerability between Canada and the UK were the result of three characteristics: disability, language ability, and level of education. The London sample had more than double the number of disabled respondents, half the number of people who self-reported as being fluent in English on arrival, and almost three times the number of people educated to a primary level only. This may reflect differences in the sending nations, their relative stability, and also the nature of the conflict and persecution. It is also a reflection of the country of asylum. The UK’s health system, reputation as a welfare state, hub of recent refugee communities, and the ability to arrive relatively cheaply overland may help to explain these differences. Many highly skilled refugees in Canada were attracted by the promise of asylum but also by the country’s reputation as a country of immigrants in need of skilled labour. However, these distinctions had little bearing on the short-term housing and employment stability of refugees. As discussed by Montgomery (1996), refugees who could reconcile their past and present with “pragmatic realism” (p. 691) had the greatest success of adaptation in the short term (evident in Chapters Seven and Eight). Refugees’ reliance on the private rental market poses several problems stemming from language difficulties and torture and trauma issues (San Pedro, 2001; Murdie, 2002), and research in London (Quilgars, 1993; Garvie, 2000) has shown that asylum-seeking households face housing in substantial disrepair, including dampness, infestation, and overcrowding. This may exacerbate refugees’ physical and mental health problems and have a detrimental effect on children. Moreover, single people and couples who may not be eligible for local authority housing may find housing in the private rental sector, and as asylum seekers they have fewer housing rights, including disqualification from assured or secure tenancies. In both Toronto and London, the role of mediating structures and the strength of the welfare system means that sometimes the most disadvantaged receive the most help, and particularly in Toronto, where the system is more laissez-faire, some respondents did access the shelter system in order to gain access to more comprehensive assistance.

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At the time of the interviews, 93 percent of respondents in Toronto were in rental accommodation (both private and social) and the remaining 7 percent in homeless shelters. Seventeen percent of respondents were in social housing, having been awarded accommodation through homelessness shelters, compared to 65 percent in London, a statistic which reflects the long tradition of social housing in Britain and its proportion, comprising 40 percent of rental stock in London. Of respondents in the private rental market, 37 percent were on the waiting list for social housing, joining 67,000 households in the housing queue in Toronto (City of Toronto, 2006)2. Private renters were nearly equally divided between accommodation in purpose-built flats or houses and improvised dwellings, which include sharing flats, rooms, or basement apartments. A general housing continuum is presented in Figures 6.3 and 6.4, where house-lessness/rooflessness comprises the upper-most categories and ‘better’ housing the lower categories. As a group, refugees largely arrived to housing dependency, relying on social networks and the formal shelter system. For example, on arrival 42 percent of London refugees were staying with friends and family and at one point one-third of respondents were in homeless shelters in their early residential history in Toronto (Figure 6.4). By the second and third residences, some people have improved their housing, moving into shared flats and private accommodation, while others have been left behind as homeless. Finally in the current accommodation, the majority of the clustering is in the more stable end of the chart, families with children in flats of their own, as afforded by welfare, and some single men in shared accommodation, also a reflection of welfare rates. Not all people have made improvements in their housing history, however. Some refugees have experienced episodic homelessness, stagnation, and the inability to change their environment. Moreover, while some people may appear to have improved their housing overall by moving from shelters to flat-shares, for example, poor maintenance or repairs, informal rental arrangements, lack of affordability, poor accessibility and over-crowdedness may actually mean a decline in housing conditions and satisfaction from a good state or charitable shelter.

2

Waiting time for a unit between 7 and 10 years (source: FCM Municipal Survey Database, 2003).

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In Toronto, people became homeless on arrival or shortly after arrival as a move away from the stresses of family and friends, and to use formal networks to access formal resources, including welfare. On receipt of welfare, people used the housing help available from the shelters to locate single rooms to rent or other affordable forms of shared accommodation, and a few youth, elderly, and large families were assisted to social housing. While in housing people found their rents very difficult to afford, they were often barred from jobs because of the lack of, or the non-recognition of, credentials, poor language skills, and conspicuous national insurance numbers. Furthermore, 40 to 50 percent of all respondents in Toronto and London were sending remittances to their families in their countries of origin, which placed a financial strain on them. By contrast, in London, people chose to remain invisible from authorities until they made their claims for asylum, resulting in people moving to B&Bs, homeless hostels and supported accommodation for the duration of their claim. On receiving a positive decision, people were given notice to leave their government-provided accommodation, and due to administrative barriers between departments, benefit payments were delayed, which meant people had no opportunity to find and let accommodation. Consequently, a positive decision created the circumstances for homelessness to occur. In Tables 6.8 and 6.9, 65 percent of respondents in London and 67 percent in Toronto had experienced houselessness since arriving in the country, while 72 percent in London and 60 percent in Toronto had felt homeless at some point. People who had experienced material homelessness but not felt homeless at any point typically understood their homelessness as a transition stage on arrival and did not associate themselves with the misfortune and disadvantage of Canadian or UK-born homeless. Others who had not been materially homeless, but who had felt homeless at some point gave examples of unaffordable housing and welfare dependency and a lack of close social ties.

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Table 6.8 Houselessness and Homelessness amongst London Refugee Respondents

Table 6.9 Houselessness and Homelessness amongst Toronto Refugee Respondents

People with contacts were as likely to experience homelessness as those without; however, as shown in Figure 6.2, contacts had a strategic significance that allowed some people to choose when and how they sought homelessness services. Figures 6.3 and 6.4 also show the average and range of satisfaction in types of dwelling and reveal that staying with friends and family was not very much better than being in a homeless hostel. This is because people shared in very stressful conditions, without the informational resources required to improve their situations, and often arriving to the shelter from family and friends was a relief. In Figure 6.5 I provide a theoretical overview of housing and home trajectories over the course of asylum and settlement to pull the various strands of this chapter together before discussing refugees’ coping strategies. On arrival in the country of asylum, refugees will move through different phases of adaptation and integration.

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These include uncertainty in the arrival and determination phase, a period of settlement instability and possibly the move to stability, generally defined by material, or functional, indicators of integration, in this case housing. At the same time, refugees’ individual agency will shift priority and outlook according to these phases and other events. These shifts also reflect different types of stress and aspects of need. In the arrival and determination phase, for instance, the asylum seeker may experience a period of insecurity waiting for her asylum determination. This insecurity is not only emotional, but also reflects the possible realities of impending return to her country of origin. Remembering the nature of the journey, its cost and its risks, this period is particularly vulnerable for refugees who may still be feeling the painful after-effects of persecution and flight. Examining the feeling-of-home line in the diagram, we see it dip from arrival before improving on receipt of a positive decision. The dip on arrival represents a number of intersecting variables: unmet expectations; the possible stress of arriving to hidden homelessness with family or friends, or time in a homeless shelter; and the mixed emotions of guilt and relief on arrival, and as mentioned the uncertainties of the asylum claim itself. In contrast, the housing line moves from a relative low to a relative high in the same phase. This reflects a move either from hidden homelessness or homelessness to dispersal accommodation, which, in theory at least, is a better housing situation, or the move from a homeless shelter to rental accommodation while waiting for the decision on the refugee claim. On receipt of the positive decision, a second phase of integration ensues in the UK, marked by the loss of dispersal accommodation, but an improvement to the sense of home because of the granting of leave to remain and the resultant possibilities. The refugee focuses her agency on reclaiming her lost status, learning the language, re-skilling or re-training, finding work, and finding housing. This period of post-determination effort is labelled perseverance as the refugee tries to ascend the career ladder that was felled on arrival. However, this period is also characterised by housing instability, dependency on roommates, insufficient housing benefit or welfare, and housing in the private rental sector, which may be neither comfortable nor affordable. After some time in this phase of perseverance, systemic barriers are realised, sometimes in housing, employment, or family reunification. This results in a phase of despondence.

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Consequently, there is a downturn in satisfaction overall, but an upturn in housing because of the period of effort taken to learn the language, the new familiarity with the system, knowledge of the housing search process, and greater confidence with travel and the area. Over time, social networks may expand and contribute to resources for coping, searching for housing, finding a job, and otherwise participating in other aspects of society. This may contribute to greater stability, corresponding with a period of transcendence where refugeeness no longer defines the person’s experiences. Optimally these trajectories would converge in what a person might consider to be good housing and a feeling of entwined belonging and responsibility to it, and perhaps expanding geographical scales, in their new society, including their neighbourhood and perhaps even the city or country. In Chapters Seven and Eight, one case study in each city is used to demonstrate the ways in which the graph changes with the input of individual data to allow us to see how divergent or approximate the feelings of home and housing assessment can be. In theory, certain events and barriers create up- and down-turns in each trajectory, perhaps counterintuitive in their negative correlation. This is tested and discussed in the case study Chapters in relation to refugeeness and homelessness.

Refugees’ Coping Mechanisms The housing market is differentiated based on numerous variables such as cost, status, location, and tenure, and to find and retain accommodation, and to improve one’s housing takes material, cognitive, political, and social resources, including discretionary income; knowledge of the housing market; formal rights, protection, and participation; contacts, and membership in social networks (Ozuekren and van Kempen, 2002, pp. 369-70). Asylum seekers often lack the resources required to negotiate the housing market (Foley and Beer, 2003). In addition, asylum seekers’ settlement and housing trajectories are de-stabilised by protracted determination procedures, and only if they receive leave to remain “will they integrate fully into their new society, and … identify with it” (Murray, 1995, p. 3, cited in Ozuekren and van Kempen). In a context of constrained and differentiated resources, refugee integration is dependent on coping with new environments in stressful circumstances. According to Berry (1991), refugees cope with barriers by changing their environment, or the meaning of their environment, and this takes resources akin to those

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required to succeed in the housing market: physical and emotional health and energy; social networks; and financial wealth (Figure 6.6).

Coping Occurs Alongside Constraints and Pressures

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Social networks provide refugees with social skills and support, including emotional, tangible and informational support. At least one study of immigrant homelessness identified social capital as the crucial factor in both integration and prevention of homelessness, in the catch phrase, “plug them in and turn them on” (Kilbride and Webber, 2006). In Chapter Seven, one London refugee suggests that “coping depends on who you’ve met”, but in the same Chapter another London refugee describes exploitation by a fellow national, again demonstrating the multidimensionality of characteristics and resources. Other than social capital, human and financial forms of capital are also important resources to safeguard against destitution and create options of establishing routines and finding new in-groups. “Money is a tool” one refugee explained, “You can create a ‘fake home’ with it. You can surround yourself with things that satisfy your wants and desires. You can suppress the longing for things. You’re buying the feeling of home—making your self-worth higher… with money you can buy a fake life where you don’t have to long for conversation” [Ali, a Somali writer in Toronto]. Again, most refugees lack these resources on arrival, though they had spent a lifetime developing them in their countries of origin. The process of starting over is difficult, and no one gains by deferring assistance or treating applicants as second-class citizens (Soysal, 1994). Immigration policies, welfare provisions, national identities, and the social construction of the ‘other’ create conditions of integration which affect refugees’ material conditions, sense of belonging and perceptions of home. The first part of this chapter examined routes to asylum, decision-making, perceptions, and social ties in the context of the ‘race for refuge’. The second part of the chapter examined refugees’ ‘settlement climb’, beginning with a discussion of discrimination as a structural barrier and internal barriers, such as trauma and nostalgia. Refugees arrive with three assets that promote agency in decision making: international experience of living or travelling abroad; a social network or contacts; and expectations. They also arrive with primary characteristics that influence their opportunities in the housing markets. In addition, eight characteristics were drawn from refugees’ interviews that demonstrated the ways individual traits become vulnerabilities in the housing market, and therefore intersect with refugees’ housing and settlement experiences. Each trait is situated amidst others because they

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operate in the wider framework of an individual as a whole person (Kaspar and Noh, 2001). The only traits discussed were those that emerged from the data so, for instance, while religious institutions were mentioned briefly in the discussion of social ties, they were excluded from the discussion of primary characteristics. The role of religion is an issue that is deserving of further exploration but cannot be examined within the confines of this book (see Burwell et al., 1986; Hagan and Rose, 2003, and Gozdziak and Shandy, 2002). However, refugees’ traits are important because not only do social structures and institutions impinge meaning on them, but meanings may also be internalised to influence refugees’ subjectivity, self-confidence and sense of belonging (Lacroix, 2004). Consequently, refugees’ characteristics have significance for ‘home’ as well as housing. High rents, low vacancy rates, lack of social housing and long waiting lists are exacerbated by reduced social assistance, legislation favouring landlords, and a lack of intervention in housing crises (Zine, 2002). Immigrants and refugees have a lack of knowledge and may be discriminated against for the level and source of income if on social assistance, personal and household characteristics, and their immigration status. These variables create differential incorporation and unequal opportunities increasing refugees’ vulnerability to housing stress and homelessness. Moreover, many refugees continue to find themselves in financial constraint, even when in social housing, because many are dutybound to send remittances to their families. Choices exist within the Toronto rental market, but they are limited to the least desireable dwellings. Consequently in the Canadian system, with no coherent programme of support for ayslum seekers, people are given the ‘freedom’ to manage their lives in the same markets and with the same welfare entitlements as Canadians. In such a system the strength of one’s ties, the presence of established formal networks and institutional expertise, and one’s human capital play essential roles in housing stability and improvement. The absence of a programmatic response for asylum support means that asylum seekers often find themselves homeless on arrival (first and second residences in Figure 6.2); doubled-up in conditions that refugees describe as disturbing for themselves and their hosts; or in homeless shelters. In the discussion of coping mechanisms, emphasis was placed on the importance of recognizing the role of personality and agency amidst

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institutional macro, meso, and micro constraints. In the UK, personal characteristics are crucial in their intersection with poverty and refugeeness for access to social housing and housing benefit. Immigration status has a major influence on the location, type, and affordability of housing because of the unequal system that supports asylum seekers. Although many asylum seekers are supported by a specialised service (NASS), this support begins abruptly on making an asylum application and an application for housing, housing people temporarily in transit accommodation before undergoing no-choice dispersal to an unknown location. Support likewise ends abruptly on receipt of a positive decision, which is why a number of respondents were in temporary housing between their first and current residences. In Chapters Seven and Eight, three case studies in each city are used to exemplify certain aspects of this structuration process that are illustrative of respondents’ struggles and that characterise their country of asylum.

CHAPTER SEVEN UNPACKING HOME: LONDON REFUGEES’ PERCEPTIONS OF A COMPLEX IDEA

Home can be a house, a certain category or social class, something you possess and that possesses you. There is a difference between your home and other people’s home: in Kinyarwanda “Inzu” means house; “Iwacu” means to our place, which includes family and property; “Iwabandi” means to other people’s place. I am in part three due to unmet expectations and difficulties. The starting point or nucleus of home is family, but the process keeps us from connecting. [UK003, Raphael, Rwanda, former broadcaster and UN translator, father of four, two girls in London and two left behind with his wife, waiting for reunification]

This chapter situates refugees’ perceptions of the meaning of home and evaluations of their housing history in the sequence of events that links their arrival to the country of asylum and settlement in a locality. Previous research suggests that over the first ten years of immigrants’ settlement in a new country, different groups will experience disparate trajectories (Wanner, 2003, p. 55; Ruddick 1999; Li 2003, pp. 92-94; DaSilva, 1997, Li 2003), including better labour market positions and independence from welfare for highly-skilled migrants compared with humanitarian migrants. However, migration categories obfuscate the reality that highly-skilled migrants may have had grounds for asylum had they sought it, and many highly-educated and skilled people arrive as asylum seekers (see Raphael quoted above). Arriving as an asylum seeker rather than through other migration categories has particular implications for one’s settlement. The humanitarian category systematically devalues refugees’ human capital, and consequently exaggerates the difference between migrant groups, who are also subject to different and unequal support schemes. As a group, asylum seekers are particularly vulnerable to homelessness (Quilgars, 1993; Garvie, 2000; Edgar et al., 2004; Phillips, 2006; Pearl and Zetter, 2002; Murdie, 2005; Klodawsky et al., 2005; Hiebert et al., 2006)

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and the risk is increased by informal and formal discrimination and institutional practices that structure asylum seekers as third-class migrants (Chapter Five). While Chapter Six discussed refugees’ characteristics and their intersection with the asylum and housing processes, generally, Chapters Seven and Eight use individual case studies as a tool to deepen understandings of refugees’ constrained decision-making and the ways in which national policies and local structures shape refugees’ housing and sense of home on the pathway to integration. UK respondents are presented in Chapter Seven and Canadian respondents in Chapter Eight. In each city, three case studies have been chosen from the thirty interviews to exemplify the ways policies affect refugee livelihoods (Table 7.1). Table 7.1 Case Study Selection

LONDON Chapter 7

TORONTO Chapter 8

1. CHARLES 28 yrs, Single Rwandan ELR Former Engineer

1. RYAD 23 yrs, Single Eritrean Permanent Resident Former Car Salesman

2. BERHANE 45 yrs, Married 4 Children Eritrean ILR Former Freedom Fighter 2. MR. HAMID 57 yrs, Married 4 Children Afghan Permanent Resident Former Lawyer

3. GVANTSA 34 yrs, Lone Parent Ukrainian ILR Former Head of Tourism 3. SHAM 42 yrs, Lone Parent Iranian Permanent Resident Former Writer

In London, cases have been selected to address important policy effects on refugees’ housing experiences, such as dispersal, doubling-up, living in hard-to-let Council units, and survival on subsistence-only support in London. Also important to the case selections are the characteristics of respondents, and each case addresses issues related to social disadvantage and capital that resonate amongst the larger refugee population (Chapter Six). These include disability, large families, lone-parenthood, severe posttraumatic stress, and unrecognized credentials, from perspectives of men and women at different ages and stages of their life course.

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The cases present chronological trajectories from arrival to settlement, underscoring the lived realities of the asylum systems in each country and the dynamics of dwelling. Figure 7.1 provides a snapshot of the distribution of respondents in different housing types and tenure in the UK, and situates the case studies in their housing context. A similar figure is produced for Chapter Eight, Toronto.

Situating Case Studies in the Breakdown of Respondents’ Current Housing: London London Housing 87% of Respondents (26) 8% Homeless hostel (2)

92% Renters (24)

65% Asylum seeking households in Priority need (17)

19% Council (5) 2. BERHANE 3. GVANTSA

27% Friends, Family privately let flats (housing benefit) (7) 1. CHARLES

46% Housing Assoc (12)

No response: 4 respondents Percentages based on total number of London respondents N=26.

Fig 7.1

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The case studies in Chapters Seven and Eight are structured along four dimensions of the flight-settlement trajectories: x x x x

Background: explores participant’s experiences in the country of origin; Arrival: examines the journey and reception of the asylum seeker; Settlement: focuses on the participant’s housing history; and finally Home: illustrates the tangible and abstract senses of home at the scale of the nation, city, neighbourhood, and accommodation.

The chapters conclude by pulling together shared experiences and strategies of survival across the samples.

London case studies 1. Charles Background Charles arrived in the UK in 2001 claiming asylum from Rwanda. Twenty-eight years old at the time of the interview, Charles was unmarried and without dependants. He held Exceptional Leave to Remain (ELR), worked part-time in the TV licensing business and attended University part-time toward a degree in public relations. Earning less than £400 pounds a month in addition to partial housing benefit, he lived on the edge of eviction because he could not afford his £220 per week accommodation. Paying three times his wage in rent may seem an exceptional example of landlord exploitation, however, refugees frequently experienced the stresses of unaffordable London rents amidst inadequate or untimely benefit payments. Charles had been referred to the flat by the Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture who had negotiated the tenancy with a private landlord. Despite the institutional referral, he was being taken to court by the landlord for non-payment of rent, an issue that he blamed on a system-wide problem of the maladministration of housing-benefit payments. Having been a homeowner in Rwanda, housing problems were a completely new challenge to Charles who had never experienced the particulars of a residential rental market, the most difficult aspects of which were gaining access to and sustaining rental accommodation. In Rwanda, Charles worked as a repairman in an electronics shop. He had a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and was pursuing a law degree

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at the time of leaving. His written and spoken English were good on arrival in the UK. Between Arrival and a Decision Charles described his journey to the UK as, “being a ship on the ocean being towed to shore… ,” because although he had decided to flee and arranged for a smuggler to take him to safety, where that would be and how they would arrive were not his decisions. The smuggler provided Charles with documents, and the reassurances he needed to keep hope alive. Together, they trekked from Rwanda to Uganda, where they spent two weeks, before flying to London Heathrow. His only expectation of the UK was the possibility of encountering danger through his persecutors’ transnational webs. Consequently, throughout his time in the UK, this affected Charles’ uptake of help through refugee community organisations (RCOs) and instead he relied on the strength of formal ties and NGOs. Aversion to associations with nationals from the country of persecution is a side of social ties particular to refugees and common where people were targeted for their clan, tribe or membership in a particular social group. Unlike many respondents who had family or contacts in the UK for support, Charles had no one. He spent his first night in the UK sleeping in the doorway of a hostel that was closed for the evening. In the morning, staff referred him to a solicitor who accompanied him to the Home Office to make an inland claim. On receiving status as an asylum seeker and requesting subsistence and shelter support, he was housed in temporary accommodation in Southwark awaiting dispersal. He was referred to the Medical Foundation for what Charles referred to as his “particular problems,” and over a period of a few months they were able to challenge his dispersal order to allow Charles to remain in London. He was also given permission to remain in the temporary accommodation for the duration of his claim. Although he was entitled to voucher support while awaiting his decision, Charles received no subsistence from NASS. Over a period of several months, he shared a double room with different strangers, none of whom shared a common language with him. While this time should have been a period of recuperation from the flight experience, planning, and re-orientation to a new environment, Charles instead suffered from the shock of a strange, derelict, and violent place. He described his hostel as:

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Horrible. Not a safe place. The accommodation was not good because everything was smelling from the walls to the carpets. The meals were not proper. Everything was very bad, dirty. And fighting everyday, so always the police were there. There was fighting over nothing. I had never lived in such a life. No relief because I was not sure if I was safe.

Charles’ fear and insecurity were intensified by the overarching concern that he might be sent back to Rwanda. His period of residence in this accommodation was ostensibly his induction to Britain and puts in context the importance of appropriate reception to supporting asylum seekers during this particularly vulnerable period, and why overall refugees’ satisfaction (Chapter Six) in B&B and bed-sits in the UK were given only a slightly higher satisfaction rating than detention. Charles knew that he was in a better place in the UK than he had been in Rwanda, but because of the social tensions within the building and its poor conditions he rated it only slightly better than sleeping rough (Table 7.1).

Between Leave to Remain and Settlement Several months after making his claim, Charles received his ELR and accompanying it, a 14-day notice of eviction from NASS. NASS supports asylum seekers only since refugees are eligible for mainstream benefits; however, while Charles had a letter from his solicitor with notification of change of status, he did not receive official documents from the Home Office with the news1. The lack of proof of status and the short eviction put Charles at tremendous disadvantage in London’s rental market. He sought help from the Local Authority, Citizens Advice Bureau, and Medical Foundation, but said they were all “useless” in keeping him from the streets. Fourteen days expired, and so he was forced to make an informal shortterm arrangement with an acquaintance. He moved to a two-bedroom housing association flat, which he shared with a woman and her two children. He slept on the couch for five months, at which point the authorities became aware of his co-residence and cut his host’s benefits. Charles was evicted to the streets. From engineer and businessman to street person: for almost two months, Charles’ slept on friends’ floors and couches, and occasionally doorways 1

Form 35, issued by NASS to individuals with ELR or ILR to demonstrate their eligibility for mainstream services, failed to arrive.

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and streets. Over this period, he made between twenty and thirty moves. Reflecting on the support he received, Charles said, “If I didn’t have a person helping, I don’t know how I would have survived. Coping depends on who you’ve met. When you are in accommodation, [social services] give you something, and when you leave, nothing.” Policies that focus on the most visibly vulnerable, neglect the precarious health of refugees who may appear to be independent, but who, without assistance, can spiral into depression and illness and delay or undermine successful integration. This is the lived reality of systemic destitution generated by policies that are more concerned with controlling asylum seekers than supporting integration (Kissoon, 2010). Between Settlement and Home Charles’ pathway to housing was owed in large part to a referral from the Medical Foundation. He moved into a bed-sit in Hammersmith, where he was living at the time of the interview. He had been there for six months when I met him, and although he was currently facing a legal battle to remain housed due to struggles with the Benefits Agency and difficulty regularising his rent payments to his landlord, he had not thought of searching for a new place: “It’s my first house in London, so I haven’t thought about it because my primary target was to have somewhere to live. So staying depends on the landlord.” Charles felt that administration was prioritised over his health and welfare, where on the one hand he was not given housing because he was not considered in priority need, and on the other they were failing to pay the Housing Benefit for a flat acquired through the Medical Foundation: You go through a lot. I have been homeless from arrival to now. When you apply for housing through the Council they say you’re not vulnerable, but if you find your own house they will pay, but they don’t. The home I was sharing—the Council harassed that person because of benefits. She was not working and had no money, but they did not look at that.

His landlord had received no payment from the Benefits Agency for five months. Moreover, his imminent eviction from the bed-sit seemed of no concern to the Council, and he was offered no alternatives. In his estimation, the system not only made him homeless, but it also prolonged his homelessness since prospective landlords asked for proof of income, which he did not have from DWP, and proof of leave to remain, which he had not received from the Home Office. He credited the Medical Foundation for helping to document his needs and support his appeal to

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remain in London and for referrals to appropriate flats in the city. However, neither attaining accommodation nor retaining it was easy, and because of his continuing precarious tenancy, he sees himself as homeless since arriving to the country. Table 7.2 provides a snapshot of Charles’ residential mobility. Since arriving in the UK, Charles’ residential experience seems to constitute less of a housing career and more of a homelessness career, including uprootedness, rough sleeping, temporary accommodation, doubling-up with acquaintances, and living under the threat of eviction. He has been unable to attain safe and secure accommodation since arriving in Britain but his homelessness career has somewhat improved from absolute homeless to insecure accommodation. Between Home and Homelessness What Home Is Charles does not define home as a bricks and mortar concept: “A home is not a building”, he said, “It is what you feel about it. If you feel comfortable, then it’s a home. It’s in your head. If you have a choice and make it, then it’s a home.” For Charles, the meaning of home is tied to a degree of control over events. It means being enabled by one’s society, having the freedom to seize opportunities and a feeling of empowerment. This is reflected in his insights into the relationship between time and feeling at home: The longer you spend in a place it can be a home. I came here, slept on the streets, and I have moved on and on. Now I am working. Therefore I am still moving on. I am getting changes and therefore the UK can become a home. But if you are in the same situation without change, then it can never be a home.

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Table 7.2 Charles’ Housing History

Time itself is not deterministic of home, but rather underpins processes of actualisation, change, growth, and personal development, and therefore immigration policies that are biased towards control and enforcement cannot be fertile ground for the development of belonging and citizenship. Since settlement, integration, and adaptation are processes, they occur over a period of immersion in a new society. Similarly, to feel at home requires, and is shaped by, a period of becoming accustomed to things, making the new normal, and regarding structures and institutions as enabling resources rather than obstacles. While the experiences of absolute and visible homelessness were a tremendous move down from Charles’ housing position in Rwanda, his sense of homelessness came from frustration at not being able to help himself out of the situation, despite his education, social capital, and resourcefulness. He was fleeing persecution in Rwanda, but as a believer in capitalism and the ability of Western economies to use labour, he thought his skills and human capital would be transferable, and therefore ease his transition to a new country. Instead he described himself pooled

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with other asylum seekers who, having no education or language skills, were treated equally, if not better, because they appeared more deserving of assistance. In addition, Charles said he realised his life was no longer in his control when he found himself sharing a room with people of a sort he would normally avoid, and when evictions continued to force him to share with whomever he could to avoid the streets. Where Home Is Considering his current situation, Charles said that he was homeless and home was nowhere for him, “I am homeless because I am not comfortable where I am, and not comfortable back home. I used to have a home in Rwanda, but not now.” Preceding his lack of housing choice was his forced migration to Britain. In addition to feeling like a ship in tow, Charles found himself so deprived of choice in Britain, that when asked if he would like to make it a home he said it had never occurred to him, but he felt like he had no other options and was working towards it. Rwanda, however, was a homeland, even if it was not always a home, because of its culture and transmission of a sense of belonging, ownership and entitlement to social and political rights inherited through his ancestors: A homeland is your origin. Rwanda. It is where my roots are. It is where my ancestors are. I came from Rwanda. I was born in Uganda and lived there 17 years and I never considered it a home. The UK does not at all feel like a home; it is as good as Uganda. I am a migrant and so the UK and Rwanda will be completely different. The UK is a foreign land. It treats me like a foreign person. […] I feel foreign and not at home. Rwanda is a home […] by ethnicity and culture. [H]ome should be Rwanda, and inside everything there are many things.

