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

“在英吉利海峡沉船后死亡的人是难民，而不是移民。他们是逃离叙利亚、阿富汗、伊朗、也门等国迫害的男人、女人和儿童。逃离这些国家的人是难民而不是移民。（Positive Action in Housing Fundraiser，2021：unpagented，强调原文）这句话来自一个国家难民慈善机构最近的筹款呼吁，以回应2021年11月试图穿越英吉利海峡的27人死亡。它说明了如何声援难民越来越多地呼吁他们成为“#RefugeesNotMigrants”。这种呼吁背后的问题是，那些不被视为真正难民的人-“经济”或“非法”移民-的权利，存在和生活被构建为不那么有价值或合法，从而成为后殖民种族主义者对“不可侵犯的生活”的建构（巴特勒，2016）。英国的移民奖学金也不成比例地侧重于难民和寻求庇护者的经历。虽然庇护制度的批判性分析是非常必要的，缺乏学术参与与其他形式的不稳定的“离开”（允许留在英国）可以被视为反映和复制的主导概念，不/值得存在牵连在这个层次框架。总的来说，在公共、政治和学术讨论中，与庇护无关的敌对环境的许多方面仍然被忽视，尽管其影响同样阴险。“不诉诸公共资金”（NRPF）政策是这方面的典范，影响任何合法“受移民控制”的人，包括没有任何有效休假的人。我的项目旨在问题化排斥形式的难民团结，并解决学术工作的缺乏非庇护移民问题，通过集中在伦敦主要是非洲移民妇女的经验与NRPF。我把NRPF看作是一种性别化和种族化的“缓慢暴力”技术（尼克松，2011年），它不成比例地把黑人、女性、单身护理人员推入无家可归的境地，拒绝他们获得任何福利支持（史密斯等人，2021年）。借鉴Mbembe（2003年）的“死亡政治”概念，我将NRPF作为英国殖民企业的当代表达，强调它如何再现黑人妇女生活的可处置性以及她们被排除在“通过殖民剥夺积累的财富”之外（El-Enany，2020年：35）。探索移民团结的替代形式，挑战移民的种族化和等级类别，这个博士将强调移民妇女的生存和抵抗的战略。我采用黑人女权主义和交叉分析（柯林斯，1990年; Nnaemeka，2003年），不仅看各种歧视，移民妇女面临的，而且他们的各种日常反应。特别是，我强调的关键作用，获得有关法律的权利和支持服务的信息发挥故意敌对和不可导航的法律的系统。因此，这个博士将关注知识共享作为妇女抵抗种族主义和歧视性法律的制度的一个关键方面。它将探讨妇女的行动主义、团结、集体学习和照顾的反空间，以及如何更好地理解和促进这些空间。

"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.