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This is the text of MODA's response to the Mayor’s strategic leadership Stakeholder consultation on Refugee Integration in London

The most important issue of integration is not in fact "equality of opportunity for refugees". Our experience of working with refugee and migrant communities for over 15 years has proved to us that the issue is more complicated, serious and challenging that the simple over-used aim of equal opportunity. This must be approached in the context of powerlessness. An academic definition reads:

“powerlessness ... arises through a process whereby valued identities and roles on the one hand and valuable resources on the other are denied, all of which are prerequisite to the exercise of interpersonal influence and effective social functioning.”

For a refugee, an asylum-seeker and a migrant, it is not just he/she is rendered powerless because his/her identity, ability and potential are denied, and he/she is excluded by systems and structures he/she cannot access, but also his or her very physical presence is potentially threatening, undesirable and illegal. This transforms him/her from a being to an image: a constructed negative image that denies her/his humanity and right to be. Imagine how oppressive this situation can be when this state of affairs is sanctioned by the state, enforced by legislation, accepted by the public and ignored by the mainstream voluntary sector. It is enough to have the label “asylum seeker” or “economic migrant” to transform you into a non-entity stripped of humanity, presence, will, right to exist, function and be visible. This label is enough to allow the state to separate mothers from children to force parents to accept removal back to where they originally faced death and danger. It is enough to take young asylum seekers away and put them in detention centres away from their communities. It is enough to humiliate people by forcing them to live on and by food vouchers. It is enough to allow and encourage police to use the harshest methods with young asylum seekers and refugees detaining them for simple offences they make because of their lack of understanding of the system and lack of any sort of support to raise their awareness and lift them from the position of their powerlessness. Thousands of asylum seekers and refugees are in prison without any support and without being aware of their legal rights let alone how to access them. After this initial dehumanization comes denial of identity, denial of abilities, skills, spiritual and cultural resources which every individual carries in him or herself, and then denial of access, participation, and role in society. This situation has led to cases of suicides, self-harm, and massive cases of mental disorder and depression among refugees and asylum seekers.

This means that asylum-seekers and refugees are by definition, by legislation and by the norms of the host society marginalized and transformed into an excluded aggregate of entities whose very human identity is questionable and whose basic human rights are willfully denied. The media and other institutions are happy to accept and accelerate this excluding strategy. Even MPs on the public accounts committee, in their report published on 14 March 2006 “call for measures to encourage people to take advantage of far cheaper voluntary removal schemes, as well as well as tougher measures such as detention and electronic tagging.” (Guardian 14 March)

So it is really the question of humanity and human rights. To what extent do we other-ize others, hate them, humiliate them, and then find justifications to persecute them because of their real or imagined otherness and existential illegitimacy. The problem is you can never have “truth” about asylum seekers and refugees because their “truth” is not an ad hoc, isolated case; its global, its related to the issue of justice and truth as they are hidden in various complex and ubiquitous political mazes and economic interests. As long as there is arms trade there will be armed conflicts and as long as there are armed conflicts and unjust dictatorial regimes that can indulge in oppression and genocide in the comfortable silence of international political hypocrisy, there will be asylum seekers and refugees. But who is the culprit and who is the victim?

So if a system, a strategy, cannot ensure basic human rights and human dignity for a group, how can it claim that it will give them equal opportunities to facilitate their ‘integration’?

Even if there are opportunities, how can a group of people entrapped in a total state of powerlessness, or marginalization and exclusion, as I defined above, be able to know about, let alone access and utilize the supposed available equal opportunities?

What is considered an opportunity for integration in an institution’s approach can function as an instrument of exclusion in a refugee’s experience.

Islington Refugee Integration Service (IRIS) have just published the results of their significant mapping research on refugees in the Borough of Islington. One of the conclusions of the research states:

“Citizenship is popular among Islington’s refugees, most of whom took it up as soon as they were qualified to do so. However the new citizenship regulations now in force would have prevented about a third of those interviewed [for the research] from doing so since they now incorporate an English language test. Passing this would present particular difficulties for the significant numbers we found who were ill, disabled or looking after small children.” (Mapping Research on Refugees in the Borough of Islington, Executive Summary, p. 4)

Here we find the problematic area of difference or distance between an aim and an instrument used to achieve it without involving the object in the process. In fact the main issue which comes out from this research, other researches and our own experience, is the question of language, of ESOL. How can we expect a refugee to access equal opportunities when he or she does not know the meanings of the words “equal” and “opportunity”, let alone their ideological and legal dimensions and functions?, when they are entrapped in a state of powerlessness, when the only survival option open to them is to stick to their own ethnic or cultural space even if this too is riddled with residual gender inequalities and racial exclusion, and often ending up in isolated ghettoes? The Islington research, mentioned above, reveals another dimension of refugees’ mode of existence:

Refugees need first to be liberated from the conditions and shackles of their powerlessness and then empowered to tackle their own disadvantage and exclusion not by giving them notional opportunities but by giving them instrument to enter society from its broadest and most effective gate which is language. Learning English should be made both responsibility and right for every refugee. With the date of his or her arrival a refugee or even an-asylum seeker should have an individual action plan developed for her/him to learn English. “Teaching without borders”, should be the vision that informs a universal access to ESOL. Learning English should be made compulsory along with guaranteeing right opportunities and methods for learning it within the shortest possible time. Only then it will be fair to make language tests a proviso for attaining citizenship. On ESOL the research says:

ESOL is the essential instrument for empowering refugees and helping them to achieve successful integration. Without language there is no chance for social interaction; no chance for accessing information; no chance for accessing services and opportunities; no chance for training, use and increase of skills and obtain decent employment; and now no chance to obtain citizenship and positive sense of belonging and responsibility and access to civil rights and liberties that come with it. On the factor of language the Islington report further says:

But in spite of this central foundational role of ESOL there are still no central or any well-coordinated large scale ESOL programmes targeting the refugee and migrant population.

To give equal opportunity to ESOL, I repeat we need to reject the prejudice that some people are less humane than others just because of their unfortunate immigration status. Any person claiming asylum should be able to access ESOL.

To be able to “consider how the life of asylum seekers, before a positive decision, may affect their prospects of integration after it”, huge research projects are needed to identify various issues and elements of powerlessness and disadvantage that refugees suffer from. Asylum-seekers and undocumented migrants are the most victimised groups of human beings. They are exploited in the labour market, victimised by police, and degraded by the system. Unfortunately the mainstream voluntary sector has totally ignored these sections of population. If there is rare research addressing these categories, it comes from academic institutions. But it is vital that the Mayor as an essential part of his strategy for integration of refugees invests generously in various research project to reveal and unravel the scope of the problems faced by these categories of people. Along this it is vital to take initiative and establish wide-ranging partnership to ensure systematic, comprehensive and outcome-driven programmes of ESOL across London for all asylum seekers, refugees and migrants.

One positive aspect that the Islington research highlights is the role of refugee community organisations in providing a sort of voice, identity and role to their communities. But refugee and migrant community organisations reflect the disadvantaged position of their communities. These groups cannot grow and be effective without resources and without technical support from second-tier organisations that understand their conditions and culture. Therefore another important aspect of the Mayor’s strategy should be to ensure long-term financial support and other resources for refugee and migrant community organisations and the infrastructure organisations that support them.

Another essential element is to give opportunities and resources to diverse refugee groups in London to demonstrate and exchange the positive aspects of their culture and the contribution they make to enhance London’s wonderful diversity and to counteract the negative images of refugees, migrants and asylum-seekers propagated by the media.