Direct Provision

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2020910872

Cover design: Peter Lang.

ISBN 978-1-78874-517-8 (print) • ISBN 978-1-78874-518-5 (ePDF)

ISBN 978-1-78874-519-2 (ePub) • ISBN 978-1-78874-520-8 (mobi)

© Peter Lang AG 2020

Published by Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers,
52 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LU, United Kingdom
oxford@peterlang.com, www.peterlang.com

Jacqui O’Riordan, and Mike FitzGibbon have asserted their right under the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this Work.
Publication supported by the Research Publication Fund of the College of Arts,
Celtic Studies and Social Sciences, University College Cork.

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This publication has been peer reviewed.

About the author

Jacqui O’Riordan is a lecturer at the School of Applied Social Studies, University Collge Cork, where she works across a broad range of adult education, undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Her research interests embody the activist and academic and focus on a range of issues concerning gender, equality and diversity in local and global contexts. Her research contributions include analyses of aspects of women’s livehihoods; child trafficking; care for children; migrant children’s experiences and interactions of education; community supports for people, younger and older, living with disabilities; as well as the analysis of care and experiences of carers. She is a co–founder of Anti–Deportation Ireland, and has had involvement with migrant and asylum–seeking communities since the 1990s.

Mike FitzGibbon has a background in engineering and information systems, and began work in development in the early 1990s, later working at the International Famine Centre in UCC and the Higher Education Equality Unit until 2002, working as a development consultant until 2005. Since then, he has lectured on and been a part of the development of the UCC International Development undergraduate degree programme; a joint MSc in Rural Development with universities in Ethiopia; and on UCC’s Masters in Food Security Management programme. He has always had a strong interest in ethics, human rights and development issues, particularly in relation marginalised groups. For the past two decades, he has had a deep involvement with the asylum–seeking and immigrant communities, and help to found Anti–Deportation Ireland, a local movement working with asylum–seekers.

About the book

This book examines approaches and responses to working with the asylum–seeking, refugee and migrant communities in Ireland. Through their experiences, analyses and activist accounts, contributors name direct provision as a system that facilitates the marginalization and dehumanizing of people. In making visible some of the undocumented challenges to direct provision, the co–operation and engagement between local and migrant communities, and the very real and moving experiences of living in such conditions, this publication forms a part of the ongoing challenge to direct provision. It calls for a reconsideration of the infallibility of the reductionist–dominant narrative that reduces responsibility to care and protect human life, to narrow economic considerations, and calls on the State to recognize its duty of care in its fullest conceptualization. While analysing through the lens of care, the reductionist and repressive State policies and practices are revealed. Most emphasis is placed on the reactions and resilience of the asylum–seeking community, through their numerous acts of resistance, supported by a signifi cant cohort of friends and activists within and outwith the direct provision system.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

List of Illustrations

jacqui o’riordan

Introduction: The Uncaring State

part iStructures and Policy on Asylum in the Irish State

piaras mac éinrí

1 Concepts of Asylum and Refugee Status: Irish Approaches to Date

claire dorrity

2 State Security versus Human Security: Asylum Policy and Its Discontents

michael blaney

3 Who’s Afraid of the Irish State?

joe moore

4 Activist Beginnings: Local and National Campaigns and Initiatives

daniel delaney and megan killian

5 The McMahon Working Group

part iiChallenging Institutions: Activist Perspectives

joe moore

6 Racisms, State Racism and Resistance

lucky khambule

7 The Power of Organizing from Within: Lucky’s Life and Journey in Direct Provision and KRAC Protest

florence eriamiantoe

8 My Experience of Living in Direct Provision

gertrude cotter

9 Beyond Ribbon Cutting: A Personal Reflection

tess o

10 The Liberation Protest

part iiiChildhoods Lived in Direct Provision: Providing Alternative Spaces and Places Where Children Are Enabled to Flourish

