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The In-Between
Spaces of Asylum
and Migration
A Participatory Visual
Approach
Zoë O’Reilly
The In-Between Spaces of Asylum and Migration
Zoë O’Reilly
The In-Between
Spaces of Asylum
and Migration
A Participatory Visual Approach
Zoë O’Reilly
Department of Geography
Maynooth University
Dublin, Ireland
ISBN 978-3-030-29170-9 ISBN 978-3-030-29171-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29171-6
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse
of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by
similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt
from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the
authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained
herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with
regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
This book is dedicated to all the people whose lives are on hold in the Direct
Provision system and other spaces on, between and within borders.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Olga Jubany, the book series editor, and the editorial
and production teams for Palgrave Macmillan, including Poppy Hull
and Beth Farrow.
The research that forms the basis of this book was funded by the
National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA) at
Maynooth University and the Irish Social Sciences Platform (ISSP) as
part of their doctoral research programme.
I would like to thank several people for very helpful and insight-
ful feedback on early drafts of this book, including Professor Mary
Gilmartin, Dr. Gavan Titley, Dr. Anthony Haughey, Dr. Cian
O’Callaghan, Dr. Liam Thornton and Dr. Alan Grossman, as well as the
anonymous reviewers of the book.
I am grateful to Dr. Anthony Haughey and Dr. Alan Grossman at the
Centre for Socially Engaged Practice-Based Research at TU Dublin for
support and space to write, and to Vukasin Nedeljkovic for kind per-
mission to use maps from the ‘Asylum Archive’.
vii
viii Acknowledgements
Many thanks are due also for help and support in various ways
to Margaret Burns, Rory O’Neill, Aoife Reilly, Prof. Karen Till,
Prof. Gerry Kearns; to the O’Reilly family, and to Alain Servant and
Solomon O’Reilly Servant.
Finally, I am enormously grateful to the participants of this research
project, whom it was a pleasure to work with and to get to know, and
without whom this book would not exist. For their participation, ideas
and enthusiasm, and for their endless courage and humour in the face
of an extremely challenging situation.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Asylum and Direct Provision in Ireland 19
3 The Politics and Practice of Exclusion 57
4 The Politics and Practice of Research 95
5 Liminality 137
6 Resisting Liminality: Connectedness, Belonging

and Integration 191
7 Beyond the Space of the Project: The Politics

of Representation and Contributions to Knowledge 227
ix
x Contents
Appendix 253
Bibliography 275
Index 299
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 Number of applications for refugee status to

ORAC/IPO per year from 1991 to end of
September 2018 (Source RIA Monthly Report,
October 2018) 21
Fig. 2.2 RIA residents by county, end September 2018
(Source RIA Monthly Statistics Report, September
2018) 27
Fig. 2.3 Direct Provision centres in Ireland open as
of July 2018 marked in red (Source Asylum
Archive [Nedeljkovic 2018]) 28
Fig. 2.4 Direct Provision centres in Dublin open as
of July 2018 marked in red (Source Asylum
Archive [Nedeljkovic 2018]) 29
Fig. 2.5 Numbers of people in the system and
waitingtimes (Source Department of Justice
and Equality, http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/
Pages/PQ-24-07-2018-1208) 31
Fig. 2.6 Duration of stay of residents in Direct Provision
accommodation in September 2018 (Source RIA
Monthly Statistics Report, September 2018) 31
Fig. 5.1 Hotel 143
xi
xii List of Figures
Fig. 5.2 Number 145

Fig. 5.3 Stuck in a box 148
Fig. 5.4 View from the window 149
Fig. 5.5 Freedom 150
Fig. 5.6 Birds 150
Fig. 5.7 Daily ordeal 151
Fig. 5.8 Corridor 1 152
Fig. 5.14 Corridors 158
Fig. 5.15 CCTV 159
Fig. 5.16 Garda station 160
Fig. 5.17 Eating area 162
Fig. 5.18 Privacy 163
Figs. 5.19 and 5.20 Same old, same old! 165
Fig. 5.21 Home 166
Fig. 5.22 Birthday 168
Fig. 5.23 Darkness and light 172
Fig. 5.24 Packed suitcases 173
Fig. 6.1 Bridge 1 203
Fig. 6.2 Bridge 2 203
Fig. 6.3 Landmark 204
Figs. 6.4 and 6.5 Swan 206
Fig. 6.6 Jim Larkin 206
Fig. 6.7 Historic building 207
Fig. 6.8 Nature 208
Fig. 6.9 Banana shoes 212
Fig. 6.10 Church 214
Fig. 6.11 Bible 215
Fig. 6.12 Saint Patrick’s Day 217
1
Introduction
1.1 Direct Provision in Ireland and the Global

Politics of Exclusion
In September 2018,1 there were 5955 people living in accommodation
centres all over Ireland (Reception and Integration Agency (RIA)
September 2018)—former hotels, hostels, army barracks2 and caravan
parks. This number includes not only people who were waiting for their
claims to be processed, but also those who have been granted status but are
unable to leave due to lack of housing. Many of these people have escaped
torture and persecution, or have run from life-threatening situations in
order to attempt to create better lives for themselves and their families.
41% of these (2441 people) (RIA September 2018) were waiting for over
two years, and many for longer: six, seven, eight years for some. Reduced to
1The latest monthly statistics report on Direct Provision in Ireland provided by the Reception and
Integration Agency was published in September 2018. They have stopped making these monthly
statistics available since then.
2In July 2018, the number of people who had been granted asylum in Ireland but remained in
Direct Provision centres due to lack of housing stood at nearly 600 (Deegan 2018). In September
2019, this number had risen to close to 900 (Burns 2019).
© The Author(s) 2020 1

Z. O’Reilly, The In-Between Spaces of Asylum and Migration,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29171-6_1
2
Z. O’Reilly
‘sixty nine numbers’3 instead of names, they wait in an institutional limbo

for a final decision on their claims. Fed and housed through the Direct
Provision system, these people are kept on the margins of society, unable
(until 2018) to access employment or for most, third-level education, and
forced to live a ‘life without choice’ (Nic Giolla Choille 2010). They are
simultaneously inside and outside: inside a system which controls their
everyday life and decisions, and yet kept outside of mainstream society in
Ireland, prevented from integrating through a series of deliberate measures.
Direct Provision centres in Ireland have been described as ‘total insti-
tutions’ by scholars, drawing on Goffman (Loyal 2011; Nedeljkovic
2018). They are the ultimate expression of ‘hostipitality’, Derrida’s inter-
twining of ‘hospitality’ and ‘hostility’, based on their shared Latin root,
evoking the idea of the undesirable guest, received with a hospitality
which is lined with barely concealed hostility (Derrida 2000). Many
people living in the Direct Provision system are consumed by the uncer-
tainty and boredom of this in-between institutional existence, and for
many, this is coupled with loss, trauma and the sense of dislocation and
confusion that accompanies being uprooted suddenly from one’s place
and life and being flung headlong into an alien world, as evoked by
John Berger’s description of the experience of migration:
Emigrer signifie toujours démanteler le centre du monde, et l’aménager dans

un monde confus, désorganise et fragmentaire. (Berger 1985: unpaginated)
[To migrate always means to dismantle the centre of the world and to rec-
reate it in a confusing, disorganized and fragmented world—my translation]
Mental illness and depression are rife (Chineyre 2011; Ní Raghallaigh

et al. 2016; Murphy et al. 2018; Nwachukwu et al. 2009; Stapleton
2012), the uncertainty exacerbated by shared and often cramped living
accommodation, often with strangers, being unable to cook or to choose
when to eat and being unable to make the choices and decisions that most
people in Ireland take for granted. Long periods of waiting for claims to
be processed lead not only to an agonizing and wasted existence for those
3On application for asylum in Ireland, applicants are provided with a reference number in the for-
mat 69/---/--. These are often referred to as ‘69 numbers’.