Home is perceived at different scales and in different ways. Charles distinguishes between the macro, the social structure, organization and politics of the country, and the micro, representing familial and domestic life, suggesting that the latter is nested in the structures of the former. In addition to this, he referred to a third dimension of a homeland, namely its eternal, spiritual and ancestral aspects. Amongst these aspects of homeland, family and ancestry create a sense of home and belonging, but they can be threatened by national and tribal politics. Rwanda was not just Charles’ country of persecution, but also comprised a legacy of cultures, systems, and beliefs he felt he embodied. Inside him, he explained, Rwanda has a home, although he no longer belongs to Rwanda. On the

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other hand neither Uganda nor the UK were a home or homeland because in both he felt he was treated as a foreigner, or an outsider with less entitlement to the rights and privileges awarded to nationals.

2. Berhane Background Berhane fled Eritrea and claimed asylum in London with his wife and four sons in 2001. At the time of the interview he had Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR), and lived in a two-bedroom Council flat in Southwark. His sons ranged in age from five to fourteen, and shared one bedroom, while he and his wife had the other. His wife, suffering with asthma, was constantly ill in the mouldy an overcrowded apartment, where they had lived for just under two years. Because Berhane had lost a leg fighting in Eritrea and suffered other unspoken injuries, his household income consisted of income support as well as disability allowance. Berhane stretched their household income by sending remittances regularly to his family overseas. He found this difficult to manage, but personally compulsory. At forty-five years of age, Berhane attended College full time for Computing and English and said his priorities in life were to improve his English, understand English culture, develop his education, and improve his computer skills. In contrast, in Eritrea he lived as a freedom fighter after finishing high school. Although he had some experience renting, he had never had to search for accommodation, and lived most of his adult life in government housing. His early years were spent in his family hut, constructed of mud with a corrugated iron roof, and different from anything he encountered in Britain. On arriving in England, he spoke some English and could read and write a bit. Berhane’s story reveals something about the coping of a large family, and his decisions and trajectory reflect both his age and stage in his life course. In addition, his experience of dispersal provides insight into the effects of this mechanism of spatial control on refugees’ vulnerabilities and homelessness as a consequence of returning to London. Between Arrival and a Decision Berhane had friends and family living in Canada and the UK, and they recommended both countries as good places for asylum seekers because of their humanitarian programmes. Canada in particular, was said to be not

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only a beautiful and peaceful country, but also the “rights of refugees and disabled people respected and education good, and can get house very easily.” He was told to go to Kenya for a Canadian visa, but Berhane thought this was too risky, and the smuggler on whom the family depended suggested that the UK was a more viable option. They moved from Eritrea to Sudan, where they stayed for one month, and finding it difficult to get a visa, Berhane paid the equivalent of ǧ5000 in US dollars for documents and for the agent to accompany them to safety. However, the documents acquired dictated that only one parent could travel, and so Berhane and two of his sons flew with the agent. His wife and his other two sons arrived in London a year later. His wife’s family, resident in Britain, gave him some general information about the country, but Berhane arrived with his own expectations, both of which he said were realised: “The government gives housing, and the government gives benefits.” On arrival at Heathrow, Berhane made contact with his wife’s family and he and his children spent their first few nights with them in Southwark. He found a solicitor, and within a week of arriving, he made a claim for asylum and support, and was sent to wait for his dispersal order in emergency accommodation in Croydon. He waited in a “not-so-bad” bed-sit (3/10 in satisaction) with his children for five weeks before they were dispersed to a three-bedroom flat in a house in Bradford. Despite having three bedrooms, the family was so frightened that he and his sons shared one room. His was the first East-African family dispersed to Bradford and he said the experience was made more difficult and isolating because of his disability. In addition, no one had thought to warn him about the cold: “I had no experience with cold—rain! No knowledge of how to live in the cold. […] I was very unhappy in Bradford.” In fact, he said the issues he faced in the UK seemed so overwhelming that he would have preferred to flee to Sudan or even to remain in Eritrea: It was very cold firstly […] and only white people, 99.9%! But there are Asians. So really feel isolated, feel like alone […]. Especially first time in new society, need some friends, don’t know about shopping, GP, government, school, don’t go anywhere, just close doors. London has a lot of people, like Eritrea. When came from Africa to here so difficult everything, technology, traffic, everything is new. You need people at that time just to give information.

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Despite the theory of dispersal to cluster areas, there was no established East-African community in Bradford to relieve him of his anxieties, offer comfort, advice or information, or ease his sense of loneliness. Berhane described his dispersal experience as if it were a new and significant trauma, which heightened his stress and deepened his depression. He had no choice to remain in London, and his poor communication and lack of mobility exacerbated his isolation. The housing provider was obliged by NASS to provide some settlement advice, and in lieu of not having a community to tap into, Berhane was compelled to rely on formal assistance. However, this assistance was frustrated by language problems. In addition Berhane found that his disability was a tremendous and unforeseen hurdle within and outside the house: Sitting room ground floor, bedroom was on second floor and third floor bedroom for child. Very old. Rain comes in from one side and because disable use crutches to go upstairs—oh the pain! Very difficult. Extremely unhappy. Extreme. Don’t talk so to wife and children because would scare them. Rain day and night, house was not good for disabled people, very isolated area. Safe Haven, but they can’t solve a single problem, telephone call, language problems, can’t understand each other, going to phone box without enough money. Especially as disabled person need very close people. Don’t have power to give another accommodation to discuss problems with NASS or Social Services, I expected solution and got waste of time.

Despite Berhane’s efforts to change accommodation and improve his housing situation in Bradford, both he and the organizations managing dispersal seemed powerless. His very intense emotions describe only a two-week period in Bradford, at which point he received his ILR and returned to London. Unusually, Berhane’s asylum application was adjudicated in just 40 days. Between Leave to Remain and Settlement Berhane’s friends found him a place in Brixton, which he secured for the week at ǧ65. This payment was extraordinarily difficult to make since his only income had been voucher support, consisting of ǧ10 per week cash allowance. The accommodation had no conveniences: no dishes, no heater, no food, no blankets, and he and his children shared a bed. The neighbourhood, which Berhane described as a “crack-place” intensified his disappointment and insecurity. Berhane sought help from the Council housing department and Social Services but,

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They knew nothing. No one helped. There was a language problem. London is very crowded, and they tried to make me go back to Bradford, but I argued about my disability and children for housing. The main thing was they knew nothing about disability.

Finally, his solicitor wrote a letter on his behalf to the Homeless Persons Unit in Southwark, and the family was housed temporarily in a twobedroom flat in Lambeth while the Council sought to requisition more cost-effective accommodation, a process that took one month. In the meanwhile, Berhane was very happy in Lambeth and enjoyed the flat’s amenities, the kitchen, the ample space, garden, TV and the neighbourhood. In fact, Berhane described this as the best place he had lived while in the UK, and most importantly it was a place in which he felt safe and where he had begun “to live in peace.” Although it was apparent that Berhane and his sons had begun to settle, the family was uprooted and re-housed in Southwark, in a two-bedroom flat near Elephant and Castle. Berhane’s satisfaction dropped from 10/10 in Lambeth to 2/10 in Southwark. The area had a number of Eritrean families, which was a comfort; however the Council had placed the family in a hard-to-let flat that had been closed due to fire, and the bedrooms in the flat were on the upper-most storey, which were painfully inaccessible because of Berhane’s disability. Just two months later, the family was moved again to a two-bedroom flat in a high-rise building where the living space was all on one floor. They had been living there for 1.5 years at the time of the interview and were on a waiting list for more size-appropriate accommodation. Between Settlement and Home Berhane said their flat was not safe, especially for refugees, and the neighbourhood made him afraid for himself and his family (during the interview, British National Party campaign flyers were slid under the door). In addition, the accommodation itself was too small and created an unhealthy situation for his family: “Two bedrooms for six people, wife asthmatic, so wife ill. Very crowded. Water on the walls and windows, not enough ventilation for her, but Council does not respond.” Despite Berhane’s housing career progressing from homelessness to inadequate housing, he believed that his housing had improved, “Housing is getting better and better, when you compare to the hostel, Bradford, temporary accommodation, this one is different” (Table 7.3).

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Table 7.2 Berhane’s Housing History

Although Berhane had doubled-up with his wife’s family when they first arrived, he did not see this as a form of homelessness, and because the transition from inappropriate and unaffordable accommodation in Brixton to Southwark Council housing was smooth, he did not feel homeless then. In fact, the only time Berhane felt homeless was during dispersal in Bradford, an indictment of the inflexibility of dispersal policies and their effect on asylum seekers’ already vulnerable emotional and physical wellbeing. Berhane and his family have moved seven times in approximately two years, and being moved from place to place was what Berhane described as his biggest housing problem since arriving in Britain: “Changing from place to place is difficult, especially with disability. The Council is not considering the disability.” Berhane’s family have been tolerating cramped and unhealthy conditions for a year and a half, and previous to their

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current accommodation their reasons for leaving residences resounded with the phrase, “didn’t have a choice”. Berhane’s housing history is abbreviated in Table 7.3. Berhane believed that a smart-card system would have helped his situation and stopped agencies from “bouncing” refugees from one organization to another without sensitivity of the limitations of language, and orientation to the city, disability, or family size. He resented having to rely on their fragmented information to receive basic entitlements. He saw providers as existing in a culture of powerlessness under government policy, unable to answer questions and deferring responsibility. Aside from the formal network of service provision, Berhane says he received little effective help from his social network, but other asylum seekers were the most helpful contacts throughout the process. Between Home and Homelessness What Home Is I asked Berhane if he considered his current residence a home, and he said, “Yes! Home is to me just anywhere you can live with your parents or with your family.” Other factors contributing to his sense of home included peace and freedom. Irrespective of one’s personal wealth and happiness: If there is no freedom outside, then not a home. […] If you live in one room with the freedom to move and achieve, then any place is home, but you can have nothing without peace.[…] If live freely, no war, at least you can struggle step by step to go up, take a long time.

Like Charles, Berhane believes that the ability to improve one’s life, change direction, and make decisions makes a place a home, relating to the importance of agency and self-determination in the process of homemaking (Kellett and Moore, 2003). “Home,” said Berhane, “is a way of life. Peaceful living, no expectation, it is freedom, safety, and peace.” Where Home Is On considering the location of home, Berhane reiterated it was anywhere he could live peacefully with his family, and ultimately that place was London. As if it were the stop on a long journey, Berhane exclaimed, “London! I have totally forgotten Eritrea—I believe I have a family, background, but home is London—Finished!” He was committed to thinking of the UK as home and making it a home, and believed that

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British citizenship for his children held promises of safety, equality, and opportunity, which were absent in Eritrea. He was grateful to the government for providing the necessities for his family and in return he had made it his home and gave it his allegiance. Unlike Eritrea, the UK offered peace, freedom, and security for his family. In addition, in the UK he perceived opportunities to improve himself through education and personal and professional development and training, none of which were offered to him Eritrea despite his willingness to lay his life down for the country. On reflection Berhane considered Eritrea a country that took without giving, while the UK gave without expectation. Berhane wanted to return this liberal humanitarian ideal by contributing to society: I am now 45 years old, and I’ve spend the past 43 years in Eritrea but have never had any good memory in life […]. I was a fighter for twenty years for nothing—just for individuals—experiences toward country was totally negative. When you compare rights, humanity, services, I contribute nothing to UK but have a better chance to living. I lost my leg in Eritrea, but received nothing—have family in Eritrea—but nothing. In the UK like my home because I live peacefully, people live peacefully, children and family live peacefully, must speak, express ideas, go to school—when discuss comparison, very difficult in Africa: have to pay for leg loss in hospital, to pay for bus, cannot talk about government, system, even think. Eritrea is not a home, no way. Zero percent—even if in a villa.

Berhane even called his youth and adulthood in Eritrea a “waste of time” because in the context of the country’s own underdevelopment, he was unable to improve himself. On the other hand, in the UK, he was prepared for a difficult road to settlement but could imagine himself achieving goals that could not have existed in Eritrea. Despite his negativity toward Eritrea, Berhane did not feel that he had lost a home, but rather that he had found a home in the UK that would be better for his family. Reflecting on his current circumstances and housing situation, he considered that his sense of home derived from opportunities for his family’s future, including the ability to practice their culture, and pursue an education, and while his sense of homelessness was not a strong, it was located in housing difficulties, which affected the family’s health (Figure 7.2). In Figure 7.2, Berhane’s housing and home trajectories are graphed over his two years in the UK. A number of points are evident. First, Berhane’s overall housing trajectory and feelings of home are positively correlated.

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While he defines home as anywhere he can live peacefully with his family, his family alone did not constitute the entirety of the meaning of home. This is most evident in periods of extreme housing instability and lack of choice: on dispersal, and on becoming homeless after receiving his refugee decision and returning to London. These are two typical events in refugees’ housing trajectories overall, and their effect on feeling at home is evident. Dispersal was Berhane’s lowest emotional point and also his worst housing situation because of the difficulties he had managing his disability in inappropriate and isolated accommodation. On return to London, Berhane still felt homeless, but not as homeless. Importantly, however, he also presented himself as homeless and was recognized as such, thus linking perception to policy. His transfer to good housing is reflected in the dramatic upturn in his outlook. His move to LA accommodation was also initially positive, but since encountering systemic barriers to housing improvement, in terms of size and disability access, he and his family are in a period of despondence. However, once Berhane achieves better accommodation, his sense of home will likely also improve, moving him from a period of despondence and general instability to transcendence where he will focus on his personal growth and professional development. Berhane was already taking classes to learn computers as well as English, and his commitment to the UK and achieving a home for his family was evident throughout the interview.

3. Gvantsa Background Gvantsa, 34, was a refugee from the Ukraine. She worked for Camden Council and lived with her elderly mother and teenage daughter in a threebedroom Council flat. She had entered the Camden Council flat when it was in complete disrepair and had used her own money and labour to turn it into something liveable. As an administrator with the Council, she earned approximately £1300 per month, on which she supported her mother and daughter. In combination with her travel expenses, English classes, Council Tax and various bills, she found it “somewhat difficult” to pay the rent. Gvantsa had an MA in Engineering, a Diploma in Bookkeeping, and a Degree in Economic Planning in the tourism industry. Although now

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fluent in English, before coming to the UK she could not speak or write English. In the Ukraine, she was employed as an Engineer and was the head of the government’s Tourism Department. She had lived in a singledetached house in a small city, did have some rental experience, and had never lived in government housing or had to look for housing.

Between Arrival and a Decision Gvantsa arrived in London in 1995 as a visitor intending to pursue a short course in Tourism. She travelled by bus to Dover from the Ukraine, stopping in Poland on the way. She knew no one in Britain, and had not planned on claiming asylum; however, a few months into her course, her mother told her that things had changed in the Ukraine, and she and her daughter were in danger. Claiming asylum was not an easy decision for Gvantsa. While studying, she was working illegally in a Turkish coffee shop at minimum wage, and when she did seek advice on making a claim, she was defrauded out of £1200 pounds by a Polish asylum seeker who took the money to help her secure a solicitor. In unwittingly trusting someone of a similar background, the application for asylum resulted in the complete loss of her savings, her destitution and subsequent accommodation in a B&B near Euston Station. Gvantsa spent her first three months in London in St John’s Wood where she paid £40 per week to share a two-bedroom flat with four other people. She earned approximately £500 per month from her informal waitressing. The flat-share was overcrowded and noisy, but she loved the Regent’s Park area. This first place felt like a hotel to Gvantsa because it lacked security and privacy, it was temporary, and none of the women had any rights there because it was a “double sublet”, stripping any security of tenure. After losing her savings on claiming asylum, she applied for housing through the local Council, and was accommodated with housing benefit for three months in a B&B. Her mother and daughter arrived from the Ukraine, and the family were moved to a different room in the B&B, which they shared for four more months. Gvantsa was shocked at the condition of the B&B: It was infested with cockroaches, extremely dirty shower room in the corridor for which there was always a queue, and mice. It smelled so bad, horrible, pests, vermin, filthy! Fifteen people were sharing one kitchen […]

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and there was a pub across the road, and I was not feeling safe. It was nasty and horrible temporary accommodation—filthy!

Her perceptions of the accommodation improved slightly when she was reunited with her mother and daughter, but she still did not feel at home, because soon after arriving, Gvantsa’s mother was moved to a hostel for single women. The family was placed on a waiting list for accommodation that could rehouse all three women, and they were given priority because Gvantsa’s mother had imminent health problems that would worsen in emergency shelter. After a few weeks, the family was moved to a three-bedroom house managed by ASRA Housing Association. Generally, refugee housing associations provide better quality accommodation than that afforded by the Councils (Quilgars, 1993, pp. 28-29), and in their ASRA letting, Gvantsa rated her satisfaction as 10/10, “So beautiful, great, perfect, the garden size! It is with two toilets and the kitchen, garden and bedroom so big! It was so much better and made us feel really better, partly because it was only family in the house.” Factors in Gvantsa’s high evaluation of this property were its ample size and privacy, and also that it felt permanent, compared with her previous two situations. They lived in the house for four months, but during that time Gvantsa defined her sense of home as having a permanent house that belonged to her. Once a Council flat was available, the family was offered their new address. They were pleased for the possibility of something more permanent, but on visiting the property in Kentish Town, they were horrified: When we first came in and opened the door, I really choked, so horrible it was, and I just run through and opened the other door to let some fresh air in. Nobody wanted because it was very dreadful condition. For half a year nobody lived here. Some teenagers broke in, what they were doing here one can only guess. There was a dog left here for some time because the lady who lived here, she went to hospital. The dog was left by itself and you can just imagine if a dog locked in, howling and barking and I think you can still see the scratches on the door.

The Council changed the electrical wiring but did nothing apart from that. The ceilings were black with fire damage, and the flat had also been flooded.

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Gvantsa was aware that she was being offered hard-to-let accommodation, and that it was Council policy to offer such dwellings to asylum seekers, but she had no choice, “They confirmed if I refused to take this flat, that is it. My temporary lease, which I had in this housing association, will come to an end in a couple of months and that is it. No-one will renew anything because I refuse to take the flat.” Gvantsa had no choice, therefore, but to move into the flat and begin repairs with her own money. Later, when applying to the Council for funds to continue with repairs to make the dwelling inhabitable, Gvantsa said their attitude was dismissive because they considered her temporary: They said, ‘you’re not going to live there all your life!’ And I said ‘what do you mean?’ They said, ‘Well, you’re a refugee here, you’re an asylum seeker, so you’re going to going back to your country!’ And I said, ‘No, I’m not going to go back to my country. My country is here now!’ Her reaction was, ‘Oh, you’re leaving, you’re not going to live here!

Gvantsa rated her satisfaction in the flat as 8.5/10 because she had invested so much of her own time, money, and labour in the property. Of course, the flat was not hers, since legislation dictated that asylum seekers were ineligible for Council accommodation. Moreover, when her decision arrived, she discovered that she had been refused asylum. The Council began eviction proceedings, but Gvantsa fought to remain in the property while she appealed her asylum decision, and eventually she won her ILR. Like many other respondents, she did not receive official documents with her decision and new eligibilities, and consequently her rental receipts were acknowledged as “Payment accepted as damage for trespass only”. Gvantsa’s housing history is summarised in Table 7.4. Gvantsa’s homelessness experiences included sharing a bedroom with a stranger on arrival to the UK, emergency accommodation upon becoming destitute, doubling-up with her daughter on reunification with her family while at the same time being separated from her elderly mother, and facing imminent eviction in Council property. Despite the homelessness experiences, Gvantsa’s housing trajectory has improved with time, first characterised by a high rate of mobility in temporary or emergency lettings, and most recently a substantial duration in property in which she was able to exercise some agency and to initiate an employment career.

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Table 7.4 Gvantsa’s Housing History PLACE

1

3 m

NW8 Camden

2

6 m

NW1 Camden

3

4 m

Same as Above

4

4 m

NW5 Camden

5

5 y

NW5 Camden

TYPE

COST/ EVALUATION REASON TO INCOME MOVE [%] 2 bedroom £160pcm 3/10 Destitute, flat in [32%] Overcrowded, placed in building, Employm noisy hostel by shared with ent, LA four Savings strangers TI: £500pcm B&B -/ 1/10 Reunited Housing Horrible, with family Benefit pests, vermin, TI: filthy £165pcm B&B -/ 2/10 Health and Housing Same as size, Benefit Above, but Council TI: family moved to £165pcm reunited HA flat 3 bedroom 10/10 Council house, HA Beautiful, moved to perfect vacant flat garden, big 3 bedroom £400pcm 8.5/10 No flat, [31%] A few intentions LA Employm unfinished to leave ent renovations, TI: but it’s mine £1,300

Between Leave to Remain and Settlement Gvantsa waited six years for her decision, one year for her initial refusal and five years in appeal. She had ILR and was planning to apply for citizenship in the near future, but her uphill battle for residential stability was paralleled by her struggles through the asylum process. According to Gvantsa, the effects of uncertain immigration status on her health and well-being were considerable: “I was nearly paralysed physically, one side of me could not move, could not turn or answer phone—head rigid—was too much pressure and nerves and umpteen complicated puzzles took place of work and occupied mind.” The protracted determination period was one of intense housing stress coupled with threats of deportation, which would

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affect her daughter and her mother, and which made Gvantsa physically ill. The intersection of Gvantsa’s immigration status and welfare entitlements caused her greatest housing problems: “My estate officer trying to kick me out and I was taken to court and facing homelessness—and no one would help because not entitled to help from Council because refused asylum application and not entitled to social services because working part time.” The only person she could rely on was her solicitor, and as the head of household she felt she had no one else to turn to for support. The asylum process was emotionally rending: “I was shouting at family, crying, nearly paralysed, hysterical—praying to God for help every minute. Everything was like a test from God and I prayed for help to pass the test.” Now, she says, her concerns are different. When she arrived she only thought about “how to get a flat” and now her concerns were “how to keep it.” Gvantsa did seek help from a variety of RCOs and settlement NGOs, as well as the Local Authority, but found language, prejudice and discrimination barriers: No information was written in Russian or Polish at all, no interpreters were suitable, there’s a lack of information, and trying to find out information and DSS and couldn’t because of interpretation. Social services treated asylum seekers really badly—‘who asked you to come, you asking for our shelter, go get a job.’ But I had no English in a ‘no choice’ situation. There is a lot of discrimination against asylum seekers, allocating the worst accommodation to them, assuming they are lazy et cetera. I began to believe this. […] You are made to feel lazy, like it’s an asylum seeker thing. You cannot assume that services are giving you best help, and you cannot get the best help from your own people. You must rely on yourself.

From Gvantsa’s observations, the deep mistrust of asylum seekers circulated amongst gatekeepers as media and politicians fuelled stereotypes of scroungers, queue-jumpers, and bogus refugees, so much so that they doubted her need for translators or interpreters, and her deservingness of welfare and national protection. She placed the blame for this mistreatment of asylum seekers on individuals who are entrusted to implement government policy, rather than on the government itself: “Very good immigration laws, good—but people dealing with it are incompetent and are messing up lives.” Most helpful to her before her asylum decision was her lawyer, and afterwards, she credits the King’s Cross Homelessness Project for giving her advice on benefits.

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In addition to getting the correct information on time, Gvantsa pointed out that many services offered training to asylum seekers, but neglected to offer travel funds. Between Home and Homelessness What Home Is Gvantsa defined home in terms of peace, protection and community in the UK, and permanence and autonomy in a residence: It is peace on any level—nation, people that will protect, defend me, the city. Where I feel at peace with myself and people around me—when coming back from a journey, it is relief to be in the city, neighbourhood— rely on them, help them, understanding—not at all ethnic roots. There are no Georgian people around, but community is about people who live around you, not about roots—and speak same language thank God, but when English not so good, still felt at home. House—needs security, not to be made to leave—when I know I can decorate it the way I love and prefer. To feel at home is to feel peace with in self.

Where Home Is Gvantsa said home was in the UK, in London and in her flat. She could definitely think of the UK as home, and gave a resounding, “Yes!” when asked if she would like to make the UK her home. Home at the scale of nation requires peace, safety, protection, and formal citizenship, which she believed was “important so you feel like a part of society.” The sense of unity and belonging was also important to her sense of home at the city and neighbourhood level, where everyone would receive the same treatment, and people were not divided by nationality or race. Most importantly for Gvantsa, however, was the scale of accommodation, in which case, “To have documents saying permanence, not to be kicked out, evicted,” meant everything, and was inexorably tied to her rights, which changed with her asylum status. To have permanence at the household level, Gvantsa needed to have her refugee status, and that is why she regards citizenship, and its protection and security, so highly. Gvantsa listed her top four variables in home-making: family relationship, quality of accommodation, neighbourhood satisfaction, and access to education and training. However, despite these micro-level concerns, she said overall safety in the country was the most important factor: “In theory, I have all this in Former Soviet Union and Ukraine, but if the country isn’t safe none of this makes sense.”

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On arriving to the country of asylum, most refugee respondents face downwards economic and social mobility, moving from a majority to minority position, a “we” to an “I” society, and the severance, or at least interruption, of established careers and livelihoods in the initial phases of settlement. As new arrivals, refugees must overcome one set of obstacles common to most migrants, including understanding the environment, culture, and systems that comprise their new society. Overcoming these obstacles reduces social isolation and improves one’s labour and housing market chances by expanding social networks, gaining confidence through expanding one’s knowledge of the city and its structures, and becoming familiar to cultural nuances, which facilitate communication and employer and landlord confidence. These obstacles are common for all newcomers were evident in varying degrees in the case studies; however, obstacles inherent to asylum seekers include migration marked by trauma and persecution, vulnerability, and isolation. The difficulties of adjustment in the first set of obstacles are deepened by aspects of refugeeness. In addition, newcomers also face systemic discrimination in the housing and labour markets not only because of their lack of experience in both, but also because of historical legacies of immigration and exclusion, and nations’ construction of “the asylum seeker”. These themes are also present amongst refugees in London and Toronto (Chapter Eight). Chapter Six generated a rough schema for categorising refugees’ primary characteristics and their resulting level of disadvantage in the housing market. According to respondents vulnerability scores (Table 7.1), the case-study participants were relatively well positioned, however Charles had a housing trajectory that was less stable than respondents with children. In part, this is due to the UK’s response to homelessness, and a statutory duty to house destitute children and their families (Chapter Five). This is an important policy contrast with refugees in Toronto, where there is no national housing policy, and no legislative obligation towards families. In London, able-bodied single people are at a disadvantage on housing benefit trying to acquire affordable and sustainable accommodation in the private rental market, similar to refugees on welfare in Toronto. Like other single people in London, Charles did not fare as well as Berhane or Gvantsa because he was not seen as “vulnerable” or in “priority need”. Respondents argued that the asylum and immigration system was designed to cater to neediness, its conception of asylum was based on charity and that meant, for people to be deserving, they needed to demonstrate helplessness and desolation. Another single person described her experience with seeking help from the Council:

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When I went to the Local Authority as homeless, I needed sympathetic treatment but they didn’t consider the situation at all, just asked for letter from the Home Office […]. The policy is designed regardless of the psychological condition. I was a capable person, I was a political prisoner and afterward I was deprived of any social activity, but I still was able to improve myself—and I just can’t display desperation so that they could understand the expression of my psychological state [UK007, Wahida, Iran, 36 years old, former university researcher currently homeless and unemployed in London].

