Title: Practices of alliance and solidarity with asylum seeking and refugee women : a case study
Abstract: This thesis is the product of four years of participation in a community project created for
and with women who were at different stages of seeking a legal right to reside in the UK. It
presents the elements of practice and organisational ethos which, through discussion,
reflection and interviews with participants, were determined as valuable ways of
countering the debilitating effects of misrecognition by the state and endemic racial
prejudice. It considers, too, the problems, dilemmas and tensions which arose as we sought
to be effective allies across multiple lines of difference, and to produce a research account
of the experience.
Beginning in 2009, and spanning the change of government a year later, the ‘Arise and
Shine’ project was funded through the National Empowerment Partnership (NEP), a New
Labour initiative which facilitated ‘empowerment’ activities across nine English regions
between 2007 and 2011. Drawing on popular education methodology, Arise and Shine
aimed to work against the barrage of hurts which so often attend the asylum process, by
creating space for mutual support and collective action (including awareness raising
through applied theatre workshops, and giving talks in schools). The case study of the
project was made possible by an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
programme enabling practice-based research on - and for - the third sector.
The thesis is written from my perspective as community worker, pro-migrant activist and
PhD student. It foregrounds the experiences, insights and the demands of the women for an
asylum system which is not stacked against them in its decision making, or in the
conditions imposed on them as they wait for the outcome of their claims. While the case
study of Arise and Shine occupies centre stage, the range of networks of services and ally
groups and organisations which sustained the women and aided their integration, including
their own self-initiated groups, are also considered. Running through the thesis are my
reflections on political, ethical and theoretical issues surfaced by the work, which I
interrogate using resources from a diverse literature centred on feminist, anti-oppressive
approaches, as well as activist praxis.
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-01-01
Language: en
Type: dissertation
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