1 Introduction
3
waiting, but to enormous costs for the Irish state, which pays private com-
panies to accommodate and cater for these people, at large profit.
Direct Provision is the main system in Ireland which accommodates
people seeking asylum. Established in November 1999 as an ‘emergency
measure’ to deal with the increasing numbers of people seeking asylum at
this time, the system was implemented in April 2000 and was originally
designed to accommodate people for up to six months while their claims
were being processed. Twenty years later, it is still the main system in place.
Direct Provision and the politics of exclusion in Ireland do not stand
alone. They are part of a broader global picture of exclusion of certain cat-
egories of migrant deemed disposable, surplus. They are part of a global
politics of securitization and criminalization of certain categories of
migrant, an increasing ‘necropolitics’ (Mbembe 2003) which dictates who
may live and who may die, whose lives are valid and worth saving, and
whose are surplus, disposable. Direct Provision is also part of an increas-
ing global network of camps, detention centres, holding centres and var-
ious other spaces located on, between and within borders where people
seeking protection, safety and better lives are forced to wait for varying
amounts of time, their lives on hold while they wait for decisions from
outside, above. While spaces of waiting fill out border zones, increasingly
such spaces are also found within borders, more often than not hidden
from the public eye. Such spaces include detention or holding centres
where people are held and various forms of accommodation centres where
people can come and go with limited freedoms, such as Direct Provision
centres, reception centres and camps. What is common between them is
that they are spaces where movement is halted and people wait and lives
are on hold and freedom is curtailed to varying extents. Camps, holding
centres, detention centres and Direct Provision centres are concrete and
spatial manifestations of the politics of exclusion. They are symbolic of
intentional exclusion, disempowerment and control. However, they may
also be spaces of resistance, solidarity and strength, the people living
within them creating networks, accessing grassroots resources and contin-
uing to be active agents of their own lives in whatever ways they can.
Representations of asylum seekers in mainstream Irish media have
fluctuated between invisibility, not representing these people sufficiently
or at all, and ‘hypervisibility’ (Tyler 2006), disproportionate emphasis
4
Z. O’Reilly
on asylum seekers, representing them as either victim or threat, and

often using alarmist or sensationalist language. While media coverage of
Direct Provision and migration to Ireland more generally has improved
in recent years, and asylum seekers themselves have become more vocal
through processes of self-organization, the voices of asylum seekers are
still insufficiently heard in the public realm in Ireland.
1.2 Research in Direct Provision

Between March and July 2010, I coordinated a collaborative visual project
with a group of ten people seeking asylum and living in a Direct Provision
centre in Ireland. The participants at the time of the project were living
in a Direct Provision centre in a medium-sized town.4 They had placed
claims for asylum with the Minister of Justice and Equality and were wait-
ing for a final answer on those claims, or on appeals against the rejection of
those claims.5 The aims of this research were, firstly, to work collaboratively
and creatively with people seeking asylum to explore and better understand
the everyday subjective experiences of living in Direct Provision and nego-
tiating the asylum system in Ireland; and secondly, to use the work created
through this collaborative process to represent these experiences in ways
which might challenge dominant representations and stereotypes, and
to contribute to bringing alternative voices on issues around the asylum
system into the public realm. Through working collaboratively with asy-
lum seekers living in the Direct Provision system, I aimed to create better
understandings of the experiences of living in the ‘semi-permanent tempo-
rariness’ (Bailey et al. 2002: 125) that this system has come to entail, and
of the experiences of living with uncertainty on an everyday basis.
The project aimed to create narratives and representations along-
side the people involved in the project which could act as ‘counter-
narratives’ to mainstream or stereotypical representations, opening a
4For confidentiality purposes, the name of the town, as well as the name of the Direct Provision
centre itself, are not used throughout this book.

5The different stages of the process of seeking asylum in Ireland, along with the various options
for those whose claim is rejected at first instance, are dealt with in detail in Chapter 2.
1 Introduction
5
space for the voices of those involved to be heard in the public realm.
I sought to explore the experiences of asylum seekers in a way that would
look behind or beyond the imposed label or category; rather than sim-
ply examining the category of ‘asylum seeker’ and the issues related to it,
the project sought to look behind the ‘convenient images’ (Wood 1985,
cited in Zetter 1991: 44) that a label creates. Working collaboratively and
in a participatory way may help to counter the non-participatory (Zetter
1991) and imposed nature of labels. By working with asylum seekers
in Ireland in a participatory and transparent way and finding ways to
communicate their experiences to broader audiences, both visually and
verbally, the work sought to expose the everyday lived realities of the con-
tradictory and non-transparent processes which keep people who have a
legal right to seek protection in Ireland in a state of limbo and economic,
cultural and geographical exclusion for long periods of time.
Central to this work is the importance of exploring the microl-
ogy of lived subjective experience and everyday life in order to better
understand how approaches to keeping out the ‘other’ are manifested
and experienced on the ground and in specific places and contexts.
Simplistic or homogenizing representations can ignore the complexity
of individual lives and subjectivities, as well as differences in culture,
background and education. Even if they are refugee-centred in their
approach, such representations may serve to create more emphasis on
the label of asylum seeker, stripping asylum seekers of individual iden-
tities and complexities of experience, as well as the ways in which peo-
ple seeking asylum negotiate imposed labels. As anthropologist Michael
Jackson asks:
To what extent do we, in the countries of immigration, unwittingly

reduce refugees to objects, ciphers and categories in the way we talk and
write about them, in roughly the same way that indifferent bureaucracies
and institutional forces strip away the rights of refugees to speak and act
in worlds of their own making? (2002: 80)
While it is important to remain aware that the act of focusing a study

on asylum seekers and the issues concerning them does to a certain
extent place focus on the category or label and perhaps through this
6
Z. O’Reilly
reinforce it, by focusing on everyday subjective experience and the

