Disabling Migration Controls: Shared Learning, Solidarity, and Collective Resistance

When people are prevented from meeting their needs, the impact is disabling, whether in the immigration system or in the wider population. Drawing on many years of research and activism, this book argues that insights from the disabled people’s movement, particularly the original Social Model of Disability, can be usefully extended to focus resistance on the disabling restrictions imposed on people subject to asylum and immigration controls.

While acknowledging the pain and discomfort of many impairments and of forced displacement, the book focuses on injustices that can be changed. It does not catalogue the hostility of the ’hostile environment’. Nor does it promote inclusive asylum restrictions. An unjust system is not transformed by including disabled people. Policies designed to deprive people of essential needs and to stoke hatred among the wider population are core elements of the rise of fascism. In this context, bringing together movements for disability and migrant justice could help build urgently needed solidarity and resistance with which to develop a society based on equity and common humanity.

Quotations and images are used to convey the messages and priorities of disabled people seeking asylum, ensuring that the book is both engaging and grounded in the insights of lived experience. This book will interest people seeking to improve social justice, including scholars of disability, migration, sociology and politics.

Rebecca Yeo is an activist and academic specialising in issues of disability and migrant justice. She worked on issues of disability and international poverty for many years before turning to focus more on the UK context. Her doctoral and postdoctoral work included bringing people in the asylum system and the disabled people’s movement into conversation with each other. She explores the relevance of insights and achievements of the disabled people’s movement for wider social justice movements.