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Asylum, Housing, and Community

This episode examines the lived realities of asylum housing in the UK, as well as the broader political and policy landscape that influences them.

In this episode, host Ethne James Souch speaks with Professor Mette Louise Berg, Dr Judith Spirig, Faith Nyamakanga, and Nelson Gomez about the lived realities of asylum housing in the UK, and the wider political and policy landscape that shapes them.

Drawing from a Grand Challenges-funded participatory research project focused on asylum dispersal areas in Yorkshire, the episode explores how narratives of "deservingness," local resource pressures, and privatised housing systems intersect with the everyday experiences of people seeking sanctuary in the UK.

With co-researchers Faith and Nelson sharing their experiences navigating the asylum process and housing insecurity, this conversation amplifies voices that are often left out of public discourse while also offering concrete insights into how policy and public attitudes might change.

SoundCloud Widget Placeholderhttps://soundcloud.com/uclsound/season-3-episode-1-asylum-housing-and-co...

 

Discussed in this episode:

  • The realities of asylum housing in Halifax and Doncaster
  • How dispersal policies affect both newcomers and long-term residents
  • The impact of UK asylum policy on mental and physical health
  • Lived experiences of poverty, waiting, and misrepresentation in the system
  • Public misunderstandings about asylum seekers and state support
  • The role of co-production and interdisciplinary collaboration in migration research
  • Participatory outputs, including the exhibition My Name Is Not An Asylum Seeker
  • The broader research initiative, Migrants and Solidarities, and the UCL Policy Lab’s This Place Matters project
  • Key policy recommendations, including the right to work and improved housing standards

Featured in this episode:

  • Host: Ethne James Souch, Coordinator, UCL’s Grand Challenge of Inequalities

    With special thanks to our guests:

  • Professor Mette Louise Berg
    Professor of Migration and Diaspora Studies, UCL Social Research Institute

  • Dr. Judith Spirig
    Associate Professor of Political Science, UCL; Affiliate, Immigration Policy Lab Zurich

  • Faith Nyamakanga
    Co-researcher and contributor, My Name Is Not An Asylum Seeker

  • Nelson Gomez
    Co-researcher and contributor, My Name Is Not An Asylum Seeker

Resources

Transcript

Ethne James Souch: Hello and welcome to this episode of Disruptive Voices from UCL Grand Challenges. I'm Ethne James Souch your host and coordinator for UCL's Grand Challenge of Inequalities. Through this mini series Challenging Inequalities Conversations on Inclusive and Just Futures, we invite you into conversations with UCL researchers who are working to build a more inclusive and equitable future. In today's episode, I'm joined by professor Mette Louise Berg, Dr. Judith Spirig, Faith Nyamakanga and Nelson Gomez to explore how their research is helping to shape more equitable policies. Mette is a Professor of Migration and Diaspora Studies and co director of the Thomas Coram Research Unit which is part of the UCL Social Research Institute. Mette was awarded Grand Challenges funding alongside her colleagues Dr. Eve Dickson, to carry out collaborative co research on asylum housing in the UK with a focus on the lived experiences of people in the asylum system. Both Faith and Nelson, co researchers of the Grand Challenges project. They were co researchers of the report Asylum Housing in Yorkshire, A Case Study of Two Dispersal Areas and contributors to the exhibition My Name Is not an Asylum Seeker. Judith is a lecturer and Assistant professor in Political Science at ucl. She is also an affiliate of the Immigration Policy Lab, Zurich Branch and the University of Zurich's Department of Political Science. Her research interests focus on the causes and consequences of exclusionary attitudes. So thank you all very much for joining me today. So Mette I'd like to start with you. Could you start by giving us a brief overview of your Grand Challenges Fund project and how this connects to the broader Migrants and Solidarities initiative?

Professor Mette Louise Berg: Yes, sure. So, the project was called Rationing Deservingess: Housing  and Dispersal in Northern England. and it was sort of an adjacent project to a larger international research project that is funded by Nordforsk and it's called Migrants and Solidarities Negotiating Deservingness in Welfare Micropublics. And this larger project focuses on the uk, Denmark and Sweden. So three different welfare states with different migration histories. But in all three countries we have seen that migration has become a really vexed and polarising issue and the issues we wanted to explore, arose from the way in which the debate around asylum is framed in the uk. Specifically, it's important to remember that countries in the global south host the vast majority of refugees worldwide. So that's sort of the broader context. and discussion around asylum and dispersal policies is often framed as a financial or a managerial question. So it's around kind of a burden to be shared rather than, for example thinking about it as an issue of human rights and social justice or international legal obligations or indeed of the human capabilities that refugees bring. We wanted to advance public debates on questions around deservingness, welfare and migration and how these questions are related to place based inequalities. The project foregrounded the voices of those who are within the asylum system. And so we trained and worked with a group of six co researchers. So they are people who have lived experience of the asylum system. And we conducted our research in Yorkshire in two dispersal towns, Halifax and Doncaster.

