Mahmood's Asylum Plan 'Conflates Control With Cruelty'

Migration experts condemn Home Secretary's refugee plans, saying the policy 'doesn't account for the reality of human experience', in conversation with Adrian Goldberg for the Byline Podcast

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. Photo: Milo Chandler/Alamy Live News

Campaigners and academics have united to condemn new measures unveiled in the Commons yesterday designed to restrict the rights of asylum seekers to build a new life in the UK.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood plans to subject refugees to reviews every 30 months to see if their country of origin is safe to return. They would only be eligible to apply for citizenship after living here for 20 years, rather than the current five years.

Lauren Starkey, an independent social worker who specialises in working with children and young people said, “This is really, really worrying rhetoric coming from the Home Secretary and what I know from the young people that I’ve worked with for years, is that the uncertainty in the asylum system causes immeasurable damage.

“I’ve worked with young people who have struggled to go to college, have struggled to make friends. Having gone through incredible trauma, they [even] find it very difficult to go to therapy whilst they’re waiting for their asylum decisions, because what they tell us is, ‘how can I start to think about rebuilding my life? How can I start to think about moving on, while I’m threatened with the potential of return?’

“What is so troubling about the Home Secretary’s approach is that she is conflating control with cruelty.”

In an interview with the Byline Podcast, Starkey drew on personal experience to illustrate the fears many asylum seekers might feel at the prospect of being returned ‘home’.

She said, “my grandfather-in-law fled Nazi Germany in 1938 and moved to the US. For him and his parents, being forced to return to Germany in the aftermath of the war was utterly unthinkable. They couldn’t live next door once again to people who had been involved in their persecution [and] who may have collaborated with the people who were against them.

“It’s a policy that doesn’t account for the reality of human experience and the reality of what people go through that forces them to need to leave their country.”

Mahmood has claimed that her new asylum policy, which would also reduce the right of asylum seekers to appeal decisions and end the Government’s legal duty to provide housing and financial support, is a “moral mission” for her.

She told the BBC that without change, “we will lose public support for having an asylum system at all; therefore we’ll lose something brilliant about this country.”

But as Byline Times has revealed, the Labour leadership has also been strongly influenced by the nationalist politics of Lord Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour project, which in turn has links to Donald Trump’s one-time strategist Steve Bannon.

This may explain why the Government seems so comfortable mimicking Reform UK’s tough line on migration, but Starkey said: “If Labour wants to appeal to a broader base of voters, bringing in the exact policies that Reform would bring in is not going to help them, because people who want Reform policies are going to vote for Reform.

“What Labour is doing is seeing off its traditional voter base, of people who will be disgusted by a policy like this, whilst not actually winning over the people they seem to be targeting.”

Yet the political narrative around refugees has undoubtedly proved troublesome for Labour. More than 111,000 asylum seekers have arrived in the UK this year and their presence has been used to stoke division by Reform and others on the nationalist right.

Mahmood referred to being called a “f*** P***” in her Commons speech, using it as an illustration of how the country has become more polarised on issues of migration and race.

Even so, many of her own MPs have rejected her hardline proposals, with even Labour moderates, like Sarah Owen, chair of the women and equalities committee, calling them “repugnant”.

Underlying Mahood’s policy is a belief that the UK is seen as an attractive destination for asylum seekers, not least because of its welfare system, but Dr Sohail Jannesari, a migration and mental health researcher at King’s College, London, dismisses this idea as “so dated.”

“These are old ideas. Actually, people move for so many complicated reasons. People move because they might speak English, because they have family networks, because obviously they’re fleeing life threatening circumstances, but all these different motivations come together and they’re not really affected by the things that Shabana Mahmood is talking about.

“This language of ‘pull factor’ is really just political rhetoric. It’s not borne out in any research for the last 40 years.”

And Dr Jannessari warns that Mahmood’s message only serves to legitimise the intimidating and sometimes violent protests seen outside hotels housing asylum seekers earlier this year.

“The tone that’s being used doesn’t see those seeking sanctuary as people, It’s contributing to the dehumanisation of people, and that’s really, really dangerous.

“In the research I’ve done, what’s continually brought up is people who’ve sought sanctuary saying ‘we feel worthless. We feel like we’re not treated as humans. We feel neglected and pushed to the margins of society,’

“Shabana Mahmood has said a few times that [migrants] aren’t integrating as they should but this tone is not conducive to that We’ve seen with repeated anti migration protests, this tone translates into action, and that has a really negative effect on their ability to integrate.”

Listen to the full episode of the Byline Podcast here.