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

“船只在英吉利海峡沉没后死亡的是难民，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。”(2021年住房筹款活动积极行动：无页，强调原创)这句话来自一家国家难民慈善机构最近的一次筹款呼吁，以回应2021年11月试图横渡英吉利海峡的27人的死亡。它表明，由于难民是“#难民而不是移民”，对难民的声援日益受到欢迎。这种呼吁背后的问题是，那些不被视为真正难民的人--经济移民或非法移民--的权利、存在和生活被认为是不那么有价值或更合法的，助长了后殖民种族主义对“无法悲伤的生活”的构建(巴特勒，2016)。英国关于移民的学术研究也不成比例地侧重于难民和寻求庇护者的经历。虽然迫切需要对庇护制度进行批判性分析，但学术上缺乏对其他形式的不稳定的“休假”(允许留在英国)的参与，可以被视为反映和再现了这种等级框架中所隐含的关于不值得存在的主导概念。总体而言，与庇护无关的敌对环境的许多方面在公共、政治和学术讨论中仍然被忽视，尽管它们的影响同样阴险。“不诉诸公共资金”(NRPF)政策就是这方面的典范，它影响到任何在法律上“受移民管制”的人，包括没有任何有效假期的人。我的项目试图通过关注主要是非洲移民妇女在伦敦与NRPF的经历，来解决难民团结的排他性形式的问题，并解决在非庇护移民问题上缺乏学术工作的问题。我将NRPF视为一种带有性别色彩和种族主义的“慢暴力”技术(Nixon，2011)，它通过拒绝黑人、女性、单身照顾者获得任何福利支持，不成比例地将他们推入无家可归和贫困的境地(Smith等人，2021)。根据姆本贝(2003)的“死亡政治”概念，我将NRPF定位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支配性，以及她们如何被排除在“通过殖民剥夺积累的财富”之外(El-Enany，2020：35)。为了探索其他形式的移民团结，以挑战种族主义和等级制度的移民类别，这一博士学位将强调移民妇女的生存和抵抗战略。我采用了黑人女权主义者和交叉性分析(Collins，1990；Nneemka，2003)来研究移民妇女面临的各种歧视，以及她们不同的日常反应。我特别强调，在一个故意怀有敌意和难以驾驭的法律体系中，获取有关法律权利和支持服务的信息发挥着关键作用。因此，本博士学位将重视知识共享，将其作为妇女抵制种族主义和歧视性法律制度的一个关键方面。它将探索妇女在激进主义、团结、集体学习和关怀方面的对抗空间，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.