Ethne James Souch: Nelson, could you tell our listeners when did it begin? What are the main goals of the project and how did you go about researching it?

Nelson Gomez: So as you mentioned in the title, it was in 2022. The research was about how the housing support that the Home Office offers the asylum seekers status were. And we find many, many interesting things. I was involved because I was part of St. Augustine Centre in Halifax as a volunteer. The university contacted the centre on, the centre contacted me. in that moment I was an asylum seeker. I, ah, was in the process of seeking asylum, living in a home Office accommodation.

Ethne James Souch: And just to add on to that, how were you involved in the project?

Nelson Gomez: Well we were part of the project, like telling our stories, ah, taking some pictures and videos about the houses or flats where we were living in that moment. Not only from, from mobile cells, but some for other friends of other people who were in the asylum seeking process, as well, asking them about how easy

00:05:00

Nelson Gomez: were for them to live in there if they, if they had their basic necessary.

Professor Mette Louise Berg: I can perhaps say a little bit more about the, the asylum system, because that's important to understand. So the Home Office is the government department that is responsible for and oversees the asylum system and makes decisions on asylum application. But the asylum support system, so accommodation and provision of support for people who are awaiting for, waiting for an outcome on their asylum application, all of that has been fully privatised since 2012. And so we focus on the everyday lives and experiences of people who have sought asylum in the UK and who are waiting for a decision. And during this waiting period, people are dispersed on a no choice basis to different parts of the country and Yorkshire is one of them. and they're housed in what's called dispersal accommodation. And this accommodation is often of very poor quality. and most people in dispersal accommodation are not allowed to work. the areas that people are dispersed to tend to be small towns and rural areas and often they are areas that have been particularly negatively affected by years of austerity policies. So local services Housing, public transport may be quite poor. And so when people seeking asylum are moved into these areas, long standing residents maybe can feel that their access to support and service is not being prioritised. Notions of deservingness as constituted through long term place based belonging and residents then can come into conflict with understandings of the deservingness of people in the asylum system. And this really can be a recipe for grievances, when actually both long standing and new residents need decent affordable housing, good services and jobs and reliable public transport.

Ethne James Souch: Thank you Mette. Thank you for your description as showing that there is a complex interplay between these long residents and the positioning of new migrants in the area. Faith, maybe you can share some of the key findings from being part of that project.

Faith Nyamum Kanga: Yeah, thank you so much. the main findings were centred around housing, that the housing situations that asylum seekers were living in were not livable at all. people reported having ceilings that were leaking. People reported having the equipment in the housing like dryers, like the energy not working, like the houses were not warm and it's in winter. Some at times, people reported having not enough equipment to use in the house. And then the second thing was around financing the financing situation. Then when we did the project, people were getting like if you're a single person it was around 40 pound. I checked earlier on, before the interview. Now it's now £49 but it was not enough that £40 per week was all for your transport, for your clothing, for your food, everything that you need to do to live as a person, as a human being.

Professor Mette Louise Berg: So in both places vulnerable people with high support needs are ah, placed in areas that are not set up to support them and where long standing residents are also struggling. And so this can cause resentment, to focus more specifically on effects on people in the asylum system. So there's a significant backlog there was at the time, there still is, of application, processing. So people who have fled war, conflict, persecution are stuck in the asylum system for months, sometimes years and they don't really, they're not in a position to start to forge new lives or support themselves or their loved ones, their. And unable to work. And this also has a really negative and corrosive effect on people's physical and mental health.

Ethne James Souch: Thank you. Yeah, as you've outlined, it's quite apparent there's lots of ongoing issues currently and lots of areas for improvement. Judith, coming to you. Could you outline your current research and its interplay with policies?

