Parent’s reflections on the impacts of the UK’s ‘hostile environment’ policies on young asylum-seeking and refugee children

The need to shield young children from adversity is well documented, and reflected in both UK policy and the current UK Labour government’s pledge to ‘set every child up for the best start in life’. Yet, conversely, the UK operationalises a raft of measures to create a ‘hostile environment’ for asylum seekers and refugees. The hostile environment policies force asylum-seeking and refugee children to endure poverty and insecurity, associated with negative consequences for children’s physical, social, emotional and educational development. This paper employs critical phenomenology to understand the material, psychological and phenomenological effects of the ‘hostile environment’ on young asylum-seeking and refugee children in the UK. Data is drawn from semi-structured interviews with parents from 11 asylum-seeking and refugee families with young children (0–8). The findings reveal that asylum-seeking children are forced to live in conditions of material adversity and a state of limbo characterised by insecurity that pervades all aspects of their lives. Refugees have more stability than asylum seekers, but the psychological and phenomenological effects of living under hostile environment conditions continue to persist. The parents in this study expressed how they felt the cumulative effects of material adversity and insecurity negatively influenced their mental state and negatively impacted their children. As such, this paper indicates the contradiction between these negative effects of the hostile environment and the ‘best start in life’ for young children that the previous and current UK Governments ostensibly support. The paper is timely as the 2024 election of the new Labour Government presents a significant opportunity to influence policy responses to asylum seekers.