“It’s That Kind of Place Here”: Solidarity, Place-Making and Civil Society Response to the 2015 Refugee Crisis in Wales, UK

Abstract

This article examines the different ways in which local civil society has responded to refugees and asylum seekers in different parts of Wales in the wake of the recent “refugee crisis”. While the events of summer 2015 have generated a considerable amount of scholarly attention, including empirical accounts that look into local community responses to refugees and asylum seekers, the current research has tended to overlook the significance of place and the varied impact of “refugee crisis” across localities; this article aims to fill this gap in the existing research. It draws on findings from qualitative research carried out between 2017 and 2018 with refugee-supporting organisations based in three different locations in Wales. Taking a comparative look at these organisations, the article sheds light on the intensity and variation of civil society response in each of these localities, showing how this is informed by and closely interweaved with processes of place-making and place-framing, contributing to the reshaping of civil society networks and population profiles in these local areas. In conclusion, the article argues that humanitarian responses to “refugee crisis” can be understood not only as instances of hospitality and solidarity but also as practices of locality production.

Cardiff and the contentious landscapes of postindustrial, urban, and transnational memory work

“…Continued discourses of race and waste place Butetown outside of the national narrative, and while my attention here focuses upon the landscapes and memories of Butetown, similar attention can and has been paid towards other neighborhoods around Cardiff facing parallel, yet uniquely place-based problems of top-down urban renewal, post-industrial displacement, and racially-charged discourse and planning (i.e. Payson 2018;Guma et al 2019). Despite these changes to the city, one thing this research does uncover in the memory work of Cardiff is a fluid and performative landscape.…”

Economic self-reliance or social relations? What works in refugee integration? Learning from resettlement programmes in Japan and the UK

“…Refugees are financially supported by the UK Government able to access Universal Credit, the social welfare safety net available to all eligible UK residents, which is widely acknowledged to place recipients below the poverty line (Craig and Katikireddi 2020). The CSS has come under criticism by some seen as a way that the state can absolve itself of responsibility for supporting refugees both socially and financially while others view it as the ultimate expression of solidarity and community (Guma et al 2019). CSS groups can be located in any part of the UK.…”

Local responses to hostility to new asylum seeker centres in Norway

“…However, the identity of a place—as a sense of who “we” are—is not necessarily collectively shared, and others’ claims and attributions are not necessarily in line with one's self‐identification. A similar study, conducted by Guma et al (2019), investigates three local community initiatives in Wales and the UK intended to contest hostile discourses on the national and international scales. By initiating asylum seeker centres in their communities, they managed representations of their local communities and claimed the identity of hospitable places.…”