Montgomery’s (1996) research has shown that a lack of intervention amongst educated refugees can create a sense of detachment to the country of asylum, notwithstanding their material success. In the UK, for instance, Charles did not see the UK as home because of the distinction between nationals and migrants and, citizens and foreigners, and the lack of opportunity awarded to the latter group, while other refugees felt that government policy stood between them and successful settlement. The distinction between asylum seekers and Britons was experienced at a national scale as a feeling of ‘otherness’ from living in a “borrowed homeland, with limited rights, and an adopted culture, which can never be a part of you,” [UK014, Maurice, Burkino Faso, MA in Philosophy and Politics, employed as bin collector in London]. Furthermore, when the inability to stabilise one’s housing trajectory is coupled by the shock of inverted social and economic status, the systemic devaluation of human capital, and the indignity of being considered a “queue jumper,” “benefit scrounger,” or “asylum shopper,” institutionalised by the voucher system, and exemplified by the demotion in employment (Chapter Six): The system of vouchers was very embarrassing and unsuitable for person’s needs. It limits you from getting what you wanted and segregated us from society. The vouchers were creating problems for people who wanted to make friends and feel like part of society. They were very embarrassing. They could only be used at Sainsbury’s, so you had to use your money for transport because it was so far away. Also, they were not enough value [UK025, Hussein].

As well as the embarrassment and problems of vouchers, vouchers also created a climate of segregation and discrimination, which was compounded by the isolation experienced by singles as a result of family separation. Isolation and ‘otherness’ in society created an emotional barrier to settlement, compounded by structures intending to deter new asylum applicants. The reality was that asylum seekers and successful

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refugees were given a poor start as a result of government policies of difference. Dispersal exacerbated the strained social ties, isolation, and depression that resulted from forced migration, and it removed the key ingredient of home-making: choice. While education, social ties, a career, and participation in society had been important to shaping one’s trajectory in the past, policy ignored people’s preferences, kinship ties and support networks, treating them as blank slates; each having their careers erased and forced to start from the beginning, engineers and PhDs elbow-toelbow with housewives and scaffolders (Chapter Six). The absence of choice fosters dependency and undermines personal agency, the strength of which was what led people to seek asylum in the West and allows people to decide their life course. Table 7.5 creates a typology of housing and its relationship to social ties as experienced under the UK’s policy of dispersal, and the compromises people make between adequate housing and proximity to a social network. Undermining certainty, familiarity, normality, and the tools to help oneself are systemic problems of dispersal (Berhane), inadequate and substandard housing (Gvantsa), and reluctant formal supports (Charles). These issues, structure housing experiences for asylum seekers in the UK and combined with refugeeness, make it difficult to improve one’s housing career. If we accept Mumford’s (1961) idea that the convergence of material and emotional conditions of home create the most tenacious cement of society, it is then easy to accept the duality of home as an indicator of integration. At the scale of dwelling, Table 7.5 presents a typology of trajectories that show routes to and from different types of homelessness. In the UK dispersal and the failure to travel create two types of homelessness, one characterised by relatively adequate housing and social isolation (Table 7.5, C), and the other by housing stress and proximity to social networks (op. cit., B). As illustrated by Berhane’s case, dispersal is a housing solution that creates a social problem and emotional vulnerability. Dispersal has also been described as a “prison,” where people “don’t even know your name” [UK014, Maurice]. While the dispersal programme ensures people are relatively adequately housed during the asylum process, this is achieved outside of London and the Southeast, where many refugees would prefer

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to stay to be near to established communities, social networks, and the security of a resource-full city. Consequently, people who are dispersed may experience “quasi-homelessness” as an isolated but housed person. Other refugees who remain in London on subsistence support comprise a “pseudo home” because they may tolerate substandard housing conditions for the sake of proximity to social networks. Table 7.5 Homelessness is always but not only about dwelling Emotionally Homeless Homeless Quasi-Homeless x

Housed

x

Materially Houseless

x x

Well-housed but feeling homeless. Improvements in one’s relationships may help to increase satisfaction and maintain shelter (A). Leaving house may improve relationships (B). Losing housing may create ‘downward’ trajectory (D).

C Absolute Homelessness x

Houseless

x

x

x x

D

Houseless and feeling homeless. Improvements in housing or income may make one QuasiHomeless (C); Improvements in ones relationships may make one Pseudo-Home (B); Improvements to both may result in Absolute Home (A). Chronic absolute homelessness may lead to poor mental and physical health, or death.

Home Absolute Home Well-housed. Positive sense of home. Possibilities for continued housing stability. ‘Downward’ trajectories may occur if: x one loses accommodation (B); x one loses their sense of home (C); x or one loses both (D). x

A Pseudo-Home x x

x x

B

Houseless but positive sense of home. Improvements in housing or income may help to attain housing while maintaining one’s relationships (A). Access to housing may compromise relationships (C). Losing one’s positive sense of home may create a ‘downward’ trajectory (D).

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On making a claim for asylum, people are eligible to apply for housing through NASS, and on receiving a positive decision they are eligible for mainstream benefits, and are given between 7 and 28 days to find new accommodation. It is at this point that failures in communication between systems and inflexibilities in NASS create refugee homelessness (Charles, Berhane). Migrants may also leave their NASS accommodation to return to London, or do so on receipt of their decision, at which point they may also find themselves experiencing some form of homelessness. Ultimately, under NASS support, there is a trade-off between improvement in housing and proximity to social relations. Furthermore, access to mainstream benefits on receipt of a positive decision is problematic for people who must compete in a discriminatory market. In a system designed to cater to neediness, there is a need to conform to this perception to get help, and even Gvantsa, who was in a more privileged position than others, expressed that continuous discrimination, prejudice and reluctant service providers eventually made her believe that she was a lazy asylum seeker. Gvantsa was a highly skilled and educated person who seemed to have recovered from a demoralised and devalued position. There are a combination of reasons for this, including that she had been in the country longer than any other respondent; she was from a relatively proximate source country; she did not experience the traumas of persecution or flight, although she did face forced resettlement when country conditions changed; she did not experience dispersal; she had her family with her; and finally, she composed the country’s racial majority. These combined characteristics created resilience in the asylum experience that was evident in her attitude and in her outcome. By contrast, Charles, who had been homeless since arriving in the UK was caught in a system of support that did not recognize the vulnerability and psychological needs behind the exterior of his gender and marital status: as a single male, he was not given priority need to accommodation, and was not only made homeless by the asylum system in the UK but had his homelessness prolonged because of structural inadequacies. As Sami commented, A human being without a home is nothing. If you’ve got your home you can start your life. You can do everything you want.[…] But English people don’t let you say this is a home. Mentally it’s not a home, but maybe I can make it like a home—like a model [UK018, Sami, Iraq].

Sami expressed the relevance of home to integration, feeling enabled and empowered to do things, and to make a home; however, while Britain has all the elements of home, it has none of the welcome. Consequently, Sami,

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like many refugees, may achieve functional integration, learning English, stabilising housing, pursuing an education or career, but the country’s national identity excludes other forms of belonging: like “timber in the sea”. This chapter employed a series of case studies to illustrate common structural issues affecting refugees’ housing and sense of home. The cases showed different pathways to housing, and different forms of coping and articulated various perspectives on settlement and housing in London. Charles, for instance refused dispersal, experienced episodic homelessness, and felt that the UK was not a home despite his efforts to make it one. On the other hand, Berhane and Gvantsa’s families were the nuclei of their senses of home, and as their families were intact in London, the UK became the site of their children’s futures and, therefore, of a present and future home. For Berhane and Gvantsa, their sense of home was strongly tied to their housing assessment; however, while Gvantsa may be the closest to “absolute home,” this is not the culmination of her integration or settlement trajectory. Rather Gvantsa appears to be in the final phase of settlement described in Chapter Six, transcendence, where as an employee for the Council, with an intact family, and in stable housing, refugeeness no longer shapes her options and impinges on her sense of home. Normality is an essential component of inclusion and belonging in society, for refugees in particular, because the experience of persecution in the country of origin is a major disruption and extraordinary period in their lives. In the process of seeking asylum, peace and security are common tropes in the meaning of home for refugees, deriving from the desire to live an ordinary life where race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion do not exclude one from society. Although housing is key to refugees’ long-term settlement, the case studies demonstrate that housing provision for asylum seekers is also important as a symbol of unequal citizenship, which contrasts sharply with the Canadian cases.

CHAPTER EIGHT UNPACKING HOME: TORONTO REFUGEES’ PERCEPTIONS OF A COMPLEX IDEA

I have felt like I didn’t have a home because I always felt at risk of losing accommodation. I used to have a home. Right now I have nothing. Even if I were to be able to go to my country right now, the concept of home wouldn’t exist anymore. The concept as an entire meaning is gone because we have lost many things, properties, even my mom had to move from where we used to live to another town and my brother lives apart from her, so you know you have your family in your heart but feel I don’t have any home any more. [C029, Jorge, Colombia, PhD Financial Management, now working in a newspaper printing press, Toronto]

Canada’s institutionalised multicultural identity as a country of immigrants and its human rights record and strong economy make it a desirable destination for would-be immigrants. To those who are able to scale the hurdles of distance, visas, and cost of travel, in addition to satisfying the economic, social or political requirements integral to Canada’s managed migration system, the country represents the promise of a better life, equality, and opportunity. For some newcomers, there is an impression that Canada’s self-advertisement as a country of immigrants means that there is no hierarchy of citizenship status or of cultural or racial groups. In their perception, Canada’s commitment to multiculturalism means that it is a country without discrimination, and one where the country’s Charter groups have no advantage over Entrance groups, because everyone in Canada, excluding the Treaty groups, have a history of immigration1. Overlooked, however, is that this national identity is a relatively recent political construction (see Chapter Four), and it remains a part of Canadian

1

John Porter (1965) classified Canada’s ‘founding’ nations, the British and French, as Charter Groups. People who entered Canada later were called the Entrance Group, and Canadian Aboriginals belonged to the Treaty Group.

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mythology because of political will, not necessarily expressed at a local scale or embraced by all Canadians. While the UK manages a national support service for asylum seekers, asylum seekers in Canada struggle within a single system that is also inhabited by poor Canadians. This means that while they receive the same welfare allowances, entitlements to social housing, and access to jobs at the low ends of the labour market, they are forced to compete with Canadians who have the advantages of being at home in the familiar: a Canadian track record of housing, work and education, and the security of knowing and constituting Canadian culture and/or the dominant group. This chapter presents three case studies to illustrate refugees’ experiences of housing and settlement in Toronto, drawing from interview material to situate meanings of home and homelessness within the trajectory of flight and asylum. Refugees critically examine the notion of home amidst their experiences of housing instability and homelessness, and challenge Canada’s national identity as a country of immigrants. The case studies illustrate issues that were recurrent motifs amongst refugees: episodic homelessness, waiting for social housing while unhoused or precariously housed, and struggles of affordability and discrimination. The first two stories belong to Ryad, aged 23, and Mr. Hamid aged 57, men situated in different stages of their lifecycle; the third case belongs to Sham, aged 42, a lone parent. The lifecycle stages reflect different expectations, goals and experiences that people have for themselves or their families in Canada, as well as different relationships with persecution and their originating states. For example, while Mr. Hamid and Sham were the primary targets of torture in their respective countries for their political activism, and secured their own exit arrangements, Ryad was sent abroad by his parents and told very little about the threat to his life or theirs. In addition, Mr. Hamid’s and Sham’s concerns and responsibilities focussed on their children’s needs, tying the asylum process to future opportunities, while Ryad was focussed on his own (in)abilities and present difficulties. Amongst the cases, Mr. Hamid was in social housing, while Sham and Ryad were not. Sham was in accommodation inappropriate for her health and disabilities and on the waiting list for a social housing unit, while Ryad was in a homeless shelter for youth (Figure 8.1). Their personal characteristics and their intersection with refugeeness, meanings of home, and housing experiences, demonstrate the reality of structuration in an equal system for people with unequal experiences and capital.

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Situating Case Studies in the Breakdown of Respondents’ Current Housing: Toronto Toronto Housing 100% of Respondents (30)

Fig. 8.1

7% H-less Shelter (2) 1. RYAD

93 % Renters (28)

77% Private (23)

40% Purpose Built (12)

10% House (3)

37% (11) respondents on waiting list

17% Public/Social (5) 2. MR.HAMID

37% Improvised (11) 3. SHAM

30% Block of Flats (9)

Toronto Case Studies 23 yrs, Single Eritrean 1. RYAD Permanent Resident Former Car Salesman 57 yrs, Married 4 Children 2. MR.HAMID Afghan Permanent Resident Former Lawyer 42 yrs, Lone Parent Iranian 3. SHAM Permanent Resident Former Writer

Percentages based on total Toronto respondents: N=30.

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Toronto case studies 1. Ryad Background Ryad was 23 years old, born in Saudi Arabia, and a citizen of Eritrea. In Saudi Arabia, Ryad had completed high school and was working part-time in a car-dealership with his father, and in a grocery store. The family had lived in a large villa-style house. He and his brother arrived in Canada in 1999, and since then he has become a Permanent Resident. His English was good on arrival. In Toronto, Ryad was episodically homeless, and was a resident of the YMCA youth shelter at the time of the interview. He explained that his homelessness was strategic, “the solution to getting a home,” and he was looking forward to attaining a permanent affordable residence. Between Arrival and a Decision Prior to embarking on the journey to Canada, Ryad had considered Australia and the UK as destinations, but the former was ruled out because of cost, and he was advised against the latter by relatives who were refugees in the UK. If he claimed in the UK, he was told to forget about citizenship and residency papers, expect bad housing and no welfare, and prepare himself for antagonism towards people from East Africa. So instead he and his brother were taken further West by smugglers, though Kenya and then the US, before being abandoned at the Canada-US border. Ryad recalls the helplessness he felt during the journey: “You’re not coming by choice so you’ll do anything the agent tells you to do. If he told me it’s best to go to border naked, I would do it because I don’t know anything.” The brothers encountered sympathetic immigration officers at the border, and on being given a list of homeless shelters in Toronto, common practice for people arriving without a place to stay, Ryad identified one that sounded familiar: the YMCA. The officers arranged for their travel and reception, and the pair arrived safely to the YMCA’s dormitory-style shelter for young homeless men. Ryad’s expectations of Canada were shattered. Instead of arriving to Canadian politeness, humanitarian ideals, and a ready labour market, he was confronted with destitution, addiction, gang violence, and disrespect for education. He and his brother were in the shelter for a few months before receiving welfare and moving into a flat together, and during this time Ryad said other residents were so mean to him they made him hate himself.

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The brothers lived in a one-bedroom apartment located by housing counsellors at the shelter. Rent was not affordable, so they sustained their payments from their personal needs allowance. Months passed without decisions on their asylum claims, and Ryad grew disillusioned with life in Canada, which seemed to hold no promise of a future. The protracted period of determination kept him on tenterhooks and he “felt lost” because he, “couldn’t make any positive decisions on life,” for a long time. As a refugee claimant, he was classed as a temporary resident and issued a “900”-series social insurance number, which highlighted his temporariness to employers. As a refugee claimant he was also considered a foreign resident, and asked to pay foreign fees at College, a disincentive for his enrolment. As a consequence he had difficulty finding work or improving his education in this initial period in Canada. After nine months, the brothers found a two-bedroom apartment through a newspaper advertisement and moved in with another Eritrean newcomer, splitting the rent three ways, they were able to retain this accommodation for 1.5 years. It was only at the end of this period that Ryad received his Convention Refugee status, but by this time he had integrated into a mindset of disenfranchisement and blame. Between Convention Status and Settlement On receipt of his decision, Ryad coincidentally lost his job due to injury. He had been earning over $600 a month and had not been receiving welfare. He described welfare as an “all-or-nothing” system that created a disincentive to part-time work because there is no system of partial benefit. So, without any earnings, he looked through newspapers for rooms advertised for rent, and failing to find anything he could afford he returned to homelessness. Again, he lived at the YMCA youth shelter for two months, which he described as his bleakest point since arriving in Toronto: like he had “lost home and was completely and officially homeless.” In fact, Ryad admitted during the interview, with some shame, that he had slept on the streets for two days because the shelters were full. On a tip from friends, he located a vacant room in a flat, and exited the shelter system. He shared with three strangers, and although he felt it was better than the shelter, he was also intimidated and alienated in the neighbourhood, which was frequented by drug users and pushers, gangs, and police. Unable to find a more suitable place, he lived there for 7

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months before moving into a room in a house, in what he thought would be a better area. Unfortunately, Ryad was unfamiliar with the size and locations of neighbourhoods, and though he moved to improve his housing situation, he found himself on a different block of the same gang territory. He felt “depressed and trapped” in a place that he hated and that frightened him, and so out of desperation, and feeling it was his “only choice”, he “escaped” neighbourhood insecurity for the familiarity, and now comfort, of the shelter. He rated his satisfaction there as 9/10, an improvement from 1/10 when he first arrived. At the time of the interview Ryad had been in the shelter for three weeks waiting for permanent, affordable and safe accommodation. Between Settlement and Home Becoming homeless to get a home, playing into a stereotype of deservingness, accommodating the rigidity of the welfare system, or giving up agency to gatekeepers were spin-offs of a strategy to maximise the assistance provided by formal networks, which recur in the next case study of Mr. Hamid. Ryad placed himself in the hands of shelter workers to improve his situation. Throughout the interview, Ryad mentioned the affordable housing scheme he was hoping to access. He explained that it was rent-geared-to-income and was associated with the Christian Church, and the rent would be set at 20 percent of residents’ income, and it was going to be his escape from “worst than worst” neighbourhoods. Homelessness as a solution, as a strategy to access resources, can be an expression of agency and not necessarily one of despondency or failure. Ryad believed that shelter staff would advocate for his exit from homelessness through priority on the waiting list for affordable housing, thus acting as gatekeepers to gatekeepers. In this “snakes-and-ladders” manner, he believed stepping off the housing ladder would be the best way of ascending it. Table 8.1 is an abbreviated housing resume for Ryad. He identified lack of affordability and unsafe neighbourhoods as his biggest housing problems because he had to hide from gangs, sometimes he found himself unable to pay the rent because he overspent on groceries, and at other times he was unable to eat because he prioritised the rent. Since arriving to Toronto he has had to pay up to 65 percent of his income toward accommodation, and over four years has made little if any progress

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in his housing trajectory, experiencing mainly lateral and downward movements across the lowest rungs of the housing ladder. Table 8.1 Ryad’s Canadian Housing History LOCATION

TYPE

3 m 9 m 18 m

485 Queen W Dufferin/ Eglinton Dufferin/ Caledonia

Shelter

4

2 m

485 Queen W

Shelter

5

7 m

Bloor/ Ossington

Room in Building

6

15 m

Bloor/ Christie

Room in House

7

3 w

485 Queen W

Shelter

1 2 3

Flat in House Flat in Building

COST/ INCOME -/$26.75 (0%) PNA $337/325(104%) Welfare SA $320/1120 (98% SA, 29%I) Welfare and Work -/$26.75 (0%) PNA

EVALUATION

$325/520 (100%) Welfare SA $335/620 (103% SA, 54%I) Welfare+

1/10 ‘area so bad’

-/$26.75 (0%)

9/10 ‘relief’

1/10 bad people 8/10 ‘yeah good’ 9/10 ‘landlord gave headache’ 1/10 ‘lost home’

(-)1/10 ‘hated it’

REASON TO MOVE Counsellors found a place Size and affordability Job loss and affordability

Friends referred to place Problems with neighbourhood Harassment and problems with neighbourhood

Percentages are based on the cost of the unit relative to housing benefit, and generally indicate the lack of affordability of accommodation. Moreover, Ryad said he was unable to rely on members of his own ethnocultural group to find housing or receive tips to access resources: “I came with a large group and most […] had family and got support but gave others no advice because of jealousy--and most of the time their advice was wrong.” This phenomenon of misinformation deliberately or unknowingly propagated to newcomers has been documented (see Ryan and Woodill, 2000) and policies that exist at the UK’s ports of entry, for instance the Refugee Arrivals Project (RAP), are embryonic in Canada. He sums up the support he received from settlement organizations in the following way: Some organizations give you good support and do the best to help, for example Culturelink, which specialises with people who come as refugees and help emotionally and help with papers. The others help but need a lot of paperwork—it makes me feel like they’re doing a job for money, as if

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they get a kickback for helping you out. Only the YMCA and Culturelink take beyond job and make you feel like family.

This sensitivity towards the purpose and project of services and refugee support is an important consideration for providers. The transmission of care to newcomers allows them to feel like a human being with capability and potential, and not a charitable object or job. In addition to problems of neighbourhood safety, affordability, and access to resources, Ryad was tired of being the outsider in fragmented and violent neighbourhoods. This was a problem of negotiating a new identity to simulate a sense of belonging. He removed the bandana that covered his head and pointed to his silky dark hair. He explained that the bandana, his oversized pants, and even his adopted accent were part of another strategy to blend into his neighbourhood. Language was also a reflection of belonging and exclusion that Ryad felt was important to ‘home’: “One of the things that make people their ‘unhome’ too – it’s the language!” Learning English was a goal in itself, but was also a means of making himself “sound Canadian,” again reflecting his desire for ordinariness. Conspicuousness, he believed, was life-threatening in his part of town. He tried to explain the importance of neighbourhood and location referring to the Koran: “In Islam there’s a saying: if you put a man in an environment for 28 days, he becomes that environment,” and Ryad could clearly see himself assimilating into his new environment, defined by street culture. Suppressing his Islamic identity was a survival strategy, a far cry from the multicultural haven he expected in Canada. Ryad also blamed the system for making it difficult for the brothers to remain together, since renting rooms in the same house or building was often not an available option, and a two-bedroom apartment was beyond their means. The lack of affordability is systemic to all people on welfare, but is a shock to newcomers that is added to their pre-existing vulnerability. It is this effect that contributes to the instability of refugee newcomers’ settlement trajectories (Zetter and Pearl, 1996; Beer and Morphett, 2002; Murdie, 2000 and 2002; Chambon et al., 2000; Quilgars, 1993; Garvie, 2002).

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Between Home and Homelessness What Home Is Home was about a sense of belonging for Ryad, which he believed and a sense of belonging offered safety within a community, protection, and opportunities for participation: Home for me is place that you feel safe, place that you feel that you belong. Actually I felt at home when first came to Canada. Home is basically a place you can have a family, raise a family, feel safe. Because home is not those four walls: it is the place where you can feel that everyone in the neighbourhood feels you can mix with them and share their hobbies. That’s home. That’s what makes you feel you belong to them.

Being in Canada was not enough because home was something to be achieved; it did not just happen. Sometimes constructing home means tearing down previous structures, and in Ryad’s case, these structures were his routine, way of life in Saudi Arabia, and appearance to try to become more Canadian, “I understand that in order for me to make it home, I’ve gotta do a lot of things to change myself first; change my lifestyle; I’ve gotta act like people in this country act; I’ve gotta mostly forget about how I used to spend my time back home.” For him, home was about assimilation, blending in, and being indistinguishable from Canadian citizens, which Ryad described as a process of forgetting and discarding, or disguising, his immigrant origins. Making a home also constituted independence and earning a living in Canada. The new routine Ryad hoped to adopt included working because welfare was a barrier to home: For me to have home, I’ve gotta work – I don’t have to depend on this social assistance they provide here; ‘cause it’s not even enough to have a home. Like, they give you $520, and the homes are mostly-- the average is between $325 and $400 – so there’s nothing left for you to eat, you know. There’s nothing for you left to…you cannot even dress good, or have the activities you wanna do. That’s why there’s a lot of people become homeless here, because they’re trying to get used to $520 a month, but when they suddenly get fed up and they cannot handle it anymore, they choose to go to a shelter where they can eat whenever they want to eat, and they can receive emotional support.

For a first-timer on welfare, the transition can be a difficult one, and for Ryad, acceding to the shelter life was sometimes easier than struggling to

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make due. As a youth, Ryad paid particular attention to his style and fashion, and working would allow him the discretionary income that “dressing right” to fit in demanded. He believed that work would also allow him to eat what and when he wanted without worrying whether that meal would cause him to default on his rent. Over time, it was possible to make multiple homes for oneself because according to Ryad, time turns experiences into memories, which gives one a feeling of knowing a place, and if these memories are positive, they provide an emotional basis for home-making: Home has to be a long period of time with good experiences because in your life you pass through a lot of things, places where you come from or good feeling—those places you can call home—may not be first but second home. It’s the memories. If you’ve got good memories, you feel like you know the place and you have a good time.

Refugees do not flick a switch and become at home on receipt of their Convention status, but receiving status gives people time to settle, which in turn gives them space to plan and construct a new sense of belonging. Where Home Is When pressed on where home was located, Ryad said Canada, because, “they gave me shelter and refuge,” and Eritrea, because of his strong social ties. He wanted to be Canadian and make Canada his home because there was “something about this word Canadian, people respect you more even if you are African and even in my own country.” For him therefore, citizenship was the penultimate indicator of belonging and factor in homemaking, “Until I get citizenship papers, then at that time it will be home.” For Ryad, Citizenship had a symbolic reciprocity of duty. As “just an immigrant”, Ryad saw a hierarchy of status, where refugee claimants were third-class residents, permanent residents were second-class residents, and both groups were discriminated against by first-class residents, i.e. citizens. Sometimes Ryad could use this to his advantage, by playing up his refugeeness for more settlement assistance or advice, for instance, but at other times he felt humiliated as an immigrant outsider: If you are a refugee or landed, you’re in the back. They call you “refugee” or “immigrant,” […] and you feel so low: “Those immigrant people, and those immigrants.” You go to a club and have to show your identification. The government gives you big paper, the landed paper, you know--when

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you show like this [he pretends to unfurl folio sized paper]-- I swear to God, one time I show it, a lot of people were laughing who were in the line […] – but it’s emotionally bad because it makes you feel different. And I don’t know [exasperation], when you come to the people – in the offices, you get more help because you are immigrant or you are refugee – I cannot deny this! But in the street, if are immigrant or stuff like that, they would curse you and call you names. They make you feel like you are not one of them yet. […] People that I know who have this Canadian citizenship – they feel rest when they get it. Why? Because they say “Now we are Canadian.” That’s what they say, even the court – “congratulations! You became a Canadian!” So what you were before you get this thing? – You were an immigrant.

Ryad encountered various forms of discrimination relating to his status and he felt like being a refugee or landed immigrant was seen as a disease or disorder in Canadian society, despite purporting to be multicultural and a country of immigrants. He identified subtle transmissions of difference, through the form of identity documents, the citizenship ceremony, which he thought diminished the worth of non-citizens. When he arrived in Canada, Ryad felt a sense of relief and honour to have been allowed into a place with a strong reputation for peace, civility, and human rights, and he considered it a home, but this sense of home was eroded by the length of the determination process, informal work, and barriers to education and housing: I believe anyone you make interview with in Canada will tell you the same thing – they come here, they feel safe, especially me. I’ve been in a war; seen a lot of people dead, you know, and I made it here – I made it just like it is home. Why? – because I’ve seen peace, I’ve seen normal people living normal life. And, well, because, I’ve been through hell - and I came to heaven. But then, […] I discovered a lot of things – like here especially, the refugee people, they’ve been treated like a money machine.

