Asylum As Violence: How the State Harms Unaccompanied Asylum Seekers in the UK
Children and young people seeking asylum in the UK experience violence - not just in the persecutory circumstances or harmful threats that led them to seek asylum, but perpetrated by and within the State that purports to provide sanctuary. It is a violence that takes many forms: psychological, physical, emotional, financial, racial and gender-based. It is a violence that is hidden or euphemised as security, public order or even justice. It is violence that is embedded, legitimised and normalised through processes, law and policy, and through media reporting and political debates. This violence affects thousands of children who arrive in the UK unaccompanied every year. It stays with them for the rest of their lives and is passed on intergenerationally.
As the racist riots of summer 2024 highlight, so-called ‘hostile’ laws, policies and unrelenting media misrepresentation of asylum seekers readily feeds into direct, interpersonal violence that destabilises entire communities. Professor Helen Stalford calls for a shift in how we talk about our current asylum system to more accurately reflect and confront the political intentions of such policies and their direct effects on children and young people seeking asylum. Helen presents the case for characterising legal, policy and social responses to unaccompanied children seeking asylum as state-sanctioned and perpetrated violence, and identifies a series of ‘tipping points’ – moments at which legal and policy responses shift from being strategic and, for some, legitimate features of the so-called ‘hostile environment’, to acts of violence in flagrant breach of our international human rights obligations, particularly where children are concerned.
About Helen Stalford
Professor Helen Stalford is a leading expert on children's rights and participatory research on access to justice. She is principal convenor of the new Centre for People’s Justice, a major new multi-sectoral initiative funded by the Arts and Humanities aimed at improving law and lives through community-led research. Helen has led projects on behalf of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency and the Council of Europe to develop ways of monitoring implementation of children’s rights and acted as expert consultant to the Council of Europe, the European Commission, UNICEF and many children’s rights charities and legal teams on issues relating to children’s access to justice, child protection and the impacts of Brexit on children. In 2016, she was appointed as Special Adviser to the House of Lords EU Home Affairs sub-committee for their inquiry into the UK and EU's response to the plight of unaccompanied children in the current refugee crisis. She led an 18 month project on the impact and legacies of Covid-19 on young unaccompanied asylum seekers' legal and welfare rights and experiences, and is currently working with Bail for Immigration Detainees and Social Workers without borders to explore the impacts of the UK’s deportation law and policy on the welfare of children.
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