Description
This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion of ‘the everyday’ in International Relations. It examines the lived experiences of refugee housing in England as a particularly useful way of interrogating the relationship between the local and the national, where arrival and dispersal policies are enacted respectively. In this article we report on the findings of our MI-funded study of refugee housing in Birmingham, UK to ask what are the affective and emotional experiences of housing that deserve academic attention to better understand how to support asylum seekers, settled refugees, and the individuals that support them during this tumultuous time of their lives? Adopting a mixed, interdisciplinary methodology that brings together the lived experience of refugee communities with quantitative data analysis about austerity cuts’ impact on the local provision of housing, the paper argues in favour of a research focus on the local than the national level and provides recommendations for refugee housing “done well”
We adopt a mixed methodology, interdisciplinary in nature, that situates the lived experience of refugee communities, and those that support them, alongside quantitative data analysis that examines austerity cuts and the impacts this has on the local provision of housing. The data reveals the negative impact of national government policy at the site of the everyday. Our study revealed the personal toll that this relationship can have, on people and their communities and goes on to make three particular claims. First, in light of austerity policies ‘the everyday’ in IR must focus more explicitly on cities as they negotiate the national and global demands of austerity as a result of the Global Financial Crisis. Second, we demonstrate that shows how in the city of Birmingham the wellbeing of all involved in refugee housing, is suffering, due to these cuts. We contrast this with evidence that housing, done well, supports a strong arrival journey in England. Finally, we demonstrate that housing is not simply about a house. Rather, there are affective and emotional experiences of housing that deserve academic attention to better understand how to support asylum seekers, settled refugees, and the individuals that support them during this tumultuous time of their lives. In making this claim the paper articulates to claims which advances the study of refugee housing in particular as well as the discourses of the ‘the everyday’ by turning to the relationship of cities and the national government.
