Enforced gratitude

This article is the first in a series of articles written collaboratively by members of Displaced Collective to document, explore and critique the power dynamics and politics of gratitude. The article you are about to read represents a confluence of voices braided together to protect the author’s anonymity.

I am a young person and a refugee. For six continuous years, I was stuck in the UK’s asylum system; a system that is hostile by design, but seeing as the system stole years of peace from me, hostile seems kind of light. Sorry, I digress. This article isn’t about the asylum system; rather it’s about a disturbing (to put it mildly) encounter that I had with an individual from a charity.

I am what you may call an experienced ‘service user’ of charitable services for refugees and migrants, and I have had some really positive experiences over the years. However, the encounter that I will detail in this article was both disturbing and illuminating. It was disturbing because it hurt me very deeply, and illuminating because it forced me to see how the support some charities and their trustees, directors and managers (i.e. those at the top) offer to ‘poor’ and ‘desperate’ refugees rests on us: 1) performing gratitude and 2) being in a position of inferiority.

Like many others manoeuvring the asylum process, I have had little choice but to turn to charities for support. For one, my first solicitor wouldn’t ever respond to any of my own communications but would respond to my charity caseworker. I can only speculate why, but perhaps speaking directly to me wasn’t worth their time or maybe they didn’t understand my English (although my charity caseworker and I would always communicate just fine in English). I didn’t have the energy or confidence at the time to fight them to treat me, and my relative, with respect as I had to focus my efforts squarely on the Home Office, so strategically I relied more and more on my caseworker to correspond with my legal representative. Entrapped in the asylum system for six years, I turned to multiple charities to help me endure the painstaking wait, indignities and anxiety-inducing twists and turns of the asylum process.

My initial thoughts about charities were what you may describe as naive. I assumed that everyone who works in a charity is compassionate, kind and well-intentioned. I heard “refugees welcome” again and again and again and, consequently, believed in my heart that I really was welcome in their spaces. Although, in my experience the support that charities provide is usually standardised and checklisted rather than individualised, I still believe the support to be meaningful and that many on the frontline of charities are sincerely trying to help as much as they can.

In 2017, I came across a person of significant influence in a charity that I will refer to hereafter as A, who herself insisted that I call on her in times of need. I had few independent avenues to secure mine and my relative’s needs (as the asylum system strips asylum seekers of independence) so I took her up on her offer. I want to acknowledge that she did help me a lot over the years. In fact, she was helping so many people that she was often described by the asylum seekers she was supporting as an angel. Given her importance in the sector, I felt proud to be associated with her, and felt good whenever she was complimentary of me. Maybe I felt special.

Fast forward to 2022, I finally got refugee status, thanks in large part to changing my solicitor. Any relief I felt was short-lived however, as I found myself being pushed out of the frying pan into the fire, moving directly from the asylum system to the welfare quagmire. First, the council threatened to separate my relative and I. My relative is disabled but as I’m over 18, I’m not considered their dependent and so I had to fight for us to be housed together. My relative and I were then moved from asylum accommodation and housed temporarily in a hotel administered by the council. Within this hotel, we were moved weekly to a different room for months, which was exhausting and unsettling, particularly for my relative. We were repeatedly given conflicting advice on our entitlement to benefits and I felt like I was constantly screaming into a void for us to be treated humanely, but I persevered nonetheless to fight for our rights and dignity.

Given our circumstances, we had nowhere to store most of our belongings and so I asked A whether she could store them for us. She kindly obliged, although I detected some irritation on her part. I thanked her profusely and told her that I would unburden her as soon as I could. Then one Friday in the middle of winter, my relative and I were moved to a temporary flat in an unknown part of the city with no prior warning. On our way to the flat, I texted A and asked her to bring our belongings. We then arrived at a flat that was dark, unfurnished, uncarpeted and unheated, with walls splattered with some kind of green substance. We were scared, cold and exhausted. We immediately started to look for more suitable, liveable accommodation. A arrived with our belongings. My relative and I were visibly distressed. I apologised for inconveniencing A and asked whether she could keep our belongings for a little longer as we could not remain in such unsuitable accommodation. She was clearly irritated again but did not say anything directly to us. She tried to help us make the accommodation more habitable. I thanked her profusely for her time and help. A left.

That evening, when my relative and I were freezing in concrete lodgings, A sent me a long text message in which she reminded us that we were merely “guests” in the UK and ought to behave as such.

The text is very long so I will paraphrase. A prefaced her message with a ‘warning’ about the content being difficult to digest, but she said it was for our own good to receive her “advice”. A said that we were “behaving in a way that presents as being entitled to a lot of help.” A broke down how many hours she had spent helping us and the cost of said help at her usual working rate, although “that cost isn’t relevant” to us (yet we still had to take note of it). She listed each and every temporary council and asylum accommodation we had stayed in over six years, and sharply reminded us these were “gifts” to us and a burden for British taxpayers. She said that my “attitude” and complaints “at every turn” are “not acceptable” and to keep in mind the struggles of an overwhelmed council over and above the humans it ostensibly supports. She pierced her message with a bold disclaimer that British people didn’t cause the problems we were forced to flee, and yet, apparently here we were living the high life thanks to institutional and individual generosity in the UK. Finally, she said that my relative, being disabled, was unlikely to ever contribute financially to this country (therefore, presumably unable to pay back their debts to the taxpayer and charities) and any support we do get will not “help you both to integrate here” (integrate with whom and on whose terms, you may ask).

