Article on Afghan migrants in London encountering the hostile environment in Critical Social Policy Global Diversities and Inequalities Research Centre

This 2024 article by Professor Louise Ryan, Professor María López and London Met PhD student Alessia Dalceggio looks at the emerging experiences of Afghan evacuees during their first year in London following the dramatic evacuation from Kabul airport in August 2021.

Drawing on the narratives of our Afghan participants and insights from key stakeholders, this paper shows how they navigated slow, opaque bureaucratic processes and a lack of communication with official agencies, which for many thousands ended in prolonged stays in temporary hotel accommodation.

Using the concept of ‘everyday bordering’, the authors explore the extent to which Afghan resettlement policies achieve their objectives and assess how such policies are produced within a punitive immigration system, which is designed to ‘wear down’ migrants in the UK. Moreover, they argue that the ad hoc response of the Home Office and the Foreign Office has created ‘false distinctions’ between categories of Afghan refugees, reinforcing notions of ‘deserving’ versus ‘underserving’ migrants. This distinction allows the government to present itself as humanitarian, ‘rescuing’ people from Afghanistan, while simultaneously maintaining its commitment to the ‘hostile immigration environment’.

This is an Open Access article that can be read in full on the Critical Social Policy website.