micro-geographies of asylum, this study sought as far as possible to look
behind that label to opinions and experiences of asylum seekers them-
selves, and to the micrology, the ‘stuff of everyday life’ (Mahler 1999:
713) and experience, in order to move away from homogenizing and
categorizing representations and labels. Working with the voices of
asylum seekers themselves, and focusing on lived experience, can chal-
lenge not only widely held stereotypes, but also the political category of
‘asylum seeker’ in itself, exposing it as simply that: a political category
rather than a ‘type’ of person.
For approximately four months, the eight participants who remained
until the end of the project and I collaborated to create a body of work
consisting of images, texts and digital stories, stemming from their
experiences of living in the Direct Provision system, but encompassing
beyond this, their daily lives, experiences of being in Ireland, thoughts,
opinions, dreams and impressions. The collaborative project finished
with the creation of an exhibition and a book in 2012 (see Appendix),
entitled New Bridges: Experiences of Seeking Asylum in Ireland. Both the
‘outcomes’ of the collaborative project, in terms of the images, texts and
stories, and the consequent exhibition and book, and the processes of
creating these ‘outcomes’ and representing them in the public realm,
reveal various aspects of the experiences of the participants of the Direct
Provision system. They also reveal how the ‘politics of exclusion’ is lived,
experienced and negotiated on an everyday basis by a particular group
of people in a specific place, time and context.
1.3 Writing and the Politics of Research

The work was collaborative and process-based. While I began the project
with some clear approaches regarding method, I wanted the work to be as
collaborative as possible, allowing the processes to emerge from the encoun-
ter between myself, the researcher, and the participants. The fieldwork was
often messy, with unexpected events, some small, some more significant.
The original aims of the project were constantly challenged and made
ambiguous throughout the course of the project, leading me to question
1 Introduction
7
and rethink my approaches, both methodological and theoretical.

Anthropologist James Clifford asks of ethnographic research: ‘How is
unruly experience transformed into an authoritative written account?’
(1988: 25). Tying together the politics of representation and of research
are the challenges of rendering the complexities of both collaborative
creative research and of experience into a coherent narrative.
The realization for me during the collaborative project that the
processes themselves, and the lived experiences of the project itself, were
as important as the material outcomes (photographs, texts, stories) was
an important step in making sense of the work we were doing. This also
became important retrospectively in the process of attempting to under-
stand the experiences of the participants of living in Direct Provision
and to narrate and (re)present these experiences in a written account.
This realization was influenced by writings on participatory research and
collaborative art approaches such as dialogical and relational art, which
focus on ‘collaborative encounters and conversations’ (Kester 2004: 1)
rather than solely on the outcomes of the research or the object of art.
In order to show the processual approach of the work within the writ-
ten text, as well as the importance of this approach, I expose the pro-
cesses as far as possible, revealing both the processes and the messiness
of these, rather than hiding them to create a sanitized ‘tidy’ account.
Through revealing the processes of research, it is possible to explore
what they in turn reveal about the experiences of the participants and
the politics of research itself. Rather than seeing the often difficult pro-
cesses and ‘events’ which occurred throughout the project as the fail-
ure of the research to go smoothly, I instead explore what these events
reveal about the ongoing experiences of the participants, and use them
to contextualize these in a very real and immediate way. Exploring and
revealing the processes of research also reveals a ‘fluidity’ in the mean-
ing of the images created. Rather than being fixed, meaning instead was
liable to change for the participants according to situation, context and
potential audience. Again, rather than seeing the lack of fixed meaning
as an obstacle to the research, I instead make this an integral part of
the research outcomes. I look at the role of audience and potential audi-
ences and how these can affect meaning; and consequently how they
can affect research and the knowledge which is created from research.
8
Z. O’Reilly
The theorization of the work, similarly, was processual and emergent.

Another challenge in how to turn the research into a coherent account
was the question of how to theorize and create a coherent account of
the complexity of experience of participants without being reductive or
imposing meaning from the outside. Alongside a methodology which
was based on meaning emerging from the encounter, similarly, concep-
tualizing the work emerged as a gradual process, taking place both dur-
ing and after the collaborative part of the project. A series of paradoxes
or ‘in-betweens’ began to emerge through the processes of the project
and the work created with the participants. Their experiences, and the
Direct Provision system itself, seemed to be located somewhere between
inside and outside, between citizenship and non-citizenship, between
hospitality and hostility, between place and non-place. A gradual sense
of the ‘in-between-ness’ of Direct Provision, and the experiences of this,
and of how to conceptualize these in-betweens, emerged while work-
ing in the Direct Provision centre with the participants and being in the
centre, while creating the body of image-text with participants, develop-
ing together themes to work with, and describing and creating meaning
from the images, as well as from exploring the work we had created after
the project had finished. Exploring the concept of ‘liminality’ (Turner
1967), and in particular developing the idea of ‘ontological liminality’,
helped to bring these various ‘in-betweens’ together, expanding the idea
of the in-between-ness of Direct Provision, and the in-between existence
of those who live within this system. Exploring the intertwined nature
of liminality and the ‘microphysics of power’ (Foucault 1979) allowed
for a deeper understanding of how architectures of power play out in
everyday lives, bodies and existence in this context. Conceptualizing
the work thus emerged from both the material and the processes of the
project. I attempt to show the processes of creating meaning, and how
meaning can be fluid and subjective rather than fixed. The lived experi-
ence of the project meant that I too experienced (albeit from a very dif-
ferent position) the control and surveillance inherent in the system, and
the daily fear and angst of living within it. Simultaneously, the images,
texts and stories which gradually emerged through the project also
express aspects of the experiences and life worlds of the participants as
1 Introduction
9
they waited for their cases to be processed in a space between an often

traumatic past and an uncertain and unplannable future.
The work straddles the border between academia and activism, a
publicly engaged piece of research. I came to the project with certain
biases and preconceived ideas. I wanted to work directly with people
seeking asylum and living in the Direct Provision system, and to find,
with them, alternative ways to have their voices heard and to contrib-
ute towards dispelling the myths around them through alternative rep-
resentations. My position from the start has been one of deliberately
attempting to counter a ‘narrative of negativity’ (Rotas 2006: 51) and to
stand in solidarity with them through the work around refugees and asy-
lum seekers as ‘bogus’, and burdens on society. The way and the extent in
which the work enters the public sphere is also part of crossing the bor-
der between activism and academia and it is important that the work in
its various forms is seen and read by a broad public.
I am a situated observer, no matter how collaborative this research
has been in its approach. While the photographs and the texts are cre-
ated by the people involved, they are still mediated by me: I present
them in the writing, and I frame them. I need to be constantly aware
then of my authorial voice, my ‘situatedness’, throughout the process of
framing this work. However, this awareness of my own voice and situat-
edness should not take over the voices of those I am working with. This
is where the ‘modest witness’ is important, in Haraway’s terms:
… about telling the truth, giving reliable testimony, guaranteeing impor-

tant things, providing good enough grounding – while eschewing the
addictive narcotic of transcendental foundations – to enable compelling
belief and collective action. (Haraway 1997: 22)
Despite the collaborative nature of the work, in its processes of creation,