I couldn’t believe what I was reading, not least while I was freezing, scared and burned out from fighting for our basic needs. It has taken me a while to properly process A’s message. All this time, I believed A-the-Angel was helping me and other asylum seekers because she was generous, compassionate and caring. Receiving this text message was a thudding wake-up call.

Was it actually the case that the support I was receiving was conditional and predicated on a puppeteered performance as an obedient, passive and grateful refugee?

I did not say anything to her about how her message made me feel. I was tired. I was scared. And after  receiving her text message, I was hurt and deeply sad. After six years of unrelenting struggles,  A had sent me a text-cum-essay staunchly defending the state and identified me and my disabled relative as the problem for demanding basic humanity, respect and rights. I would rather she told us she could no longer help us than smugly kicking us when we were at our lowest. 

I told her I was grateful for all her help in an attempt to placate her. She condescendingly told me to remember to translate her message to my relative, like my relative was some child who needed to be told what’s right or wrong by someone who had never had to walk a day in our shoes; who did not have to flee their home, manoeuvre a ‘hostile’ immigration process that invisibilises you because you’re the wrong kind of foreign and disabled. A process that steals and freezes your time, denies you the right to work or to earn a living, and then forces you to navigate a welfare system that debases and drains you at every turn.

She told me she didn’t want me to “feel bad” but “didn’t want me to make any enemies”. This to me sounded like a threat. She clearly sees me as a troublemaker so if I should ever have cause to disagree with her, could she be dangerous? Could she sabotage my status? I don’t know if I was overthinking it, but I felt extremely vulnerable at that moment. I am acutely aware of how unsafe and conditional our immigration status is. And I know what she was saying: just shut up and take it, even if it’s unjust, inhumane and cruel, just take it, lest we come across “entitled to a lot of help” and “make enemies”.

I saw her in a completely different light after this, and I learned a lot. I learned not to share my thoughts and feelings about the difficulties here with everyone who claims to care about refugees. To people like her, mistreatment is only something that happens outside of Britain. Here, the administrative processes are grounded in fairness and justice. If there are problems, we must feel sorry for overburdened state institutions and local authorities, not the people who endure their treatment. Or perhaps we feel sorry for people who endure them to a certain extent, but we will pull the plug on our performed sympathy as soon as they become ‘unruly’ and start demanding better for themselves.

I had a caseworker who would often talk to me about racism, but I didn’t understand what she was saying then. It was at this moment that I gained some clarity.  We (refugees and migrants) are ‘guests’ in their (Britons) country. Outsiders. Inferior Outsiders, even.

A tried to teach me a lesson that evening: that I should know my place in this country and show gratitude at every turn, however hard it gets. I should keep my mouth shut, or focus my complaints on the violence enacted outside of Britain (but, of course, not by Britain).

I wanted to say to her that I would be grateful if I didn’t have to struggle day in and day out for our basic needs, receive mere scraps and then have to keep fighting some more, no matter how depleted, demoralised and dehumanised I was. But I didn’t say anything to her directly because I am scared, and even today I am writing anonymously. I have since become more attuned to how my peers perform gratitude and I understand their reasons for doing so. Everything is conditional and the immigration system is becoming asphyxiating so what choice do we have but to perform a gratitude that is so firmly rooted in racism in order to assimilate and stay safe.

I learned that not everyone who works for a charity is a nice person. This might sound obvious but it really isn’t when you’re stuck in these spaces. I don’t think A cares about refugees, she cares about how refugees make her feel about herself. Working with – or receiving gratitude from – refugees cements her feelings and privileged position of superiority. Her interests lie not in our safety or liberation. She feels better helping us poor, grateful, inferior refugees, provided we remain grateful and inferior to her. If we achieve any success, I imagine people like A boast about how it was down to their ‘support’ and, once again, feel good about themselves whilst securing awards for their service to our plight. Point being, sometimes it only comes back to them, and the ways in which we fight minute to minute and day to day are invisibilised or simply packaged by them as stories of ‘poor’ and ‘desperate’ refugees saved by charitable British people.

Just to reiterate, I do still believe there are kind and good people in charities and my objective here is not to tarnish those sincerely working in solidarity with people on the move. But I do think it’s important we talk about the problems within these spaces too, even if it’s hard to do so.

Despite A’s ‘advice’, I do not accept that I am entitled or that I have a bad attitude or that I must perform gratitude when being subjected to inhumane treatment (which, yes, can happen in Britain too). I have struggled for basic dignity here and elsewhere, and I will continue to do so, but I will be more careful about who I think is fighting alongside us versus those who see us merely as objects of charity and turn on us as soon as we demand better for ourselves.

By Displaced Collective.