Here are some things about the hostile environment, and how the Home Office uses religious communities to pursue immigration enforcement [THREAD]

The natural habitat for these facts and arguments is in my dissertation, which is published here. Because it’s 5,000 pages long (it’s not), I thought I’d share some of the key findings https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/9392/1/RLI%20WPS%20No.%2047.pdf

The hostile environment has always been as much a moral endeavour as a practical one. There was never any plan for measuring ‘success.'

In fact, those who designed the policies said they’d keep them in place even if they weren’t achieving anything, because it’s ‘the right thing to do’

So around 2013, at the same time as the Home Office was pursuing highly visible, performative immigration enforcement tactics like the Go Home van, and tweeting pictures of immigration raids, it was planning a much more insidious set of policies and practices

Much of this is what we now call the hostile environment, brought in by the Immigration Act 2014 and extended in 2016: making employing anyone without the right papers a criminal offence, putting immigration checks in the NHS and stopping landlords renting to ppl based on status

All of this was designed, in the Home Office’s own words, to make life difficult for undocumented people and encourage them to “voluntarily” return. It was also designed to “discourage prospective illegal migrants” and “deter legal migrants from breaching conditions of leave”

These policies are just as performative as the circus of the Go Home vans. The suffering – the starving, the exploitation, the destitution – of those already here is as much about giving the UK a tough image as it is about actually getting undocumented people to leave

But yes, the hostile environment policies outlined above are designed primarily to target undocumented people. However, they of course impact on people with all kinds of immigration status, including on British people of colour

For example, for the last decade the Home Office has encouraged people to report anyone they think might not have the right form of leave to immigration enforcement

In 2011, David Cameron said he wanted “everyone in the country” to help with immigration enforcement by reporting people to the Home Office

You can do this online, anonymously. You can even submit an allegation about a violation of immigration law that hasn’t happened yet

The Home Office receives on average over 1000 allegations every month. But the thing is, they’re mostly total bullshit

Over 60% of allegations are completely unuseable – mostly because the person who’s been reported hasn’t violated any immigration rules

This could be because they have some other form of leave (e.g. they’re seeking asylum / have refugee status or are on another form of visa) or because they’re a British citizen

The Home Office doesn’t record what form of leave people are found to have after they’ve been subject to a false allegation, or their nationality

But it’s worth noting that British people are subject to more ‘intelligence-led’ immigration stops than any other nationality https://thebristolcable.org/2017/10/brits-stopped-checked-immigration-crimes-cant-commit/

So basically, the reporting system is unwieldly, presumably a massive resource drain (who knows how long it takes to check the hundreds of false reports received every month) and stokes racism. It’s also just pretty fucking creepy. So.

So in 2014 we have the Immigration Act, which criminalises / sanctions public sector workers and ordinary citizens alike if they don’t check and report on other people’s immigration status. For people with precarious status, almost every aspect of public life became risky

The border could now be encountered at the doctor’s office, at a job interview, at a flat viewing, or even just in the street if someone took it upon themselves to report you to the Home Office based on little more than their own racism

And, the Home Office’s receipts show, the border (and border guards) also became increasingly present in faith-based community spaces at this time. The jump from 2014 to 2015 is pretty stark

At the same time as people’s ability to work, rent housing and access healthcare was taken away, the Home Office also massively stepped up so-called ‘community engagement’ with religious communities

These are workshops where Home Office staff talk to people about leaving the UK. Interviewees said that people volunteering within religious community-run organisations would also counsel people about leaving the UK

(This wouldn’t be included in the figures above, which just count official workshops run by the Home Office)

Of course, some might argue that if people want to leave the UK, if they’re struggling so much, there’s nothing wrong with helping them to do so. Many of the clients my interviewees worked with were destitute and street homeless, unable to work and completely desperate

But that’s what I argue is so insidious about this whole thing, and the fact that engagement with religious communities jumped when it did

The reason people were in such a desperate situation was because of the rest of the hostile environment – the clients of interviewees had lost jobs because of tightening restrictions on the right to work and ended up homeless. Some ended up dead

Religious community organisations became one of the only places people in this situation could turn to for support – and now, people vulnerabilised by the hostile environment are being advised by trusted people within one of the few safe spaces left that they should return home

As one volunteer put it: “There was a lot of love and respect between [volunteers and visitors]. They started seeing us as family. And we constantly said to them: ‘Look, you’re on the streets here. It’s not going to get any better...

"The economic situation here, the work laws, the employment laws, everything that exists – your life here is just not going to get any better. Go back to your family…start a life there again.’

These volunteers were acting in good faith. They saw people struggling, with nowhere to turn for sustainable support, and tried to help them in the only way possible – by helping them ‘voluntarily’ leave the UK

The voluntary returns scheme is the Home Office’s favoured way of removing people, because voluntary returns are much cheaper than enforced ones

But calling these returns voluntary in the context of the hostile environment is really stretching the definition of the word. Even UNHCR says that when people’s rights aren’t recognised and they’re under pressure, “they may choose to return, but this is not an act of free will”

The hostile environment is ostensibly targeted at pressuring undocumented people to ‘voluntarily’ return because the alternative is unliveable. But it’s worth noting that the voluntary returns scheme is also open to people with an active asylum claim

Asylum-seekers who sign up for the voluntary returns scheme have their claims automatically withdrawn, and there’s no right of appeal

There’s much more in the article about how people across the immigration system, including asylum-seekers, experience the hostile environment, and how the distinction between different categorisations of people (e.g. refugee / migrant) doesn’t hold much weight in real life

Basically, if an environment is hostile, it’s hostile for everyone living in it – that’s what an environment is