as well as in the public representations of the work, and the focus on
foregrounding the voices and images of the participants, it is important
to acknowledge that the presentation of the work in these pages is mine,
a certain version of reality. The picture I give of the asylum system is the
one that I have experienced, albeit seen largely through the eyes of the
people I have worked with, one reality among many, pieced together
10
Z. O’Reilly
here in a particular way. The ways in which the participants presented

their worlds to me was influenced by the ways in which I interacted
with them, and the ways in which I directed conversations and themes,
making me a mediator in the participatory process. However, by con-
stantly questioning and exposing my own role in this process, and by
incorporating the voices of the participants as far as possible, I attempt
to acknowledge and expose the performative nature of method, and
the coexistence of different versions of reality and possible tensions between
these, thus drawing attention to the politics of research.
The writing is the exploration of a journey to try to understand the
experiences of living in the Direct Provision system and to communi-
cate that understanding beyond myself and those I have worked with.
In some ways, people seeking asylum in Ireland can be seen as voiceless.
Asylum seekers are actively hidden from mainstream society through
policies and architectures of exclusion. This exclusion creates myths
which are not dispelled for the most part by those in authority or by
mainstream media, and which are often expanded by the lack of contact
those believing or spreading the myths have with people seeking asy-
lum. This serves to further exclude asylum seekers, and further diminish
possibilities for meaningful engagement and integration. But it is also
important to acknowledge that many asylum seekers are also far from
voiceless, and would not see themselves as so, and do find ways to have
their voices heard, to resist, negotiate and challenge imposed liminal-
ity and exclusion, and to create belongings and attachments in Ireland,
despite a system which in many ways serves to prevent this.
1.4 Documenting Everyday Experience

Policies, labels and practices of discrimination and exclusion, as well as
representations of asylum seekers and refugees as a threat to society or
as voiceless victims, are not abstract; they have direct effects on peo-
ple’s everyday lives, well-being and even survival. Similarly, liminality
and in-between-ness are not simply abstract concepts, but encom-
pass a set of very real experiences in the everyday lives of real people.
Broad understandings and analyses of issues surrounding asylum, and
1 Introduction
11
interrogations of particular policies, need to be looked at in tandem

with their effects on the ground, through the experiences of those sub-
jected to them and the everyday lives and spaces which are created and
affected by them.
In 2007, Harindranath pointed to an ‘acute lack of an engagement,
particularly in official and government discourse, but also in academic
research, with the everyday experience of refugee communities’ (2007:
138). Since then, there has been an increase in studies which focus on
the everyday lived experiences of asylum seekers (for example Conlon
2011; Ghorashi et al. 2018; Kobelinsky 2010; Mountz 2011; O’Neill
2010; O’Reilly 2018; Refugee Rights Europe 2016, 2017, 2018).
O’Neill and Harindranath state that better ‘understanding’ of the lived
experiences, lived cultures of exile, displacement and belonging feeds
into cultural politics and praxis, and may help processes of integration
and social justice (O’Neill and Harindranath 2006: 41). There is a grow-
ing interest in stories and narrative as a way of understanding experience
(Eastmond 2007; O’Neill and Harindranath 2006; see also Dona 2007).
O’Neill and Harindranath, after Horrocks et al. (2003), tell us that
‘there is an acceptance of the need to look at how people actually live
and make sense of their lives’ (O’Neill and Harindranath 2006: 42). In
‘The Art of Listening’ (2007), Back emphasizes the importance of listen-
ing to and recuperating stories of the everyday and the seemingly unim-
portant details, as well as the stories of those who often remain nameless.
The experience of seeking asylum in a foreign country can be confus-
ing, frustrating and damaging to mental and physical health. The small
details, or ‘micrology’ (O’Neill 2008), of everyday lived experience, both
negative and positive, told from the perspective of those living them and
placed in their social, political and cultural contexts, can contribute to a
fuller understanding of asylum, and of the societies and places we live in.
Working with and alongside people seeking asylum is an important
part not only of highlighting how state policies of fragmentation of
labels and bureaucratization of the refugee experience, as well as pol-
icies of marginalization, dispersal, detention and incarceration mani-
fest on the ground and are experienced by those subjected to them, but
also of ‘rehumanising’ people seeking asylum, moving away from mass
narratives which distance and homogenize and seeking to understand
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the complexities and individual people and experiences which lie

behind them.
This piece of work is based on interdisciplinary, ethnographic, prac-
tice-based research, documenting my attempt to better understand,
and to contribute towards creating better public understandings of, the
experiences of asylum seekers in Ireland, as well as to find ways to com-
municate these understandings through working with people seeking
asylum through a collaborative, photography-based project. The work
seeks to add to literature on the subjective experiences of migration,
expanding in particular understandings of the liminal spaces created
through the politics of exclusion and how these spaces are experienced,
lived and negotiated on an everyday basis by those waiting within them.
Methodologically, the work adds to the small but growing body of lit-
erature in the social sciences on participatory visual methodologies.
Through a critical interrogation of the methodology used here, I seek
to expand understandings of how creative and visual methodologies can
be used as a means of working collaboratively with research subjects in
order to provide insight and understanding into subjective experience
and into the nature of research itself. In addition to this, the work seeks
to challenge narrow representations of asylum seekers by creating alter-
native representations alongside asylum seekers themselves, and thus
bring alternative voices and representations into the public realm. The
following chapters document the journey of this research project.
1.5 Structure of the Book

The book is divided into seven chapters. Chapters 2 and 3 deal with
‘The Politics of Asylum’, providing the context and theoretical approach
of the work and placing Ireland in a broader international context.
Chapter 2, ‘Asylum and Direct Provision in Ireland’, examines the
asylum system in Ireland in detail, with particular attention on Direct
Provision. It examines Ireland’s shift from a country of net emigration
to one of immigration and the history of Ireland’s relationship to refu-
gees in relation to this. It then turns specifically to the establishment of
the Direct Provision system in 1999 and the relationship of this system
to a changing country in the twenty years of its existence.
1 Introduction
13
Chapter 3, ‘The Politics and Practice of Exclusion’, places Ireland in a

