Living with Limited Income in the UK Asylum System

A 45-minute interactive workshop highlighting the challenges of living to a budget within the UK asylum system. Participants will think about the struggle to meet essential needs whilst relying on the limited statutory support available in the asylum system and, from here, think about the connections between policy, poverty and health and wellbeing.

This workshop explores the lived experiences of asylum-seekers within the UK asylum system, as they navigate the limits of state support and try to make life liveable whilst awaiting news of their asylum claim. After exploring the realities of life in asylum accommodation, the workshop will challenge students, in small groups, to make their own budgets within the confines of the weekly income offered to asylum-seekers receiving state support. This will provide an opportunity to get a close understanding of the difficulties of meeting basic needs within the UK asylum system, and the impacts of limited income on health, wellbeing, identity, humanity, and belonging. The workshop will ask not only what this means for asylum-seekers today, but what impact this limited income might have individually and collectively into and on the future.

Dr Charlotte Sanders, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, Deputy Chair of the Centre for Migration & Diaspora Studies.

Charlotte has been researching at the intersection of migration, housing and health for over a decade, most recently exploring lived experiences of asylum hotel accommodation through ethnographic research in hotels and asylum-seeker and refugee support services.

Young people, 14-17

Anyone

By invitation only.