Online Lecture Series for 2023-24: Resisting the Hostile Environment
For this year's series, the Language, Literature and Politics Research Group is hosting 11 one-hour online talks on ‘Resisting the Hostile Environment’. The context for this lecture series was created in May 2012, when Britain’s Home Secretary, Theresa May, declared in an interview: ‘The aim is to create here in Britain a really hostile environment for illegal migration .... What we don’t want is a situation where people think that they can come here and overstay because they're able to access everything they need’. From a broad range of different disciplinary perspectives, the speakers in the series address how the state’s efforts to foster a hostile environment for asylum-seekers and refugees in Britain has been framed, enforced, managed, negotiated, and resisted.
The first talk is on Thursday 9 November, from 4 to 5pm (UK time).
The journalist (LRB, Guardian) Daniel Trilling (https://danieltrilling.co.uk/) will talk on:
Title: Creating ‘illegal’ immigrants: the Rwanda plan
Abstract: Over the past few decades, British governments have repeatedly promised to crack down on forms of immigration they deem unwanted. The proposed measures have varied in scope and target but they frequently involve creating new ways in which the state can class people as ‘illegal’. Why does this keep happening? Daniel Trilling, a journalist who specialises in immigration and asylum, will consider what the latest episode in this story - the government's plan to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda - tells us about the underlying trends.
The link for the event is as follows:
This is a public event, so do please forward to anyone you think may be interested