broader international context, both empirically and theoretically. Direct
Provision centres are part of a broader network of liminal spaces, situ-
ated between and within borders, and created by a global politics of exclu-
sion. Drawing on the work of Agamben and Derrida among others, I
create a conceptual framework for understanding the Direct Provision sys-
tem in a global context. I also look at various mechanisms of exclusion of
the unwanted ‘other’, leading to immobility increasingly becoming a part of
mobility for certain categories of migrant, and the liminal spaces which facil-
itate or are created through this. As waiting and immobility become increas-
ingly part of mobility for many migrants, I argue for the importance of
creating deeper understandings of the everyday experiences of liminal spaces.
Chapter 4 focuses on the politics and practice of the research itself.
This chapter outlines the methodological approach to the research, the
processes of planning and structuring the collaborative project and
describes how the project unfolded with the participants. I examine three
areas relevant to this particular research, but also relevant more broadly
to researchers and practitioners working with vulnerable or marginalised
groups, as well as working in places which are hidden or closed off from
the public: I look firstly at participatory research; then at the processes of
working visually; finally I look at issues of power, ethics and representa-
tion: what does it mean to represent another person or other people, and
what is the potential damage of doing this? I explore issues around partic-
ipation, participatory research and participatory art, vulnerability, and the
potential of an ‘aesthetics of injury’ (Salverson 2001: 123) that can occur
from this, relating these issues to the particular context of this research.
Chapters 5 and 6 explore different aspects of the everyday experi-
ences of asylum seekers in Direct Provision, as they emerged through
the images and texts created during the project, as well as from the dis-
cussions surrounding the creation of this material.
Chapter 5, ‘Liminality’, explores three aspects of liminality, as they
emerged from this research: spatial, temporal and ontological. The
chapter firstly traces the spatial and temporal aspects of a liminal exist-
ence in this context, the ways in which the space of the Direct Provision
centre itself, and an imposed state of ‘permanent temporariness’, are
lived and negotiated on an everyday basis. I then add a further aspect
in the form of what I have called ‘ontological liminality’, a means
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Z. O’Reilly
of expressing the ways in which a chronic sense of fear, insecurity, invisi-

bility and a highly controlled existence are lived and internalized.
Chapter 6, ‘Resisting Liminality: Connectedness, Belonging and
Integration’, explores the various forms of connectedness, belonging and
integration into mainstream society of people living in Direct Provision.
Despite the imposition of a liminal existence, an enforced state of ‘in-
between-ness’, people seeking asylum do not simply passively accept this
existence, but negotiate it in various ways through their everyday lives
and practices. Looking at the actual experiences of liminality and exclu-
sion, the ‘intimacies of exclusion’ (Mountz 2011: 382), in liminal sites
also reveals various forms of belonging, involvement and connection
with places and people in the locations where asylum seekers find them-
selves, through, for example, social interactions and friendships, religious
involvements, activism and voluntary work. While these may be tenuous,
in that they are tainted with uncertainty and could be torn away at any
moment, these belongings and attachments are important and perhaps
overlooked in attempts to understand experiences of liminality, isolation
and exclusion. This chapter explores these unofficial and un-encouraged
forms of integration and belonging, important reminders that people in
liminal situations are also non-passive agents of change.
Chapter 7, ‘Beyond the Space of the Project: The Politics of
Representation and Contributions to Knowledge’, explores the ways in
which the original aims of the research were challenged, questioned and
made ambiguous through the processes of the research, and in particular
the processes of exhibiting the material to broader audiences. I also look
at what the co-created work, as well as the processes of creation and rep-
resentation of this work, reveal about the experiences of the participants
of living in the Direct Provision system. I look at the implications of this
research, both theoretically and methodologically, and for knowledge
and understanding of the politics of exclusion more generally.
As an appendix to the chapters of this book are twenty of the twen-
ty-one6 images and accompanying texts which made up the final
6One of the twenty-one images is not included here as it contains potentially recognizable
individuals.
1 Introduction
15
exhibition and co-created book, entitled New Bridges: Experiences of

Seeking Asylum in Ireland. The images chosen for the eventual exhibi-
tion and book were edited by the participants themselves, both individ-
ually and collectively. The texts which appeared in the exhibition, and
consequently in the book and this appendix, often differ from the texts
accompanying the same images in the body of this book, as the original
texts or captions were collectively edited and adapted for the purposes
of the exhibition.
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2
Asylum and Direct Provision in Ireland
2.1 Introduction
Asylum seekers are persons who seek to be recognized as refugees in
accordance with the terms of the United Nations Convention Relating
to the Status of Refugees (1951). An asylum seeker has a legal right to
seek refuge in Ireland under the terms of this convention. In the mid
to late 1990s, alongside the rise of the ‘Celtic Tiger’, Ireland shifted
from being a country of emigration to one of immigration, with a rapid
growth (4.1%) (Samers 2010: 22) of migrants in proportion to its over-
all population between 1996 and 2005. This ‘unprecedented and sus-
tained period of inward migration’ (Conlon 2010: 95) to Ireland can
be partly attributed to rapid economic growth, demand for labour, rela-
tively liberal immigration policies during that period, and general inte-
gration into Europe’s wider migration system (Samers 2010: 25).
In this chapter, I outline the asylum system in Ireland, the estab-
lishing of Direct Provision in 1999, and current processes for people
seeking international protection. I then focus on the Direct Provision
system itself and the conditions for those residing in it, arguing that,
since its inception, the system has been characterized by a gradual and
© The Author(s) 2020 19

Z. O’Reilly, The In-Between Spaces of Asylum and Migration,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29171-6_2
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increasing exclusion of people seeking asylum from mainstream soci-

ety in Ireland, through a series of deliberate distancing measures. I then
outline some of the critiques of the Direct Provision system by schol-
ars, activists, migrant support groups and human rights bodies over the
twenty years of its existence, despite which the system remains in place.
2.2 Ireland’s Asylum System

Prior to the 1990s, Ireland had very little experience of dealing with
refugees and asylum seekers (see Thornton 2007 for a historical anal-
ysis of reception conditions in Ireland). Ireland signed the Refugee
Convention in 1956 and the Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees
in 1967. After signing the Convention, the country accepted various
groups of refugees fleeing conflict: 539 Hungarian refugees in 1956,
a small group of Chilean refugees between 1973 and 1974, and 212
Vietnamese refugees in 1979. These groups were for the most part taken
care of by voluntary and religious or charitable groups. The first refu-
gee programme set up, run and funded by the State appeared between
1992 and 1998, when the country took in 455 Bosnian refugees
(Thornton 2007: 88).
The Direct Provision system was established in Ireland in November
1999 and implemented in April 2000 as a response to the rising num-
ber of asylum applications in the 1990s. In 1992, there were just thir-
ty-nine applications for refugee status to Office of Refugee Applications
Commission (ORAC); in 1996, there were 1179 applications; by
1999, this had jumped to 7724, with numbers peaking at 11,634 in
2002. These numbers steadily declined after 2002, with applications in
2010, the year I began fieldwork for this research, at 1939. Numbers
have increased again since 2014, and by the end of November 2018,
had reached 3324, the highest number in a decade. In 2000, the year
Direct Provision was implemented, the number of asylum applications
had increased by more than 41% over the previous year to 10,938
(see Fig. 2.1).
In a context of broader patterns in Europe from the 1990s of intro-
ducing stricter barriers to entry for people seeking asylum, as well as
2 Asylum and Direct Provision in Ireland
21
Fig. 2.1 Number of applications for refugee status to ORAC/IPO per year from
1991 to end of September 2018 (Source RIA Monthly Report, October 2018)
proposed changes to the UK system of asylum support, including a shift

