Migrant women's practices of survival and resistance in the UK's hostile environment - the necropolitics and everyday violence of the 'subject to imm

"The people who died after their boats sank in the English Channel are refugees NOT migrants. They ARE men, women and children fleeing from persecution from countries like Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen [...] People fleeing these countries are refugees not migrants." (Positive Action in Housing Fundraiser, 2021: unpagented, emphasis original)

This quote is from a recent fundraising appeal by a national refugee charity, in response to the death of 27 people who

attempted to cross the English Channel in November 2021. It illustrates how solidarity with refugees is increasingly appealed to

in terms of them being '#RefugeesNotMigrants'. The problematic implication behind such appeals is that the rights, presence

and lives of those who are not perceived as genuine refugees - the 'economic' or 'illegal' migrants - are constructed as less

worthy or legitimate, feeding into postcolonial racist constructions of 'ungrievable lives' (Butler, 2016). Scholarship on

migration in the UK also disproportionately focuses on the experiences of refugees and asylum-seekers. While critical analysis

of the asylum regime is much needed, the lack of academic engagement with other forms of precarious 'leave' (permission to remain in the UK) can be seen to reflect and reproduce dominant conceptions of un/worthy presence implicated in this

hierarchical framework. Overall, many aspects of the hostile environment that do not relate to asylum remain overlooked in

public, political and academic discussions, though their effects are no less insidious. The 'No Recourse to Public Funds' (NRPF)

policy is exemplary of this, impacting anyone who is legally 'subject to immigration control' including people without any valid

leave. My project seeks to problematise exclusionary forms of refugee solidarity and address the paucity of academic work on non-asylum immigration matters, by focusing on the experiences of predominantly African migrant women in London with NRPF. I examine NRPF as a gendered and racialised technology of 'slow violence' (Nixon, 2011), which disproportionately

pushes Black, female, single carers into conditions of homelessness and destitution by denying them access to any welfare support (Smith et al., 2021). Drawing on Mbembe's (2003) concept of 'necropolitics', I situate NRPF as a contemporary

expression of the UK's colonial enterprise, highlighting how it reproduces the disposability of Black women's lives and their

exclusion from "wealth accumulated via colonial dispossession" (El-Enany, 2020:35). To explore alternative forms of migrant

solidarity that challenge racialised and hierarchical categories of migration, this PhD will emphasise migrant women's strategies

of survival and resistance. I employ Black Feminist and intersectional analysis (Collins, 1990; Nnaemeka, 2003) to look not

only at the various discriminations that migrant women face, but also their varied everyday responses. In particular, I emphasise

the critical role that access to information about legal rights and support services plays in a deliberately hostile and unnavigable

legal system. Consequently, this PhD will pay attention to knowledge-sharing as a key aspect of women's resistance to racist and

discriminatory legal systems. It will explore women's counter-spaces of activism, solidarity, collective learning and care, and how these can be better understood and promoted.