Ryad’s criticisms reflected a sense of the country not supporting his ambitions, and contrasted to the gratitude of older heads of refugee households. The next section profiles Mr.Hamid who also arrived in 1999 but was at a much later stage in his life-cycle than Ryad. Through his story we see how he was able to exit homelessness and retain accommodation for his large family, and his perceptions of Canada as a home.

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2. Mr. Hamid Background Mr. Hamid had permanent resident status and lived in Toronto with his wife and four sons, who ranged in age between 12 and 17. He received welfare and the family lived in a socially subsidised three-bedroom house in Chinatown. Mr. Hamid was looking for a job while improving his English at the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture (CCVT), which he also attended for advocacy and support. In Afghanistan, Mr. Hamid had earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Law and his wife had been a university lecturer. They had lived in a single-detached house in Kabul, but Mr. Hamid’s experience in the rental market and in house-hunting was limited. He lived in Pakistan before coming to Canada via the US, but had travelled alone, only sending for his family once he had been in Toronto a few years. Between Arrival and a Decision Mr. Hamid fled Afghanistan for Pakistan in his middle years because of his political opinions and affiliation with a human rights organization. His wife and children had fled Afghanistan to Pakistan a few years earlier while Mr. Hamid remained in Afghanistan to continue his humanitarian work, but eventually he too was forced to leave, though the family preferred to remain in the region because he believed his exile would be temporary. Mr. Hamid emphasised that his family were respected, educated, and established in Afghanistan, and he left for no reasons other than to save his life and his family’s: I am Afghan, I was in Afghanistan, I preferred Afghanistan, until the day I knew I would be killed. I had come to Western countries ten or twenty years ago, but I preferred to stay in Afghanistan because I have there property, some land, business, good houses, good place in Kabul city, good job I was a lawyer in my country, my wife was a university teacher. We had a good education we had respect from the people, I preferred to stay there until […] I understood I would be killed, I flee, I escape and I came to Canada […].

Mr. Hamid did not use smugglers to leave the country because he was assisted by NGOs. However, it was easier to get a visa to the US than to Canada. Leaving his family in Pakistan, Mr. Hamid flew through the UAE to Germany, where he spent four days, before flying on to the United States. According to Mr. Hamid, this staggered flight trajectory allowed

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him to adjust to the West, and to minimise the barrier of culture shock on settlement in Canada: “One week, I was in Europe, there a lot of difference between the life in Eastern country and Western country, and after one week or two I became familiar with this life.” He stayed with friends in the US for just over two weeks, and then they drove him to Montreal. From there, he boarded a bus to Toronto. Mr. Hamid could have lodged an asylum claim in Germany, but he had already made up his mind that Canada was his destination because he saw it as, “Multicultural, free and without discrimination,” while “Germany did not accept refugees, and US has no family reunion.” He had never considered the UK as a destination, because he believed its asylum system was stricter than Canada’s. He thought immigration laws in Canada were easier than in other places, and he had a vague notion of Canada’s values, but he had no other ideas about what to expect in the asylum process. On arrival in Toronto, Mr. Hamid contacted the Afghan Women’s Association for advice, and was referred to Seaton House homeless hostel. He made his claim for asylum the following day, and remained in Seaton House six months while awaiting a decision. The shelter was a very important resource for him, and counsellors referred him to the CCVT, gave him advice on accessing legal aid, and assisted him in applying for social housing and welfare. As a resident at the shelter, he was provided in-house one-stop help. The shelter was particularly sensitive to Mr. Hamid’s age and poor health, his lack of language skills and mental wellbeing, so they continued to offer outreach services to him even once he left their accommodation. Overall, he rated their help as 10/10. Rather than feeling homeless as a newcomer in Toronto’s largest men’s shelter, he saw the positive: there were on-site doctors, he was given three meals a day, there were laundry facilities, he had a room to share, and the bed linens were changed daily. He was grateful for the shelter, though temporary, and said he was able to exit the shelter by placing himself “in the hands of a shelter counsellor” who eventually found him a place close to his English school. Counsellors at Seaton House referred him to a bachelor apartment within six months, and though it was over-budget, it was his exit from houselessness. Mr. Hamid was in the apartment on his own for two months, when he received his refugee status.

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Between Convention Status and Settlement Mr. Hamid lived in the bachelor apartment for 7 months, and then his application for social housing was approved and he moved into a bachelor apartment in a high-rise building. He remained there for two years while CCVT helped to reunite him with his wife and children. When they eventually arrived in Toronto, the low availability of large social housing units meant that the family continued to live apart for an additional two months, at which time they were transferred to a three-bedroom house in Chinatown provided by Toronto Housing Connections, where the family had been living for over a year at the time of the interview. Between Settlement and Home Mr. Hamid rates the house as a 9/10, although they share three bedrooms and one bathroom amongst the 6 family members. Mr. Hamid’s housing history is summarised in Table 8.2. Since coming to Canada, Mr. Hamid says he has had no housing problems to overcome. He does, however, feel financially constrained between paying for his children’s transportation and the utility bills on the house. When he was housed from the shelter, it was unaffordable since the rent was $25 above welfare’s housing allowance for single people, $325. This meant that he is forced to use 13 percent of his personal needs allowance toward rent, which made it difficult to manage other needs like transportation and food.

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Table 8.2 Mr.Hamid’s Housing History LOCATION

TYPE

COST/ INCOME -/$112pcm 0% Hostel Personal Needs Allowance (PNA) $350/325 108% Welfare SA

1

6m

Sherbourne/ Jarvis

Shelter

2

7m

Dundas/ Pembroke

Privately Let Flat in House

3

2 y

Sherbourne/ Dundas

Social Housing Flat in Building

$109/325 33.5% Welfare SA

4

13m

Gerrard/ Broadview

Social Housing Row House

$236/673 35% Welfare SA

EVALUATION 7/10 Receiving lots of help but people not good, some drunk people and bad people, no freedom 8/10 Had a lot of freedom but same kind of bad people 9/10 Nice place, but neighbourhood still bad

REASON TO MOVE Counsellors found a place

Counsellors found a place

Family reunited, Counsellors found a place

9/10 Quiet and peaceful, children complain about one washroom and size of bedrooms

Food banks act as a non-governmental “top-up” to social assistance benefits or minimum-wage incomes, and serve 60,000 people every month in Toronto (Food and Hunger Action Committee, 2000). Mr. Hamid summarised his settlement experience in Canada, and emphasised the kindness and generosity of the Canadian system and their minimal economic standard: Seaton House, they worked a lot for me and I became Convention Refugee, and the judge was kind, and after, I got my landed and I sponsored my family and now I have my family. I had for the first years of my life, housing I lived in Seaton House they found for the shelter for pay, after six months, they found other house for me, very cheap paying, the housing—a bachelor. After my family join to me, they find this house for me. I just pay for this three bedroom $236. I like Canada very much, I don’t know if all of the refugee people be like this, they are very lucky, but you know that the economic situation is not enough for us, but we are very happy.

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Mr. Hamid said that accommodation could be a home if one had a good time and good family relations, and it was a place in which one could think. It could be even more of a home if it was a house, not an apartment, and owned, not rented, so that one was in control of the environment. Mr. Hamid interpreted ownership to mean stability, security, and permanence, while renting was associated with a lack of control, freedom, rights and responsibility. Mr. Hamid believed people did not “choose” to rent, but did so because they are unable to afford to own. In the future, he said he hoped to purchase his own house in the city, but for now he feels at home because he has “freedom and a yard.”

Between Home and Homelessness What Home Is The interview began with my asking Mr. Hamid what he considered home, and he said it was place that gave him confidence and in which people had access to the same benefits, or equal opportunity, “…the meaning of home for me is a place located, that gives me confidence, and the other thing is a home means a lot of people live in the area they have just the same benefit in this place.” In addition, Mr. Hamid considered his family relationship to be the most important factor in feeling at home in Canada. He explained that it was for his children that he came to Canada, so they could make a home. Where Home Is For Mr. Hamid, home is not something that grows on you, it cannot develop from one’s immersion in a place; rather, the environment is crucial for cultivating home and affecting one’s mindset, feelings of security, inclusion, and social understanding. For example, he lived for nearly 10 years in Pakistan prior to arriving in Canada, but that time did not make Pakistan feel like a home. In contrast, he was in Canada just a few months before he began to feel it was a home to him. Despite having an ethnic and linguistic advantage in his region of origin, society and politics continued to make Mr. Hamid feel separate and different. On the other hand, his experience of Canada’s commitment to human rights and equality reflected his ideals and made him feel like he belonged. Another important difference between Pakistan and Canada was that the former was temporary in Mr. Hamid’s plans, and so despite the length of his residence there, he did not integrate into the society. In contrast, he

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intended that Canada would be his family’s home and he set his mind on making that happen. A sense of home at all levels included family unity, permanence, security, belonging, and freedom. The same variables that made a residential dwelling a homemade Toronto, and Canada, feel like a home, but Mr. Hamid also called Toronto his “house” because, like a residential dwelling, it was a place of “shelter and comfort”, it provided protection and respite from the “outside world” and offered a site within which a sense of home could be constructed. Mr. Hamid used the terms house and home as metaphors, turning the ambiguity of the terms and their subjectivity into words that reflected his psychological state and feelings about Toronto and Canada. With regards to the national scale, Mr. Hamid said that Canada was a home compared with Afghanistan because it was a “positive country” and a peaceful place without discrimination, where education and healthcare, essentials for human development, were free. At the eternal spiritual level, Afghanistan was his homeland because the connection to the country of origin flows much deeper than its government, services, and even peace. Afghanistan was where his relatives were born and buried, and where he was born, something he said he could not ignore and could never forget. At the scale of the City, Mr. Hamid said he felt there was mutual understanding, and he shared values with Canadian society and Toronto as a community. This was epitomised by public libraries, which seemed to be the cornerstone of all neighbourhoods in Toronto, but were banned in Afghanistan. In Canada, Mr. Hamid is not focussed on fulfilling his own career ambitions, but rather on nurturing his sons’ development and education. At this point in his life, he is more concerned about his healthcare. The formal network Mr. Hamid tapped into offered access to social services and welfare and provided a surrogate for informal networks, friends and family. Like Berhane, in the UK, who fought for change in his country of origin, Mr. Hamid is similarly grateful to Canada for investing in his well-being despite having no history of participation or contribution to the country. This generosity has stimulated a sense of loyalty to the liberal democratic welfare state, making both men want to do what they can for their adopted countries, which have proved themselves worthy of the title “home”.

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Compared with Mr. Hamid, Ryad’s experience in Toronto illustrates a sense of injustice from a high-level of expectation, and a chronic struggle to retain long-term accommodation and access social housing. Although both men arrived the same year and began their Canadian housing careers in the Toronto shelter system, Ryad was still waiting to access social housing. Three factors may have contributed to the differences in their ability to exit the shelter and attain social housing: first, Mr. Hamid was perceived as vulnerable because of his age, physical health, and psychological trauma; second, reunification with his large family consisting of four dependent children was imminent; and third, he placed himself in the hands of shelter staff, a recent strategy for Ryad, reinforcing gatekeepers’ perception of his vulnerability, and justifying his deservingness as a political asylum seeker rather than an economic migrant. Mr. Hamid arrives in Canada completely homeless, without a place to live and without social contacts in the city, he spends his first few months in a men’s shelter. His sense of home increases with his initial move out of the shelter and into his first flat; however, systemic delays in family reunification prolonged his worries. It is not until his wife and sons arrive in the country that Mr. Hamid’s sense of home takes an upturn. This is despite his stepped improvements in housing. During his subsistence phase, Mr. Hamid allowed the shelter system to support his needs, link him to welfare, and assist in his housing search. During his perseverance phase, Mr. Hamid continued his association with the shelter, which helped to support his basic needs, and his struggle to have his family reunited in Canada. Protracted delays gave him a sense of disillusionment, but this disappeared when his family arrived. Despite the near convergence of house and home in the transcendent phase of settlement and integration, Mr. Hamid’s full sense of home is hampered by his reversal of fortune and status, about which he is sometimes nostalgic. In comparing his trajectories to Berhane’s (Chapter Seven), Mr. Hamid was missing his family as a pre-condition for stability, while Berhane is missing housing. On receiving this housing, I expect that Berhane’s trajectory will resemble Mr. Hamid’s.

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3. Sham Background Sham was 42 years old and a refugee from Iran with Convention refugee status in Toronto. She fled Iran in 2000 with the younger of her two sons (12 years old); the older (17 years old) had been called to fulfil his national service duties. She also left behind her social status, political activism, and relatives. In the following quote, Sham offers a glimpse of the circumstances she left behind in Iran: [I]n my country, my husband’s family were rich and we didn’t have problems financially. My second husband was same as me, sick because he was in jail ten years. When the government killed my first husband, I married ten years later to my brother-in-law. Every time I’m thinking of women’s problems. I was a writer for a magazine but when I was so young the government put me and my family in jail. I was accepted as an engineer in University, and my son the same has problems because last year he was accepted but the government don’t let him.

Instead of attending University for Engineering, Sham married. Her husband was a doctor, and she was a housewife and their relationship was good. When her husband became increasingly critical of the government, Sham became a gender activist and began to write and publish articles. But soon thereafter, her circumstances changed, and a chain of events led to her gender persecution and flight for asylum. For some time the couple believed that the family was under surveillance, and shortly after this suspicion, her husband was detained by authorities. Subsequent to her appeals to the government, she was told to attend the facility on the occasion of her husband’s release from jail. Arriving with her youngest son to take her husband home, they became witness to his hanging before they themselves were taken into custody. Mother and child were held for 10 days until her husband’s family secured her release. As a means of protection, it was arranged that she would marry her brother-in-law, a decision that was enforced by her father-in-law who, along with her new husband/former brother-in-law, blamed her for her husband’s death. After the marriage, she was beaten on a regular basis. The beatings were brutal: her skull had multiple fractures, her jaw was broken, her eardrum shattered. She recalled one time her father-in-law jumped on her head. She had exchanged government persecution for domestic torture, and would likely have been killed had she not fled.

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At the time of the interview, Sham and her son were living in a onebedroom apartment in the upper-story of a multiple-occupancy house. She received social assistance and did not work, but was active in a women’s writing circle where she often spoke about her experiences in Iran. She was proud of her involvement in this group, and hoped one day to write the story of her happy childhood. Her English was poor to satisfactory, but she insisted she did not need an interpreter. Between Arrival and a Decision This is a glimpse of what Sham was fleeing from, but what did she think she was fleeing to? Sham’s biggest shock was the disjuncture between her expectations of Canada before arrival and the realities of being in Canada. Sham thought she would be arriving to a “…paradise and everything would good for me and my children.” Her sister and brother-in-law greeted her at Pearson International Airport and Sham and her son stayed with them and their two children in their three-bedroom townhouse for nine months. This was the beginning of Sham’s housing trajectory in Canada and, according to Sham, it was the worst place she had ever lived. For nine months, Sham and her sister shared a bed, and although this arrangement was fine at first, the atmosphere in the household quickly deteriorated. Sham’s young son bore the brunt of household tensions, receiving verbal and emotional abuse from his Aunt and Uncle. Sham said prior to arrival in Toronto, she thought her sister and family “had everything,” but on arrival she realised that they were working too much, and their house was, “…not a place to live.” Sham’s brother in-law was a social worker at a shelter; but what seemed to be an invaluable resource was actually another barrier. Although he helped her to make her refugee claim, subsequent attempts to get information from him about the progress of her refugee claim and where to go for advice were rebuffed, and she was advised against seeking outside assistance. Encouraged by a counsellor at CCVT, Sham moved out of her sister’s place and into a basement flat in a house. In her new flat, she had more freedom, but found that she became profoundly depressed, cried all the time, and started to become sick. Soon after Sham discovered she had

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cancer. She described this as the beginning of very dark times but thought it was better for her son’s sake that they lived independently. After seven months, Sham and her son moved to her current flat, where she had been living for almost two years (Table 8.3). Table 8.3 Sham’s Housing History LOCATION

TYPE

COST/ INCOME

EVALUATION

1 9m

Bathurst/ Lawrence

-/-

2 7m

Donlands/ Mortimer

3 bdrm rowho use shared with 5 people 1 bdrm baseme nt flat in house

3 22m

Donlands/ Mortimer

1 bdrm flat in MOH

$800/511 [157%] Welfare SA TI $1107

1/10 Very bad, worse especially for son, unsafe 2/10 Freedom without pressure Depressed, sick 3/10 A little better, but very poor health

$375/511 [73%] Welfare SA TI $957

REASON TO MOVE On advice from NGO to qualify for legal aid Referral from counsellor at CCVT

Waiting for social housing

She received her Convention Refugee status just a few months prior to this interview, and had applied for permanent residence. Sham also made an application for social housing, which included letters from her doctors about her inability to manage stairs because of the nausea, headaches and seizures associated with her cancer treatment, and dampness aggravating her arthritis and broken bones. She included statements in her application about her inability to afford the rent for her flat because of outstanding debts to her immigration lawyer and dentist, the latter was needed to set her teeth and jaw as a result of torture in her country of origin. But the wait for housing was a huge problem for her, and she was upset that the housing department was not taking her medical situation into account. Sham’s housing history has had a detrimental cumulative effect on her health while making incremental improvement in housing quality and overall satisfaction.

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From Convention Status to Settlement Sham evaluated her housing satisfaction based on her son’s health and well-being, but she recognized that he was very sensitive to her increasingly poor health. She described herself as being under tremendous financial pressures and under emotional pressure to make up for her son’s traumas and displacement from his home, family and friends: We have too much financial problems. I believe that the Canadian government maybe want to help people but I don’t know why the government don’t do that anything for housing people […] and my son actually right now has gone into a depression and he always cries and tells me, mom I’m not crazy I’m not stupid I just want something basic in life, and I think it’s true, but I can’t do anything, for instance I can’t by winter shoes for him, so he goes everyday with broken shoes, and then he comes back and I tell him everyday tomorrow tomorrow we will buy, but my rent is so high […]. When my son came home and wanted from me something and I can’t do anything for him it is the same torture. My friends here help me […] and now I have a loan more than $3000 dollars and I pay every month $150 dollars[…].

The burden of poverty was stressful for Sham and exacerbated her psychological guilt and ill health. The torture and persecution that she and her children faced in Iran had been embedded in her current experience of destitution: not being able to give her son a better life was a genuine form of emotional torture for Sham that she struggled to reconcile with her income and necessities. She was disturbed by second-guessing the decisions she made in life that led her to these circumstances: Everytime I am alone in the house and I have too much bad memories because I was in jail for a long time with my son. My son was three years old-- and when I sit at home I’m thinking about my problems and everything and I can’t relax[…] because sometimes I get bad dreams. I every time saw this same hanging, torture, voices and I hear my son’s voice and he’s shouting “help, help!”, and I can’t do anything. My bigger son is still in Iran and I don’t have any money to send to him so he can come outside from my country. Every time I am thinking that it’s my fault, and this idea is bothering me too much, because I was opposition [to the government] and it was my life and I lose everything about myself, and after that I had two sons and I don’t know why they had to be tortured.

She felt her decisions were the cause of her young son’s depression. She was unable to mask their poverty from her son and he begged her to allow him to find a job to help support them: “this everytime breaks my heart.” In turn, she pleaded with him to concentrate on his education and not

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earning money; but he was insistent, and she was desperate, and the situation was unresolved. Her world was a nightmare, and it was still filled with uncertainty since she had been unable to secure her eldest son’s exit from Iran, she was unable to afford her accommodation despite receiving the maximum housing allowance, she felt unable to mitigate the pressure and depression her young son was experiencing, and she was struggling to cope with her compounded illnesses. Each of these was directly related to Sham’s refugeeness: her persecution, flight, and settlement, especially as related to treating symptoms of her physical and psychological torture in Iran. Sham’s description of her current accommodation and neighbourhood, and her aspirations for social housing were associated with her persecution because the place was too small, inappropriate for her illness and impaired mobility, and its darkness brought back memories of jail. Sham liked the area she lived in because, “[…] here it’s so quiet and no one bothers us and no bad voices, shouting, and never say anyone noisy, and it’s close to downtown and everything. I’m going to more than four hospitals and have had two surgeries, ear and mastectomy.” Although quiet and close to hospitals, Sham said the flat was far from shops, far from friends, small and the stairs were hazardous to her health. Sham had submitted an application for social housing and was desperate to move from her current accommodation into new, safer, and brighter surroundings, but she had been waiting for nearly two years despite supporting documentation from her psychologist, counsellors, GP, and oncologist. Priority placement in social housing is given only when personal or family safety is at risk, because of abuse by someone they live with in a familial relationship and for persons with terminal illnesses, while all others are placed on a centralised waiting list (Toronto Social Housing Connections, Quarterly Activity Report, April – June 2003). It is unclear how the City defines “terminal illness”, but Sham’s cancer history seemed to be excluded. From Settlement to Home Their current flat was large enough, although Sham’s son did not have the security or confidence to sleep on his own. Sham had strong opinions on what she needed to feel secure and well in new accommodation: I like building because every time I am scared from my back and I’m thinking that somebody is at my back and maybe he will kick me or hit me.

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Every time I am worried about house because around house is always empty, but a building is not the same because every house is close together. This is my feeling. I don’t know. Every time I go outside, too much too much I follow my back and I’m worried about that. Every time I stay at home. I am afraid of outside, I want to enjoy inside the home. [...]Every time I want to stay at home and enjoy friends and enjoy together.

Sham’s housing preference was an extension of her physical insecurity: not knowing from where her attackers might come. Consequently she wanted to live under the protection of neighbours rather than in an isolated house, which could be approached from behind. Although she was unsure about the nature of the high-rise building, she was certain that what existed outside of it was dangerous. Sham came to Canada believing she could rely on her already-established kinship ties but this assistance was limited. Instead, she received help from the Provincial Government in terms of social welfare, education, and healthcare. However, Sham was frustrated by her constant struggle and isolation in the asylum and housing process, and said she alone was her greatest asset throughout her flight and settlement experience. She rated the help of CCVT as 10/10 in terms of providing her with housing help and advice, counselling, and emotional and psychological support, but she revealed frustration with other NGOs such as “Neighbourhood Services” and “Housing Help Centres” because they were unable to facilitate prioritisation of her claim on the social housing waiting list, and therefore provided neither a neighbourhood service or housing help. The challenges Sham faced on a daily basis had formulated an evaluation of services that highlighted personal agency as the most significant force of change in her life. Between Home and Homelessness What Home Is Sham’s obsession with housing was an obsession with safety and security. When asked what the word home meant to her, Sham said it was a place to live that was comfortable and relaxing because she could not venture outside with confidence: Home means for me--it’s so important because every time I stay at home, I can’t go outside, I can’t go to job, I can’t go to ESL class. Home means for me so big and large word, every time I stay home. Every time I make food and everything at home, this is our culture, and every time my friends and family come here, we don’t go outside for fun, every time we make our fun

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at home. My son is twelve and there’s no place to me and my son for homework and I want to sleep.

Sham’s world revolved around the household, but in her accommodation in Toronto she was trapped because of her disabilities, inability to function with the stairs, and to feel comfortable and safe outside of the dwelling. The dwelling was also uncomfortable for her son. As a result of these things Sham felt like she did not have a home and at another scale she talked about feelings of dislocation in Canada, in a culture where “people do not live together,” which made her self-conscious about her foreignness and look back with nostalgia at her life, and social networks, in Iran. Sham’s place of comfort and familiarity was located in Iranian culture, a sense of community, and the naturalness of social relations. In Canada she found only laws, which were an impediment as much as a help. On the other hand she respected Canada for the equality between newcomers and citizens. But Canadian laws were delaying reunification with her older son, and at a local level, regulations were delaying her access to social housing. Where Home Is When asked whether she could ever think of Canada as a home, Sham said, “no, just Toronto, not Canada.” When asked if she would like to make Canada her home, she said she was not thinking about that and it “doesn’t matter.” When asked if the amount of time spent in a place affects whether it becomes home, she said, “place matters, the conditions, jail, affects people more than time,” just as the poor quality of her apartment affects her health. These questions, however, were unimportant. They were reductionist and abstract, and Sham said: “I don’t know, never I’m thinking about that, just need some place for me and my son to be relaxed there. Because I don’t have any time for thinking.” In a Maslovian sense, Sham’s environment has created obstacles to fulfilling basic needs. The absence of appropriate shelter, and struggle to attain it, her child’s depression and her struggle to cure it, her dietary and health requirements and her struggle to meet them intersected to create barriers to the actualisation of her human capital and potential. Sham’s goal in life was to help others, but she realised that she had been so occupied with meeting her basic needs and navigating gatekeepers that she had neglected efforts toward improving herself. For example, she had been unable to attend English classes since arriving in Canada. Although Sham wanted to improve her language skills to help people, talk to other Canadians, and her son’s friends, she had spent her days appealing for

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appropriate housing, attending to her health, and ultimately struggling for her and her son’s survival. Nevertheless, her willingness and drive constituted the agency that drove her to continue her writing, speak in public about her flight and persecution, and to remain a strong and vocal advocate for equality between people. Finally, Sham showed me two embroidered plaques that she had created, which symbolised feelings of being at home. She provided a translation from the Arabic: This is poem about life. Life needs something hot, like fire, and if you are active life will warm. And this poem says: that day is tomorrow and tomorrow is so light, and every day is tomorrow. It means, think about the future not the past, because if you think too much about the past you stay in the past and it is not good.

This was a permanent reminder that the struggle for home was hers to continue, and with her potential and will, she could achieve her life’s aspirations—if only the system would cooperate.