away from supporting asylum seekers through the mainstream wel-
fare system and a dispersal policy, there were fears regarding increased
flows of asylum seekers towards Ireland and abuse of the welfare system.
At the time, asylum seekers arriving in Ireland could access the main-
stream social welfare system; entitlement was based on need, and lack
of Irish nationality did not affect the payment of means-tested social
assistance payments (Breen 2008; Thornton 2013). It was argued that
with stricter access to welfare payments in Europe and the UK, Ireland’s
welfare system could be seen as a pull factor for people seeking asylum
(Thornton 2007, 2013). The Direct Provision system, based on a gov-
ernment decision in November 1999, essentially removed asylum seekers
from mainstream social welfare, providing them directly with full board
and accommodation and, theoretically, with all basic needs. The Direct
Provision policy was accompanied by a separate dispersal policy, whereby
accommodation was obtained in different areas of the country to
ensure more equal distribution of asylum seekers throughout the coun-
try (FLAC 2009: 13), similar to the policies then recently introduced
in the UK. Thornton (2013) points out that an examination of inter-
nal correspondence from the Department of Social Protection reveals a
belief that the elimination of cash payments would reduce the numbers
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of asylum seekers arriving in Ireland and eliminate the ‘pull’ factor of

welfare entitlements.
The system was originally designed to accommodate people for up
to six months while their claims were being processed. However, in
September 2018, 41% of residents in Direct Provision accommodation
had been living within the system for over two years, with 237 peo-
ple (3.9%) waiting for over six years (RIA Monthly Statistics Report,
September 2018).
Irish immigration and asylum policies have tended to differ some-
what from those of other EU Member States, being influenced by the
Common Travel Area with the United Kingdom. Under the Protocol
on the position of the United Kingdom and Ireland annexed to the
Treaty of the European Union and the Treaty establishing the European
Union by the Treaty of Amsterdam, Ireland has the facility to opt out of
proposed measures pursuant to Title IV of the EC Treaty, which is the
article under which most immigration and asylum measures fall. While
Ireland can opt into measures undertaken at a European level at a later
date, it has undertaken not to opt into measures which will compromise
the Common Travel Area with the UK (Quinn and Kingston 2012: 19).
Despite this, EU legislation, and the development of the Common
European Asylum System (CEAS), has had a significant impact on
Ireland’s asylum policy, and the introduction of the International
Protection Act in 2015, on which Ireland’s asylum law is now based, has
aligned Ireland more closely with EU asylum laws. EU instruments with
impact on Irish asylum law are: the Qualification Directive (Directive
2004/83/EC), which defines who qualifies for refugee status, and the
minimum level of protection for those granted either refugee or subsid-
iary protection; the Asylum Procedures Directive (Council Directive
2005/85/EC), which guarantees that every asylum applicant should have
the opportunity of having a personal interview, comprehensive informa-
tion about the procedure at the start of the process, access to legal assis-
tance and interpretation services and judicial oversight. It is also intended
to specify common criteria for (in)admissibility to asylum procedures
and common lists of ‘safe’ countries of origin and ‘safe’ third countries;
the Dublin Regulation (Regulation (EC) No. 604/2013), also known
as Dublin III (updated version), which states that an application should
23
be made in the member state that issued a visa, the member state that
actually permitted entry (lawfully or otherwise) or, where neither of
these first two criteria apply, the state in which a claim is first made.
The underlying principles of the Dublin Regulation were that an asy-
lum seeker should have no choice about where to make the application
and that a claim could be made and examined once and once only. To
facilitate the implementation of Dublin III, that is basically the depor-
tation of people from one member state to another, states need to iden-
tify their first point of entry. The Eurodac Regulation (Regulation No.
603/2013) is intended to facilitate that. Once picked up by the police
in Greece or Italy, for example, people seeking asylum are fingerprinted
and those fingerprints are entered into the central Eurodac database
(those under 14 years old are exempt). The fingerprints of asylum appli-
cants are kept in the system for ten years (unless they obtain citizen-
ship of a member state), and those of foreign nationals arrested without
valid papers when attempting to cross an external border of the EU are
kept for two years from the date on which the fingerprints were taken.
Anyone claiming asylum now may expect to have their fingerprints
taken and compared with those in the Eurodac database. If a match is
found, an application will be made to deport the applicant to that orig-
inal member state. The Dublin Regulation and Eurodac were intended
to prevent asylum applicants testing their chances in different member
states, or in the member state of their choice. Other relevant European
legal instruments are the Temporary Protection Directive (Directive
2001/55/EC), which lays down the minimum standards for giving tem-
porary protection (TP) in the event of a mass influx of displaced per-
sons, a directive which has been put to the test in recent years in Europe
without huge success. It is intended to ‘share the burden’ of costs and
efforts between member states in receiving and providing for such ref-
ugees (referred to as ‘displaced persons’ since they will not have to go
through the asylum process). In 2018, Ireland opted into the Recast
Conditions Directive (Directive 2013/33/EU), which aims to ensure
that in all member states there are certain basic provisions made for the
accommodation, health care, education, access to legal and other sup-
port of asylum seekers so that reception conditions in different member
states should not deter or attract people seeking asylum.
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2.2.1 International Protection Process
Following a comprehensive review of the protection system in Ireland in

