This blog seeks to examine policy changes associated with Brexit through looking at categories of worthiness relating to the status of refugees and anthropological theory surrounding kinship. This is relevant to a variety of NGOs assisting refugees affected by this changing situation, such as the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit.

The changes in the UK’s family reunification policy since Brexit have demonstrated the flexibility of categories of family and what a family ‘worthy’ of reunion looks like. Until December 2020, the UK belonged to a set of policies known as the Dublin Regulations: a broad set of regulations covering many aspects of the asylum process. They allowed unaccompanied minors to seek reunification with a range of family members, and vice-versa, including parents, siblings over 18, uncles, aunts and grandparents (NIDOS 2016). The Dublin Regulations also protected unaccompanied minors from trafficking by guaranteeing them a safe, legal route to the UK (Vignale 2015).

However, since Brexit, the UK has become more hostile in their immigration policy, a factor which has extended into family reunification. Having rejected popular proposals such as the Dubs Amendment, which would have maintained the right to a safe, legal route (International Rescue Committee, 2020), the UK now requires families to make their own travel arrangements (Home Office 2020). Also, what family members can claim in order to be reunited has been restricted. Now only immediate family members are included, so unaccompanied minors can solely claim to be reunited with parents, and adults can only claim to be reunited with spouses and children under 18 (Home Office 2020).

Determining what constitutes a ‘worthy’ refugee is tied to shifting definitions of ‘refugeeness’ (Ikanda 2018), highlighting the importance of defining categories in both bureaucratic procedures and social relations. Bureaucratic categories define the status of refugees, but by adapting to the criteria of these categories, refugees can be deemed untrustworthy and treated with suspicion. Anthropologist Marnie Jane Thomson (2012) illustrates this by examining the contradictory expectations of refugee resettlement processes, where transparency is demanded from refugees but the internal workings of resettlement and reunification are hidden. This produces what she describes as ‘black boxes of bureaucracy’: opaque structures that continually change the priority criteria for resettlement, for example, leading to refugees inhabiting changing identities to meet those criteria and qualify for resettlement. Often, aid representatives then perceive these behaviours as dishonest (Ikanda 2018:587).

This links to the inherent idea of ‘the refugee’: a category defined by passivity and vulnerability, and therefore a lack of agency. However, as Ikanda (2018) shows through Somali refugees in Tanzania, refugees do in fact exercise agency in ways that complicate categories imposed upon them. For example, Ikanda discusses how Moha, a Somali refugee, improvised kinship relations when he drew on the remittances and connections of scattered family members, but then distanced himself from these ties by choosing to live long-term in a Dadaab refugee camp to increase his chances of resettlement (Ikanda 2018:587). He changed strategies due to a new agenda of aid agencies in the camp, under which UNHCR principles of family reunification were strictly applied with the aim to ‘shut down chances of settlement’ (Ikanda 2018:586) of Somali refugee families if any of their relatives were found to be Kenyan. This meant that Moha’s resettlement application backfired when his brother’s computer data showed that he had acquired a Kenyan ID (Ikanda 2018:587). This demonstrates an underlying ideology that permeates family reunification policy and has manifested in the UK’s changing policy after Brexit – because of the narrow definition of ‘family’, refugees who claim reunification based on other conceptions of family are seen to be ‘cheating the system’, therefore eliciting hostility from state officials.

As Ikanda highlights, the fluidity of kinship categories in resettlement demonstrates more broadly that ‘international principles...are not always universal’ (Ikanda 2018:587). This needs to be acknowledged in policy related to refugees and asylum seekers, especially family reunification policy. Categories and principles by which refugees are defined change systematically due to factors like time, governance and social relations, constituents which exacerbate uncertainty in resettlement processes.

The universality of kinship relations has long been questioned by anthropologists of kinship. David Schneider’s seminal work (1984) undermined the universalist assumption that ‘blood is thicker than water’, which presumes that biological relations primarily define kinship. He demonstrated that the understanding that blood relations and sexual reproduction determine relatedness is just one example of a kinship ideology; not necessarily a cross-cultural phenomenon. This understanding is evident in the new criteria defining family reunification policy since Brexit, which prioritises the notion that biological and marital ties determine kinship - impacting who qualifies as a ‘worthy’ relation of a refugee.

However, this does not fit with the complex situations of many refugees, whose most ‘immediate’ family members may be scattered and dispersed around the world. Furthermore, contextual factors and individual choice can also determine kinship and feelings of relatedness. Kath Weston’s Families We Choose (1997), for example, details forms of queer kinship in 1980s San Francisco. Through fulfilling family duties such as gathering together on special occasions, ‘chosen’ family members effectively replaced each other’s biological kin, who often rejected them. ‘Choice’ of kinship is also evident in Ikanda’s studies, where refugees ‘choose’ or reject certain individuals they define as family, to keep up with the shifting definitions of ‘refugeeness’ and improve their chances of resettlement.

Hence, the anthropological denaturalisation of universal definitions of kinship show that multiple and often contrasting concepts of family models exist in different contexts. In contrast with the previous Dublin Regulations, the new Brexit laws have an unfairly narrow, universal basis when defining what counts as ‘immediate’ family, reinforcing hostile affirmations of who is deemed a ‘worthy’ refugee.

Throughout this blog, we have discussed the shifting nature of definitions of refugees and family members ‘worthy’ of resettlement. Both ‘refugeeness’ and kinship are constructed by fluid categories. Highlighting this fluidity is helpful for organisations who aim to assist refugees in navigating uncertainties of complicated bureaucratic systems and critiquing their unjust consequences.

References:

Home Office (2020). Family reunion: Asylum policy guidance on family reunion applications. [Online]. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/947066/family-reunion-guidance-v5.0ext.pdf [Accessed 1 April 2021].

International Rescue Committee (2020). What is the Dubs Amendment. [Online]. Available at: https://www.rescue-uk.org/article/what-dubs-amendment#:~:text=What%20is%20the%20Dubs%20Amendment%3F%20The%20Dubs%20Amendment%2C,the%20UK%20after%20the%20Brexit%20process%20was%20completed. [Accessed 1 April 2021].

Ikanda, F.N. (2018) ‘Animating “refugeeness” through vulnerabilities: worthiness of long-term exile in resettlement claims among Somali refugees in Kenya’, Africa, 88(3), pp. 579–596.

Ikanda, F.N. (2020) ‘The Role of Somali Kinship in Sustaining Bureaucratic Governance around Dagahaley Camp in Kenya’, Ethnos, pp.1-20.

NIDOS (2016). Unaccompanied Children and the Dublin III Regulation, Utrecht: NIDOS.

Schneider, D. (1984) ‘The Fundamental Assumption in the Study of Kinship: “Blood is Thicker than Water”’, in A Critique of the Study of Kinship. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp.165-177.

Thomson, M.J. (2012) ‘Black Boxes of Bureaucracy: Transparency and Opacity in the Resettlement Process of Congolese Refugees’, Political and Legal Anthropology Review (PoLAR), 35(2), pp. 186–205.

Vignale, F. (2015). Dublin III Regulation on asylum and unaccompanied minors. [Online]. Available at: https://free-group.eu/2015/04/09/dublin-iii-regulation-on-asylum-and-unaccompanied-minors/ [Accessed 1 April 2021].

Weston, K. ([1991]1997). Families We Choose. New York: Columbia University Press.