In the recent Conversation on Migration hosted by Justice & Peace Scotland, one of the speakers, Alex Holmes, said he had posed this question to asylum seekers he had met in Calais.
If we were to ask the question of asylum seekers in the UK recently, the answer would be – whatever and wherever the Home Office and its accommodation providers say it is.
Asylum seekers are sent to a number of cities under the Home Office dispersal scheme. They are not given a choice about where they go, unless they can show medical grounds for wanting to be in a particular area. Scotland has 8.6%, who are mostly in Glasgow.
Current Home Office contracts for accommodation will run until 2029 and are worth £9bn, no small amount. In Scotland the provider is Mears. Hotel/hostel accommodation is used as initial accommodation, for a maximum of 35 days, until homes can be made available. However, with the advent of lockdown under COVID, over 340 asylum seekers in Glasgow were moved out of their homes into hotels.
The reasons for the move were not clear – Mears and Home Office claimed it was for reasons of health and safety but there is a view that it was about cost.
The asylum seekers then lost the minimal financial support they had been receiving, so they couldn’t buy phone top-ups or small snacks, access public transport or save to buy clothes. They lost the small freedoms they had to live normal lives - to cook their own food, choose when to eat, do their own cleaning. New asylum seekers who have been put straight into hotels could not register with GPs from this temporary accommodation.
It is not clear what form of vulnerability assessments were made before the move, and mental health issues are rife. One man was so scared that he felt he couldn’t go into public areas of the hotel or go outside. He has now been moved to a flat in Easterhouse and thinks he is in heaven by comparison.
Tragically there has been one suicide and also the well-publicised incident in the centre of Glasgow in which six people were stabbed and an asylum seeker shot dead. Asylum seeker support charities have reported difficulties in being allowed contact with asylum seekers in the hotels and have to phone them to come out and get food or other items.
One asylum seeker has described the current arrangements as detention in all but name. Now those coming into the UK via the English Channel are put into redundant barracks in Kent and there are concerns that this is making it difficult for supporting charities to offer advice and assistance, as well as giving anti-migrant groups a focal point for their actions.
Where we go next is not clear.
Will costs decide when/if asylum seekers get back to dispersed accommodation or continue in hotels/hostels? Is it the government’s intention to keep new asylum seekers in detention-like conditions and away from any chance of integrating in local communities? In light of the recent denigrating and inflammatory comments of both the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister about “do-gooders” and “lefty human rights lawyers”, I for one do not feel optimistic about the future of our asylum system.