Reflections and Summary Refugees are people that take chances. They look for new opportunities and are willing to do things that other people are not willing to do. And bring therefore daring, ingenuity, a sense of courage, which I think enriches our country [Rabbi Gunther Plaut, “Strangers Becoming

Us,” radio programme]. Active citizenship is about choosing one’s way of living, having the capability to actualise those choices, and experiencing the ontological security of “being in place” or belonging that is produced. Citizenship and integration, therefore is a process, and the role of government policies on integration is to build bridges between “human doings” and “human beings”: supporting refugees’ ability to provide for themselves and their future in society and the idea of empowered, as opposed to passive, citizenship. The process of integration has various stages, from meeting basic needs, to developing social connections and expanded networks, to participating and transforming society as an insider. For some refugees, these may not be consecutive stages, but concurrent pursuits. However, systems may pose barriers between refugees’ agency and “higher” stages of integration. Just as Maslow suggested that having one’s basic needs met was a requisite to optimise socialisation, personal development,

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spirituality, and creativity, Beiser (1987) demonstrated that in periods of extreme stress, refugees focus on the present to the exclusion of the past and future. Similarly, Beiser (1987) has shown that nostalgia, or looking back, is detrimental to one’s progress in the country of asylum, and this is often generated by unmet expectations, and the inability to achieve one’s goals beyond the basics of safety and security. For Ryad, home was something to be achieved, worked towards, and it was about achieving ordinariness in society. Similarly Mr. Hamid valued equality. However, while Ryad felt his immigration status and nationality were discriminated against, Mr. Hamid recognized that homelessness was a condition that affected Canadian-born people and newcomers, and similarly he was eligible for social housing and welfare rates equivalent to those of Canadian-born people. Rather than feel discriminated against, Mr. Hamid felt that this epitomised the Canadian ideal of equality and multiculturalism. Unlike Ryad, Mr. Hamid was planning for his children’s future, rather than his own, and his housing history consisted of 7 months on the private rental market in the 4 years he was in Canada overall. Both men had left the shelter system on receipt of welfare; however due to Mr. Hamid’s age, health problems, difficulty with language, and pending family reunification, shelter staff prioritised his housing needs, and it was through them that he attained social housing. After spending time in and out of the housing and labour market, Ryad was also trying the homeless shelter as a strategy to access social housing. At the time of the interview, of the 5 people who were currently housed in social housing, two were over 50 years old with large families, two had arrived as unaccompanied minors, and all five had experienced homelessness in the shelter system. By contrast, Sham was tolerating unaffordable housing that was inappropriate to her health needs, and rather than enter the shelter system she had taken out loans to keep herself afloat. Due to her physical condition and mental health, she refused to take less expensive housing in a basement apartment because her earlier experience was traumatising. Both she and her son were attending counselling at the centre for victims of torture; however, the organization’s advocacy did not influence her position on the housing register. In a system of uncertain vulnerability, where her child’s health was not a priority, Sham was prolonging her instability by relying on her personal agency rather than the bridging capital of the shelter system that might have provided the link she needed to social housing. As a result of her housing stress, Sham transposed her anxiety, depression, and trauma on the present, describing her inability to

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buy her son a sense of sameness to his peers (through clothes, games, treats, and an allowance) as “the same torture” she experienced in Iran. Moreover, she was so engaged in meeting her basic needs that she did not have time for language classes or, for instance, thinking about whether she was interested in making Canada a home. The case studies reveal a number of common structural issues that affect refugees in Toronto, and which are resolved differently in the UK. In the UK, asylum seekers are not entitled to work. On making the asylum claim, asylum seekers are eligible to apply for NASS housing and subsistence support, and can choose to accept the latter, if they are in need, without accepting the former. By accepting subsistence support only, they can remain in London and make their own housing arrangements (Charles), most often with friends or family, until their claims are determined; or if accepting NASS accommodation they are housed in dispersal areas for the duration of the claim (Berhane). On receiving refugee status, UK refugees also receive entitlement to mainstream benefits and to enter the labour market. At this point they are in competition for affordable rental accommodation with other beneficiaries, a challenge that asylum seekers in Canada face from day one. In Canada, asylum seekers normally get permission to work, or they can apply for mainstream benefits, and they are eligible to apply for social housing. However, if an asylum seeker is living with relatives, they are not eligible for support (not even vouchers), and although they are eligible to work, if they cannot find work or their health prevents them from working, they are unable to support themselves or contribute to the household (Sham), often exemplifying the overcrowded and stressed conditions of hidden homelessness. In applying for welfare, an asylum seeker may be able to remain in the vicinity of their social networks, however, the application takes time, and during this period many asylum seekers enter the homeless shelter system. Receipt of welfare is their pathway out of the shelter system. The reality is that voucher support, though it has its injustices, does allow people the choice to remain with family, but conversely it may be argued that it prolongs hidden homelessness and places a financial and emotional strain on both the asylum-seeking and host households. However, options are important, and perhaps if a person was unable to find comfortable or affordable rental accommodation in Toronto with welfare, there could be an alternative system of federalmunicipal funded housing support for the period of determination of the claim. While NASS support and banning employment does not give

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people a choice to find market housing on mainstream benefits or give them access to social housing in London, a lack of such a support service in Ontario does not give people the safety net of government provided transitional accommodation. Many asylum seekers may not have family or friends on which they can rely. On making the claim for asylum and support in the UK, people are immediately housed, first in refugee-specific transit or emergency accommodation, and then in dispersal accommodation. In Canada, however, asylum seekers’ only option is homeless shelters, which can be traumatic for people who had never imagined homelessness as part of their asylum-settlement trajectory. There are limited refugee shelter spaces, consequently refugees who become homeless depend on mainstream homeless shelters and are helped alongside Canadian-born homeless people. This is a short-term solution to immediate housing need. However, unlike the transitional support of NASS, homeless shelters in Toronto may be a pathway to housing for some. Others, like Sham suffer a protracted wait in inadequate shelter. In a system with a supply shortage, narrow definitions of vulnerability can overlook people with severe needs, who if they were in the UK would be housed in Council housing or by registered social landlords. While 17 percent of respondents in Toronto were in social housing, in London 57 percent of people were identified as vulnerable households with children, persons with disabilities, or as unaccompanied youth, and housed by housing associations or councils. Finally, in Canada, multiculturalism and citizenship in a country of immigrants created unmet expectations shattered by a reality of long waits for the asylum decision, staged citizenship, permanent resident ‘cards’, distinctions in the NI numbers of asylum seekers and others, citizenship tests, ceremonies, and discrimination, all of which made some refugees feel like lesser and unwelcome migrants. In conclusion, rather than re-state in specifics the inter-play of personal characteristics with housing, which is clearly illustrated in Chapter Six, this discussion Chapter focussed on the ways in which structure shaped people’s choices and influenced their housing outcomes. In Canada the dissonance between houselessness and homelessness is not as stark as in the UK because asylum seekers have a degree of choice in where to live, how to spend their money, and because more equality is built into the system. Whereas in the UK an asylum seeker may be dispersed beyond the limits of her social networks, asylum seekers in Canada have to make their

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own ways, and they do this through a web of formal ties. Asylum seekers may suffer in poor housing conditions and the least desirable units and neighbourhoods, but they have a right to choose to live anywhere in Canada, or if on welfare, anywhere in the Province. This means that refugees’ agency is the engine of change amidst the constraints of the rental market.

CHAPTER NINE THE CANADIAN VIEW FROM ABOVE: AN INSTITUTIONAL OVERVIEW OF SELECT ORGANIZATIONS1 MANAGING THE ARRIVAL, SETTLEMENT AND INTEGRATION

The previous Chapters examined the re-orientation of home at a local and personal scale amongst refugees in London and Toronto stressing the agency of the individual. In this chapter, a macro-level response to immigration is presented to situate refugees’ voices in the perspectives of key-informant officials. The chapter is intended to show the views and perspectives of state actors on the issues of asylum and integration. Due to the limitations set out in Chapter Three, which restricted access to officials in the UK, this chapter presents the institutional perspective within Canada. Beyond the interests of individuals, the interests of the state are crucial to understanding why the tradition of asylum amongst states has continued. States are not altruistic in this humanitarian tradition (Smith, 1993; Schuster, 2003; Kushner and Knox, 1999; London, 2000; Paul, 1998), and research has shown that the institution of asylum is a benefit to granting states primarily because it serves states’ claims to be liberal and democratic (Schuster, 2003, p. 24). Complementing and extending the discussion in Chapter Four, this chapter is a snapshot of the official perspective on immigration and asylum in a contemporary context and constitutes a structural response to asylum, settlement and refugee homelessness. It privileges the federal level of government throughout to contrast with the direct involvement of the UK government in the support of asylum seekers. Since the Canadian government is not directly involved with asylum seekers, but does involve 1 Opinions expressed by interviewees are not necessarily those of the organizations.

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itself with support for sponsored refugees, this chapter asks, “what is the relationship of the federal government to asylum, and how do other layers of government fill its gap?”

Structure and agency in politics and experience Structure and agency are dualities instantiated in social practice and integral to individuals’ experiences. The structure of social systems is defined as their rules and resources but structure is not external to the individual (Giddens, 1984) and in Chapters 6-8, the settlement and homelessness experiences of refugees in Toronto and London exemplify the impact of structure on people’s lived realities over time and space. Chapters 6-8 also illustrate how “one person’s constraint is another’s enabling” (p 176). To complement and build upon that analysis, this chapter gives voice to actors who maintain and reproduce the institutional structures that control the arrival, determination, settlement and integration of refugees at various geo-political scales. The case of Toronto is used as an example to demonstrate the interrelatedness of scales, and to raise questions about the scope and power of actors within institutions responding to asylum seekers and refugees. It is only by examining the relationship between human agency and social structure that the pathways of refugees can be contextualised. Although institutional actors do not create social systems, they do reproduce and transform them. The key informant perspectives illustrate the role and constraints of the structures that operate within multiple systems and through ‘time-space edges’ (Giddens, 1984). These edges can be applied to the overlapping and contested jurisdictions of refugee settlement and homelessness in Canada, at the levels of the Federal, Provincial and Municipal governments. Although this chapter is not intended to be an institutional ethnography (see Mountz, 2004), it offers multi-level viewpoints that emphasise scale as a relationship amongst integrated stakeholders with varying degrees of power to respond to global processes with local practices. Two themes emerge from the key informant interviews: the first is the securitization of the asylum process and the asylum seeker as a threat to national security; the second is the blurring of jurisdictional responsibility, which can result in gaps in the safety net and settlement services for newcomers. While the Prime Minister asserts the importance of immigration to nation-building in Canada’s past and future, immigration is

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also seen as a prospective security threat which weakens national social cohesion through the cultural “othering” from the normative white AngloSaxon identity (Anderson, 1998). Regarding jurisdictional responsibility, within the state and its ministries, departments and agencies, the segregation of functions and rigidity of order within the structures and their relationships can create disorder (Giddens, 1984, p. 134), and this can be amplified or ameliorated by local institutions. However, the disorder resulting from the rigidity of local institutions was also reflected in refugees’ frustration with the highly segregated functions and services of settlement organizations, which, though not a direct cause of underhousing or houselessness, reportedly did not improve people’s residential situations, and were often viewed as an obstacle to settlement rather than a help (Chapters 6-8). These issues are important to settlement and homelessness because, generally speaking, just as securitization of Canada’s borders can affect access to the asylum process, jurisdictional boundaries can affect access to resources and functional integration, and both can have an indirect effect on the affective integration of newcomers, their sense of home, belonging, homelessness or exclusion, which in turn affects the impact of immigration on society as a whole. This chapter takes as its starting point the idea that states view social phenomena with a different perspective than the individual, local organizations or NGOs. At one extreme, Scott describes states as “systematic cyclopean” (Scott, 1998, p. 264), while in a more tempered description of the state’s view he says, “…officials of the modern state are, of necessity, at least one step—and often several steps—removed from the society they are charged with governing” (Scott, 1998, p. 77). However, because of the differences in perspective, the state only functions when undergirded by local institutions and public informal life (Ibid., 1998); and although local and federal institutions can productively question one another’s effectiveness, in the short term disagreement about approaches and policies can have a bearing on people’s lives. For example, the distribution of information for asylum seekers at Toronto’s international airport, managed today by the Red Cross and partners as the First Contact Project, was prohibited by government edict until 2002. Although “…officials apprehend and shape legality and illegality, immigrant categories, and other synoptic categories, which are a point of departure for the state’s view of reality” (Ibid., 1998, p. 83), state actors are themselves also constrained by these categories and the goals of the systems within which they function. The remainder of this chapter

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examines the securitization of immigration since 9/11, the issue of jurisdictional cooperation and non-cooperation between the three levels of government in Canada, and Canadian key informants’ perceptions of UK asylum policies.

I. Home free or not: securitization and exclusion after 9/11 We begin by examining the effects of the events on September 11th, 2001. We will look at the direct effect and indirect racial effects on both asylum seekers and their settlement. Having examined this, we will look at key informant interviews with agents of the Federal and Municipal governments, intergovernmental NGOs, and national and local umbrella NGOs which were conducted in the ‘aftermath’ of 9/11. From these we will examine both the ameliorating and detrimental effects on settlement. First we will look at the issues of securitization and immigration, which is unique to the Federal level of government and which sets the rules on acceptability. Who the state excludes is as important as who it includes (Chapter Four), so the issues of who is entitled to claim asylum, enter Canada, and become Canadian are important. The globalisation of terror since 9/11 (Rojecki, 2005) questioned and challenged, in practical and philosophical ways, the benefit of ease of transportation and communication across borders; the social networks of citizens; the meaning and limitations of citizenship; the dynamics of identity, loyalty and belonging; and the meaning of integration in a network society. Each of these, in turn, affects recent arrivals: limiting their ability to travel and communicate back home, restricting those willing to accept them, greater exclusion restricting them from achieving a positive decision which could lead to citizenship, and limiting asylum seekers’ interactions with society upon arrival, particularly in seeking housing. The 9/11 attacks on the US resurrected in Canada the language of the “enemy alien” and fear of the foreigner, which was largely unprecedented since the internment of people of Japanese ancestry in Canada in 1942. The psychological toll of being defined as the enemy of one’s place of birth, residence, or adopted homeland is as destructive to a group as the legislation that seizes property, freezes assets and physically excludes (Kobayashi, 1987). As harmful as these are for citizens and permanent residents, this label can only complicate and further restrict the efforts of refugees in their attempts to integrate into society and seek housing.

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Schuster (2003) argues that governments attempt to control borders for two reasons, neither of which justify exclusion: the financial burden of immigrants and immigrants’ threat to national identity, both of which she claims are fundamentally racist positions (pp 254-255). Immigrants have been constructed and perceived to be “parasites” on countries’ welfare systems (Freeman and Loeb, 1994) and threats to peace and security (Clarkson, 2002). Consideration of the immigration security nexus is necessary when imagining a borderless world, because not all people who portray themselves to be forced migrants are vulnerable, or victims of persecution, or desirous of making a home in a new country; rather some may hold violent political ideologies, and intend to foster, spread, or actualise them. Diligence, therefore, requires governments to debate the issue in the context of strategic planning, because they have a duty to protect their citizens as well as a commitment to the politically displaced, and these need not be antithetical to each other (Harvey, 2002, p. 2). Ultimately, determining migrants’ intentions for the future may be as important as determining their circumstances for leaving their countries of origin, and I would argue this is not an essentially racist position (c.f. Schuster, 2003), but a necessary consideration for countries with immigration and asylum systems2. The line of thinking that links migrants’ plural or divided loyalties, national and cultural identities, or senses of duty and belonging with riots, terrorism or threats to national security is as racist as it is a “commonsense” notion, both its racism and its plausibility arising from the essentialisation and stereotyping of groups of individuals, (see for example Enoch Powell, 1968; Anderson, B., 1983; Gilroy, 1987). Since 9/11 this line of thought has been emboldened by Al-Qaeda’s calls for Muslims, including those who live in the West, to destroy America3. Therefore, 2

The ethics of borders and national exclusion is beyond the remit of this chapter and this research, however, some academics have argued that immigration and asylum systems themselves are racist as well as inhumane (see Carens, 1987, 2000; Hayter, 2000; Bauder, 2003; Schuster, 2003). 3 “Oh youth of Islam everywhere… jihad is your duty and rightness is your path. …our Prophet and leader (peace be upon him) said that were it not too hard for Muslims, he would join every invasion for the sake of Allah. He also said he wished he could join an invasion and be killed, invade and be killed and again invade and be killed. …You Muslims have to follow this path. …to those who have immigrated for the sake of Allah so that they may be killed for the sake of

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Schuster’s consideration of whether the exclusion of asylum seekers is common sense or racism ignores one of the most common-sense justifications for preclusion: national security. Post 9/11, the association of terrorist threats with asylum seekers and immigrants was ubiquitous and the rhetoric of suspicion and mistrust formulated discussions of barriers, perimeters and overseas interdiction as prophylaxes against the globalisation of terror. However, potential consequences of securitization for asylum seekers include refoulement, torture and death (Anderson, 1983; Schuster, 2003; Fekete, 2005). A traditional approach to national security was predominantly concerned with external military threats or internal terrorists. Since 9/11, however, this approach has expanded to include migrants and refugees whose movements are seen as a threat to peace and security in the West. One extension of this approach is that national identity becomes a matter of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ where boundaries are constructed between those who appear to belong and those who do not. The focus on this threat is called “over-foreignisation” (Huysmans, 1995, p. 31). Perceptions affect policies and therefore need to be accounted for, but Huysmans asks whether it appropriate to reinforce the interpretation of refugees as a security threat since, “accepting that people feel threatened need not mean accepting that this perception is justified” (p32). According to Huysmans the perception of the threat is not ‘natural’, but arises from a particular historical, economic and political context (Chapter Four) and the most appropriate state response is to challenge and correct the belief that the country is under siege. We will now examine two aspects of the policies of the Canadian Federal government: First, the historic Canadian principles, policies, and attitudes towards asylum seekers and the effects on these as a result of the necessary post-9/11 relationship and cooperation with the United States. This is examined through an interview with the Honourable Art Eggleton, and public statements from previous Prime Ministers. Second, we will examine how the post-9/11 relationships between securitisation and migration have forced the government to manage its humanitarian their religious faith. To those who have left their parents, their sons, their relatives and towns, I convey my greetings. …May Allah lead the hearts of our youth to the path of jihad, strengthen their hearts, give them courage, help them reach their targets and link their hearts in amity and unity” (www.aljazeera.net, Sunday 19 October 2003, message from Usama bin Ladin).

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obligations amidst a commitment to security in the region and the flow of trade. We will expand on this by looking at interviews with two CIC officials in Ottawa.4. Both demonstrate the fragmentation of approaches and ideas within the imagined monolith of Federal government, and the complexity of the machinations within the government, which are debated to produce coherent policies. In both cases, we will examine how the attitudes and actions of the Federal government both ameliorate and exacerbate the effects of 9/11, both on refugees’ general situation and more specifically, on their attempts to make Canada a home.

Balancing principles and international cooperation Among the key priorities of the foreign policy of any country are maintaining relationships and cooperation with other countries. As part of the North American continent, Canada shares—and is expected by the US to share—responsibility for continental security. The relationship between asylum and securitization of Canada’s borders was the main concern for former Defence Minister and member of Canadian Parliament, Art Eggleton5, especially in terms of introducing mechanisms to ensure the safety of Canadians and the integrity of immigration and refugee protection. On the issue of balancing national security and the right to claim asylum, Eggleton raised three main points: first, Canada’s shared border with the US gives the issue of security post 9/11 a sense of urgency and responsibility; second, Canada is concerned with the safety of the US partly because the US is its largest trading partner; finally, Canada is concerned with maintaining an asylum policy that reflects “Canadian values”, and this includes having an “open system”: …it is our hope as a policy entity that we can still treat people fairly and have an open system and give people the opportunity to express their story, and if it’s one that is deserving that that person be allowed to stay in the country. Now, that’s our policy but how this works out in practice, when you have these two things, at times perhaps colliding...only time will tell in terms of the practice of it. There is though, in this post-September 11th world, a lot more emphasis on security than before.

4

Director of the Asylum Division of the Refugee Branch and Director of Strategic Policy, CIC. 5 Liberal Member of Parliament (MP), Hon Art Eggleton served as a member of Toronto city council and Metropolitan Toronto council for twenty-two years, including eleven years as Toronto’s longest serving Mayor. He was appointed Minister of National Defence in 1997 and served in that position until 2002.

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Eggleton believes that the solution to finding a balance between securitization and access to Canada’s asylum process is, “…finding a system and the proper people to run a system…” that will distinguish between the deserving and undeserving claims for asylum, i.e. those who are eligible to access the system versus those who are security threats. Eggleton recognises that systems are not infallible, and the collision of policy and practice may result in collateral damage, which, says Eggleton, may be a “justifiable wrong”: …looking at the security-end of things …you might have systems that are more security oriented, and you could have some people falling in the cracks as a result of that—and we hope not. We don’t want that to happen. We want to treat people fairly, but there may be some period of time here where going through the additional security provisions will create some problems—It’s going to take some time to determine. Our intent is to keep on much the course that we’ve been at, except that we obviously have to be a little more vigilant about the people that are coming in in terms of the safety and security—and we always should have been, but 9/11, and given our relationship with the United States, we have to be even more so now, but we still want to be fair, and we still want to do it in the traditional Canadian way, not go toward the British way or towards the Australian way but in the typical traditional Canadian way as we have dealt with it.

Canada wants to be fair, but has to be vigilant. Whereas security may have been compromised in the country’s commitment to be open, compassionate, and welcoming, in the post-9/11 present and future, such ideals must be balanced with an immigration system that offers Canadians and Americans protection, safety and security. Key informants frequently referred to the policies of other countries, particularly the US, the UK and Europe, and Australia. The comparative frame of reference seemed an important justification for or against specific practices, and in this case, the British and Australian ways of managing immigration were criticised for their apparent regard for toughness rather than fairness. In addition, this quote illustrates the diplomatic function of securitization as an indicator of international cooperation against terrorism and acknowledgement of living in an international community. This is important because it relates to Canada’s relationship with the US, its role in the world and global situation. However, as demonstrated in Chapter Five, many asylum seekers use the US as the staging ground from which to enter Canada (Chapter Five), and consequently a safe-third country agreement means that more asylum seekers will be returned to the US than vice versa.

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According to Beare (2003), globalisation relates to migration, especially illegal migration, in three ways: “[It]…creates a shared world view of the threats and risks that countries (developed and less developed) face; to the extent that the risks are real/actual, the risks themselves are shared; globalization encourages and facilitates a shared response to these risks”. Although there are large variations in national responses to migration, globalisation creates an integrated multi-lateral response to asylum resulting from a common conception of illegal migrants as undeserving and as a threat to national stability. The pull towards integration was particularly strong in post-9/11 Canada-US relations, and maintaining an open border with the US was imperative for Canada’s economic health. As a result, the degree of harmonisation and coordination, especially in terms of asylum policy, became more of a preoccupation than it had been previously (Adelman, 2002). Consequently, Canada is squeezed between two goals. While the heterogeneity of the state is most evident when examining the jurisdictional edges of three layers of government in Canada, it is also evident in the divergence between state principles and practice, and the varied opinions of state actors. Eggleton believes a new system is needed in the post-9/11 world for Canada to be more vigilant toward national and global security. At another level, the Prime Minister’s statement to parliament immediately after the attacks on the US asserts a commitment to immigrants and immigration as a Canadian principle and, in terms of security, an assertion that Canada will remain vigilant. The following excerpt from Prime Minister Chrétien’s address to parliament immediately after the 9/11 attacks stresses that immigration and immigrants are an integral aspect of Canadian identity, which will not be jeopardised by calls for increased securitization of the state: If security has to be increased to protect Canadians it will be. We will remain vigilant but will not give in to the temptation in a rush to increase security to undermine the values that we cherish and which have made Canada a beacon of hope, freedom and tolerance in the world. We will not be stampeded in the hope, vain and ultimately selfdefeating, that we can make Canada a fortress against the world. Finally, I want to make another very important point. Canada is a nation of immigrants from all corners of the globe, people of all nationalities, colours and religions. This is who we are. Let there be no doubt. We will allow no one to force us to sacrifice our values or traditions under the pressure of urgent circumstances.

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We will continue to welcome people from the whole world. We will continue to offer refuge to the persecuted. I say again, no one will stop this6.

This is a powerful commitment to continued openness. Two thematic strands can be identified in the Prime Minister’s excerpt: the link between immigration and securitization, which he seeks to sever; and immigration as a “Canadian value”, which he identifies with “hope, freedom and tolerance” and seeks to protect. The Prime Minister’s statement situates Canada apart from the “fortress” nations, and the address was used to send a message to the Canadian public: sovereignty before economy; citizenry and humanity before security. Within the government, however, departments and agencies were busy evaluating the prospects of integrating systems with the US, sharing information, extending enforcement powers, and broadening policing capabilities.

Excluding “us” or “them” in the securitization/migration nexus? Rather than use 9/11 to justify the physical exclusion of prospective immigrants, in his address to parliament Chrétien refers to immigration as a centripetal force that can unify Canadians in the fight against terrorism. Vigilance, however, is central to both Eggleton and PM Chrétien’s direction for Canada’s immigration system. Chrétien acknowledges the link between the globalisation of terror and migration, but places more importance on maintaining the liberties that are essential to the development of a fair and just society than making Canada a “fortress against the world”. In his address to the House of Commons, he concedes that terrorists can seize upon key values, such as freedom and openness, to perpetrate acts of violence: Terrorists are not attached to any one country. Terrorism is a global threat. The perpetrators have demonstrated their ability to move with ease from country to country, from place to place, to make use of the freedom and openness of the victims on whom they prey, the very freedom and openness that we cherish and will protect (Ibid, Hansard, Chrétien, 17/09/01).

6 Edited Hansard, 37th Parliament, 1st Session, 79-1115, Monday, September 17, 2001, Right Hon. Jean Chrétien (Prime Minister, Lib.).

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Chrétien uses the Canadian immigration system as a symbol of openness and freedom, and a gate for terrorist activity, the latter being the consequence of the former. Even the most restrictive immigration system is defenceless to the determined and resourceful terrorist, and tightening controls contravenes Canada’s commitment to immigration as a pillar of nation building. Chrétien therefore was prudent in guarding Canadian principles (Chapter Four) rather than promising a security that could not be fulfilled. However, in the US, immigrants became the focus of suspicion within localities from the outset and, at a national level, immigration control “…became a cornerstone of the ‘war on terrorism’” (Nagel, 2002, p. 972). And similarly, perhaps inevitably, in Canada the new immigrant became the target of distrust, and in the process, the rhetoric of “us” and “them” began to inform popular debate (Adelman, 2002; Beare, 2003); however, the problem in multicultural Canada is determining who constitutes an outsider, a “them”, and a potential threat. Canada as an imagined nation is still defined by racialist ideologies (Anderson, K, 1991; Anderson, B, 1983; Ignatieff 1993) that view immigrants as outsiders and as non-whites, and distinguishes the imagined nation from the “actual nation” (Gilroy, 1987). In this type of racism, immigrants are constructed as non-white and non-citizens, although many immigrants may not only be Canadian citizens, but also white. In addition, Beare (2003) states that securitization is easy to legislate since, “Immigrants are alien in both a literal and a figurative sense”; but in a multicultural society built on immigration, one must respond with the question, alien to whom? An overview of the state’s structures, the actors within those structures, and the construction of “citizen” in whose name these structures have been shaped, may contribute in responding to that question. It has been noted that recently arrived and visibly identifiable racial, ethnic or political minorities, who were most dependent on organizational links to their countries of origin for settlement in Canada, were also the ones whose communities were the focus of anti-terrorist strategies and investigation (Morden, 2003; Beare, 2003). This may be a “justifiable wrong;” is it also, however, a new form of racism? Post 9/11, the body of the spontaneous migrant became a “geography of terror” (Mountz, 2004; Harvey, 2002; Beare, 2003), and was subjected to the scrutiny of agents of the state, and discrimination within their social world: “The terrorist enemy has become the dangerous foreigner in our

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midst, with the policing task being to identify, remove, and incapacitate these persons” (Beare, 2003). The terrorist was imagined to be a figurative ‘Trojan horse’, who was allowed into Canada on the pretext of contributing to the country, although Adelman points out, “any sophisticated terrorist would avoid the exposure that a person in the refugee stream is exposed to: security clearances, filling out forms, interviews etc” (cited in Beare, 2003). Other “homeland insurgency movements” have, Adelman admits, “used the refugee determination system as a way of moving their supporters into Canada to assist with organizing support for the insurgency cause”, but this is a form of transnational, as opposed to international, terrorism (Ignatieff, 2001). The conflation of the terrorist with the immigrant, and especially the Muslim asylum seeker, was heavily criticized by government, but continued at other scales, and in both directions at the border. The US criticism of Canada’s entry procedures and security screening helped to define the immigrant “other” for Canadians: the body that became an object of fear and suspicion was the conspicuously West Asian, Arab, and Muslim young male, ironically originating from countries with a track record of human rights violations and refugee acceptances in Canada. It has always been difficult to strike a balance between security considerations and fairness to refugee claimants at the border because, at one level, they appear to be incompatible goals. This was especially true after 9/11. Immigrations officials were on the frontline of balancing security, “Canadian values”, and control of Canada’s borders while assuring access to one of the world’s fairest refugee determination systems. Discontinuity of policy and praxis within the state structures managing immigration and asylum emerge from different levels of responsibility and proximities to the ‘frontline’. One CIC official, quoted below, raised the dilemmas of frontline immigration officers. He situates the problem in the attacks on the World Trade Centre, refers to the US and Canada’s duties as neighbour and ally, and then elaborates on the difficulties for officers at the ports of entry: …the fact is that the Americans were attacked basically by people of a Muslim background, Islamists. Are they reacting properly—perhaps not. On an individual basis, I’m not sure how a country is supposed to react in those situations—I’m not sure how an individual immigration officer is supposed to react. I think of our officers sitting on the border watching people coming across from the US on September the 15th of 2001. They’re sitting there, they’ve got people coming across, they’ve been told—well,

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they’ve seen what’s happened and they’re horrified—they’ve been told that it’s these people who’ve done it and they’ve seen pictures of these people, they’re being told there’s still a high possibility of more attacks, they’re being told that certain people may be trying to flee the United States and get into Canada to get away. How is the immigration officer supposed to react?

