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Taking place from 27 June to 9 August 2024, the H is for Hostile Environment exhibition explored the hostile environment through film, poetry, food, political writing, and a workshop with women with first-hand experience of migration and displacement
The hostile environment was the name given by then-Home Secretary Theresa May to a collection of government policies which aimed to co-opt large parts of UK society into policing the UK’s borders – from doctors to landlords, employers, homeless services and more.
The policy had the stated aim of combatting ‘illegal immigration’ but had real-world, devastating effects on the lives of many thousands of people who live in the UK with migrant heritage. Its most notorious effect was the Windrush Scandal, where large numbers of people of Caribbean heritage, who had lived in the UK for decades and should have enjoyed full citizenship rights, were barred from employment, healthcare, education, benefits and more, and faced mass deportation at the hands of the Home Office.
Whilst the government itself no longer uses the term, hostile environment policies remain in place – many have even worsened. We saw this exhibition as a way of turning the lens on the hostile environment policy, which continues to bring devastation to so many people.
H is for Hostile Environment, Edwin Mingard and Keren Weitzberg
Moving image, 33 mins, 2022
Edwin Mingard and Keren Weitzberg conceived of a moving-image piece that would explore migration and asylum seeking in east London as part of UCL East’s Trellis programme.
Whilst the project was borne from overlapping personal and professional interests, they also saw it as a chance to work in a mutual way with partners whose lives and work had been shaped by the UK’s border regime, providing a platform to tell a story with multiple voices and narratives.
The piece was co-produced in close dialogue and collaboration with those who have first-hand experience of migration as well as those who are actively challenging the Home Office’s draconian and surveillance-intensive policies. The themes and topics that surfaced from these collaborative sessions came to dramatically reshape the piece.
What emerged was differing stories of navigating life in east London, carving out spaces and forcing open pathways amidst xenophobia, bureaucratic pressures from the Home Office, border violence, and loss and nostalgia for ‘home.’
Some of these stories are intergenerational; some are set in the past; others focus on the present. But rather than centring stories about minorities ‘fitting in’, they speak to the tensions between hostility and hospitality that have long shaped and reshaped east London.
Migrants, asylum seekers, and their advocates are envisioning alternative futures for Britain, actively wrestling with the hostile environment policy, and trying to find more just, if messy, answers to the question of who is welcome.
Freedom for all, Geneva Virasami
Political pamphlet, 2022
The political pamphlet was edited by Geneva Virasami, a British-Mauritian journalist dedicated to empowering young people through liberationist politics. She learnt from London’s grassroots activists volunteering at The Spark social justice festival in 2015 and 2016, has worked in TV and radio broadcast news, and is currently studying the Public History MA at UCL East. You can find more work on her Instagram page @genevas_convention.
The front cover was designed by illustrator Jess Nash at Migrants in Culture, a design agency led by artists, designers and organisers with lived experience of the UK’s hostile immigration system. Beginning in 2018 as a volunteer-led advocacy network, they aim to make visible and to challenge the impact of the hostile environment on the culture sector and its workers.
Read the full pamphlet here.
H is for Hope, Creating Ground
This installation was created by women from Creating Ground – a not-for-profit that works with women from migrant backgrounds to promote cross-cultural awareness, learning and sharing through collaborative arts and educational projects. They encourage people to share their experiences, express their feelings and overcome difficulties through art.
After watching H is for Hostile Environment, the group reflected on its images of hope – flares, bubbles, and kites – and its focus on collective action. They then captured their own symbols of hope in bubbles.
