Problem or Opportunity? Asylum Seekers, Refugees, Employment and Social Exclusion in Deprived Urban Areas

Problem or Opportunity? Asylum Seekers, Refugees, Employment and Social Exclusion in Deprived Urban Areas

Summary. The UK has become a leading proponent of European restrictionalism and has focused its efforts on developing policy that excludes asylum seekers from mainstream society. Dispersal policy has focused upon sending asylum seekers to excluded urban areas where there is an excess of available housing. This paper discusses the potential impacts of this approach on the economic prosperity and social cohesion of UK dispersal areas and focuses specifically on new migrants who arrived under the NASS dispersal programme. It demonstrates that, whilst newly arrived asylum seekers and refugees (ASRs) have both skills and qualifications, they are currently experiencing high levels of unemployment and those who are employed are working in low-skilled jobs with earnings far below the average. The paper contends that the high levels of unemployment and underemployment currently experienced by ASRs may serve to exclude them from society in dispersal areas and in so doing exacerbate the general levels of social exclusion in those areas. It is argued that ASRs could offer new opportunities for deprived areas if initiatives were introduced to help them access work commensurate with their skills and qualifications.

Introduction

The flow of refugees from undeveloped to developed countries is not a new phenom-enon. The past four decades have seen the arrival of significant numbers of asylum seekers and refugees in Europe (European Commission, 2001). Until recently, most arrived under the auspices of specific pro-grammes set up to address particular global political crises—for example, the so-called Bosnian crisis or the expulsion of Asians from Uganda (Sales, 2002; Kuepper et al., 1975, p. 9). Controls on the legal entry of immigrants have meant that in recent times seeking asylum is often one of the few legiti-mate ways of gaining access to Europe (Sales, 2002; Bloch and Schuster, 2002). It was not until the 1990s, when the impacts of tightened immigration policies were felt, that the numbers of asylum applicants arriving spon-taneously in Europe began to increase to the extent that successive governments have felt the need to create specific policy initiatives to tackle the so-called asylum problem.

In common with elsewhere in Europe, the UK has seen the arrival of large numbers of people seeking asylum. In response to the pressure that asylum seekers have placed on support services in southern Britain, the National Asylum Support Service (NASS) was set up in 1999 to disperse asylum seekers around the UK. Reception areas were typically deprived urban areas with large supplies of vacant housing. Following the establishment of the dispersal programme,

Jenny Phillimore and Lisa Goodson are in the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK. Fax: 0121 414 3279. E-mails: j.a.phillimore@bham.ac.uk and l.j.goodson@bham.ac.uk.

0042-0980 Print=1360-063X Online=06=101715 – 22 # 2006 The Editors of Urban Studies DOI: 10.1080=00420980600838606

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the UK government developed a range of pol-icies to deter asylum seekers from being attracted to the country in such large numbers. These policies have been strongly criticised for being exclusionary, discrimina-tory and giving little consideration to the ways in which those awarded leave to remain are to be integrated into society in the reception areas where they have been placed (Sales, 2002).

This paper considers some of the impacts of dispersal on these deprived urban areas and on new migrants living within these areas. It raises concerns that existing UK immigration policies, and lack of coherent integration initiatives to assist those granted refugee status, will lead to high levels of unemploy-ment and deskilling amongst new migrant communities with knock-on effects on econ-omic stability and community cohesion. This paper uses data from three recent studies in the West Midlands, a key reception region in the UK, to demonstrate the high levels of underemployment and unemployment being experienced by migrants dispersed to the region. It further argues the need for positive interventions to enable the skills and expertise available within new migrant communities to be realised and seen as new opportunities that could be capitalised upon in areas experiencing long-term economic and social deprivation.

Asylum Policy in the UK

The European Union has seen an enormous influx of asylum seekers in recent years. Until recently, the UK was ranked 12th in terms of the number of asylum applications received. In 2002, the UK saw a 20 per cent rise in the number of asylum claims making the figure, which stood at over 84 000, the largest in the EU (Peach and Henson, 2005). The sheer volume of arrivals and cost of sup-porting them have become one of the UK’s most controversial political issues. A number of popularist newspapers have adopted asylum as their cause ce´le`bre, whilst the Con-servative opposition have accused the Labour government of being ‘soft on asylum’ and

have thrown doubt on their ability to halve asylum applications. The Government’s response has been to ensure that Britain has become one of the major proponents of the EU’s growing restrictionism towards asylum seekers (Zetter and Pearl, 2000). Changes to the social support system which made asylum seekers dependent on state-supplied housing and, until recently, vouchers, have made them appear more visible as a group and have re-enforced public perceptions of asylum seekers being a ‘burden’ to society (Sales, 2002), attracted to the UK by the alleg-edly generous benefits system and plentiful employment (Home Office, 1998). With the growth in asylum numbers, it has become pol-itically expedient to replace the morally sound expression ‘political refugee’ with terms such as ‘exploitative’ and ‘bogus asylum seeker’ (Bloch and Schuster, 2002, p. 398) and to view asylum-seekers as unwelcome (Robinson et al., 2003; Goodson et al., 2005).

