‘Then cherish pity; lest you drive an angel from your door.’
From ‘Holy Thursday’, Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake
The last line of Blake’s poem, with its echo of the Biblical injunction - ‘Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Unawares!’ (Hebrew, 13:2) – reminds us that giving sanctuary or refuge to strangers who need it is part of a longstanding and venerable tradition in Britain. Indeed, by some accounts, we pride ourselves on a liberal asylum tradition that dates right back to the welcome that we gave Huguenots from France and the Protestants expelled by Phillip III of Spain in the late sixteenth century.
Yet asylum and the granting of asylum has been a contradictory business for at least as long, since the contribution that these co-religionists could then make as a source of skills and capital amply fulfilled Machiavelli’s advice that asylum should only be granted if and when it served the all-important state – their host. The liberal tradition of asylum in which it is granted as an act of charity at the discretion of the Home Office has never shaken off this prioritisation of the ‘domestic situation’ or, more unfortunately, the resulting portrayal of the refugee as a burden, someone to be tolerated for the sake of ‘liberal values’ rather than someone with a positive contribution to make to the host society.
It was interesting to hear among the various causes suggested in the shocked aftermath of the recent violent attacks on refugees and asylum-seekers in South Africa, the suggestion that ‘in some instances, local leaders have blamed foreigners to deflect criticisms around the lack of jobs and service delivery.’ The messages sent out by politicians and the consensus-building media that convey them play such a crucial role in determining how ‘strangers’ will be ‘entertained’, now as ever.
For our part, what we would like to see this Refugee Week in our MigrantVoice feature is a fresh encounter between individuals who have to care or who just do care about the values implicit in the offer of sanctuary. How can we safeguard them at this stage in the process of globalisation?
This is a good time for us in the UK to be revisiting some of the many issues raised because the Independent Asylum Commission has just spent eighteen months conducting the largest and most comprehensive enquiry into the UK asylum system ever undertaken. Apart from the necessary polls and focus groups – they have also launched a conversation with ‘ordinary people’ about what sort of asylum system they want – and what they think ‘asylum’ is.
Commencing this conversation between individuals is surely of vital importance because it offers a much better chance of people understanding each other, the circumstances in which they find themselves and the kind of contribution they can make to each others’ lives – than stories about ‘foreigners’ or any group of ‘them’ which feed enemy images, usually in the absence of any direct experience of the individuals concerned. MigrantVoice hopes to contribute to this emerging conversation. We have invited people active in the giving and receiving of asylum to help us discuss their priority issues.
But we start this week with a more self-reflective theme – the media and asylum. It seemed to us important to stop for a minute and think how we fit in – before we embark on this challenge. In Oxford, Sheffield and London, we have found partners for MigrantVoice who have some ideas about the kind of media that they think could facilitate an open, frank but constructive debate On Refuge. This is not only about the UK – it is about the principle as it exists in the world we live in. This is a good place to start… and we hope to hear from many more of you over the next few days. Wherever you are: What are your experiences, and your comments?
