As I prepare for my fieldwork in Birmingham this winter I am starting to come across some of the great organisations that work for the rights of the “rightsless” in Birmingham. One of them is ASIRT – Asylum Support and Immigration Resource team, who supply legal advice and advocacy support to migrants who have been subject to migration control. On their blog they tell some horrifying stories about the effects of the hostile environment in the UK for undocumented migrants that is growing even more hostile with the new Immigration Bill. In a recent blog post they reflect on a specific case where a woman is being treated by local authorities in a Kafkaesque manner, and how ASIRT managed to protect her rights by threatening the local government with Juridicial Review.
http://asirt.org.uk/wordpress/?p=241
During my stay in Birmingham, where I will be a guest PhD at IRiS – Institute for Research into Superdiversity at Birmingham University, I will post regular updates about what is happening in the UK and Birmingham on the issue of irregular migration.
/Jacob Lind