The ‘Race Disparity Audit’ — And why it tells us all we need to know about the hostile environment.

Immigration enforcement is becoming ever more high visibility and disruptive, to all communities, not just those with precarious status.

I have news for you. The hostile environment, set up specifically by Theresa May to make it as difficult as possible for those with precarious immigration status, does not just affect migrants or those without British Citizenship. Instead, it is part of a wider, historical trend towards oppressing those who frankly are not white and British.

A really good short video on the creation of the hostile environment — Through the ever fabulous means of Lego.

The hostile environment is alive and kicking, and becoming ever more oppressive. There is an offshoot of policy and legislation designed to make it as difficult as possible for people not just to live, but to survive. Here are some highlights:

• Immigration checks on opening a bank account.
• Immigration checks when trying to find a home to rent.
• The Department for Education sharing details from the school census for the purposes of immigration enforcement.
• The NHS now being required to carry out immigration checks before patients can receive treatment.

This is in addition to monitoring in higher education, local authority collaboration through gatekeeping of support and the controlling migration fund, and increasing collaboration between police and immigration control (Op Nexus) including handing over details of victims and witnesses to immigration.

Let’s also not forget one of the most despairing. Charities St Mungo’s, CGL and Thames Reach taking money in turn for handing in and assisting to deport rough sleepers.

Now, let’s couple all of the above with an increasingly far right politik. A type of politics that is divisive, othering and effectively gaining support by being un-accepting at best and racist at worst, towards those who are not white and British. Let’s not get started on Brexit.

Let’s not even get into the prevent strategy, I have been there already.

Put all of this together and immigration control is seeping into our companies, our societies and communities. It is now creating it’s most dangerous output, suspicion. This suspicion for instance, has resulted in thousands of british nationals being accused of being illegal in this country. 1 in 5 questioned by immigration are British nationals. Although the home office maintain they do not enforce on the basis of ethnicity (i’ll leave you here to mull on that)

The Micro impact

The very infamous advert touted by Theresa May in her time as Home Secretary, when the hostile environment really took hold.

The Micro impact I have talked about time and time again. It is a sad tale of destitution, homelessness and desperation. Children and families sleeping on the streets because councils will not provide them with support. It is homeless rough sleepers who instead of being given support to move on, are victimised for being homeless. It is victims of crime who then suddenly find themselves subject to immigration enforcement, for the crime of being a victim?

But it is also this, perhaps un-surprising little nugget, that hundreds of thousands of those with precarious immigration status’ disappear off the radar. I would be bold enough to say that an environment so hostile has been created, that it drives people underground, it drives children underground, it fuels risk.

The wider picture

So now we can talk the race disparity audit (what an awful name as an aside). Basically, it makes for grim reading. In a nutshell, if you are not white and British, you are probably not fairing as well. It has been incredibly well documented over the years that black children and families are more likely to live in poverty, are more likely to be in contact with the police, more likely to be stopped and searched. This is nothing new.

Generally, those who are not white and British are less likely to do well in education and less likely to go on to higher education. Far more likely to live in poverty and within far more deprived communities.

Yet the popular narrative is one of integration and more to the point, of not integrating. Headlines of whole communities detached from wider communities. And so on. And so on.

It has been going on for longer than I have been alive. Whole communities othered, cast out. More likely to basically land in every negative outcome category you can name. Held to account for nearly every ill in society. Increasingly, immigration is becoming a dirty word. Not seen for the massive benefits it has brought to our society for years, instead becoming popularly associated with the import of wrong-doing and bad. The construction of irregular immigration as criminal fuelling draconian policies, such as still being the only country in Europe that has a policy of unlimited detention of those with irregular status’.

Putting together all the pieces

Let’s pull all of these thoughts together, in an attempt to make some sense of it.

• Policy in the United Kingdom is constantly moving toward making life as hard as possible for migrants.
• The narrative that accompanies these policies is incredibly othering of anyone who is not white and British.
• The hostile environment is legitimising an alternative discourse, that is creating suspicion and mistrust in society which disproportionately affects black and ethnic minority communities.
• The wider impact is a system which directly and indirectly oppresses those communities whether or not subject to immigration control, leading to poorer outcomes in them.
• Increasingly turning Joe public into border control agents, putting a stranglehold of non-acceptance front and centre.

Is it any wonder that some communities find integration in this climate challenging and instead elect to operate within their own micro-communities?

Is it a surprise that children I work with regularly tell me that they feel “everyone is one their case” because they are black?

Are we not rethinking that maybe, creating such a hostile environment will drive communities ‘underground’, reducing access to opportunity for children and creating levels of risk to those communities?

Our immigration policy harks back to times of segregation, in an effort to create invisible walls between sections of our communities. To create a culture and fear that means that people do not access help and support when they need it. Bringing ‘British Values’ so far into the realms of nationalism that it fuels and creates fear in our schools and communities. This effect is far reaching and impacts not only on communities where precarious immigration status is an issue, but into wider, everyday society. It is fuelling an old and tired discourse of ‘mistrust’, almost xenophobic in nature. It drives racial tensions and divides far into society. It fuels those who feel they can stand on the streets and tell people to “fuck off home”.

An English Defence League protest in London.

This is the wider impact of the hostile environment and I really do not think I am reaching when drawing this conclusion. It fuels an existing, subversive narrative that has bubbled under the surface for a long time. Immediately and to the communities it affects, it renders people destitute and pushes them outside of society, increasing trafficking into modern slavery. It creates a climate that make an enterprise out of exploiting those without status. It entrenches racial inequalities that have existed for years and furthers them, pushing more and more, regardless of status, into the fringes of society.

The policies are not working, it’s time to rethink our approach. We need to move towards a rights-respecting discourse on immigration if we ever have any chance of tackling racial inequality in our society. On a side note and just for a bit of fun. A child can even tell you, in simpler words, exactly what this means.