Dr. Judith Spirig: Yeah, sure. thanks so much for having Me Ethne, I'm currently working on the range of different projects that deal with questions of inclusion, exclusion and identity. And I explore questions about politics and policies of asylum and immigration with a range of co authors. They're sort of very much interested both in how policies affect people, newcomers and those that have been in a place for longer sort of along the lines of what Mette just described. And they're also interested obviously in providing insights to policymakers and other stakeholders

00:10:00

Dr. Judith Spirig: in sort of the asylum and integration policy space. So one of the papers you know that's perhaps worth talking about a little bit is the commentary for the IFS Deaton Review on inequality that I have recently written together with Dominik Hangartner. And in this commentary we argued that what is perhaps the biggest effect of immigration or sort of having newcomers arrive in a country on economic inequality within that country. And specifically in the commentary we're trying to think about the UK through a political channel, not so much through a direct economic channel in which maybe you could think that newcomers would replace people who had previously had certain jobs or reduce sort of competitors wages. And that's sort of something that economists focus on a lot. But we're really interested in sort of a political channel where the idea is that parties that become or tend to become more successful in times when immigrant immigration and immigration issues are highly salient, anti immigrant right wing parties are successful. These are going to have sort of a bigger impact on economic inequality in a country than sort of these direct economic effect. And I think maybe Mette also you know had implicitly already said something that, that that relates to this I think because you know one example for this would be that the arrival of asylum seeker that it does not always increase support for anti immigrant parties among locals. So it's not necessarily the case that it has to happen but it depends on sort of the context. Right. And the policies that are in place. So for example some studies show that policies that promote meaningful contact between new and established residents, among other policies they can mitigate such outcomes. I'm also involved in some sort of very directly policy focused research or projects where together with two UCL colleagues Alexandra Hartman and Moritz Marbach were sort of as part of the UCL Policy Lab we're working on gathering and summarising best evidence on or credible evidence as we call it on asylum and integration policies and sort of try to package that knowledge for use by policymakers and think tanks and other sort of stakeholders. in that space. And the idea really is to create something like an evidence base for what works in this area of asylum policy and refugee integration policy, what helps asylum seekers integrate into communities.

Ethne James Souch: Thank you. Such a wealth of research that you've been involved with.

Professor Mette Louise Berg: Can I just jump in? I would just really like to follow up on what you said about how immigration doesn't necessarily give. It's not immigration per se that gives rise to anti migrant kind of feelings or sentiments or politics. And so I think we have a really brilliant example of that with the Ukraine crisis. Because there we saw in the wake of the full scale Russian invasion in 2022, we saw the UK government stepping up really saying we want to welcome Ukrainians, we want to offer them a sanctuary. And there was a huge, huge groundswell of public opinion, people stepping up, offering a space in private homes. And so we can see it a lot. Also depends on the media and political narratives and the wider context. and so that's really important to bear in mind. It's not immigration per se, it's a context.

Dr. Judith Spirig: And I mean the integration policies for that group was also very different.

Professor Mette Louise Berg: Exactly, it was strikingly different. So I also was lucky enough to get Grand Challenges funding to do some research on the Ukrainians which I was in tandem with the work on the asylum system. And it was really quite difficult I would say, to do that research because we saw this hugely welcoming, positive response to Ukrainians at the same time as really punitive and negative policies and politics around people, other people, other groups arriving to also seek sanctuary and asylum.

Ethne James Souch: Thank you, that's really good to add in, Judith. So what is next for your research and how might shift in inequalities or policies affect your research in the coming dec. A lot to think about.

Dr. Judith Spirig: My research in the coming decades. So let me start with something that's sort of a bit closer on the horizon at the moment for me. And it's sort of a project called This Place Matters and that's a new initiative that the UCL Policy Lab has launched in partnership with Citizens UK and more in common. And the idea of this project is really about figuring out how to strengthen social or community cohesion, in the UK to think about which kind of interventions are

00:15:00

Dr. Judith Spirig: most promising when it comes to bringing local communities together.

Ethne James Souch: Thanks Judith. And I agree this is an ever changing research landscape so we'll see what happens in the next decade or so. and I really look forward to seeing more of the impacts from the project you mentioned, this place matters. We can add into the show notes some of the updates as with all the projects you've mentioned just so that listeners can find out more if they need to. Just moving on to you Mette. so the project you mentioned earlier highlighted the co production and research and the importance of such and UCL Grand Challenges programme is all encompassing this and encourages interdisciplinary collaborations. So I thought from your perspective just to give some context of what are the key benefits of working in this way and why do you think it's important to do so in your projects?

