The Criminalised Victim

The criminalised migrants, asylum seekers, refugees

  • ASYLUM SEEKERS
    ‘An asylum seeker is a person who has left their country and is seeking protection from persecution and serious human rights violations in another country, but who hasn’t yet been legally recognized as a refugee
    and is waiting to receive a decision on their asylum claim. Seeking asylum is a human right. This means everyone should be allowed to enter another country to seek asylum.’

  • REFUGEES
    ‘A refugee is a person who has fled their own country because they are at risk of serious human rights violations and persecution there. The risks to their safety and life were so great that they felt they had no choice but to leave and seek safety outside their country because their own government cannot or will not protect them from those dangers. Refugees have a right to international protection.’

  • MIGRANTS
    ‘There is no internationally accepted legal definition of a migrant. Like most agencies and organizations, we at Amnesty International understand migrants to be people staying outside their country of origin, who are not asylum seekers or refugees.’
    (Amnesty International, 2022)

The right to asylum

  • Article 14 of the 1948 universal declaration of human rights states: ‘everyone has the right to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from prosecution.’

  • Providing asylum is a responsibility shared by all countries

  • And yet, the implication in the media is that, somehow, the very act of seeking asylum is a problem — ‘we are being invaded’

Stats

  • People who originally came to the UK to seek asylum made up an estimated 5% of the UK’s foreign-born population in 2019, and 0.6% of the UK’s total resident population

  • When compared against EU member states, in 2021 the UK ranked 6th in the absolute number of people to whom it gave protection, including refugees

The criminalisation of asylum seekers

  • From being a victim to being a criminal…

  • On July 19, 2021 — proposition for new law:

    • Thousands of people who come to the UK seeking safety could be imprisoned for up to 4 years under new legislation being debated in parliament

    • The Nationality and Borders Bill includes provisions for people, who have fled war, terror and oppression to seek asylum in the UK, to be arrested and prosecuted under a new offence for arriving in the UK without a valid entry clearance

The criminalisation of irregular migration

  • The vast majority of irregular migrants are otherwise law abiding people and would not be considered a threat to anyones safety

  • ‘While States have the sovereign prerogative to govern conditions
    of entry into and stay in their territory, they must always do so
    with respect of their human rights obligations. Criminalising
    migration has not been shown to prevent or resolve irregular
    status and is a concerning practice that leads to a number of
    human rights violations. The criminalisation of people on the
    basis of their migration status also reinforces false and
    xenophobic narratives that migrants are criminals or that
    migration itself is a threat’
    (UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and UN Committee on Migrant Workers)

The ‘crim-migration’ system

  • Migrants are a modern day folk devil — they are demonised in the media but also disproportionately over-policed by the criminal justice system surveillance services and other institutions:

    1. Creation of specific migration crime offences

    2. Deportation as a response to criminal penalty (UK borders Act 2007)

    3. Making those who facilitate irregular migrants liable for criminal and civil sanction (UK immigration acts of 2014 and 2016)

    4. Restrictive and punitive civil exclusions — access to everyday activities are denied

      (Bowling and Westenra 2020)

  • It is a criminal offence to work in the UK without the right to do so. Migrants working illegally can be imprisoned for up to 6 months

  • If an employer is found to be employing someone illegally, the employer may be fined or face prosecution

  • Only those with lawful immigration status can rent private accommodation. It is a criminal offence for landlords and agents to knowingly let property to an illegal migrant

  • Migrants in the UK illegally are not able to access public funds. Those without lawful immigration status may also be charged if they require hospital treatment or health care whilst in the UK. Outstanding payments for medical treatment can also result in further immigration applications
    being refused.

  • Other services, like bank accounts and driving licences are also restricted if you are in the UK illegally

The hostile environment

  • Since 2012, it has been an explicit aim of the government immigration policy to create a hostile environment for anybody unable to demonstrate their immigration status on demand

  • A set of policies introduced in 2012 by then-home secretary Theresa May, with the aim of making life unbearably difficult n the UK for those who cannot show the right paperwork

  • As May said at the time: ‘The aim is to create, here in Britain, a really hostile environment for illegal immigrants.’ (Theresa May, 2012)

Impact

  • Deters people from going to the doctor for fear of racking up a huge bill or being reported, detained and deported

  • Deters them from reporting crime to the police

  • Deters them from reporting unsafe working conditions or exploitative employers

  • Reduces the options for renting a home and pushes people into poor quality or even dangerous accommodation, at the mercy of their landlord

Safe and legal routes

  • The share of asylum applications that received an initial decision within six months fell from 87% in 2014 to 6% in 2021

  • On 31 December 2021, around 101,000 people were awaiting an initial Home Office decision on their asylum application

  • In real terms the asylum support payment level in 2022 was 27% lower than in 2000

Trafficked people: criminals or victims

  • Trafficking for forced criminality is increasingly being recognised as an issue of concern in the UK

  • Cases have been reported of trafficked person, bother children and adults, forced to undertake a range of criminal activities

Sex Trafficking

  • There are a number of industries that people are trafficked into (legitimate/legal industries too)

  • Its not just the very heavily morally charged area of sex trafficking where people are victimised and exploited (more on the ‘exploited’ victim next week)

  • During the 2000s, sex trafficking has become established as one of the most serious (crime) problems in the Western world, and has been given a prominent position on both national and international agendas (Doezema, 2010; Heber 2018)

  • Conflation of Trafficking with Sex Trafficking, and Sex Trafficking with Sex Work

    • To clarify: not everyone who’s trafficked is trafficked for sexual services and not everyone who works in the sexual services industry (some of which is legal) has been trafficked

Supply and demand: A market system

The market system in which human trafficking for sexual exploitation occurs, in which victims are treated like commodities which are bought, sold, traded and used, is widely stigmatized, partially criminalized and poorly regulated

  • Third parties

  • ‘Employers’

  • Clients and ‘customers’
    (Aronowitz and Koning 2014)

Criminalisation of Sex Trafficking victims

  • Victims of sex trafficking can appear as willing participants because they often fail to cooperate with the authorities

  • Authorities might just assume they are offenders