19 April 2015: a fishing boat filled with 700 men, women and children attempts to cross from Libya to the small Italian island of Lampedusa. As those on board rush to attract the attention of a cargo ship – in the hope of being saved from the drifting vessel – the boat becomes unbalanced and capsizes. Less than 30 survive. Their fellow passengers are not the first to drown making this journey, but it is their deaths that capture the media’s attention, triggering headlines around Europe declaring that a ‘global refugee crisis’ has dawned.1
In a global context, however, this crisis is nothing new. For decades, refugees have been migrating thick and fast into countries neighbouring conflict zones. The protracted Syrian civil war, now entering its seventh year, has forced two million people to seek refuge in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon.2 Kenya’s Dadaab – the world’s largest refugee camp – was established in 1991 to accommodate those fleeing Somalia’s civil war; people now in their mid-twenties have spent their entire lives there. European countries, too, have been playing host to asylum seekers for generations. During the Bosnian conflict in the early 1990s, over a million people were displaced3; Germany alone provided refuge for 350,000 refugees.4 And the UK is no stranger to large numbers of incoming people: there were over double the number of asylum applications (excluding dependants) in 2002 than there were in 2015.5
Despite being a destination for asylum seekers for decades, however, the UK government has failed to adopt a fair and effective process for accommodating these people and their claims. As of June 2016, there were more than 26,000 people who came to the UK as early as 2006 who were still waiting for their asylum case to be decided.6 Bread & Roses is a social enterprise addressing the very issues caused by this moratorium. The project works to rebuild the lives of women who fled their homes years ago, but have been tangled in – or paralysed by – the UK’s prolonged, inert bureaucratic process for claiming asylum, through support, training and employment opportunities.
There are two entwined strands to the enterprise: firstly it utilises a growing network of organisations and volunteers to offer the practical support needed by women who have been through the asylum process. Understanding these needs has been possible through working with leading UK refugee organisations, including Women for Refugee Women and Paiwand Afghan Association. Secondly, it brings women together on a weekly basis to learn floristry from professionals – a practical skill, creative outlet and social occasion. These two strands produce a self-contained revenue stream: the sale of the flower arrangements funds the employability programme. The project aims to help refugee women integrate, but also to create new opportunities for themselves: the latest programme trained six Congolese, Eritrean, and Syrian women as junior florists, enabling them to take up paid roles running workshops and working on freelance floristry projects in the Bread & Roses team.
Just as the crisis didn’t start with a capsized fishing boat, a refugee’s journey doesn’t end when they make it onto dry land. Upon arrival to the UK, a person is required to register at an Asylum Screening Unit, where they are given legal status as an asylum seeker until either being granted or denied protection as a refugee. There is a vital distinction between a refugee and asylum seeker: until a person meets the necessary criteria to be granted refugee status, their rights and freedoms are severely restricted. Until last year, asylum claims could be funnelled into the Detained Fast Track procedure, which assesses applications within a maximum of two weeks, while claimants remain in detention. The procedure has since been suspended, after consistent arguments that it was ‘structurally unfair’.7
The bulk of asylum claims are not dealt with so swiftly however, despite the fact that the Home Office aims to process applications within six months.8 The 26,000 people who arrived to the UK as early as 2006 but are still caught in the system are a testament to this. Until 2014 when steps were finally taken to reallocate staff to the under-resourced task of processing claims, the Home Office acknowledged that there had been a steady rise in the number of claims which remained outstanding after twelve months.9 These people are kept in legal limbo as asylum seekers, and often spend years living in uncertainty of what their future holds. Denied the right to work, they receive just £36.95 a week for food, clothing and any other expenses.10 Bread & Roses was set up to support women who’ve experienced the cultural and social isolation inflicted by the juridical purgatory and stark financial predicament of seeking asylum in the UK.
Indeed, as far as the UK’s ‘refugee crisis’ goes, we’re not dealing with an influx – we’re dealing with a backlog. The word ‘crisis’ is itself is an unhelpful way of conceiving of the situation, for it suggests an intense moment, a breaking point: an event which quickly escalates and is then resolved. And although the words ‘refugee’ and ‘crisis’ have become inextricably linked in our current vocabulary, the phrase gives a misleading sense of the experiences of refugees. In the current geopolitical climate, the need for refuge from danger can last for years. As Paul Collier and Alexander Betts have said recently, ‘integration into another society is essential’.11 They state quite plainly: ‘refugees have a right to expect a pathway to autonomy’.12 It is difficult to pursue autonomy when your new nation has left you in uncertain limbo, having expunged your ability to earn, and rendered you dependent on their paltry cash allowance.
And yet leave them in limbo we do. Despite a widely shared consensus among experts that ‘labour market participation is the single most important step to a successful integration into host societies’13, the UK continues to restrict the working rights of asylum seekers while simultaneously failing to process claims in a timely way. Several European states – including Germany14 and Sweden15 – are now adopting more progressive policies to reflect the need for asylum seekers and refugees to enter the workforce, such as subsidised jobs, integrated language training and tailored apprenticeship schemes. UK policy has not been so well updated. As a result, asylum seekers live in the UK without the ability to learn new skills, gain experience or earn their keep for years before being granted leave to remain, or being deported back to the country they fled from.
The cruellest irony is that by the time a person is granted refugee status (and therefore the right to work), their long-term unemployment has had a severely damaging effect on their ability to join the workforce. Skills and aspirations16 – not to mention confidence – are weakened by years of inertia. This is demonstrated by the fact that unemployment levels in refugee communities remain above 50%, compared to 6% for the national average.17 A survey of refugees living in London, commissioned by the GLA in 2010, showed that the majority of refugees who were unemployed had been looking for work for more than a year, and those who were employed were primarily working in low-skilled, low-paid and often dangerous jobs.18 For the many refugees who are repeatedly unsuccessful in their attempts to secure paid employment, the only way to earn an income seems to be cash in hand work. Refugee women are particularly vulnerable and at risk of exploitation by taking up this kind of work. Many women who have worked with Bread & Roses have, in desperation, accepted off-the-books jobs as cleaners or carers, and subsequently endured emotional or physical abuse from their employers.
As a society, we should be able to offer refugees more: a genuine route to a secure and happy life, reflective of their aspirations and qualities. Refugees have the right to expect to flourish. As it stands, we encourage refugees to see themselves as the fortunate few, the lucky beneficiaries of our generosity, but their supposed good fortune becomes a new kind of punishment, a strategy for lowering their expectations and silencing their legitimate demands - lest they be labelled ‘ungrateful’.19 Rather than prolonging their sense of persecution, however, the UK would do better to recognise their skills and facilitate their contributions to our society. Were this the case, perhaps we might be a little less hostile about letting them in.