annie cummins

11 Children without Childhoods: The Experiences of Children in Direct Provision in Ireland

nomaxabixo princess maye

12 The Nature and Consequences of Institutionalizing Families

temmy a

13 My Journey into Direct Provision

14 Children’s Play in a Hostile Environment

kaffy

15 Controlled: Raising Children and Living under Surveillance

naomi masheti

16 The Psychosocial Wellbeing of Asylum Seeking Children Living in Direct Provision Centres in Ireland

part ivWomen and Men as Gendered Adults Living in Direct Provision

ciara burke

17 Women’s Migratory Journeys: Hope and Pain – From Home to DP to Home Again

amin sharifi isaloo

18 Liminality in the Direct Provisional System: Living under Extreme Rules and Conditions

dominic hewson

19 ‘Being Made Different’: Inactivity, Dependency and Emasculation in Direct Provision

keelin barry

20 Invisible: Disabled Child and Adult Asylum Seekers Living in Direct Provision

caroline muthoni munyi

21 Struggles of Living in Direct Provision

22 Leaving, Arriving, Beginning: Residents’ Stories of Coming

joe moore

23 Living under the Threat of Deportation: Activist Counter-Deportation Strategies in a Changing Environment

vukasin nedeljkovic

24 Direct Provision Diary 2007–2009

melanie marks and hassan ali hassan

25 Resisting: Poems

part vRealizing Human and Social Potential: Initiatives, Experiences, Resistances

niyi kolawole

26 From Seeking Asylum to Serving Knowledge: The Journey of an Asylum Seeker in Ireland

pako mokobo

27 My Journey through Higher Education: A Struggle for Self-Improvement to Contribute to Irish Society

mike fitzgibbon

28 Becoming a University of Sanctuary: Making UCC a Welcome Place for Asylum Seekers

graham clifford, yolanda mhene and justine looney

29 The Sanctuary Runner Stories

30 Ordinary

joe moore

31 Anti-Deportation Ireland: Emergence, Growth and Actions

angela veale, sarah robinson, naomi masheti, and barbara tint

32 Applied Improvisation and Visual Methodologies in Priority Identification with Asylum Seeker Women in Direct Provision

kathy d’arcy

33 The Journey to Me: Exploring Identity and Belonging through Creativity with Children Living in Direct Provision in Cork

fiona kearney and tadhg crowley

34 Creative Agency: Enabling Cultural Participation for Young Asylum Seekers, Refugees and Migrants in a Museum Context

mike fitzgibbon

Conclusions: Reduction, Repression, Reaction, Resistance

Index

Illustrations

Figure 24.1. Kilmacud House Direct Provision Centre, Dublin

Figure 24.2. The Old Rectory Direct Provision Centre, Wexford

Figure 24.3. The Old Convent Direct Provision Centre, Ballyhaunis

Figure 27.1. Justine and Tracey celebrate at the end of the Cork City Marathon, 2018

Figure 31.1. Anti-Deportation Ireland logo

Figure 32.1. Bound feet

Figure 32.2. Stomach

Figure 32.3. Shoulders

Figure 32.4. Workshop participant Arife Daci HySaj

Figure 32.5. Workshop participant Uzma Shanheen

Figure 32.6. Workshop participant Sibusisiwe Mhlophe

Figure 32.7. Workshop participant Tanweer Al-dagamin

Figure 33.1. A life-story diagram created by a young participant

Figure 34.1. Our Place

Figure 34.2. Navigating the Urban Landscape

Figure 34.3. Arriving into View

Figure 34.4. Arriving into View – the mural in Fitzgerald’s Park

Figure 34.5. Moving Still – mural

Introduction: The Uncaring State

Direct Provision and Dispersal

This publication attempts to make visible the realities of living in Ireland’s international State Protection system – Direct Provision and Dispersal – the Irish State’s response to people who are seeking asylum in Ireland, while their applications for protection are being considered. Briefly, in direct provision accommodation people live in shared hostel-type accommodation, meals are provided and they are given a small financial allowance of €38.80 a week for adults and €29.80¹ for children. The system is overseen by the Reception and Integration Agency (RIA). While a very limited right to work was introduced in 2018², those who are in the system for longer times continue to be prohibited from working and earning a living, sometimes for several years. Adults transition from young, to middle, to older adulthood in the system, people meet, develop relationships and children are born. Children come to Ireland with their parent or parents, sometimes leaving other, often older siblings, behind. They continue their childhoods living in this system and transitioning from early childhood, to middle childhood, to teenage years and onto young adulthood.