“How about Asylum Seekers who are Homeless?” The Racialised Logics Behind State Designed Strategies of Containment and Control During Covid-19 and Anti-Racist Alternatives: A Glasgow Case Study

Abstract

This paper asks two questions: How has the Covid-19 pandemic been experienced by people seeking asylum who are subjected to United Kingdom (UK) State designed-in destitution? And what might be the alternatives to State produced destitution? To answer these questions, we draw on two case studies from Glasgow, a city unique in the UK for its long history of asylum dispersal and its deeply embedded ecology of third-sector support and asylum advocacy work. We argue that to understand the segregatory power of dispersal and tiered welfare provision as forms of violent migration governance, centring the racialised logics at play is imperative. This provides the framework for developing anti-racist approaches to supporting people made homeless through destitution by design. Using case studies, we explore how the UK Government’s use of ‘emergency hotel accommodation’ for people seeking asylum who are already homeless or are at risk of homelessness, are becoming normalised strategies of containment for racialised others and an extension of the distributed violence of dispersal accommodation that long pre-dates the pandemic. We offer an alternative advocacy-led and rights-based approach to secure refuge for people made homeless by the State.