Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats with Maya Goodfellow

Maya Goodfellow in conversation with Ayeisha Thomas-Smith about Maya's new book Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats (Verso, 2019).

Hostile Environment: The UK government proudly calls the aim of its immigration policy to be the creation of a “hostile environment” while refugees drown in the Mediterranean and Britain votes to leave the EU against claims that “swarms”of migrants are entering Britain. Meanwhile, study after study confirms that immigration is not damaging the UK’s economy, nor putting a strain on public services, but immigration is blamed for all of Britain’s ills. Yet concerns about immigration are deemed “legitimate” across the political spectrum, with few exceptions. How did we get here? Maya Goodfellow offers a compelling answer. Through interviews with leading policy-makers, asylum seekers, and immigration lawyers, Goodfellow illuminates the dark underbelly of contemporary immigration policies. A nuanced analysis of the UK’s immigration policy from the 1960s onwards, Hostile Environment links immigration policy and the rhetoric of both Labour and Tory governments to the UK’s colonial past and its imperialist present. Goodfellow shows that distinct forms of racism and dehumanisation directly resulted from immigration policy and reminds us of the human cost of concessions to anti-immigration politics.

Maya Goodfellow is a writer, academic broadcast commentator. She has written for the New York Times, Guardian, the New Statesman and Al Jazeera, among others. She recently completed a PhD at SOAS, University of London, her research focused on race and racism in Britain.

Ayeisha Thomas-Smith is an activist, trainer and writer currently undertaking a PhD in Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, researching neoliberal subjectivity in social movement infrastructure. She is a Senior Organiser at the New Economy Organisers Network, co-founded KIN, a network for black activists working for collective liberation, and also presents the Weekly Economics Podcast, Economics with Subtitles for BBC R4 and The Why Factor for BBC World Service.

This PERC event will be chaired by Aeron Davis, Co-Director of PERC.

‘Maya Goodfellow deftly shows how the contemporary demonising of migrants, including refugees and asylum-seekers, has a long and dispiriting national and global backstory to it—but there are also heartening stories of resistance and solidarity which point to the way forward. Priyamvada Gopal

‘Maya Goodfellow has a sharp mind, a deep well of knowledge and a readable style. When she writes something, I learn something.’ Gary Younge

Dates & times

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13 Nov 2019	6:00pm - 8:00pm	apple google outlook

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