http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/08/hosting-refugees-in-my-home-migration-crisis
Opening my home to refugees has been humbling and eye-opening
Alison Phipps
Tuesday 8 September, 2015
I’ve lobbied on asylum and refugee-related matters for years, and almost a decade ago, I volunteered with Scottish Detainee Visitors to befriend detainees held in Dungavel IRC (Immigration Removal Centre).
‘We can’t go back’: families seeking asylum fear d
There was no hope of the then Labour government changing its policies either on the detention of asylum seekers, on detention of their children, or on destitution. So it was time to do something myself.
My partner and I contacted Positive Action in Housing (PAIH) which was running a small volunteer hosting scheme. There were not many volunteers. PAIH took details about our circumstances and matched us with our first guest, bringing her to our house to introduce us.
I was struck by how all her life was in a tiny hand-luggage-sized suitcase.
We prepared for hosting the way we’d prepare for anyone who came to stay: fresh sheets, fresh towels, a spare shelf, our Wi-Fi code, and an extra pint of milk in the fridge. Later, with experience, we learned to have other things available: peanut butter, rice, honey, ghee.
We received a useful brief introductory letter with the first name of our guest, her nationality, and the languages she spoke. I’m a professor of languages and intercultural studies, and here was my first lesson in humility. I hadn’t even heard of her mother tongue. There was also a number to ring for someone who was able to act as an interpreter if needed.
Speaking to people with limited English might seem like a huge challenge, but in fact even just the initial tour around our kitchen, bathroom and our first guest’s bedroom had us sharing words, and laughter, as our guest began to try out her English. I realised that all the English she had ever spoken was out of despair to officials about her situation; that English was associated, for her, with unjust decision-making and a “culture of disbelief”.
Over the years, we have hosted a range of different guests – from China, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kenya, Eritrea and Somalia. Through the conversations over our meal tables, sitting with an atlas in our lounge, and with many, many short clips from YouTube from people’s home towns and lives, we’ve come to have a deeper, richer and humbler understanding of the suffering of people in regimes or under conflicts, some of which endure to the present day.
In particular, we have learned a great deal about the situation in Eritrea, the country from which the guest who has stayed with us the longest came.
Recently we hosted a destitute refugee woman who was put out of the private accommodation given to her after she gained refugee status, two days after giving birth to her firstborn. When she and her case worker appealed, she was allowed back in to the accommodation, but then not allowed visitors; this was in order, she was told by the accommodation provider, “to starve her and the baby out”. In despair she came to us from the city in England where this had happened. These days we know who to turn to when these terrible things happen; in the early days we were naive about the brutality of the system.
So, if you are thinking of volunteering to host a refugee my advice would be: don’t go over the top and do anything extra special; give people time to settle in; never, ever ask people to share their story with you. Don’t interrogate. Refugees’ stories are difficult to tell and hard to hear and any hint of voyeurism makes a difficult situation worse and breaks trust. People will not share information which might put their families at risk back home, and rightly so. Don’t assume that you know best how to help people – often the way help works across vulnerable communities is very different to the way you might address issues or problems. Just because it’s different doesn’t mean it is wrong.
Is hosting an answer to the so-called refugee “crisis” in the UK? No – although it will help alleviate the huge crisis in destitution for asylum seekers until we can get a change in the policy and law. The UK government needs to end the practice of detention and enforced destitution which leads to so many people having nowhere to live. Also, there needs to be a very considerable change in the quality of decision-making when it comes to asylum claims in this country. So few people are granted the right to remain on their first claim, and so many are granted it on appeal; in between there lies homelessness and destitution.
For now, in the absence of leadership from the UK government, hosting refugees in family homes is one answer to the lack of compassion and the desperate struggle for practical resources in the sector. The experience of sharing makes you far more acutely attuned to the needs of human beings and their suffering; it can develop empathy but most of all it changes us through relationships. After the waves of xenophobia and ill-founded fear of recent years, we need to turn from our myths of scarcity and find practical ways of living together. This is one.