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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Public private encounters: negotiations and understandings at the edge of ‘community’, ‘home’ and ‘belonging’
| Panel |
8. Refugees and the Law in Europe
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| Paper ID | 148 |
| Author(s) |
Binaisa, Irene Naluwembe
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | In the wake of 9.11 Britain’s migrant communities have come under increased public attention. This attention has spanned central and local government initiatives directly targeted at migrants and their descendants, as well as an increased pre-occupation with the notion of integration and community cohesion. The London Borough of Newham is one of Britain’s most ethnically diverse boroughs. It is second only to the London Borough of Brent, which occupies first place as it has a larger White Irish community. Within the diversity of Newham the paper focuses on migrants from Uganda and their descendants, a ‘community’ whose initial growth stemmed from an influx of refugees to Britain. Taking the London Borough of Newham as locale this paper will seek to examine public policy discourses in the current social political climate.
Local government policies span a range of initiatives and are targeted at both the wider Black Minority Ethnic (BME) community as well as specific sub-groups within this category such as refugee, asylum seeker, Black, Asian etc, and in this respect the London Borough of Newham is no exception. This research will focus on the experience of the Ugandan ‘community’ as a migrant group that is long established in the area but which also encompasses migrants from a wide variety of categories. Some are still under refugee status, whilst others are under indefinite leave to remain, ‘asylum seeker’, undocumented, students, naturalised British or second generation British.
The paper will seek to juxtapose public policy initiatives and responses alongside personal narrative data taken from members of this ‘community’. It will seek to enquire into their impact on the ‘community’, and how Ugandan migrants and their descendants engage, negotiate and situate their lives in this current social political climate. It will also seek in light of the diversity of those who would fall under the rubric of ‘Ugandan community’, to question how these wider policy initiatives are viewed in terms of their success or otherwise, as well as within the specific context of the London Borough of Newham.
This research draws from fieldwork undertaken using a multi-sited ethnographic approach. Hopefully by engaging both sides of the debate along differing scales, the paper will reveal a more complex nuanced picture, which will seek to problematise the discreet boundaries that separate public-private, refugee-migrant-undocumented-citizen.
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