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New report released by GMIAU (Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit) and the Boaz Trust, which finds that people in Greater Manchester are spending years, even decades, in destitution. One woman interviewed spent more than sixteen years trying to regularise her immigration status.
A slow violence: How immigration control forces people in Greater Manchester into destitution.
Based on in-depth interviews with individuals who have experienced destitution, as well as interviews with voluntary sector workers in the city-region, the report details how destitution is being used as a weapon of immigration control, enacting a slow violence on people's lives that punishes them simply for being here. The report finds that as well as multiple barriers that exist in preventing people from escaping destitution, access to accommodation for people experiencing homelessness across Greater Manchester is highly inconsistent, with individuals (including a torture survivor and domestic abuse survivor) retraumatised by months of street homelessness or precarious living environments. This form of slow violence is found to damage people’s physical and mental health, pushing some towards self-harm and thoughts of suicide.
Furthermore, a decade or more of cuts to legal aid provision has left the North West with the largest gap in the country between the need for and provision of immigration and asylum legal advice, which has resulted in individuals who could regularise their status remaining trapped in destitution for years on end.
Alongside these findings, the report also makes a series of recommendations to national government and lays out what can be done to design destitution out of our city-region, building on positive regional developments in recent years.
You can download a copy of the full report and the shorter policy briefing