Until 1996, there was no legislation specifi-cally aimed at asylum seekers but in this year the first Asylum and Immigration Act was passed. Through its three main objectives,¹ this Act introduced a notion of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ asylum seekers. Following a legal challenge, local authorities became responsible for the housing and subsistence of asylum seekers. In an attempt to reduce the costs associated with this ruling, local auth-orities, most of whom were located in the over-crowded south-east of England, began to disperse asylum seekers on a ‘no choice’ basis to deprived urban areas which had plentiful supplies of low-cost housing. Later, the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 was passed with its main aims being to reduce the flow of applicants, ease councils of the finan-cial burden and relieve housing and social pressures in south-east England. It heralded the ‘dispersal’ programme whereby, in an attempt to ease the burden on southern auth-orities, all new asylum seekers arriving in the UK were obliged to transfer to a region outside the south-east. In order to manage this dispersal programme, the National Asylum Seekers Support Service (NASS) was set up in April 2000.

A number of criteria were used to identify dispersal locations, the most important being the availability of housing. Cities such as Bir-mingham, Liverpool, Wolverhampton and Coventry were selected because, at the time, they had large quantities of vacant social housing. In addition, NASS contracted with a range of private landlords who acquired large portfolios of low-cost property in areas of housing market failure (see Nevin et al., 2000, 2001). These generally coincided with the key local authority dispersal areas and areas which were ranked high on the Index of Local Deprivation. The 1999 Act was, like its predecessor, highly controversial. Some organisations maintained that it would have been better to house asylum seekers within settled communities with people from their own country or close to other relatives who can help to support them (Bloch and Schuster, 2002). The dispersal programme has been further criticised on the basis that resettlement areas were chosen mainly on economic imperatives. Little consideration was given to the impact that large numbers of individuals, with low incomes and no support networks, would have on deprived areas with a limited history of providing homes for asylum seekers. In addition, there was little regard given to the possible reac-tions of local people or the impact on asylum seekers of being separated from friends, family or other forms of support.

In 2002, the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act introduced further controls on asylum seekers and introduced measures to help to increase the numbers of unsuccessful applicants deported. This Act also saw the introduction of a number of policies with far-reaching implications on education, train-ing and employment of asylum seekers. These included the withdrawal of subsidies to help pay for some types of training and the removal of the right to apply for per-mission to work on the grounds that the pro-posed speed-up in asylum application processing would mean that the majority of claims would be processed within three months. This outcome has failed to be realised and many asylum seekers still wait over a year

for a decision, often much longer as they go through the lengthy appeals process. This paper argues that policies that promote restric-tionalism by removing the right to work or develop employability are counter-productive, since they are likely to increase long-term exclusion of refugees from the labour market and as a result exacerbate problems of social exclusion in deprived settlement areas.

Dispersal Areas, Deprivation and Social Exclusion

Emerging evidence suggests that areas that have seen a large influx of new migrants are already experiencing extreme levels of depri-vation. The Index of Local Deprivation (ODPM, 1998) shows that all seven local authorities that serve as major dispersal areas outside London, featured in the UK’s top 20 deprived areas. In addition to feeling the pressures brought about by new migrant groups, the majority of urban areas serving as resettlement communities already have high concentrations of ethnic minority groups who are also experiencing above average levels of poverty (ODPM, 2000). Wheatley-Price’s (2001) study on the UK found that recent White immigrants experi-enced a transitory period of disadvantage whereas non-White immigrants never attained equality with native-born Whites. In the UK, the government has presented evidence to show that urban areas with high concen-trations of minority ethnic inhabitants experi-ence high levels of social exclusion associated with a range of factors of which racial dis-crimination and unemployment are critical and interconnected (ODPM, 2000; Wilson, 1998). Looking outside the UK to research undertaken in North America and Europe, there is evidence of a positive correlation between higher levels of deprivation and the location of recent immigrant communities (Ley and Smith, 2000) suggesting that, at least in the short term, the arrival of migrants may increase the levels of deprivation.

Social exclusion is a contested term and there is no consensus about the exact factors

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or agency responsible for it (Hills et al., 2002). It has been described as feeling ‘excluded from the mainstream’ and a feeling of ‘not belonging’, and is considered almost entirely an ‘urban problem’ (Power and Wilson, 2000). The UK government recognise some of the complexities of social exclusion and describe it as

a shorthand term for what can happen when people or areas suffer from a combination of linked problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low incomes, poor housing, high crime, bad health and family break-down (ODPM, 2000, p. 1).

Despite on-going debates concerned with the meaning and definition of social exclusion, there is some agreement that there is a strong relationship between employment and social exclusion with authors such as Wilson (1998) and Power and Wilson (2000) arguing that loss of employment is a key factor in the increasing levels of social exclu-sion in racially segregated areas in the US and the UK. In both countries, there are two issues of concern when considering the relationship between the labour market and social exclu-sion: unemployment and low-paid or marginal employment.

