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SUMMARY:Relocating urban asylum: forced migration and the revanchist produ
 ction  of marginality - Jonny Darling  (University of Manchester)
DTSTART:20141201T173000Z
DTEND:20141201T190000Z
UID:TALK54887@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:29816
DESCRIPTION:In 2010\, the UK Home Office announced that it would be passin
 g contracts to provide dispersal accommodation and reception services for 
 asylum seekers to a series of private providers. This meant the end of \na
 sylum accommodation through local authorities in many of the UK’s larges
 t cities. This paper seeks to explore the impact of this shift in asylum p
 rovision and consider what this means for the relation between \ncities an
 d asylum seekers in contemporary Britain. The paper draws on fieldwork in 
 four UK cities (Birmingham\, Cardiff\, Glasgow and Sunderland)\, including
  interviews with local authority representatives\, politicians\, asylum an
 d refugee support services and asylum seekers \nthemselves. \n\nIn conside
 ring this empirical evidence base\, the paper \nargues that we may see a t
 roubling narrative of political neglect\, shrinking accountability and the
  slow recession of support services and expertise. As the realities of ‘
 austerity urbanism’ have interacted with the privatisation of asylum sup
 port\, so we are witnessing the emergence of new assemblages of authority 
 and governance at the urban level. A \nlimited concern with the social nee
 ds of asylum seekers\, has been replaced with an increasingly revanchist a
 genda which seeks to both \nremove those seeking asylum from political deb
 ate and to maximise the economic gains to be made from dispersal. In the g
 rowing and emerging \n‘asylum market’\, I argue that the realities of 
 asylum urbanism are far removed from the potential for political change so
  often associated with \nthe image of the city as a site of refuge. This d
 oes not\, however\, mean giving up on the city as a space for critical pol
 itical practices. Rather\, it demands a reorientation of how asylum is pol
 iticised and an \napproach that takes seriously the informalities of urban
  life. In concluding\, I draw on the experience of these four cities to su
 ggest that whilst the revanchist practices of asylum urbanism gain ground\
 , their margins still represent contested spaces in which the image of an 
 irregular city may be kept alive.\n
LOCATION:Room SG1 of the Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, CB39DT\, 
 Cambridge
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