Professor Mette Louise Berg: Yeah. Thank you. So yes I'm a social anthropologist by background but as over my career as I have worked on migration issues for many years and I just find that working in an interdisciplinary manner is just always enriching. and for me it's about focusing on the topic that I work on rather than on particular disciplinary angles on it. So talking to other people from other disciplinary backgrounds who work on similar topics or issues, issues I just find is always helpful. Enriching brings new nuance, a deeper understanding. and migration and asylum are really complex issues that you can't really comprehend from a single disciplinary standpoint. You need inputs from different disciplines. You need. What I can bring as a social anthropologist is kind of a bottom up view. The lived experiences, subjective histories and experiences. But we also need economists who can the big picture but also at them so smaller kind of local impacts. we need lawyers who can talk about impacts of particular laws. We need political scientists who can talk about attitudes and impacts of policies. we need historians to understand the kind of, the longer histories of migration and asylum. And so together we can kind of build up a fuller picture. So that I find really enriching.

Ethne James Souch: Nelson, what was your experience of contributing to the research and the following exhibition? What was the experience like? Has anything happened since the project? would m you able to share that with us?

Nelson Gomez: Well when the research took part I was being waiting for my status for about two years. Remember some situation was really sensitive or shocking to me. I remember Mette went to Halifax and she wanted me to show her about food banks or centres when we got helped and go back to some torches of food banks when we were the first time in Halifax was so emotional in a bad way but just tell our stories or see the others stories or experience about the asylum system situation was I didn't know about the quantity of support money people get now but at that time we got 35 pounds a week per person. Yeah. What we have done for now is just make public the situation, the information that we found and inform others about this situation because there are so misunderstandings about asylum seekers. I remember once I saw on Facebook a person saying the asylum seekers get 35 pounds a day. That would be really nice, but it's not. So misinformation is around. And yes, I think that one of the most important things about this research is to inform people to say the truth.

Ethne James Souch: Thank you for sharing and I understand it must have been a really difficult time at that moment and hopefully this podcast interview can kind of still amplify that work and keep that conversation going as you've mentioned. And Faith, what about you? Is there anything you would like to share of your experience of contributing to the research and since that project started and finished?

Faith Nyamum Kanga: Yeah, I think I share the same sentiments in Nelson because I always live by this. It's like a proverb or a statement that says when you have a story, be sure to be the person that tells your story because if you don't, somebody else will and they will not tell it. Right. And as Nelson have

00:20:00

Faith Nyamum Kanga: said that there's been a lot of misrepresentation, misconception about what the asylum is and what people go through. So for me it was a phenomenal experience, to be part of the research, you know, to be part of a person telling her own story as a migrant and to hear other people as well, you know, talk about, share their own story, the truth of what they face every day, it was really a good experience, experience for me. And as Nelson and you have said, as well Ethne, it's an ongoing conversation. So we, we hope that the conversation continues and we hope that we'll go back to this research and look at what has been done so far.

Ethne James Souch: Thank you for sharing. That's a beautiful positive note. So just looking ahead, what's next for the research project or the wider initiative and how do you see its impact continuing to grow?

Professor Mette Louise Berg: Yeah, so we've written blog posts including some of them we've co written with the co researchers. We've also co written a book chapter and we have contributed to a toolkit on participatory research for third sector organisations. So hopefully other people will find inspiration in what we did and will help them design their own participatory research. We've also written and are still writing academic articles. for the co researchers it was really important that we reached A wider audience. So we also teamed up with Nadia Mendes Guevara who is an architect. So another disciplinary perspective and she essentially translated our research into a pop up exhibition which has been touring Yorkshire. And in each site that the exhibition has been we've worked with local partners in Halifax. We worked with the local library which is the library of Sanctuary. So they, the exhibition was there. They curated a display of books around sanctuary and migration. We worked with the local historical Archive, West Yorkshire Archives, who curated a display around the history of sanctuary in Halifax. So again giving more historical depth to these issues. Often migration and asylum are seen as new current issues but actually they're not. People have always moved and there are histories to to these issues. and most recently the exhibition has been here at ucl. currently there is a parliamentary inquiry on asylum accommodation and so we have also submitted evidence to that. So I guess in summary we've tried to reach different audiences both locally and nationally and within academia and beyond. and I guess what I would really want to or what I really hope our project could contribute to is kind of changing the narrative on migration and asylum which I think we really need just to say that.

Ethne James Souch: I have seen the, and I've been to the exhibition that was featured at UCL several months ago and it was wonderful. So many congratulations on that. So looking ahead, what do you view as key research priorities for addressing societal inequalities? As it relates to the, the discussions we'd had today, there are a few.