Wilson’s (1998) report for the Social Exclusion Unit When work disappears out-lines the impacts in the US of the disappear-ance of work from poor racially segregated neighbourhoods and how so-called jobless-ness has affected both individuals and the social life of neighbourhoods. The shift from ethnic minorities being poor but working to being unemployed en masse is termed here the ‘new urban poverty’. Wilson considers that many of

today’s problems in America’s inner-city ghetto neighbourhoods—crime, family dis-solution, welfare, low levels of social organisation and so on—are in major measure related to the disappearance of work (Wilson, 1998, p. 2).

The relationship between an individual’s unemployment, social exclusion and the downward mobility of a neighbourhood is

set out by Power and Wilson (2000, p. 8). An influx of low-skilled individuals leads to competition for a shrinking pool of jobs. Lower wages result and some people decide to withdraw completely from the labour market. In addition, difficulties in gaining work lead to high levels of economic inactiv-ity. With no obvious route out, people feel trapped; they become depressed and lose initiative perhaps resulting in frustration and negative behaviour. The impact of low wages is further perpetuated as demand for local shops and services is reduced, having a further knock-on effect on the number of job opportunities created. The impact of unem-ployment then moves beyond the individual and the present moment to have an impact on the future trajectory of an area as

these clustering impacts on people’s life chances and on neighbourhood conditions have wider consequences. Being poor in an area with many poor people and poor conditions generates a gradual loss of con-fidence in the system (Power and Wilson, 2000, p. 8).

As the character of an area changes, there is some evidence to suggest that its residents become less attractive as job applicants. Fur-thermore, it has been argued that employers make discriminatory assumptions about inner-city ethnic minority workers and screen them out in a selective recruitment process (Wilson, 1998). Thus, for some, locat-ing employment and breaking the vicious cycle becomes even more challenging.

The link between the availability of employment and social exclusion is not as straightforward as Wilson suggests. It is important to consider the quality of job oppor-tunities made available in order to have a posi-tive impact on localities. Critics of US systems say that using labour market flexi-bility to create jobs does little to reduce social exclusion if those made available are ‘marginal jobs’ which lack security, a decent wage, training and promotion prospects. Rather than reducing social exclusion, such employment ends up widening the gap between those at the bottom of the earnings

scale and the overall average. However, if such jobs can be viewed as stepping-stones to something better, then the situation may not be so bleak (Atkinson, 1998). There is a complex relationship between employment and social exclusion: success depends on whether the work restores a sense of control, acceptable relative status and prospects for the future (Atkinson, 1998). Evidence suggests that refugees who are able to locate work very rarely find jobs that meet these criteria.

Asylum Seekers and Refugees and Social Exclusion

The term refugee applies to a person who, having applied for asylum, has been given recognised refugee status or leave to remain in the UK (Thomas and Abebaw, 2002). The UK government has portrayed the asylum ‘problem’ as being temporary in nature, implying that eventually dispersal areas would return to ‘normal’ once failed asylum seekers were returned to their home countries and the flow of asylum seekers into the country was reduced (Sales, 2002). However, until 2005, Immigration and Nationality Directorate statistics indicate that around 50 per cent of asylum applicants were likely to receive some form of leave to remain and thus have the right to settle in the country in the long term (IND, 2003, 2004). The key issue to address is how refu-gees, having been marginalised by state policy (Zetter and Pearl, 2000), can be inte-grated into dispersal areas without becoming permanently socially excluded and exacer-bating poverty and deprivation at individual and neighbourhood levels. The importance of integrating refugees into society is outlined in several government papers which under-pinned the dispersal programmes (Home Office, 2000, 2002, 2005a). In order to con-sider what this might involve, it is important to think about what integration means for refugees and how it might be achieved.

The concept of acculturation is often used to help explain the cultural changes that a group or an individual encounters because of

migration. Berry (1997) argues that integration is one of the four possible accul-turation strategies open to newcomers to any country. ‘Assimilation’ occurs when individ-uals do not wish to maintain their cultural identity and seek daily interaction with other cultures. Separation takes place when individ-uals place a value on holding on to their orig-inal culture and wish to avoid interaction with others. Marginalisation is likely when there is little interest in, or opportunity for, cultural maintenance or in having relationships with others, possibly because of a sense of exclu-sion. Finally, integration occurs when there is an interest in both maintaining one’s orig-inal culture while engaging in daily inter-actions with other groups. All of these strategies require substantial adaptation to the dominant culture, but integration is argued to be the most positive approach (Berry, 1997) and likely to involve the least amount of psychological trauma on the part of the migrant population and have the least negative impact on social cohesion. Berry stresses that integration is a two-way process and can only be successfully pursued by migrants when the dominant or host society is open and inclusive in its orientation towards cultural diversity. Mutual accommo-dation is needed by both groups to the extent that non-dominants need to accept the basic values of larger society, while the host society should be prepared to adapt national institutions to meet the needs of all groups. This would mean that refugees should have equal access to housing, health care, edu-cation, training and employment.