Domesticating the UK 's Hostile Environment: Forced Migrants' Lived Experiences of Making ‘Home'

Abstract

In this paper, we analyse the lived experiences of forced migrants in dispersal accommodation in the UK, contributing to understandings of the policies and politics of the hostile environment immigration regime in relation to the domestic sphere. More specifically, our research addresses the relative dearth of work exploring the intimate lived experiences of forced migrants by considering how the asylum regime shapes understandings of home and constrains processes of homemaking. We examine how material and social aspects of dispersal accommodation work to limit forced migrants' sense of home. We show how ‘out of place’ materialities, such as leaks, damp and infestations of insects, alongside broken and absent material fittings, such as decaying and missing furniture, undermine the making of a safe and comfortable home. We also illustrate how social relations within and around dispersal accommodation, including relationships and encounters with neighbours and flatmates, can undermine one's sense of home and belonging. By illustrating the interconnections of the material and social, we contribute to understandings of forced migrants' experiences of housing that are constituted through an assemblage of people, objects, relations, emotions and broader political policies. Whilst forced migrants respond to precarious housing through diverse coping strategies, this paper shows that within the context of a hostile UK asylum and migration system, the ability to make home is highly constrained