A hostile environment for Asylum Seekers in the UK – a Practitioner’s Perspective

Between 2013 and 2014, when Teresa May was the Home Secretary, she defended her plans to create ‘a hostile environment’ for illegal migrants to Britain, for instance, targeting those perceived as coming to the UK for ‘health tourism’ and an easy to access welfare system. Rogers Brubacker’s work informs this paper in analysing race and how the white nation is deployed in creating an image of asylum seekers as the deviant ‘other’. This is further observed in current debates around the referendum and Brexit, where emphasis has been placed on race, migration and closing borders. In this paper, I draw on the work of Social Workers Without Borders (SWWB) in their pursuit of borderless nations. These practitioners challenge dominant white discourse at a time when bordering work attempts to contain subjects within, as seen with the referendum, while keeping others out.