“This is a court of law, not of justice”: Reflections from court-watching the criminalisation of people seeking asylum in the UK

In late June 2022 the British government expanded the scope of so-called ‘immigration crimes’ through the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. In addition to increasing maximum sentences for ‘illegal arrival’ and its facilitation, the Act removed the legal defence previously relied upon by those arriving irregularly to seek asylum.

In its first year, several hundred people - including people seeking asylum, victims of torture, trafficking and modern slavery, and age disputed children - were arrested, charged, and imprisoned for their irregularised arrival.

While recently much has been written on the criminalisation of solidarity actors globally, less attention has been paid to the criminalisation of irregularised migrants themselves, including for their supposed roles in ‘facilitating’ the journeys of others.

This paper draws on 10 months of ethnographic court-watching in criminal courts across the British South Coast. Between January and October 2023 I observed over 100 hearings in which people arriving in ‘small boats’ across the English Channel were prosecuted for doing so.

Drawing on this ethnographic material, together with interviews with lawyers, this paper discusses the legal violence enacted by and through different actors involved in these criminal proceedings. I argue that the courtroom is an important site of racialised (b)ordering, where the script of the ‘illegal migrant’ is (re)written both discursively and materially, unauthorised mobility is pathologised, and where criminal punishment is relied upon as a crude, often violent tool in the enforcement of borders and belonging.

Attend the seminar online

• Meeting ID: 957 7070 0934

• Passcode: 586690

Join the seminar via Zoom

About the speaker

Vicky Taylor (she/her) is a DPhil candidate at the Centre for Criminology. Her DPhil research looks at the politics of border policing in and across the English Channel. This project is supervised by Professor Mary Bosworth and supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, and Balliol College's Dervorguilla Scholarship. She is also a participant in the collaborative Legal Aid Clinic at HMP Huntercombe, and Events Coordinator for Border Criminologies.

Vicky holds a BA in Geography from the University of Cambridge (Double First), and an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies from the University of Oxford (Distinction).

Prior to starting her DPhil, she worked as a Senior Researcher in the UK Civil Service (Fast Stream) across the policy areas of asylum, irregular migration and resettlement. She previously worked for a Think Tank researching issues of healthcare access experienced by online sex workers, and as a researcher supporting the legal charity Just for Kids Law. Alongside her DPhil, Vicky is Director of the social enterprise Screen Share UK, an organisation dedicated to tackling the digital divide experienced by young refugees and asylum seekers in the UK.