Geographies of asylum, welfare, and the state at the margins

在过去的十年里，英国的庇护和福利制度都因重大的组织变革、资金削减和私有化而发生了变化。寻求庇护者的分散和福利紧缩的影响越来越集中在已经贫困的边缘城市地区。然而，尽管有这些相似之处，学术分析和评论倾向于孤立地考虑福利和边境制度。我的博士研究通过对非公民和公民在边缘谈判的日常实践、表现和治理的生活经验进行经验丰富的地理理解，解决了这一差距。我的论文是基于在大曼彻斯特罗奇代尔（Rochdale）的两个慈善收容中心进行的为期一年的人种学研究：一个服务于移民社区，另一个服务于非移民客户。在这里，我能够详细描述庇护和福利治理之间的相似之处和交叉点，观察庇护和福利申请人如何受到主权权力的类似纪律表达和系统性地暴露于贫困和匮乏之中。我发现，将庇护和福利“服务”外包给非政府行为者，以及这种官僚安排的制度化“道德距离”（Gill, 2016），使这种敌意得以实现。此外，我详细说明了这种敌意和距离是如何被各种“技术设备”塑造的（巴里，2001年；达林，2014年），并随着数字化而增加。最后，我的论文提请注意在庇护和福利制度中存在的团结和联系的日常行为。通过解构国家主义对公民身份的分类，本文最终结合了国家批判理论（Mitchell, 1991; Painter, 2006; Jessop, 2016）和关于国家主导的人口划分的文献（Tyler, 2013; Anderson, 2013），仔细研究了根据移民身份划分的边界。由于不同边缘群体的治理似乎趋同，本文提出了一个问题，即这对受这些发展影响最大的人和地方意味着什么。由于政治和学术辩论中都没有对新兴的庇护与紧缩关系的具体关注，我的论文提供了原创的学术贡献；探索分散的政府实践和生活经验，构成这些系统，他们的交集，和国家。我的工作旨在更好地理解，当人们的生活因政府地位而分裂，但因边缘化和共享空间而团结在一起时，会发生什么。研究的持续相关性我相信我的研究仍然有几个原因。首先，由于英国最贫困居民的生活成本可能处于危机的边缘，福利申请人和寻求庇护者都将面临越来越多的困难，因为慈善机构可能面临前所未有的服务需求。此外，随着政府寻求通过加速失业者重返工作岗位来解决劳动力短缺问题，万能信贷申请人再次成为新制裁威胁的目标。与此同时，由于现任政府的《国籍与边境法案》（Nationality and Borders Bill）对英国的庇护体系构成了重大威胁，甚至可能完全停止在英国境内接收寻求庇护者。这一切都发生在不同大陆持续不断的冲突意味着抵达英国的难民人数可能会增加的时期；这要么通过非正式方式进行，要么通过政府组织的方案（例如目前的阿富汗公民重新安置计划）进行。该奖学金将使我有机会通过出版和向更广泛的受众传播我的研究成果来提高我的博士研究成果，同时也使我能够为系里的学术成果做出贡献。

Over the past decade, the UK's asylum and welfare systems have both been transformed by major organisational changes, funding cuts, and privatisations. Asylum seeker dispersals and the impacts of welfare austerity have become increasingly concentrated in already-impoverished, marginal urban areas. Yet despite these parallels, academic analysis and commentary has tended to consider welfare and border regimes in isolation. My doctoral research addresses this gap by developing an empirically rich, geographical understanding of the everyday practices, performances, and lived experiences of governance that non-citizens and citizens negotiate at the margins.My thesis was based on a year-long ethnographic study conducted at two charity drop-in centres in Rochdale, Greater Manchester: one serving migrant communities, the other non-migrant clientele. Here I was able to detail the parallels and intersections between asylum and welfare governance, observing how both asylum and welfare claimants are subject to analogous disciplinary expressions of sovereign power and systematic exposure to poverty and destitution. I found this hostility to be enabled by the outsourcing of asylum and welfare 'services' to non-governmental actors and the institutionalised 'moral distance' (Gill, 2016) of such bureaucratic arrangements. Additionally, I detail how such hostility and distance is shaped by various 'technical devices' (Barry, 2001; Darling, 2014) and increasing with digitisation. Finally, my thesis draws attention to the everyday acts of solidarity and connection that exist across asylum and welfare systems. By deconstructing statist categorizations of citizenship, the thesis ultimately engages both with critical theories of the state (Mitchell, 1991; Painter, 2006; Jessop, 2016) and literature on the state-led division of populations (Tyler, 2013; Anderson, 2013) to scrutinise boundaries drawn according to immigration status.As the governance of different marginalized groups appears to converge, this thesis asks what the implications of this are for the people and places most-affected by these developments. With a specific concern for the emerging asylum-austerity nexus absent in both political and academic debate, my thesis offers an original scholarly contribution; exploring the diffuse governmental practices and lived experiences that constitute these systems, their intersections, and the state. My work seeks to better understand what happens when the lives of peopled divided by governmental status, but united by marginalization and shared space, meet. Continued relevance of researchI believe that my research remains pertinent for several reasons. Firstly, with the UK potentially on the brink of a cost-of-living crisis for its poorest residents, benefits claimants and asylum seekers alike are set to face increasing hardship as charities face potentially unprecedented demand for their services. Additionally, Universal Credit claimants are once again being targeted by threats of new sanctions as the government seeks to address labour shortages by accelerating a return to work for the unemployed. Meanwhile, as the current government's Nationality and Borders Bill threatens the UK's asylum system with significant upheaval, potentially even halting the reception of asylum seekers in UK territory altogether. This is all taking place during a time in which ongoing conflicts on different continents mean an increase in refugee arrivals to the UK is likely; with this either taking place informally or through government organised programmes (such as the current Afghan citizens resettlement scheme).The fellowship would provide me with the opportunity to enhance the contributions of my PhD research by publishing and disseminating my work to a wider audience, whilst also allowing me to contribute to the scholarly output of the department.