Dr. Judith Spirig: Things that come to mind. the first thing is that I think it would be important to prioritise what we sometimes call the co production or co producing research with policymakers and communities. What I mean by that is really try and break down the barriers between researchers and government and those directly affected by policies or sort of interventions. When we design studies and even more so maybe than we have been doing so far, I think if we want to for our work to really reduce social inequalities or to just lead to better outcomes for those affected by policies or interventions, that can be, you know that means both newcomers and long term residents alike we should really be formulating the research questions and the interventions with the input and that can be background information, thoughts but also data from both those who implement it and those who live it. and I think building on that I imagine that one thing that would be important in sort of trying to propel this forward would be to try and institutionalise this kind of approach more. I think the UK has done a lot in that regard. There is a big network of what work centres in various domains, example education, healthcare, but there's no sort of such centre when it comes to the evidence that we have or are trying to gather on immigration and inclusion. Another point that I think, and that's informed also by the kind of work that I'm doing and the kind of data that I'm working with is that it would be very important or it seems important to improve data access, for research on

00:25:00

Dr. Judith Spirig: inequality. this might sound a bit technical, but it really is very important and it's one of the reasons why we sometimes struggle to evaluate policies, because oftentimes there is just a lack of detailed data to track the outcomes that we're interested in. Trying to find a way in which it would be easier for researchers to access that data that is available somehow would make a big difference, when trying to evaluate impacts of such policies. Thank you.

Ethne James Souch: Brilliant. And I think a lot of our listeners will agree with you on those points. and come to you Mette, is there anything you would like to add to the question? So what do you view as a key research priority for addressing societal inequalities as it relates to the discussions we've had today?

Professor Mette Louise Berg: Yeah, thank you. Really important question. Ah, so I have a kind of a list ah, of quite concrete measures. So I think it's really important that we address the housing crisis. So affordable and good quality housing is needed for both newcomers and long standing residents and I think that could alleviate some ah, some of the tensions in local areas. also if we make inclusion and sustainable communities a key priority in the accommodation procurement process for asylum accommodation, then we would likely also see very different dynamics at local level. And so this would mean consultation with local authorities and communities, careful consideration of availability of services, support and local transportation. I also would say people in the asylum system should be allowed to work after. There could be a short period in which they can't work. But then to allow people to work, this would enable people to live dignified lives free from destitution. It would help decrease social isolation. It would mean that people can contribute in meaningful ways to their communities.

Dr. Judith Spirig: can I just add one thing? I think the right to work for asylum seekers, which you've mentioned as well, is a very interesting policy, especially in the UK context because the UK has been, it's an outlier when it comes to allowing asylum seekers to work. It Allows that much later than other European countries. And there is plenty of evidence. You know, this is actually one policy where we know, we know that not allowing asylum m seekers the right to work is bad. Yeah. So I think it's in, it's a good example where you can see the difference between politics and policy. and the research is clear when it comes to that policy.

Professor Mette Louise Berg: Absolutely. And the justification for banning asylum seekers for work is that apparently so from what this is, what politicians say is that it's to ensure that the that people aren't migrating to work here and then claiming asylum. But there's absolutely no evidence to support that. Rather there's lots of evidence to support that it is much better for everyone if people are allowed to work work. So I agree fully.

Nelson Gomez: But personally I think each of us has a compromise from our experience not only as a co research but as a refugee. Because I think every single day I remember that I am a refugee and, and I am proud to be that. No, not that, not because why I became a refugee. But I feel good to be a refugee, to be the voice of many, many, many people who sadly still becoming refugees around the world. And yeah, just that. Just very happy to be part of the, this project.

Faith Nyamum Kanga: It takes a lot for somebody to leave everything that they've known, known of for a long time and to make that decision, to be here, whether it's it's war. so let's, let's, let's be kind to one another.

Ethne James Souch: Thank you all so much for an interesting discussion, for all your thoughts and for sharing personal information and personal experiences. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you all so much for joining me today. Judith, Mette, Faith and Nelson, you've been listening to Disruptive Voices. This episode was presented by me, Ethne James Souch produced by Decibelle Creative and edited by Annabel Buckland at Decibelle Creative. If you'd like to hear more of these discussions with Disruptive Voices, make sure you're subscribed to this podcast so you don't miss future episodes. Come and discover more online and keep up with the latest grand challenges, news, events and research. Just Google UCL Grand Challenges.