2014, resulting in the publication of the McMahon Report in 2015, the
International Protection Act 2015 was signed into law on 31 December
2016 and came into effect on 6 January 2017. On this date, the ORAC
was abolished and responsibility transferred to a new International
Protection Office (IPO).
On arrival in Ireland, a person must report to the IPO in Dublin.
Before an application can be made for international protection, the
applicant must first complete a preliminary interview in order to estab-
lish whether or not the application is admissible or can be accepted by
the IPO. Biometric information (fingerprints and photograph) are also
taken at this point in order to ascertain whether the Dublin Regulation
is applicable, that is whether another Member State has already granted
refugee status or subsidiary protection, or whether a country other than
a Member State is considered to be a ‘first country of asylum’.1 It is pos-
sible to appeal a negative preliminary admissibility decision. If a person’s
application is found to be admissible, they then receive a Temporary
Residence Certificate (TRC) as evidence that they have submitted a
protection application in Ireland. The application process then includes
the filling out of an application form, examination of all the informa-
tion provided and a personal interview.
The International Protection Act outlines two forms of international
protection: refugee status and subsidiary protection. To be recognized
as a refugee, a person must, owing to a well-founded fear of being per-
secuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or
membership of a particular social group, be outside his or her country
of nationality and be unable or, owing to such fear, unwilling to avail
of the protection of that country, or be a stateless person, who, being
1According to the International Protection Act 2015 (Section 21, Subsection 15), a country is
a first country of asylum for a person if he or she (a) (i) has been recognized in that country as
a refugee and can still avail himself or herself of that protection, or (ii) otherwise enjoys suffi-
cient protection in that country, including benefitting from the principle of non-refoulement, and
(b) will be readmitted to that country.
25
outside of his or her country of former habitual residence for the same
reasons as mentioned above, is unable or, owing to such fear, unwill-
ing to return to it. If it is decided that a person is not a refugee, she
may qualify for subsidiary protection. Subsidiary protection was intro-
duced in Ireland in 2006 as part of the 2004 Qualification Directive
(and updated in November 2013) and is a status which is similar to that
of refugee. It is granted where the person does not qualify as a refugee
but where the IPO considers that the person faces a real risk of suffer-
ing serious harm2 in his or her country of origin3 or country of former
habitual residence.
If the IPO recommends that the applicant is entitled to neither ref-
ugee status nor subsidiary protection, the Minister for Justice and
Equality will then consider whether or not to grant permission to
remain in the State for another reason (for example, because of fam-
ily or personal circumstances). Persons granted permission to remain
do not have all of the same rights as persons granted refugee status or
subsidiary protection. They must have been resident in Ireland for five
years before they are eligible to apply for Irish citizenship. They do
not have the right to family reunification but anyone who is entitled
to reside and remain in the State may apply to the Minister to permit
family members to join them. The Minister for Justice and Equality can
grant or refuse permission on a discretionary basis. A person is entitled
to appeal a negative decision on either refugee status or subsidiary pro-
tection to the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT), but not
a negative decision on permission to remain.
2Serious harm means: (i) death penalty or execution, (ii) torture or inhuman or degrading treat-
ment or punishment of a person in his or her country of origin/country of former habitual resi-
dence or (iii) serious and individual threat to a civilian’s life or person by reason of indiscriminate
violence in a situation of international or internal armed conflict (International Protection Act
2015, Part 1 (2)).
3The precise definition is that a person eligible for subsidiary protection is a person who is not a
national of a Member State of the European Union; who does not qualify as a refugee; in respect
of whom substantial grounds have been shown for believing that he or she, if returned to his or
her country of origin/country of former habitual residence, would face a real risk of suffering seri-
ous harm; and who is unable, or, owing to such risk, unwilling to avail himself or herself of the
protection of that country; and who is not excluded from eligibility from subsidiary protection
for certain reasons (International Protection Act 2015, Part 1 (2)).
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Whereas previously, each of these statuses were applied for separate-

ly—i.e. if an application for refugee status was rejected, the applicant
would apply for subsidiary protection, and likewise, if this was rejected,
would apply for permission to remain—under the International
Protection Act 2015, all three statuses are applied for simultaneously
through a single application procedure.
2.3 Direct Provision

After a person has made an application for asylum in the IPO, he or she
is typically offered accommodation in a ‘reception centre’ in Dublin for
a period of approximately ten to fourteen days before being dispersed
to one of the Direct Provision centres across the country. According to
the most recent available report from the Reception and Integration
Agency (RIA), there were thirty-seven (RIA September 2018) Direct
Provision centres in Ireland, spread throughout eighteen counties (see
Figs. 2.2, 2.3, and 2.4), including Dublin, and housing over five and
a half thousand people (5955) (RIA September 2018).4 These cen-
tres are coordinated by the RIA, a unit of the Irish Naturalisation
and Immigration Service (INIS), which is in turn a division of the
Department of Justice and Equality. The RIA was established in 2000
at the same time as the Direct Provision system, taking the place of the
Directorate of Asylum Seeker Support and the Refugee Agency. The
responsibilities of the RIA were originally to coordinate the provision
of services to asylum seekers and refugees, to coordinate the implemen-
tation of integration policy for all refugees and those granted leave to
remain, and to respond to crisis situations resulting in increased num-
bers of refugees arriving in Ireland at the same time (FLAC 2009: 14).
The role of the RIA was amended in 2007 with the establishment of
4The number and locations of Direct Provision centres in Ireland regularly change, as centres
open and close across the country for various reasons. See Asylum Archive (Nedeljkovic 2018)
for a detailed archive of past and present centres up to 2018. Current accommodation includes
several emergency accommodation centres as numbers accommodated in established Direct
Provision Centres are at capacity.
27
Fig. 2.2 RIA residents by county, end September 2018 (Source RIA Monthly
Statistics Report, September 2018)
the Office of the Minister for Integration and since then has been prin-
cipally concerned with reception only,5 rather than integration.
The centres consist of a ‘hodge-podge of accommodations’ (Conlon
2010: 101), including hotels, former nursing homes, caravan parks,
former army barracks and holiday villages. The RIA website describes
accommodation arrangements as follows:
Accommodation in reception and accommodation centres is provided on

a full board basis which includes the provision of a bed and three meals
per day. Residents are not allowed to cook their own food while living in
an accommodation centre. They may be required to share their bedroom
and bathroom facilities with other residents. There is a set of house rules
which all residents must comply with. A formal complaints procedure is
available for residents in the event of a dispute or grievance. (RIA 2010)
5The responsibilities of the RIA as published in Department of Justice publication Freedom of

Information Section 15 Reference Book (2008 edition) are: ‘planning and coordinating the provision
of services to asylum seekers; the accommodation of asylum seekers through the Direct Provision
system; assisting in the voluntary repatriation of destitute nationals from the twelve states which
joined the EU in May 2004 and January 2007’ (Department of Justice 2008: 180).
28
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Fig. 2.3 Direct Provision centres in Ireland open as of July 2018 marked in red
(Source Asylum Archive [Nedeljkovic 2018])
In addition to full board and accommodation, asylum seekers are pro-

vided with a weekly payment per person.6 Between 2000 and 2017, this
payment remained at €19.10 per adult (the payment per child increased
in 2016 from €9.60 to €15.60 per child). The adult payment was the
6Previous to 2017, the weekly allowance per adult was €19.10 and €15.60 per child. The amount
per adult was calculated from deducting the estimated cost of accommodating someone in Direct
Provision from the basic standard Supplementary Welfare Allowance in 2000, when Direct
Provision was established, and remained unchanged between 2000 and 2017, despite substantial
increases in other welfare payments during that time. At the time of calculation, the allowance of
€19.10 was equivalent to slightly less than 20% of the Supplementary Welfare payment. However,
29
Fig. 2.4 Direct Provision centres in Dublin open as of July 2018 marked in red
(Source Asylum Archive [Nedeljkovic 2018])
only social welfare payment never to have increased over this period. In
2017, the payment was increased to €21.60 per person and in 2019, to
€38.80 per adult and €29.80 per child. In addition to this, an exceptional
needs payment may be granted, at the discretion of the community wel-
fare officer. Clothing and other exceptional needs payments are provided
case by case; asylum-seeking children are also entitled to Back to School
increases in this payment meant that in 2009, this allowance was equivalent to less than ten per cent
of the Supplementary Welfare Allowance payment. This was the only social welfare payment never
to have increased during this period (Brady 2010).
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clothing and footwear allowances. Asylum seekers are provided with a