Determining who gets into Canada and who stays out are the two sides of the immigration officer’s role, and although the process for these decisions may be outlined in standard operating procedures, “profiling” is prevalent, and to some extent professionally necessary, amongst port officials (Harvey, 2002). Profiling based on the country of birth, however, became a procedure for US border guards, and distinguished the admissible from the inadmissible based on a conception of “belonging” that proved that birth-ties were more significant than the ties of citizenship, and immigrant Canadians were not seen to be “Canadians” but were associated involuntarily with their countries of origin: Racial profiling based on country of birth that, contrary to official statements from people like Ambassador Cellucci, has included Canadian citizens, holding Canadian passports, who happen to have been born in one of those designated countries. The US established a third line for people to stand in at ports of entry: “other”…At the “other” line, visitors must be photographed and fingerprinted before entering the US. The “other” line was established for Muslim men ages 16-45 who are from a list of 26 countries. These “other” men are deemed “security risks”…target aliens to be monitored (Beare, 2003).

Officials in Canada questioned the fairness of systematic discrimination based on ethnicity, religion or country of origin, and whether it could be deemed a “justifiable wrong” in the circumstances: … in [the officer’s] mind is he not going to almost automatically do some sort of profiling. You can say, okay, people with Islamic names, I’m going to screen out. I’m not sure what the answer there is, because it is discriminatory. It is on an individual basis—it is wrong. Is it justifiable? I guess that’s what it comes down to—is it a justifiable wrong way of screening people? I’m not sure. … On an individual basis it’s unacceptable. My argument is that for profiling, we should be looking at a lot of things, it’s just that in order to look at all those other things you can get information, when you’re standing there at a port of entry with 500 people waiting that you’ve got to get through in the next hour, you’re going to wave a lot of them through, you’re going to ask them one or two questions and move them on.

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In performing the role of the gatekeeper, the pressures on officials on the frontline that resulted from 9/11 caused policy makers to question the overall utility of profiling: does it make frontline immigration officials more effective or efficient in identifying potential security threats? It was resolved that discrimination through profiling was an unnecessary wrong. Instead, non-discriminatory questions should be systematically formulated to improve officers’ ability to recognize people who are threats from the queue of 500 prospective entrants. The CIC official continued: So, if one of the questions is: “Ever been to Afghanistan,” that’s much more an indicator. It doesn’t matter where you come from, where you’re born, what your name is, if you’ve been to Afghanistan during the time of the Taliban, then maybe you should be asked some questions. That makes more sense. But they have to get to that point—and that’s where they start wanting to sort, by something they can see, and it’s a problem, a real problem. And I’m not sure how we resolve it. …And I want …to look at it from the other side, with the question you just had: why don’t you investigate it from this point of view, and tell us, what would you look for on September 15th, 2003? What is it you’re looking for that will allow you to feel secure? I’m not sure, and it’s such a hard question to answer because people feel hurt then they’re picked out of the crowd, and that’s not the goal (my emphasis).

So the nature of profiling at the border was refined, but still the question remained of who was being asked. Although it may give security to some, it makes others—new migrants, migrants with Muslim names, and others who might appear to be Middle-Eastern—feel insecure when they are singled out at security, irrespective of their citizenship. Ultimately, randomisation of the selection process was introduced, rather than systemic discrimination based on one’s background, and this contributed to people in both the “us” and the “them” queues feeling more secure. The process of exclusion, though still charged with emotion, is not personal, nor a matter of style, heritage, or culture. Having a system that seems fair, that appears to value citizens and non-citizens, blacks and non-blacks, and that takes a people-centred approach to security, is integral to effective and efficient determination of those deserving or undeserving of entry, in a world where borders exist and matter. The agents who enact the processes that constitute the structure of immigration and asylum affect who is welcomed physically and emotionally. The CIC key informant introduces the idea that physical exclusion can generate social exclusion or feelings of marginalisation and

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reflects on the perceptions of individuals who are subject to profiling by agents of the state. This CIC key informant recognizes that the treatment of individuals at the port of entry, the language that is used to communicate, and officers’ attitudes affect people’s sense of welcome to Canada, and may have longer term psycho-social and emotional effects, especially for those who have fled persecutory regimes: You know I have friends who have, because of their names and the colour of their skin, found themselves being singled out in airports. They’re the ones who are asked to take their shoes off. Is that right or wrong? I can see on an individual basis—I can see why they feel affronted: they’re being singled out, they haven’t done anything wrong, they wouldn’t dream of doing anything wrong, but they’re being treated as if they’re somebody who would do something wrong. And so, when I look at what the American Government is doing again, I’m happy that the Canadian Government has not gone that way. When anybody ever brings up the concept of us dong profiling on a systematic basis, I dig in my heels and say, “No.”… So, I don’t know how bad it is except that if you’re Muslim you’re more likely to be subjected to interrogation if you’re not there legally, more subject to arrest. You are more likely to be stopped than me. That’s what they’ve done. They’ve created that in their minds so that’s the way it’s more likely to be.

Researchers who find the materiality of housing and homelessness a more convincing indicator of integration often overlook this nexus, but both are important. Anderson and Smith (2001) have argued that policy-relevant social research must confront the emotional qualities of social life, and be sensitive to “…how emotional relations shape society and space…” (p. 9). This study straddles the space between homelessness and immigration research and argues, in this chapter, that the struggles of state actors and community structures to manage migration and settlement affects both the physical and emotional trajectories of newcomers. Feeling hurt, affronted, singled out, and being more subject to interrogation, arrest and delay are effects of a system, recognized both by agents of the system and, as seen in previous Chapters, by subjects of the system, i.e. refugees, as committing “justifiable wrongs” to balance national security and the right to asylum.

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E Pluribus Unum—Many Voices, One Message Canadian officials were prepared to investigate options and alternatives to improve Canada’s immigration system, making the process of inclusion and exclusion fairer and safer for new arrivals. To this end, they interrogated their own practices as well as the practices of other Western nations. The plurality of voices within government implies different points of view, but in fact the underlying message of immigration as a framework for nation-building and of Canada as a “country of immigrants” has hegemony. Although the state has an immigration policy to control and maintain its borders and access to citizenship, in the context of globalisation of migration it is at once powerful and powerless (Sassen, 1996; Mountz, 2004). Since “…it is not possible to effectively restrict illegal immigration, …governments in the developed countries must turn to policies that will integrate migrants into their new homes in ways that will minimize the social costs and maximize the economic benefits” (Bhagwati, 2003). It is in the process of integration and social inclusion that the state can exercise its power. The following quote presents a competing vision to those expressed earlier and this CIC key informant suggests that Canada should take the reins of the future “fortress North America”: I think we’ve been a leader in terms of overseas interdiction, posting officers abroad to work with airlines to deter people from actually getting on the plane to get here. And I think pushing the border out is going to be more and more important particularly as we look at fortress America throwing up walls. We need to have access to the United States in terms of our economic health, so if people can’t cross the border freely, if goods can’t cross the border freely with people, our standard of living is going to suffer. So, to some extent I think we need to get ahead of the curve in terms of where the American are going and push the border out and work with them, harmonise to the extent possible, while maintaining sovereignty over our immigration policy but working with them in recognition of the economic imperative to say, how can we better co-ordinate our efforts offshore to keep people from arriving. The idea of a security perimeter: where is the border? Is it at Pearson, is at the land border, or is at Heathrow where people get on the plane?

He reasons that Canada’s role in humane “migration prevention” efforts will secure trade relations with the US, which is essential for Canada’s future. Deterrence, detection, interdiction, and detention are therefore invaluable to human and economic security. In fact, “keeping people from

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arriving” is important to Canadians who are funding a very expensive asylum determination system, and important to the regions of origin, which would be more appropriate hosts culturally, climatically, and geographically than Canada. To that end, he suggests that Canada should examine shifting funds from the Immigration and Refugee Board to development assistance and support for asylum in third countries. A common refrain amongst key informants was the difference in conduct between the Canadian and US governments. Despite the belief that Canada and the US have “…very comparable systems, and two of the most accepting systems in the world…”, the key informant cited in earlier sections acknowledged that the Canadian system has a higher degree of “tolerance”, particularly toward hearing “…gender persecution claims and not returning people to the death penalty”. This is an important distinction, raised by both the UNHCR and the CCR (see Chapter Five), that emphasises the problems that arise when the US and Canada sit down to discuss issues of harmonisation of immigration policies, including visas, refugee determination, and creating a North American security perimeter, denoted by common rules and practices. As a response to the intersection of immigration and securitization, the idea of implementing new systems and structures, including a zone of exclusion or security perimeter, was considered and ultimately rejected. The goal of both countries’ immigration officials is to filter, as accurately as possible, the undeserving from the deserving entrants, but despite the systems being “…more parallel than they were before…,” especially in terms of information and intelligence sharing, the Canadian government has not “…changed any… major policies to date.” Rejecting the idea of a security perimeter or further harmonisation, the first CIC key informant said, “Canada would only buy into it if it’s completely under Canadian control… we’re not going to end the same country… we’re not going to have a wall going up around the continent.” Compared with the US, Adelman says, Canada is “pretty tame…full of big sounding scary words but little action” (Adelman, 2002, p. 11). Adelman confirmed that 9/11 had no impact on Canada’s immigration stance: there had been no steps made to harmonise immigration policies and the overall number of immigrants to Canada remained the same (Adelman, 2002, p. 6). There may be one official message of a culturally plural and multi-ethnic Canada; however, the “big sounding scary words” did have an effect on the sense of belonging felt by visible-minority immigrants, and in Ryad’s

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case (Chapter Eight), created a psychological barrier between himself and a Canadian identity or feeling of home: …I felt like everybody consider me an enemy because I was born there…we all came out of Saudi Arabia – we all felt unsafe… we feel like we are unsafe – that’s why we don’t feel [Canada’s] home anymore…. But I guess it’s not our fault,… I believe even if we’re visitors in this country they would hate us. They would hate us! So that’s it [C001 in Toronto].

II. Jurisdictional cooperation and non-cooperation Having looked at those aspects, which relate solely to the Federal government, we will now examine the relationships between the federal, provincial, and municipal governments. Different Ministries, Departments and Branches take an interest in immigration and settlement issues, and while horizontal linkages are difficult to forge and maintain, vertical linkages amongst levels of government touch on constitutional issues that are a barrier to inter-jurisdictional cooperation and coordination. This section analyses the second theme that emerged from the key informant interviews: jurisdictional responsibility and its relationship to refugee settlement. We will first look at the expected role of the provincial and federal governments on refugee settlement, and second we will look at the management of asylum at the municipal level, focusing on the destination of most asylum seekers: Toronto.

The role of the province and federal governments on refugee settlement Although immigration has shared jurisdiction between the Federal and Provincial governments, as discussed in Chapter Five, the Province of Ontario is unrepresented amongst key informants because in 2003 it did not have an immigration agreement with the Federal government. When asked to discuss refugee immigration and integration in Ontario, a Member of Provincial Parliament replied: “Immigration is Federal, integration and homelessness are Municipal, so talk to them” (Telephone interview, 03-03). In May 2004, the Province of Ontario and Government of Canada signed a “Letter of Intent” for an immigration agreement, which is yet to be negotiated. Critically, the letter “…paves the way for municipalities to have a voice in immigration issues in discussions toward a Canada–

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Ontario immigration agreement…” and recognizes “… the importance of cities and the urban reality of immigration” (www.gov.on.ca/citizenship/). The Government of Ontario Finance Minister says that it is “…disadvantaged in a number of areas of federal spending” (www.gov. on.ca/FIN/english/media/2005/spe03-finimb.htm) including immigration and settlement, compared to other Provinces, specifically Quebec, although he admitted Ontario’s economy would “grind to a halt” without immigrants. On the other hand, the Federal Minister of Infrastructure and Communities says that if the Province is “…lucky enough to have fewer unemployed people, more rich people, relatively speaking, than the rest of the country, then that’s a sign of success; it’s not a sign of failure” (Mills and Gordon, Toronto Star, 2005), and Ontario does not warrant more money for the immigrants it attracts. Former Immigration Minister Corderre identifies inter-jurisdictional collaboration, such as the Federal-Provincial-Territorial (FPT) Working Group on Refugees, as an important characteristic of immigration and settlement. Referring to Federal concern for asylum seekers, he says that the working group was established to resolve “…provincial concerns around funding for the delivery of social assistance, health and education services to refugee protection claimants” (CIC Performance Report, 2003). The Provinces argued that they should receive compensation for their obligations toward asylum seekers, since, for example, much of their Legal Aid bill was for asylum determination which, up until 2003, was from the same pot of money as Criminal Legal Aid. As a result of the working group, Federal monies were negotiated to “…allow the provinces to free up resources in criminal legal aid in order to maintain immigration and refugee legal aid services…” (Ibid., 2003). In the future, this might be expanded so that the Federal government assumes financial responsibility for asylum matters, in a manner akin to the UK. In the Canadian context, the ramifications of cost shifting are uncertain. A Federal level key-informant insists that there is a regional and national role in newcomer integration particularly associated with regional and national identities. From the Federal perspective, immigrant settlement is associated with promoting a healthy nation rather than fostering urban growth amongst “…a scattering of disconnected cities”. While recognizing the importance of local support for national programmes, the Government of Canada’s policies are not directed to a few key cities: “… there are those who would say that the world revolves around Toronto—people from Toronto seem to think that, but there is a country outside of

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Toronto”, but the Federal government’s policies, “…are directed at developing common values across [the] country”. There are fundamental Canadian values, which have a cohesive importance to the nation and, “… are common to rural areas, to smaller cities, and to larger cities”, but they are not, “…necessarily exactly identical to some other values, which may be part of a larger city syndrome”. In relation to housing and homelessness, often generalised as another “larger city syndrome”, Eggleton accused the Ontario Provincial government of not doing its share to ensure the building of affordable housing and alleviating homelessness. Consequentially, the burden was falling on Municipalities, which were struggling to manage myriad responsibilities: The Federal Government just signed an agreement with the Province last year to pump $245 million into Ontario of Federal money on the basis of $25,000 a unit—and the Province came back and said they’d put in $2,000 a unit, and they dumped the rest of it onto the Municipalities. And, even though we finally said, ‘OK, better than nothing,’ … here we are, a year later and not one bit of the Federal money has been used—Province continues to hold it up. Now we’ve got another pot of money that’s going forward for affordable housing, and this time we’re saying to the Province, ‘We put in 25 a unit, you put in 25 a unit,’ and we’ve had a hard time. … (interview 05-2003).

There is an obvious frustration with the Provincial barrier to addressing the needs of the City; moreover, shared responsibility begets confusion and evasion since the different layers of government are accountable to different sets of people; and governments’ narrow perspectives makes effective structural integration impossible: What you’ll find in many areas is shared responsibility—and there may be some confusion of who the lead is—we may be the lead on immigration and the Province may be the lead on homelessness, but when you connect the two, who’s the lead?—when somebody from the refugee community has a homeless problem, who’s the lead on that? We’re trying to get around this thing by saying, ok, we’re partners on this and we’ll find solutions to these things as we go. It’s not cut and dry, this is Federal, this is Provincial—very little is that cut and dry—there’s substantial sharing, and my approach to this is not to pass the buck, but to get in and help solve the problem, but we have to fully get in other levels of Government. And unfortunately, we’ve got three levels of Government, with perhaps different perspectives... and looking after their own interests in a stove-pipe kind of fashion makes for a challenge to try to integrate horizontal links—

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but that’s part of the challenge, what makes the job interesting! …in some Provinces like Ontario, the Province isn’t putting up the money, and that’s a case in point where some people would say, ‘To H*ll with the Province,’ we should go directly to the City, like Toronto.

To some extent, the solution for the Federal and Municipal governments has been programmatic. Supporting Communities Partnership Initiative (SCPI) is an example of a Federal programme addressing a local problem. SCPI was created in order to integrate stakeholders, including different levels of government, community groups, and the private and voluntary sectors to address a single-issue: homelessness. The programme began in 1999 and is funded by the Federal Government department formerly known as Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC)7 through the National Secretariat on Homelessness (NSH) and its National Homelessness Initiative (NHI). SCPI has allowed Eggleton, as a Federal politician, to become involved in homelessness issues and, in effect, circumnavigate the Provinces on addressing homelessness across the country: … It’s interesting though, when you talk about Federal-Municipal, to me SCPI was a case in point of Federal-Municipal, and I never quite figured out whether the Province had a perfunctory role...my understanding the agreement was with the Municipality that the money was going to the Municipality based on a number of criteria, so that to Community partnership money was going toward the development of facilities and research. So that’s an occasion where the Province didn’t have too much to do with it... .

SCPI was intended to respond to the needs of Cities across Canada and Federal funds to alleviate homelessness amongst newcomers is a programmatic response to community-defined service gaps. The Acting Director of SCPI elaborated on the process of circumventing the Province to fund Community projects: [W]e certainly had to have our agreements with all the Provinces and Territories to create this sort of framework for this, but in terms of the money, it goes straight to the Municipality, and it is used in collaboration with funding and resources from a number of other places to create a homelessness program. … SCPI has helped to meet some of the pressures in that system and create some of the flexible services that have enhanced 7

Renamed Human Resources and Skills Development (HRSD).

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the ability to respond to homelessness. In other cases, in other communities, we have different models. In one model the community, there will be a community advisory committee, and they will really be the ones who do this planning and are keenly involved in implementation, but it will actually be HRDC that actually cuts the cheques to individual projects [interviewed 05-03].

In addition, refugee homelessness underscores the jurisdictional complexity of the issues which necessitate a plural governmental response: From my perspective, responsibility for many social needs is diffused among Federal, Provincial and Municipal Government levels, plus nongovernmental organisation partners—so to identify one single point source of the full range of solutions?? [Impossible!] We know for example if an immigrant child—or a refugee child—ends up in Ottawa, they will be going to the local elementary school, and that is under the authority of a local education board, we wouldn’t necessarily want, in this country at this point in time to see all refugee children going to one school. So, what we’re saying is the institutions that are out there in society to serve people quite often are applied, basic entitlement services are applied, regardless of whether you’re a refugee or somebody who’s born in Canada. We know that refugees will be showing up in many parts of Canada, not just in two or three communities (Acting Director, SCPI, 05-03).

SCPI’s Acting Director clarified the Federal response to refugee homelessness by distancing the Government of Canada from concern over this specific subgroup. The Federal response does not reflect recognition of the asylum seeker’s inherent vulnerability, but rather an interest in addressing the prevalence of homelessness in Canada in all its local manifestations. While SCPI has been involved with refugees, it is because the need has been demonstrated at the local level, not because it is identified as a federally important area of interest: We have been involved with refugees, it’s been community driven, so that’s the degree to which we’ve been involved...because our mandate is to respond to the range of people who are homeless and at risk. So, there are specific projects who are naming refugees exclusively or as part of the group, that’s the way we’ve been responding… .

At a community level, examples of SCPI funding include transitional housing facilities for the Canadian League of African Women, and an information clearinghouse provided by the Red Cross First Contact Project. It is clear that the Government of Canada and HRDC recognize

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that there exists an arsenal of local expertise that can be drawn upon to address community vulnerability and which, when pooled, constitutes a proactive response to homelessness that, on its own, the Government could not mobilise or effectuate.

Managing asylum at the local level: key informant, Toronto The meaning of asylum and attitudes to asylum seekers is not homogenous amongst state actors (Scott, 1998), and this is most evident when comparing municipal level responses to the federal perspective above. At a municipal level8, integration is defined as full participation in society socially, economically, culturally and politically, but the key informant complains that the City’s structural integration with the Province and Government of Canada on immigration and settlement is weak. Although the City demands to be included in immigration talks, the lack of coordination on issues amongst levels of government causes confusion and delays in action: The City has been trying very hard to lobby the federal government that the City be given a seat at the table when the federal and provincial governments discuss immigration policies. But then, the provincial representative to the working group in the last meeting was saying: ‘what’s the table, where’s the table? No, there’s no such table!’ Like the federal, provincial government, I think they share information but they’re not doing it on a regular basis either, so according to this provincial official, there’s no table for these issues to be tabled!

At another level, “integration into Canadian society means integration into a local community” (http://www.canadascities.ca/roundtbl.htm)9, and local government, particularly the City of Toronto, experiences most of the direct costs and benefits of immigration. The City of Toronto made a presentation to the Prime Minister’s Caucus Task Force on Urban Issues in 2001, calling for a re-defined relationship on immigration issues with the Federal Government. Effectively, Municipalities want to bypass the Provincial level of government on immigration and settlement issues, arguing: 8

City of Toronto’s Chief Administrator’s Office, Strategic and Corporate Policy/Healthy City Office, Diversity Management and Community Engagement Unit, and coordinator of the Working Group on Immigration and Refugee issues. 9 The campaign to strengthen the responsibility of Canada’s cities is a joint effort by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) and the Toronto Board of Trade (BOT).

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Municipal policies and services support integration; Immigration impacts occur at a local level; Success of national policy depends on local programs and public services; Cities belong at the immigrant settlement policy table; and Toronto should be reimbursed for expenditure for specific shelter, income support and public health costs (http://www.canadascities.ca/roundtbl.htm).

According to City-level key informant, the problem of coordinating Municipal involvement in the Federal issue of immigration is constitutional: David Miller [currently Toronto’s Mayor] appeared before the Federal standing committee on Citizenship and Immigration asking that the City be included in their consultation. Nothing. They ignored us. They ignored us altogether. And they wouldn’t talk to us directly at all because they’re going by the book. The Constitution of Canada doesn’t recognize Cities at all. Cities do not appear at all in the Canadian constitution. They are a nonentity. They don’t exist.

This exemplifies Scott’s observation (1998) that the rigidity of structures can cause or exacerbate institutional dysfunction, preventing local organizations from undergirding federal policies, and subverting a direct and efficient response to the local manifestation of globalisation in a postcolonial era—refugee homelessness and settlement needs. Since Cities are under Provincial jurisdiction, the transfer of money from the Government of Canada to its Municipalities cannot be done directly and requires the introduction of special targeted programmes, such as SCPI. The City of Toronto has recognised that asylum seekers are highly vulnerable to homelessness (City of Toronto, 2001) and in 2001 City of Toronto shelters were host to approximately 800 asylum seekers (http://www.canadascities.ca/roundtbl.htm). The City receives no designated monies from the Federal Government for asylum seekers, and is unable to develop a working relationship directly with the Federal government under the Canadian constitution. Moreover, the City cites delays in the federal system for case processing and refugee determination as the main contributor to refugee homelessness since asylum seekers are only eligible for welfare on official acknowledgement of the receipt of their refugee claim, which can take up to a month:

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The City has been providing emergency shelter and other related services to refugee claimants. The federal government is not providing any help because the federal government doesn’t provide funding to refugee claimants, period. Before these claimants get a piece of paper, acknowledgement that their claims are being reviewed, for a couple of weeks, these claimants have nowhere to turn but community organizations, these are Sojourn House, Romero House, Hamilton House, and the City’s emergency shelters for help, for a couple of weeks because the paper churns out very slowly, and before they have a piece of paper acknowledging their claim is being processed, nowhere to turn to. And also, after they have this acknowledgement, they are entitled to apply for welfare and they have a temporary social number they are entitled to look for a job, but as you know, with that social insurance number with a number that indicates that they are refugee claimants, it’s very hard for them to get work, and that means they will continue to depend on sometimes the emergency shelter provided by the city, and also income support [City KI interview, 04-03].

The Federal government, which is also responsible for the issuance of social insurance numbers (SIN) for employment eligibility, issues asylum seekers a conspicuously temporary number, along with all others who are neither Canadian citizens nor permanent residents. Discrimination amongst housing providers and employers in favour of citizens and permanent residents subjects asylum seekers to undue hardship, and according to the City’s key informant, a higher probability of dependency and prolonged shelter use. Discrimination on the grounds of citizenship status is also illegal under the Ontario Human Rights Code. In addition to the alleged laissez-faire approach of the Federal government towards asylum seekers, the City says that the Provincial government has failed it on two counts: it has been ineffective in negotiating and coordinating urban settlement and integration costs with the Federal Government; and it has prevented the City from widening their tax base: Now, for income support, the Ontario Works, the Province pays 80% and the City pays 20 percent. So, the City’s responsible for 20%, so you can say, well, the Province is paying the bulk of the—so why do you complain, but the city has a very narrow tax base. All the revenues that the City collects are from property tax… . The city doesn’t have income taxes. Legitimately all the income re-distribution programmes should have come from income taxes. It’s a re-distribution of income, right, and the city doesn’t collect any of that income tax, like in some European cities, the cities collect income taxes, and in American cities, the cities would have hotel taxes, and in some other cities in Canada, for example Vancouver, the

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city collects gasoline taxes so they can invest in public transit and some other services. Here, zilch, nothing. So, it’s very hard on the city. So you know, the city has been asking the province to provide the city a special charter, with this charter, the city’s tax collecting power would be enhanced so the city could collect some other taxes. The Province hasn’t given any response to the city [City KI 04-03].

The Toronto Board of Trade says that the Federal government’s lack of reinvestment in Ontario “…has been a major factor in Toronto suffering from crumbling infrastructure, declining service levels and increasing municipal and provincial taxes” (Leslie, 2005) and “fair funding for the costs of immigrant settlement” is one of the substantive issues that needs redress (Toronto Board of Trade, 2005). The operating budgets of the three levels of government are interwoven in that more money from the Federal government to the Province for settlement services or, as the Toronto key informant suggests, a special Charter that allows direct negotiation with the Federal level of government would ameliorate the conditions of asylum seekers and refugees. Instead of a Charter, however, in July 2004, the Federal government acknowledged the growing importance of Cities to Canada’s social fabric and economic future and created the Department of Infrastructure and Communities on the platform of a “new deal for Canadian Cities”. The Department, “…position[s] the government to advance its agenda for Canadian cities and communities in strong collaboration with partners across the country”, said Prime Minister Martin in a Press Release (2005). Although this sounds as if the agreement circumvents the Provinces, once again the new Minister of State made certain to underscore the constitutionally entrenched Provincial jurisdiction of Cities stating that he brings to the portfolio, “…respect for provincial responsibility toward municipalities… .”(Godfrey, 2005). The integration of responsibilities of the three levels of government toward asylum seekers is unequal, resting disproportionately on Cities and least on the Federal government. However, according to Eggleton, since immigrants are net contributors, Toronto and Ontario actually gain from having more immigrants, and therefore benefit despite this inequality: …[T]here needs to be some examination of our support services. I think though that one has to bear in mind that if we look at immigration it has done a lot for the advancement of this country, it’s done a lot for the advancement of this city. Immigrants are net contributors to the economy… you may say that the local level of Government and the Provincial level of Government have taken more of the share of immigration than perhaps they should have, but they also have the benefit

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at the end of the day—these people contributing to the economy of the country.

Since immigrants’ overall contribution to the Canadian economy is positive, Eggleton feels that an increase in Federal expenditure may be warranted. However, when the question is brought back to the issue of asylum seekers, rather than the general category of immigrants, Eggleton says that the Federal government is overly, and comparatively, generous on an international scale: Refugee Claimants are a little bit of a different category as they’ve not yet been allowed into the country, they’re still a claimant—...but they do they do get a number of things! Interim health care program, welfare, work permit—I don’t know what other countries would do that! That’s extraordinarily generous compared to other countries, when you consider that these people have not got landed status, [and] may not be legitimate refugees at the end of the day. …

On the one hand, Eggleton believes in being “…open, compassionate and welcoming…” to newcomers, but on the other hand, not all newcomers are equally deserving of this reception. Although it is illegal to deny housing on the grounds of citizenship, the government legitimates denying a sense of home to asylum seekers, although many are prospective citizens. Municipalities, and especially the City of Toronto, have demonstrated their commitment to newcomer settlement by the provision of services, including homeless services, which are accessible to all persons regardless of citizenship. As the City level key-informant explains, recognition and financial support, akin to a limited Federal sponsorship agreement for such services for asylum seekers and other immigrant newcomers, would ensure that newcomers’ costs are more fairly shared amongst levels of government. Integration is, after all, a fundamentally local experience, which takes time.

