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Palgrave Macmillan

Hostile Homes

Violence, Harm and the Marketisation of UK Asylum Housing

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

Authors:
  1. Steven A. Hirschler

    1. Department of Social Sciences, York St John University, York, UK

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  • Explores the increasing reliance on private security firms to manage controlled populations, such as migrants in detention and asylum seekers living in dispersed accommodation.
  • Draws on empirical interview data featuring the experiential accounts of asylum housing residents and third sector workers.
  • Speaks to students, academics and practitioners interested in asylum and immigration policy, the privatisation of social control practices, and the harm and structural violence of the state and private firms

Part of the book series: Critical Criminological Perspectives (CCRP)

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Table of contents (6 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-vii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • Steven A. Hirschler
    Pages 1-16

  3. Britain’s Legacy of Inhospitality and Violence Towards Immigrants

    • Steven A. Hirschler
    Pages 17-49

  4. From ‘Crimmigration’ to Governmentality: Theoretical Perspectives on the Management and Marketisation of Immigration Control

    • Steven A. Hirschler
    Pages 51-94

  5. The Asylum ‘Market’: Deportation, Detention and the Privatisation of Dispersed Accommodation

    • Steven A. Hirschler
    Pages 95-136

  6. Hostile Environments: Life Within Privatised Dispersed Housing

    • Steven A. Hirschler
    Pages 137-169

  7. The Role of Third Sector Organisations and Concluding Remarks

    • Steven A. Hirschler
    Pages 171-186

  8. Back Matter

    Pages 187-188
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Keywords

About this book

This book explores the ways in which the state and private security firms contribute to the direct and structural harm of asylum seekers through policies and practices that result in states of perpetual destitution, exclusion, and neglect. By synthesising historic and contemporary public policy, criminological and sociological perspectives, political philosophy, and the direct experiential accounts of asylum seekers living within dispersed accommodation, this text exposes the complex and co-dependent relationship between the state’s social control aims and neoliberal imperatives of market expansion into the immigration control regime. The title borrows from former Home Secretary Theresa May’s pronouncement that the UK government aimed to foster a ‘hostile environment’ in its response to illegal immigration. While the Home Office later attempted to rebrand its hostile environment policy as a ‘compliant environment’, this book illustrates how aggressive approaches toward the management of asylum-seeking populations has effectively extended the hostile environment to those legally present within the UK. Through an examination of the expanded privatisation of dispersed asylum housing and the UK government’s reliance on contracts with private security firms like G4S and Serco, this book explores the lived realities of hostile environments as asylum seekers’ accounts reveal the human costs of marketised asylum accommodation programmes.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Social Sciences, York St John University, York, UK

    Steven A. Hirschler

About the author

Steven A. Hirschler is Lecturer in Criminology and Sociology at York St John University, UK. His research interests include the privatisation of UK asylum housing and the relationship between law, social inequality and social control practices. Steven has previously published on topics ranging from the 2011 UK riots to structural violence in video games. His teaching covers themes including criminological theory, victimology, asylum and immigration, and state violence.

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