Just over a year after fleeing the Taliban and seeking asylum in the UK, more than 150 Afghan refugees, including children, are facing more upheaval. In a matter of weeks, the Home Office has given dozens of refugee and asylum seeker families short notice that they will be moved from their accommodation in London to hotels in Yorkshire and Bedfordshire, hundreds of miles away.
Many new arrivals find themselves moved to different areas, often where accommodation is cheaper. This involves taking (often vulnerable) people far away from the neighbourhood where they have begun settling in, and where they have started in local schools and jobs. Our research in the London boroughs of Newham and Barking & Dagenham illustrates how important these point-of-arrival communities are to refugees – and what is at stake when people are made to leave.