Canadian key informant perspectives on the UK Security was a theme throughout the key-informant interviews, and as demonstrated through the section on the securitization of immigration, international comparison was an important resource in identifying best practices that might be transferable to immigration and settlement programmes in Canada. The third and final section of this chapter examines Federal-level officials’ views on the UK. This section analyses

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managed migration and settlement strategies, illustrates the government’s regard for international trends, and highlights aspects of the Canadian and UK immigration system that need improvement or warrant duplication.

Managed Migration A managed migration programme is a state solution for appearing in control of migrant flows. It allows the state to formulate and set a quota for immigrants allowed to work or settle in the country, and consists of a few differentially permeable windows of entry. As discussed in Chapter Four, Canada has three windows of entry: independent immigration, family sponsored immigration, and humanitarian immigration. However, in the UK the asylum window receives an undifferentiated flow of people amounting to 80,315 applicants in 2000 (Home Office, 2001), compared with 30,072 in Canada the same year (CIC, 2001). The great number of “spontaneous” arrivals to the UK has resulted in policies based more on deterrence than on integration, compared with the Canadian ethos of prospective citizenship: …for Canadians, immigration is a package, and all parts of the package have to be working in order for people to say, yes, you’re bringing in the right number, yes, keep on doing it. If you go to a situation where you are no longer able to control the flow, and you are being overwhelmed by large numbers of asylum seekers, and where you have been operating on a temporary foreign worker perspective which is, ‘I only need these people for a short period of time. They will come in, fill a gap, and then they will go home. I will treat them with a great deal of respect while they’re here; but, my policy is they will come here, they will stay here for a short time, and they will go home.’ Reality shows you all across Europe, UK included, that most of them do not go home. They stay. They were not invited to stay in the first place. They were invited as temporary foreign workers. They were not encouraged to become Citizens. They were not part of a ‘building our nation’ movement. You’re talking apples and oranges. I will not in any way criticise somebody else’s approach. We have our Canadian way, but it is built on a nation-building element. It is particular to Canada. If you were to go out in the world and ask about different programs, what you will hear is that Canada looks for immigrants, so there’s a different perception, and that makes a big difference in how people feel [Director, CIC Integration Branch].

In the preceding quote, the Director of CIC Integration Branch identifies two approaches to immigration: the European approach based on temporary foreign labour; and the Canadian approach based on “nation-

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building” through permanent residence and citizenship. The difference in ethos is an advertisement to prospective migrants, and she believes that the “Canadian way” facilitates newcomers’ affective integration to Canada. According to this key informant, managed migration is about being able to control the flow of migrants and appearing to be in control of the flow of migrants. Managed migration offers the state an opportunity to utilise immigrants as a tool to manage its long term demographic and economic needs, and this is reflected in the settlement and integration structures that exist to support newcomers in making Canada a home. In contrast to Canada’s vision, CIC’s Director of Strategic Research and Statistics said that the UK was “…in some ways, 5-10 years behind…” because they lacked an explicit immigration policy. This means that the UK’s policy discourse on integration is relegated to the category of asylum rather than family members or workers: …they haven’t thought about that. So, because they don’t have a policy…[t]he research agenda has tended to come out of the Home Office group that has been looking at Race Relations and Criminality and so it has that angle to it and it also has focused on the asylum side because that’s the big political issue of the day.

The UK is “…more advanced in their history of race relations…” but has a “…perspective of integration [that] is very much one way integration, whereas in Canada…it’s more two ways.” The UK takes an assimilationist approach to integration as opposed to Canada’s official multicultural approach, and newcomers to the UK are expected to conform to a hegemonic “British” identity. The Director of Integration Branch does not see the UK providing programmatic support for integration, but rather forcing integration by removing the element of choice: They have not used the same approach as in Canada, they have not provided the kinds of supports through Government programming in the same ways in Canada, and they have only recently begun to make changes in their Citizenship Act and to talk about the importance of language skills and the importance of things, but in their initial discussions they still didn’t quite have the nuances right. You can’t force learning a language on someone else. You can’t force a sense of belonging on someone else. It is created by reducing barriers to social and economic integration. It is created by being welcoming [Appendix E], and I think they are working on changing a lot of what they do to focus more on that, but their challenges are not entirely the same as Canadian challenges.

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“Their challenges” include reforming the asylum determination process, controlling the volumes that enter, dealing with borders and related security issues such as smuggling, and upholding human rights in the process (Director of Strategic Research and Statistics, interview, 05-03).

Dispersal and the Voucher System: Best and Worst Practices Key informants identified two UK practices, which contribute to the reconstruction and demolition of a sense of home for refugee newcomers: dispersal and the voucher system. Dispersal in the Canadian context, as opposed to the British, is not about burden sharing but rather opportunity sharing and opportunity gains. Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver attract the wealth, skills and education of independent immigrants and, according to key informants, the country wants to capitalise on immigrant skills to revitalise other parts of the country. Incentive-based strategies tied to the “point-system” are an option, where prospective immigrants who agree to commit to a number of years in designated localities would receive bonus points on their immigration application, but mandatory dispersal violates the Charter of Right and Freedoms as well as the “Canadian way”: We’ve always said, in the history of this country that’d be good to get people going somewhere other than Toronto all the time. We have needs in different parts of the country—but nobody’s come up with the magic formula on how to do that, and nobody’s very inclined to make dispersal mandatory. It’s not been our nature to do that. But, if we can find some way of getting people going to some other part of the country, then that’s a good thing. One of the things that we also have to break down barriers on is credentials—there’s a lot of people that have professional backgrounds that could be very useful in this country, for example doctors—they could use some more doctors in the North and different parts of the country… (Eggleton, interview, 03-03).

While the concept of dispersal in the UK is applied to asylum seekers, Canada mulls the potential of dispersal to assist skilled migrants in finding work in their field, reduce barriers to economic integration and contribute to smaller communities across the nation. Of course, seeing immigrants as an economic resource rather than a deficit is contingent on recognition of foreign credentials and qualifications, and translating skill sets for the Canadian labour market and local economies. Dispersal is, however, an expensive and “un-Canadian” concept (Director of Strategic Research and Statistics). Nevertheless, comparison is

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imperative to evaluating ideas: “So we look to how [the UK is] dealing with some issues that we would like to deal with and we learn certainly learn from their program success and failures, as we do from other countries”. This includes the voucher system, introduced to asylum seekers in the UK in 2000, which was so controversial that the government terminated the programme in 2002. The UK’s programme of integration, particularly its failures, has offered Canadian officials valuable lessons on “what not to do” (Director, Strategic Research and Statistics). This was echoed by the Director of Integration: I like to learn about what others are doing in order to improve upon what we do and not to make the same mistakes, and so I find it interesting when people are putting in place programs of assistance that require people to use chits for getting their essentials of life, or where they’ve actually housed people in certain housing projects. Mostly I look at those and say, ‘OK, that’s not what I would like to do.’ I don’t want to have a program that would create a rupture between those who are living on lower incomes in Canada versus newcomers on lower incomes in Canada… .

In sum, in the UK, dispersal and vouchers were politically legitimated forms of marginalisation and social exclusion, which Canadian officials seemed to find morally repugnant. More than personal disagreement with such UK policies, the grounds for objection were that implementation in Canada would violate equality under the Charter. Disaggregating migrant flows under a managed migration programme, on the other hand, is the first step in providing government the opportunity to capitalise on migrants’ potential, meet their international obligations, and appear in control of its borders. Different migrant streams have different programmes associated with them, and strategies to assist integration. Finally, the concept of Canada as a prospective home to newcomers is imperative to the continuance of “nation building.” Is the state really “cyclopean” on the issue of immigration? To an extent. Although states have a particular way of seeing the world, state actors can anticipate the social effects of federal policy, as demonstrated by keyinformants’ sensitivity to people at ports of entry post 9/11, systemic coordination by levels of government to ameliorate local social problems, and researching the applicability of internationally tested schemes for integration of newcomers to Canada.

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This chapter analysed key informant interviews amongst government officials under three themes: security; jurisdictional responsibility; and perspectives on the UK. The issue of securitization of immigration post 9/11 illustrates the heterogeneity of voices within the government and the effect of debating ‘who constitutes a threat?’ on the national psyche of a “country of immigrants”/ “others”. The section on jurisdictional responsibility and ownership of complex problems showed that matters of immigrant and refugee integration and homelessness are, to a great degree, contingent on the integration of stakeholders and governments to address systemic disadvantage. The state is not equally powerful, and some parts may be powerless or voiceless on certain issues. For a time, the Federal government was powerless to address homelessness amongst Canadians directly with the Municipalities, and Municipalities still are voiceless on the issue of immigration and settlement. Both of these issues were partly resolved through programmes, the introduction of new ministries, and ongoing talks with all three levels of government. Finally, the chapter examined key informant perceptions of UK policies and revealed their sensitivity to international best and worst practices to inform and justify a “Canadian way” of approaching immigration. Not only did they identify a more welcoming ethos in Canada, compared with the UK, their concept of the refugee as a prospective permanent resident and future citizen contrasted to the UK’s unequal treatment of asylum seekers, evident under the voucher and dispersal schemes, and the issuance of temporary humanitarian status (ELR) rather than permanent leave to remain in the UK (ILR). This is a reflection of the countries’ different demographic and economic needs, which construct immigration and asylum as “nation building” in Canada and as a reluctant duty in the UK. Combined with asylum seekers’ perceptions of their individual treatment, settlement trajectories, and material circumstances, the state’s rhetoric and ethos are essential for holistic integration and a sense of home in the country of asylum. However, throughout the key informant interviews with officials, there was a clear distinction drawn between Federal monies and programmes for immigrants, which was an important aspect of CIC, as opposed to asylum seekers and refugees. While the former were consistently deserving at all levels of government, the latter were neglected except within the City of Toronto, which were the only level of government to offer indiscriminate services to all residents and acknowledge of the vulnerability to homelessness of newly-arrived asylum seekers.

CHAPTER TEN COMPARATIVE OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

In an age of globalisation and international forced migration, where borders are meaningless for some and matters of life and death for others, this research focused on the multi-dimensionality of home and homelessness as metaphors for national and local integration and social exclusion. Because home is a concept of place and space, it allows analysis of a trajectory beyond the physicality of any particular dwelling and can be emblematic of belonging, peace, and hope for the future at different scales. The stated aims of this research were to explore the conceptions, locations, and reconstructions of home through the asylum and settlement process; and to examine the relationship between national and residential dynamics and the sense of home or homelessness. The research achieved this through conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews with refugees in Toronto and London and explored people’s ideas of home and homeless through the lens of forced migration, forced settlement, and individual agency amidst different levels of enablement and constraint. I discussed the importance of history and traditions in shaping contemporary responses to large numbers of asylum applicants, their journeys to sanctuary, and states’ measures of incorporation or exclusion. The research then turned to examine the characteristics of respondents’ flight and settlement and the intersection of personal vulnerabilities with barriers to housing and means of coping. Abstracting from refugees’ housing histories, the research proposed a general diagram depicting the relationship of refugees’ housing and home trajectories. Finally, the research examined key informant perspectives in Canada to demonstrate the role of the state in ameliorating or exacerbating refugees’ vulnerability and resilience. This chapter begins here, with the state perspective, to discuss the differing degrees of involvement of national governments in asylum seeker welfare, protection from homelessness, and support of home through integration policy. It then examines refugees’ housing trajectories

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in London and Toronto, the influence of policies in shaping them, their reflection of individual agency and resilience, and whether there were differences in the meaning of home in each country, in addition to differences in housing pathways. Next, I compare structural responses to and support of asylum seekers and argue that these are deeply-rooted in each country’s heritage of incorporating immigrants. Returning to the beginnings of this research, I then discuss the research design, the usefulness of a comparative approach versus the difficulties of qualitative international comparison, and the successes and challenges of interviewing refugees. The discussion then arrives at its starting point and addresses the issue of whether refugees should be described as doubly or triply homeless, and each country’s duty to help refugees in their struggles to achieve stability, transcend the obstacles of refugeeness and homelessness, and develop a sense of home. Inverting the research structure in this chapter provides a kind of symmetry that allows the empirical Chapters and their key findings to be discussed first (Chapters Six to Nine), situating them in the historical and legislative contexts of Chapters Four and Five, and finally returning to the research’ starting point to examine the methodological and conceptual significance of the application of the research to measure refugee integration starting with refugees’ views and self-assessment. In this final Chapter, I will comment on some of the similarities and differences between Canada and the UK in terms of their traditions of immigration, responses to homelessness, and management of asylum. I will attempt to link these conclusions to the conceptual framework set out in Chapter Two, including structuration, needs theory, refugeeness, and the duality of integration. I will argue that refugees’ pathways to homelessness are conditioned in part by culture and history, location, and asylum policy. How refugees manage within these systems and overcome structural and systemic barriers is also influenced by their backgrounds, experiences, persecution, decision-making, and expectations.

The view from above: Canadian key-informants and responsibility for asylum Different levels of government have different roles toward refugees and stakes in their welfare. Chapter 9 discussed the perspectives of various state actors and key informants in the non-profit sector (third sector) regarding their responsibilities or mandates towards asylum seekers, ameliorating refugee homelessness, and supporting a sense of home.

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Key-informants had variable proximity to each of these issues. For instance, interviewees at the local level and within the third sector expressed a strong commitment to community responsibility for asylum seekers. In some cases this sense of community was created as an organizational mandate, especially evident in refugee-supporting NGOs or refugee homelessness shelters providing bridging capital (e.g. Red Cross, First Contact Project; FCJ Hamilton House Shelter); while in other cases, asylum seekers were supported as a matter of community bonding within ethno-cultural organizations (e.g. Midaynta). Along with a third set of organizations, with a more general mandate and client group, a formal network of resources fills the gaps in the safety net that is a result of jurisdictional issues amongst three levels of government. Along with community organizations, interviews were also conducted with City-level officials. As a result of higher-level government retraction from asylum issues, the City of Toronto bears the burden of reception and settlement for asylum seekers, allowing universal access to programmes of support, emergency shelter, and social housing. By comparison, in the UK asylum seekers’ subsistence needs are legislated for and met by the national government through Social Services, and subsequently through NASS. In Canada, federal-level key informants were distant from asylum seekers’ housing, homelessness, or integration. Instead, their concerns focussed on the integrity of the determination and appeals system, maintaining border control, and fairness and efficiency in the immigration system. Their gaze was turned towards Canada as a national entity, and protecting its future while maintaining its humanitarian commitment towards asylum seekers. Particularly since 9/11 in the US, and 7/7 in the UK, the securitization of borders and perception of asylum seekers as a possible threat has been an imminent concern. However, in contrast to the UK, the government openly resolved to continue the “Canadian tradition” of immigration and offering refuge to the persecuted. This fundamental distinction in tradition and nation-building, also evident in Chapters Four and Five, has a profound effect on refugees’ perceptions of freedom, fairness, and a future in Canada, as opposed to feelings of separateness and inequality in the UK.

Refugees housing and home trajectories Asylum seekers arrive to countries of asylum with varying levels of trauma and vulnerability, levels of expectation and demand, and degrees of

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agency (Chapter Two, Chapter Six). The process of learning and unlearning in a new society is also easier for some than for others, and the institutions that refugees encounter on arrival can ease this transition in some ways while making it more difficult in others. This duality is evident in the disparate trajectories presented as case studies, and in the characterisation of migrants’ vulnerabilities in the housing market (Chapter Six). The “race for refuge” is turned into a “settlement climb” on arrival in the country, indicating that although one part of the journey has been achieved, transforming asylum into citizenship, or settlement into integration, can be equally circuitous and constitutes part of the ongoing struggle of immigration, diaspora, and multiple trans-national belongings. While refugees will face many external barriers in the settlement climb, some will be internal, such as nostalgia, trauma, and victimhood. The construction of refugeeness in the West and refugees’ subjection to the stereotype, or internalisation of it, is an obstacle to re-establishing one’s social and economic status and has a bearing on how people feel about their new society. The high levels of education amongst respondents (Chapter Six), particularly in Canada, and difficulties of reconciling the loss of status with discrimination in a country of immigrants generated feelings of dissatisfaction and questions about making Canada a home. Such questions were also evident in the UK, but for reasons of barriers to Britishness and an inability to transcend refugeeness. The idea of transcending refugeeness is an important one for consideration by the state and its goals of social cohesion and integration. Addressing how to become Canadian or British forces the state to recognise and address barriers to identity, beyond the achievement of formal citizenship, by examining the role of the dominant group in accepting or rejecting newcomers’ belonging. It is important to recognize the ways that government can help belonging through changing public attitudes and to understand that, as a two-way process of integration, making place for newcomers in national identities is important (Kissoon, 2010). Asylum seekers in Canada are protected from unequal treatment by a web of rights and a network of formal ties, and while the federal level of government is not officially concerned with integrating asylum seekers or providing for their basic needs, the country’s laws have evolved to ensure equal justice for everyone on Canadian soil. From a macro perspective, this is an expansive notion of citizenship contributing to Canada’s liberal reputation. From a micro perspective, in a system of limited resources,

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lack of support and integration programmes, and equality of entitlements and competition with Canadians, asylum seekers enter a swim-or-sink society in which it is sometimes easier and more efficient to sink-to-swim. This was evident in each of the housing trajectories presented in Chapter Eight: Ryad, who had exited homelessness a few times, returned to homelessness as a strategy to access social housing; Mr. Hamid entered the shelter system on arrival in Canada and received social housing seven months later; while Sham has made her own way since arriving with her young son to Canada, and her housing crisis remains invisible to gatekeepers. This was also evident in the UK, where the “perverse incentive” of becoming homeless to gain housing excludes the LA from its duty to house those whom it calls the “intentionally homeless” (Chapter Five). In some cases refugees’ pathways into homelessness may be strategic, but most often they are precipitated by structural inadequacies. Examples of this in the UK include systemic problems of delays or non-payment of housing benefit; failures in communication between the Home Office and Benefits Agency, resulting in homelessness when forced to leave NASS accommodation; and receipt of subsistence support when remaining in London, creating situations of hidden homelessness. On arrival in the countries of asylum, refugees often rely on their bonding capital to keep them out of homelessness and/or invisible from authorities. Pathways out of homelessness generally rely on bridging/linking capital for information, mediation, resources, or shelter, and are important to those who have no contacts in the country or are unwilling or unable to tap their kinship ties. In fact the relationship between refugees’ social capital and their homelessness is complicated by the sink-to-swim strategy, and refugees’ personal characteristics, e.g. whether they are idiocentric or allocentric (Chapter One, Chapter Six). Moreover, there is often a greater presumption of the strength of kinship bonds than there is in reality, and some people fall between the cracks of NGO-RCO perceptions of clanbased or tribal resources and their actual relationship to their ethnic resources. No one believed that they would become homeless on arrival to the UK or Canada. Some believed they would experience difficulties, others had not even imagined that British or Canadian people had problems of homelessness. Compared with London, homelessness was a common experience for refugees in Toronto: many stayed in shelters on arrival or after finding

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staying with contacts unsatisfactory. As well as variable degrees of use of social ties for housing stays, there was also a wide range of satisfaction when housed with contacts, and dependency on close ties sometimes resulted in acrimonious splits, where the homeless shelter was rated as an improvement in the sense of home (Chapter Six). Without formal state infrastructure to support complex needs and state alternatives to absolute or hidden homelessness, asylum seekers may find themselves struggling to subsist and recuperate from persecution and/or flight, while managing their asylum claims in derelict accommodation, in homeless hostels, or doubled up with social contacts. However, in the UK, a specialised system of support to house asylum seekers is available. This provides people with an alternative if staying with family or friends becomes untenable or of course if asylum seekers have no one with whom to stay and no independent means. In Canada, there is no similar alternative. Instead, people are forced to rely on municipally-run or charitable shelters, or try to find affordable accommodation when in receipt of welfare; while the former alternative is at least supported by shelter staff (Chapter Eight, Mr. Hamid), the latter can be both isolating and fraught (Chapter Eight, Sham). In Canada, therefore, an alternative system of specialist housing providers or hosts where people would not have to become homeless to get a home, might also be useful. Asylum seekers could choose to access supported accommodation at any point prior to their refugee decision, and remain accommodated for the duration of their claim. A citywide or Greater Toronto network of hosts would lift some of the pressures from the City’s existing homeless shelters, offer a safer haven for asylum seekers who wanted an alternative to hidden homelessness or homeless hostels, and give Citizens a chance to welcome newcomers and newcomers the chance to associate with established Canadians (e.g. Praxis’ “Hosting Scheme” in the UK; and the possibility of a “Host Program- Plus” for asylum seekers in Canada, which is currently a “befriending” scheme). The case studies showed the ways in which individuals moved through a system of constraints, based on limitations of housing supply and support in Toronto, and based on a lack of choice and inflexibility within a system of support in London. Chapters Seven and Eight provide a snapshot of people’s housing resumes, demonstrating problems of affordability on welfare in Toronto, and systemic problems with benefit payment and entitlement in London, as well as homelessness as a result of leaving NASS accommodation, and old, sometimes unfit, housing stock. Berhane

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suggested that his problems of accessing the correct benefits with greater efficiency might be addressed through the implementation of an entitlement card for asylum seekers in the UK. This might be a popular consideration in the UK where the idea of identity cards for asylum seekers has been raised. When graphing the housing and home trajectories of Berhane and Mr. Hamid, the importance of housing, particularly to Berhane, was evident in the turns of his feeling of home, which were closely correlated to his housing. As a result of a housing problem, Berhane’s sense of home has failed to improve. In contrast, Mr. Hamid’s sense of home was positive irrespective of his housing. Being provided for in the shelter did not draw him into a sense of homelessness; however, systemic barriers to family reunification did, because family was the centrepiece of home for Mr. Hamid. In this way, the case studies, and the question of home and homelessness reveal what people are missing in their lives and points to the solution for a fuller sense of home that meets material and emotional needs. Finally the cases also show that housing is key to refugees’ long-term settlement, housing provision for asylum seekers is important as a symbol of (un)equal citizenship, and together these influence people’s commitment to their countries of asylum because their countries of asylum may seem to have rejected them or allowed them to suffer. This is the case, for instance, for Charles and Sham, which further illustrates that home is a two-way process and that neither country can claim to be the superior because they enable and constrain newcomers in different ways. Canada and the UK diverge in their promise of Citizenship and belonging, where Canada takes a more inclusive but highly selective role and the UK takes an exclusive but increasingly selective role. On the other hand, Canada and the UK converge in their relegation of asylum seekers to the most marginal housing. The structure of asylum support affects refugees’ housing experiences, and in both countries the initial qualitative assessment of housing was quite poor, and people often relied on already stressed social networks for early support. Over time, a period of instability in the mainstream benefits system is overcome and social networks, knowledge of housing markets and neighbourhoods, overall confidence with communication, society, and the environment expand and grow.

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Traditions of immigration and institutional framework The roots of the differences in Canadian and British responses to asylum seekers and their homelessness lie deep in each country’s history. Chapter Four illustrated the role of defensive Britishness that tied the early history of Canada to the UK, the relegation of immigrants’ presence and contributions to the margins of history (Anderson, 1991; Razack, 2002; Rich, 1986; Driedger, 2003), and the implementation of various forms of legislation to promote racially exclusive notions of citizenship. While Canada’s pressures from within eventually led to the adoption of official multiculturalism and the opening of its immigration system to skilled migrants from around the world, the UK’s pressures from without gave rise to defensive notions of citizenship and a preoccupation with borders. The chapter discussed the late 1960s and early 1970s as the period of transition that removed racial selectivity from Canada’s immigration system and replaced it with economic motives. However, Canada’s threepronged approach to migration with independent migrants, family reunification migrants, and humanitarian migrants has hierarchical connotations that place asylum seekers’ social status and potential contributions beneath other groups. In addition, Porter’s (1965) research noted that a hierarchy also existed between Canada’s charter groups and others, which he referred to as the “vertical mosaic”, and these fissures are still relevant to contemporary asylum seekers who face quiet forms of discrimination that delay their “settlement climb” and continue to demote their social status compared with Charter groups and non-immigrants (Ryad, Chapter Eight, for instance). Despite the warmth of the welcome, and the national imaginary as a multicultural country of immigrants, there is a systemic lack of government support for asylum seekers that affects settlement trajectories and the meaning of home, particularly in relation to the Canadian promise of multiculturalism. The period of transition for the UK’s history was evident in the immediate post-war era where the arrival of the Windrush solidified a formerly inchoate notion of “us” and “them” that had been geographically delimited. The chapter argued that the defence of Britishness became a domestic issue, manifested in segregated communities and minds, shifting boundaries according to migrant flows. In the contemporary period, asylum seekers have been the target of this “othering”, evidenced by racist attacks, particularly in dispersal areas, and the virulence of anti-asylum rhetoric in the press, which have been condemned by the UN and ECRI (Chapter Five).

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While Canada’s immigration strategy is concerned with managing arrival and beginning integration as soon as possible, this does not include integration for “temporaries”. The UK takes the same stance; however, their migration programme has been characterised largely by deterrent policies aimed at domestic popularity foremost, rather than long term economic and demographic planning, or humanitarian concerns. The recent asylum models in the UK; cautious move to overseas resettlement; and introduction of a skilled migrant programme, point system, and citizenship classes and ceremonies represent a new shift towards a more reflexive system of migration management. However, asylum is still a reluctant obligation. In some part, differences in national responses reflect the privileged distance of Canada from the source of conflicts and geographical and cost barriers to arriving. This affects the numbers of asylum seekers to Canada and indicates higher social status and greater financial and social resources for those who arrive. Relatively, the UK is easy to get to, and it has become a hub for asylum seekers fleeing to the West, including many who have passed through its airports on the way to Canada. In addition the UK’s relationship with the EU has had a demonstrable effect on it as a destination for migrants (e.g. Sangatte crisis). Chapter Five also illustrated the differences in numbers of applicants that each country received, and demonstrated the greater pressures facing the UK. In terms of conspicuousness, a lack of documentation, and spontaneity, the UK faces greater challenges at controlling overland flows, while air travel is less conspicuous, requires documentation and is scheduled. Consequently officials in Canada have more control over their borders as a result of their location in the world than the UK. Despite this natural barrier, Canada also practices a range of interdiction strategies, including overseas officers, visas, and carrier sanctions. Despite the differences in the sources and flows of migrants, their resources and capital, comparison of the “refugee burden” demonstrated that neither Canada nor the UK faced substantial economic, social, or territorial pressure from asylum migration. Nevertheless, in both countries border control has resulted in a spiral of deterrent measures and escalating migrant risk (see also Chapter Six). Although a number of international human rights treaties structure the right to seek asylum, states are the arbiters of this right, and UK legislation has variably eroded the rights and entitlements of asylum seekers, using detention, dispersal, and deportation to contain asylum seekers and appear in control. At the same time, the UK has continued to uphold its obligation

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to the international community, and gives asylum seekers the benefit of state support in housing, income, and universal healthcare, making it a good place to go if you are vulnerable. Unfortunately, these provisions operate in a “climate of vitriol”, and since they accompany less choice, less benefit, and less quality, the stigma of asylum burdens the settlement climb. The Canadian government leaves asylum seekers to their own devices amidst the resources of the City and non-profit sectors. Asylum seekers then eke out a living on their own with unequal capital, resources, and knowledge to compete for housing. Consequently, many rely on the strength of weak ties to survive the system (Granovetter, 1973). This sounds like a cold system, and in many ways it is, saved by the fact that asylum seekers and immigrants are surrounded by the fantasy of a society where success is not conditional on assimilation.

Framing and implementing the research: Home and homelessness Taking a comparative approach to understand the implications of policy on home-making provided a unique perspective on refugee homelessness. There are at least two sides to this comparative approach: one exploring the similarities and differences between countries and their approach to immigration and asylum in historical terms; and a second, which contextualises the issues of asylum-seeking within the wider global and regional contexts. Both sides are used in this study to demonstrate that contemporary responses to migration are located in particular geographies and historical trajectories. This is the traditional approach to a comparative study. This study, however, has a third dimension, which has been the central focus of this research: the effect of countries of asylum on refugees’ interpretation of housing loss and home-making over the settlement process. The angle of subjectivity on the comparative approach is interesting because it adds a critical reflexive dimension to external indicators of integration (epistemological importance), and it demonstrates that events, such as homelessness, may be interpreted in the contexts of the individual’s relationship to the state and its national ethos (ontological importance). As an example of the latter, in a country where asylum seekers have been called “the scum of the earth targeting our beloved coastline” (Dover Express, 1999), receiving hard-to-let fire-damaged LA

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housing may be interpreted as the result of being seen as a “third class citizen” (Gvantsa, Chapter Seven). By contrast, in a country where “we all belong,” homelessness may be interpreted according to the lack of resources that afflict Canadian nationals: “[homelessness is] not dependency as an environment and I could get on my feet moving toward independence. I learned a lot about people—[people] were really strong but in a cycle where they can’t—people don’t address the homeless problems” (C009 Comfort, Zimbabwe). In terms of understanding integration through refugees’ subjectivity, the focus of feeling at home or not-at-home, as opposed to definitions of home or housing assessment, were predominantly housing-related in the UK, and based on income, career, and family reunification barriers in Canada. The difference in focus is partly related to acknowledgement of the scarcity of housing in London and broad-ranging differences in housing quality and maintenance, while in Toronto people were in relatively newer accommodation in the private rental sector, and were involved in re-establishing their career and social status (Chapter Six). In-depth interviewing was also important. The meaning of home is an involved and sensitive concept, which requires a similar interview style. Consequently, most of the interviews were completed at refugees’ flats around their schedules to allow ample time and to create the greatest level of comfort. Face-to-face interviews, guided by an interview schedule and tape-recorded, ensured understanding of difficult concepts, and refugees were always shown and read back my notes, and were in control of the tape recorder. There were a number of small gestures like this that fostered a good rapport and trust relationship. However, refugees’ social circles were small, and although other types of interview-based research can rely on snowball sampling, I could not. Therefore the NGO-RCO sector was vital to the completion of this research. They offered me a way into a “hard-to-reach” group, provided interpreter support, and gave feedback to help contextualise policy and translate jargon. The main failing of conducting interviews was my inability to prioritise staying in touch with my formal contacts or my interviewees. Moreover, I was uncertain about the research ethics of befriending interviewees, and so I remained elusive. In hindsight I greatly regret this and question whether it was right or necessary. The key informant interviews that I conducted were necessary, in theory, to capture state responses and explanations for their approach to asylum seekers; however, they posed a greater challenge to elicit information

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beyond their official role and capacity, some people were opposed to tape recording, and some involved lawyers. All were tightly scheduled. It was also common for key informant to say little and instead pass pamphlets and reports to me, and so it was important to remain friendly but be insistent. For both sets of interviews, refugees and key informants often were most open when I gave anecdotes from the other country or my own life. Moreover, in both cases I collected more information than I was capable of using for this research. As a point of research this is problematic because it may have prolonged interviews unnecessarily, and prolonged the transcription, collation, and analysis of the data. On the other hand, because I was researching a special group for a comparative study, I wanted to explore the settlement process fully. However, as a result of over-interviewing, I have an opportunity to explore my material in several different ways in the future, including examining issues of gender, race, discrimination, social ties, assistance and support. The interviews also focussed on two main issues: housing experiences and the meaning of home. Although refugees’ housing experiences has been discussed in previous research, a systematic analysis of its relationship to the meaning of home has not been done. Overall, this was an intentional gap in the literature on integration, which privileges indicators that are perceived to be measurable and comparable, particularly economic-related outcomes with a history of assessment, of which housing (including affordability, type, quality, location) is one, and others are income, health, education, and employment. However, a number of researchers have indicated that this research gap exists due to conceptual difficulties rather than unimportance (Yu and Liu, 1986; Castles et al., 2003; Robinson, 1998; Montgomery, 1996). Research has also shown that the correlation between functional and affective forms of integration need not be positive, in that people who appear to be well-integrated in society in terms of objective functional indicators may not have positive feelings about the experience (Montgomery, 1996). Robinson’s (1993, 1998) research found that refugees’ assessment of the success of official programmes differed from official outcomes, and so qualitative research using subjective indicators of integration is no less important than objective indicators to determine whether policy objectives have been achieved. This research attempted to bring together ideas from refugee studies, housing, and home to examine the relationship between a material and an emotional indicator of integration. The word “home” has been used in a dialectical relationship to “refugeeness” in dozens of academic articles

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conducted for housing research, and others emphasising abstract concepts related to loss, flight, uprootedness, and the importance of social relations. These titles reflect the different scales of experience that refugees relate in discussing the meaning of home, ranging from the local to the global (Somerville, 1998; Murdie 2004; Powles 2002). Homelessness and refugeeness are not interchangeable concepts, although both encapsulate difficult and extraordinary times and relationships to place. This research uses them as vessels that carry a different meaning depending on the person you are talking to and their experiences. When asked what home means, one woman said, “…to be at home is not to think of yourself as a refugee” (UK002, Hyacinth, Rwanda, widow with two children in London, former agricultural sciences manager). Therefore, to address whether it is appropriate or useful to consider refugees multiply homeless, I would say not. To do so eclipses other meanings and sites of home, and ties refugees to their persecution and loss while ignoring sanctuary, agency, new horizons, and the possibility of transcending refugeeness. Hyacinth’s sentiment expresses a desire to transcend labels, to achieve “ordinariness” from an extraordinary and unstable situation, and most importantly, to be seen as ordinary. Finally, one refugee, describing what “home” is to him, seems also to encapsulate the important duality of structure and agency, applicable to different scales of dwelling in the world: Home is a person. The head is the mental aspect of home and the body is the physical aspect. Homes have both aspects and are not mutually exclusive. This means you can’t be 100 percent at home if your mind doesn’t accept it. Unless you’re physically healthy, housed, and working, you can’t be at home. The body must be satisfied, not just your mind. (C027, Issaias, Eritrea, currently working as a researcher in Toronto).

Structuration theory, with its emphasis on the duality of structure and agency, is important to this research because it recognizes the shared experiences of structures and people’s ability to overcome those that constrain and seize opportunities from others that enable. Like structuration, integration is a duality, a two-way process shaped by the individual and society. Although processual, integration or home is about a journey through different stages where people’s needs are met through the combination of participation in society and social transformation, and when the elements of home converge, “that most tenacious cement” holds people and places together.

POSTFACE DOCTRINE OF SURRENDER AND GRACE

Historically and contemporarily, religion has been used to justify atrocities committed against various populations. In major religious texts, however, exile and banishment have been punishments causing grief on par with death. The epic displacements of Moses from Egypt, the baby Jesus from Bethlehem of Judea, Prophet Mohammed from Mecca, Mormons’ internal flight from Illinois and Missouri, and the banishments of Eve and Adam from the Garden of Eden, and Sita and Rama from Ayodhya signify the universal pain of uprootedness and the significance of welcoming those who seek sanctuary from persecution and shelter from existential and literal homelessness. The passages that follow are associated with Hinduism, often referred to as the world’s oldest religion, and suggest an ancient, if not primordially humanistic, doctrine of surrender and grace proclaimed by Shri Rama: When one comes to me for refuge, I cannot reject him. This is my dharma. It does not matter if as a result of this I suffer. Even at the cost of life I must do this duty of mine. Never can I deviate from it. Verily, I tell you, even if [my enemy] himself came to me for sanctuary, I would accept him without hesitation. (Ramayana retold by C. Rajagopalachari)

In another translation of the ancient text, Shri Rama’s proclamation is more elaborate, and includes the declaration that those who fail to provide protection for the asylum seeker degrade their own humanity by depriving a person of the basic condition of a home: A miscreant who approaches with joined palms, seeking refuge, should not in the name of humanity be slain even if he be a foe […]! The unfortunate or the fearful who plead for shelter or throw themselves on the mercy of their enemy, should be protected by him who is master of himself. If, conforming to the tradition, one does not render assistance according to one’s capacity, either for reasons of fear, delusion or anger, one is reproached by all and the suppliant, who perishes before the eyes of the one of whom he has sought help in vain, carries away all his merit!

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Therefore it is a heinous crime not to give shelter to those who petition it on this earth; it is to deprive oneself of heaven and glory and to lose one’s strength and prowess! […] Any being who has sought refuge with me, saying- ‘I am thine’ is assured of my protection, I swear it! Bring this stranger to me, […], I shall offer him security whether he be [the brother of my enemy or my enemy] himself! [Ramayana Book VI : Yuddha Kanda Book of War, Chapter (Sarga) 18, The Ramayana of Valmiki Translated by Bar I Prasad Shastri, London, W.II, 1952]

Refugee crossings are matters of survival and triumph against borders and body-politics worldwide. This book focuses on a few of the most privileged who, regardless of their past and present circumstance, have achieved the award of arrival and settlement in Canada and the UK. Attempting to win the same race for refuge, between the years 2000 and 2014 tens of thousands of persons have perished on land and at sea. In order for each of us to accept what can be changed and have the courage to change it, we must first interrogate our position and beliefs about the costs of citizenship and our culpability in border-deaths. The standard of mercy and humanism of which we are all capable is within reach if we dare to stretch out our hand to the outstretched hand.

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INDEX

9/11, 18, 90, 94, 128, 259-272, 286287, 290 Absolute Homelessness, 175, 204, 223 Absorptive Capacity, 62, 68, 77, 103, 106, 121 Adaptation, 11, 26, 31, 40, 47, 61, 169, 172, 183, 188, 204 Affective Integration, 5, 16, 19, 20, 38, 47, 48, 57, 258, 284, 299 Aliens, 60, 62, 75, 89, 92, 133, 259, 266, 268 Assimilation, 61, 70, 83-85, 234, 297 Asylum Seeking, 35, 39, 109, 124, 151-154, 288, 300 Barriers, 4, 15, 25, 34, 36, 40, 45, 69, 92, 103, 109, 118, 123, 127, 149-153, 165, 166, 167, 169, 176, 182, 187, 190-193, 213, 218, 236, 250, 251, 261, 284285, 288-291, 294, 296, 298 Belonging, 3, 4, 16, 19, 24-25, 2930, 36, 39, 41, 47-48, 58, 74, 76, 91, 97, 134, 146, 157, 160, 165, 171, 176-177, 191-194, 204-205, 219, 225, 233-235, 242, 251, 258-260, 268, 272, 284, 288, 291, 294 Bilingualism Canada, 9, 81, 83-84, 94 Borders, 6-8, 30, 35, 47, 56, 60, 70, 75, 89, 96-97, 105, 107-108, 110, 113-119, 122-124, 127-128, 132, 135, 154, 162, 229, 258-264, 267-271, 285-290, 295-296 Sovereignty, 6, 97, 108, 119, 123, 151, 265, 271

Britishness, 10, 65, 70-75, 77, 80, 86, 91, 94, 120, 291, 295 Canada, 2, 3, 9-13, 21, 46, 49, 5152, 56-59, 66-69, 79, 80-93, 97, 101-102, 106, 115-122, 127-129, 134, 136-138, 140, 142, 147, 148, 151-154, 157-184, 187, 193, 194, 197-198, 207, 220, 225-300 Capability, 23-25, 47, 106, 151, 174, 233, 251, 265 Capacity, 24 Capital Social Ties, 6, 8, 12, 23-28, 31, 42, 44, 51, 88, 98, 109, 113, 140, 151, 162-163, 175, 179, 187-188, 191, 193, 204, 222, 231-233, 249, 257-258, 274, 276, 290-292, 296-298 Carrier Liability, 78, 122, 128-129, 296 Chronic Homelessness, 2 Citizens, 9-14, 29, 46, 51, 65, 70, 75, 77, 79, 84, 86, 89-93, 108, 113, 115, 123-127, 132, 135, 137, 148, 151, 193, 201, 221, 234-236, 250, 259-260, 265-269, 280-283, 293 Citizenship, 4, 6, 16, 19, 24, 25, 34, 36, 46, 59, 66-70, 74-80, 84, 86, 91-97, 115, 121-124, 129, 132, 138, 146, 149, 151, 182, 204, 212, 217, 219, 225, 226, 229, 235, 236, 251, 254, 259, 268271, 274, 280-284, 291, 294-296 Colonialism, 9, 12, 63, 65-75, 90, 94, 101, 110, 279 Empire, 12, 59-60, 65, 68-74, 80 Community, 3, 4, 9, 11, 31, 44, 45, 48, 50, 52, 61, 72, 76, 77, 80, 84,

331

Intersections of Displacement

85, 90, 91, 115, 119, 131, 136, 144, 153, 162, 177, 182, 183, 200, 208, 219, 222, 234, 242, 250, 263, 266, 270, 275-281, 285, 290, 295, 297 Comparison, 3, 10, 19, 20, 23, 36, 41, 45, 47, 52, 56, 57, 86, 98, 108, 138, 148, 149, 154, 212, 263, 282, 285, 289, 290, 296-299 Control, 59, 73, 91, 93, 120, 202, 285, 296 Coping Mechanisms, 31, 153, 191, 194, 202, 208, 222, 247-252 Culture, 9, 11, 17-22, 28, 30, 37-44, 49, 52, 56, 65-66, 80, 154-156, 165-167, 172, 173, 176, 196, 199-205, 213, 225, 241, 268, 289, 292, 295, 298-300 Decision Making, 4, 7, 11, 14, 21, 24, 31-35, 47-50, 56, 77, 95, 122, 131, 151, 154, 162, 167, 171174, 182, 191, 194, 195, 197, 239, 251, 254, 257, 258, 288, 293 Deportation, 15, 31, 38, 61-62, 108, 110, 114, 126, 217, 296 Detention, 15, 108, 114, 120, 122, 128, 129, 163, 201, 271, 296 Dispersal, 15, 62, 72, 108, 114, 122, 135, 140, 144-146, 169, 176, 190, 195, 197, 200, 206-208, 210, 213, 222-225, 253-254, 285-287, 295-296 Displacement, 2, 5, 14, 15, 22-24, 30-36, 41, 43, 47, 70, 79, 96-100, 106, 114, 123, 135, 137, 152, 154, 162, 183, 203, 211, 218219, 223, 231, 234, 237, 241, 247, 249, 260, 265, 276, 283, 300 Education, 15, 16, 25, 31, 37, 45, 46, 50, 72, 79-83, 86, 88, 148, 158, 160, 165-174, 177-183, 196, 199, 204-207, 212, 219-230, 236, 237, 242, 244, 247, 249, 274, 277, 285, 291, 299

Elderly, 167, 169, 213, 216 Employment Income, 15, 16, 31, 33, 45-49, 73, 88, 91, 108, 114, 134, 136-137, 148-149, 166-172, 176, 179, 183, 190-191, 194, 202, 206, 208, 216, 217, 221, 223, 231, 235, 247, 253, 279, 280, 297-299 European Union, 75, 100, 101, 114118, 124-131, 296 Exclusion, 11-15, 29, 36, 59-62, 6669, 74-83, 91, 93, 96, 103, 109, 117, 120, 177-220, 233, 252, 258-261, 265, 269-272, 286-288 Expectations, 3, 20, 21, 25, 38, 46, 91, 103, 151-154, 159-162, 165, 190, 193, 196, 207, 227, 229, 245, 252, 254, 289 Family Size, 170 Flight, 6, 9, 14, 22, 30-37, 42, 47, 60, 96, 109-117, 123, 151-154, 157, 159, 172-173, 190, 199, 200, 206-207, 224, 227, 237, 244, 248-251, 268, 270, 288, 293, 300 Foreigner, 1, 2, 8, 37, 60, 63, 69, 95, 103, 124, 205, 206, 230, 259, 262, 266, 283, 285 Functional Integration, 16, 48, 146, 178, 225, 258 Gatekeepers, 21, 50-52, 134, 167, 169, 172-175, 218, 231, 243, 250, 292 Globalization, 22, 90, 259-265, 271, 279, 288 Health, 8, 15, 17, 23, 25, 29, 33, 37, 39, 45, 46, 50, 69, 72, 83, 146149, 165, 168-172, 182, 183, 192, 202, 212, 215, 217, 223, 227, 238, 242, 243, 246-253, 264, 271, 274, 279, 282, 297-300 Home, 1-5, 9-14, 16-23, 25-36, 3840, 46-49, 51-53, 56-58, 62, 73, 75, 79, 95, 96, 102, 109, 115122, 125, 127, 129-140, 143,

Index 144, 146, 149-152, 160-165, 169-176, 179, 182, 184, 187, 188, 190-212, 213, 215, 219-239, 241-244, 247-254, 256, 258-262, 273-277, 282-300 Homelessness, 2, 11, 22, 48, 96, 135, 137, 162, 203, 211, 218, 219, 223, 231, 234, 241, 243, 249, 258, 276, 300 Housing Career, 2, 3, 5, 8-16, 1921, 27-32, 39, 45-62, 72-73, 77, 91, 96, 114, 121, 122, 135-153, 161-178, 182-184, 187-232, 236, 238, 239, 240, 243, 245-254, 259, 270, 275, 277, 280, 282, 286, 288, 290-294, 297-299 Housing Trajectory, 4, 20, 39-40, 44, 166, 177, 184, 196, 199, 203, 209-212, 216, 220-222, 232, 239, 243-246, 252 Human Capital, 4, 14, 20, 34, 44-46, 88, 103, 133, 134, 151, 152, 166, 179-183, 193-196, 204, 206, 221, 250, 288, 291 Human Rights, 2, 9, 29, 32, 36, 61, 69, 83, 85, 94, 115-119, 123-124, 130, 134, 146, 226, 236-241, 267, 280, 285, 296 International Law, 7, 115-117, 124, 128 Identity, 7, 15, 17, 20, 42, 45, 47, 60-63, 70, 75, 76, 80, 81, 84, 85, 91, 93, 115, 120, 123, 149, 178, 225-227, 233, 236, 258-261, 264, 273, 284, 291, 294 Illegal Migrant Irregular, 6, 8, 78, 126-128, 132, 264 Immigration Officers, 127, 128, 229, 267 Indicators of Integration, 16, 20, 46, 47, 190, 297, 299 Indigenous First Nations, 2, 182 Instrumental Integration, 47

332 Integration, 4, 7-35, 40, 42, 44-48, 51, 56, 57, 61, 72-74, 77, 83-85, 91, 93, 95, 103, 120, 121, 125, 128, 132-135, 140, 146-154, 162-166, 172, 178, 182, 188-193, 197, 202, 204, 222-225, 230, 241, 243, 251, 256-259, 264, 270-292, 296, 297-300 Interdiction, 108, 127-131, 149, 261, 271, 296 Intersections, 9, 21, 23, 37, 61, 167, 168, 193 Invisibility, 8, 45, 61, 74, 77, 151 Language, 9, 15, 16, 37-42, 46-53, 63, 66, 72-76, 80, 83, 120, 147, 157, 159, 165, 167, 172, 176178, 183, 190, 191, 200, 205, 208-211, 218, 219, 233, 238, 241, 250-253, 259, 270, 284 Legislation, 9, 60-62, 66-72, 74-90, 94, 115-121, 127-131, 135, 137, 138, 143-148, 176, 284 Law, 6, 59, 67, 73, 76-83, 86, 92-96, 118, 129, 131, 135, 138, 143, 146-151, 194, 216, 259, 295, 296 Lifeworld, 24, 26 Managed Migration, 79, 87, 106, 119, 129, 131, 146, 226, 283-286 Media, 6, 36, 50, 57, 60, 63, 73, 95, 105, 106, 159, 218, 274, 297 Mixed Motives, 14 Mobility and Migration, 1, 4-6, 9, 11, 14, 15, 21-23, 28-45, 57, 60, 67, 83, 94-96, 101, 108-110, 113, 114, 118, 123, 124, 127-129, 133, 148-154, 157-162, 166, 167, 172, 173,190-200, 205, 207, 211214, 218-219, 222, 226-229, 237, 238, 259, 260, 272, 273, 288, 291, 296, 300 Moral Panic, 73, 76, 90, 94, 106 Multiculturalism, 3, 5, 6, 9-12, 2023, 30, 35, 42-46, 56-63, 66-98, 105, 119-131, 134, 135, 138, 144-149, 158, 159, 162, 165-177,

333

Intersections of Displacement

182, 193-197, 204, 217-221, 224-229, 233, 236, 238, 242, 246, 252-, 299 NAFTA, 127 National Asylum Support Service, NASS, 135, 138, 143-146, 163, 169, 195, 200, 201, 208, 224, 253, 254, 290-293 Nationalism, 81 Neighbourhood, 4, 41, 92, 140, 172, 191, 199, 208, 209, 219, 231234, 240, 248, 249 NGO, 2, 3, 12, 37, 50, 51, 56, 122, 145, 220, 237, 252, 267, 292, 298 Non-Refoulement, 118, 129, 130, 157, 261 Obstacles Constraint, 14, 15, 34, 47, 51, 129, 204, 220, 250, 258, 289, 291 Ontological Security, 24, 26, 38-40, 44, 154, 251, 297 Pathways, 4, 11, 21, 153, 225, 257, 289, 292 Persecution, 6-9, 14, 15, 29-36, 3942, 60, 95, 96, 106-114, 117-119, 124, 128-130, 134, 152, 154, 157, 165, 168, 174, 183, 190, 200, 204, 205, 220, 224-227, 244, 247, 248, 251, 260, 265, 272, 289-300 Photo Voice, 9, 20, 49, 52, 53, 268 Prejudice, 7, 46, 61, 81, 130, 166, 173, 176-182, 218, 224 Priority Need, 135, 137, 143, 167, 172, 202, 220, 224 Process, 11, 19, 28, 48, 300 Race, 7, 12, 13, 22, 23, 28, 41-47, 59, 61-91, 96-105, 118-124, 130134, 145, 152-154, 165-167, 172-173, 176-182, 193, 205-208, 215, 219, 225, 235, 241, 258, 260, 266-272, 277, 284, 291-295, 299

Refugee Burden, 100, 103, 106, 108, 149, 296 Refugee Claimant Refugee Claim, 6-8, 15, 19, 48, 87-89, 113, 137, 165, 190, 230, 235, 245, 267, 279-282 Refugee Protection Division, Canada, 120 Refugee Regime, 14 Refugeeness, 5, 14, 17-23, 28, 32, 34, 37, 38, 40, 149, 162, 167, 177, 182, 191, 195, 220, 222, 225, 227, 235, 248, 289-291, 299 Relative Homelessness, 65, 86, 89, 120, 174, 222 Resettlement, 9, 11, 22, 39, 48, 72, 80, 87, 88, 97, 118, 120, 124, 152, 224, 296 Rooflessness Homelessness, 28, 136, 137, 184 Routinization, 14, 26, 40, 234 Safe Third Country, 119, 124-131 Scale, 2-5, 9, 16-23, 28, 29, 37-41, 48-53, 58, 62, 86, 92, 115, 120, 124, 129, 134, 137, 140, 151, 157, 160, 161, 165, 191, 199, 205, 219-222, 226, 242, 250, 256-259, 267, 273-282, 286-291, 300 Security, 3-6, 11, 14, 18, 22-26, 30, 33, 35, 38-40, 44-48, 75, 82, 8894, 109, 119, 120, 126-129, 154161, 167, 212, 214, 219, 222, 225, 227, 241, 242, 248-251, 257-272, 282, 285, 287, 290 Security Perimeter, 128, 129, 271, 272 Segregation, 62, 66, 67, 85, 221, 258 Settlement, 4-6, 9-13, 16-22, 25, 3042, 45-51, 56-63, 72, 73, 79, 80, 92-97, 103, 109, 113, 115, 121134, 146-153, 160, 162, 165, 166, 172-175, 182, 188, 191, 193, 196-204, 208-212, 217-221, 225, 227, 230-235, 238-240, 243,

Index 247-249, 254-259, 266, 270-274, 278-284, 287-291, 294-299 Shelters, 57, 140, 182, 229-233, 238, 240, 277, 280, 290 Single Parents, 167, 172, 173 Smuggling, 78, 101, 127, 129, 159, 162, 285 Social Capital, 3, 25, 42, 45, 152, 162, 163, 166, 193, 204, 252, 290, 292 Social Cohesion, 4, 6, 132, 258, 291 Social Exclusion, 11, 53, 67, 136, 222, 223 Social Housing, 6-10, 15, 57, 91, 135, 140, 143, 144, 147, 148, 170-172, 176, 184, 194, 195, 227, 238-240, 243-254, 277, 290, 292 Social Status, 15, 37, 41, 149, 159, 161, 166, 170, 244, 295-298 Stigma, 152, 297 Structuration, 14, 18, 23-28, 33, 34, 48, 96, 128, 134, 135, 151, 195, 202, 222, 227, 257, 289, 292, 300 Giddens, 17, 23, 24, 26, 109, 133, 165, 300 Subjectivity, 5, 14, 17, 19-23, 28, 32-38, 40, 51, 53, 149, 162, 167, 177-182, 191, 194, 195, 220, 222, 225, 227, 235, 242, 248, 289, 291, 297, 299 Submergence, 105, 123 Survival, 2, 5, 8, 14, 24, 25, 33-36, 96, 106, 113, 151, 167, 172, 173, 197, 199, 202, 233, 251, 297 Territory, 6, 7, 9, 22, 30, 45, 65, 68, 70, 79, 100, 108, 115, 118, 124, 129, 133, 151, 231 Trafficking, 78, 127 Transit Countries, 127 Typology of the Unwelcome, 73, 106, 165, 296

334 Undeserving Poor, 8, 12-14, 25, 27, 66, 91, 95, 113, 263, 264, 269, 272 UNHCR, 6, 8, 57, 87, 88, 95, 100108, 118, 123, 124, 131, 174, 272 1951 Refugee Convention, 7, 37, 83, 94, 110, 113-119, 123, 124, 130, 133, 151 United Kingdom, 3, 6-13, 18, 21, 27, 35, 37, 40, 43, 45-53, 56-63, 65-70, 73-83, 87-98, 101110,114-122, 125-140, 143-149, 151-164, 168-171, 173-179, 183, 184, 187, 190, 193, 195-229, 232, 238, 242, 253-259, 263, 274, 282-297, 300 Uprootedness, 9, 14, 100, 182, 203, 209, 300 Visible Minority, 68, 83, 176 Visitors, 8, 128, 214, 215, 268, 273 Vouchers Welfare, 15, 108, 114, 145, 146, 221, 253, 286 Vulnerability, 4, 5, 14, 19, 21, 25, 32, 33, 36, 37, 43, 109, 127, 133, 134, 152, 153, 166, 167, 173, 174, 177, 183, 193, 194, 206, 220, 222, 224, 233, 243, 252, 254, 277, 278, 287, 288, 290 Welfare, 2, 6, 8, 11, 19, 32, 37, 45, 46, 52, 56, 66, 89, 110, 123, 129, 143, 148, 151, 167, 169, 184, 187, 190, 194, 211, 218, 222, 227, 280, 292, 293, 296, 298 White List, 130 Youth, 2, 89, 132, 143, 164, 167, 169, 170, 171, 174, 175, 177, 212, 227, 229, 230, 235, 244, 245, 247, 248, 254, 260, 267, 292