medical card which allows them to access medical services free of charge.
All Direct Provision centres in Ireland are commercially run, and
most of them are also commercially owned, apart from seven state-
owned centres (RIA September 2018). In 2009, Ireland’s Free Legal
Advice Centre (FLAC) stated that Direct Provision centres ‘operate as
an industry rather than a means by which the government is fulfilling
its human rights commitments’ (FLAC 2009: 11). The State paid €72
million euros to private firms operating Direct Provision centres across
the country in 2018 (Deegan, Irish Times, March 6, 2018), a rise from
€57 million in 2017.7 Six firms received payments of over €5 million
each in 2018 (ibid.). These include Aramark Ireland Holdings Ltd.,
part of the US international corporation Aramark, which is the largest
prison catering company in the US. In 2016, Aramark was involved in
running three state-owned Direct Provision centres, at Kinsale Road,
Cork; Knockalisheen, County Clare; and Athlone, County Westmeath.
Other companies include Fazyard, which operates the largest Direct
Provision centre in the Dublin area, the Clondalkin Towers; Mosney
Irish Holidays Ltd., Barlow Properties, Bridgestock Ltd., Millstreet
Equestrian Services and East Coast Catering.
Since its establishment in 2000, the Irish asylum and protection sys-
tem has been marked by long delays, leading for many to years of living
in uncertainty. As stated above, the system was originally designed to
accommodate people for up to six months while their claims were being
assessed. In March 2010, when research with participants began, there
were a total of 6349 people living in forty-six Direct Provision centres
across Ireland. 2333 of these (over 36%) had been residing in the Direct
Provision system for over thirty-six months (three years), awaiting a final
decision on their claim and 1173 (over 18%) for between twenty-four
and thirty-six months (RIA Monthly Statistics Report March 2010).
In August 2012, the number waiting for over three years represented
well over half the people in the system (2970 of a total of 4869 resi-
dents). In September 2018, 41% had been waiting for over two years
7http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/PQ-24-07-2018-887.
31
Fig. 2.5 Numbers of people in the system and waitingtimes (Source

Department of Justice and Equality, http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/
PQ-24-07-2018-1208)
Fig. 2.6 Duration of stay of residents in Direct Provision accommodation in

September 2018 (Source RIA Monthly Statistics Report, September 2018)
and there were 237 people (nearly 4%) who had been waiting over six
years (Figs. 2.5 and 2.6).
Long periods of waiting for claims to be processed have led not only
to an agonizing and wasted existence for those waiting, but to enor-
mous costs for the Irish state, which pays private companies to accom-
modate and cater for these people, at large profit, as discussed above.
According to the Irish Refugee Council’s (IRC) Roadmap for Asylum
Reform (2011), one of the main reasons for this delay in the Irish system
has been the lack of a single protection procedure. A system in which a
32
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very small number of applications were generally granted refugee status

at first instance led to long delays as appeals were processed, as well as
unnecessary costs to the Irish State. Tied in with this was what the IRC
has called ‘a culture of disbelief ’ (IRC 2011: 3) inherent in the Irish
asylum system. In 2010, only 1.1% of applicants were granted refugee
status by the Office of Refugee Appeals Commission (IRC 2011: 2),
significantly below the average EU recognition rate at the time of 27%
(Smyth 2011). This meant that in the same year, Ireland was ranked at
the bottom of the EU league for granting protection to asylum seek-
ers. The refugee recognition rate in 2016 was 24%, as O’Connell
(2017) points out, a substantial increase over recognition rates in the
earlier years of the decade. He also points out that most of the increase
in the recognition rate in recent years appears to be due to a substantial
increase in positive second instance decisions.8
One of the key features of the new International Protection Act
2015 was a single application procedure (as explained above). As part
of the transition arrangements from the ORAC to the IPO, all appli-
cations still in review under the old procedure (approximately 3000
cases at the time of writing, according to the Minister of Justice and
Equality9) would be brought into the IPO for another interview.
Current waiting time for a first interview with the IPO is approximately
twenty months for cases which are not prioritized. In April 2018, the
UNHCR called for immediate action to reduce the length of time
people are waiting for a decision on their protection applications, stat-
ing that long periods of time spent in State-funded accommodation
is ‘leading to dependency and disempowerment among many peo-
ple seeking protection’ and ‘hampering their integration prospects’
8O’Connell explains that these rates are calculated on the basis of the total number of recommen-
dations or decisions that refugee status should be granted at first instance and appeal in any given
year as a percentage of the total number of recommendations or decisions made at first instance
or appeal in that year (O’Connell 2017).
9https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/question/2018-06-12/531/.
33
(UNHCR 2018). UNHCR adds that where many European coun-

tries have laid down time limits in national law for processing applica-
tions for protection, with a majority of countries setting the limit at six
months, ‘under Irish law, where a decision has not been taken within
six months, all that is required is for the Department of Justice and
Equality to provide the applicant, upon request, with an estimate of the
time it is likely to take to reach a decision’ (UNHCR 2018).
2.4 Direct Provision as a Gradual Mechanism

of Exclusion of Asylum Seekers
from Mainstream Society
Direct Provision centres have been called Ireland’s ‘hidden villages’
(Holland 2005), with asylum seekers very often geographically—as well
as socially, culturally and economically—distanced and excluded from
mainstream society. It can be argued that Irish asylum policy has been a
gradual and increased exclusion from mainstream Irish society since the
arrival of people seeking asylum in significant numbers from the mid-
1990s onwards. In 2003, Lentin argued that the response of the Irish
State to the increase in asylum applications has been a gradual process
of distancing:
beginning with psychological distancing (calling asylum seekers ‘bogus

refugees’, ‘illegal immigrants’ and/or ‘economic migrants’ and thus dis-
crediting them), going on to physical distancing (dispersing asylum seek-
ers to Direct Provision hostels), and finally to the last stage, when asylum
seekers are psychologically and physically distanced, namely deportation.
(2003: 305)
Similarly in 2007, Thornton pointed out that:
The hallmark feature of the Irish reception system for asylum seek-
ers has been the continual withdrawal and diminution of social rights
on the grounds of preserving the integrity of immigration controls and
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protection of the welfare state from those who are viewed as not having a
definitive right to be within the country. (2007: 86)
Some of the key means through which exclusion of asylum seekers from
mainstream society in Ireland has occurred since 2000 are the creation
of a separate welfare system, in the form of Direct Provision, enforced
dispersal around the country and the accompanying hidden nature of
Direct Provision centres, as well as the denial of access to employment
and education. This exclusion has been further compounded, as Lentin
points out, by ‘psychological distancing’ (Lentin 2003) through media
representation and government discourse. I look at each of these aspects
in the paragraphs below.
The shifting of asylum seekers from the mainstream welfare system
to ‘Direct Provision’ in 2000, which may be seen as a ‘deterrent meas-
ure’ (UNHCR 2000, discussed in Chapter 3), implied that the welfare
needs of asylum seekers were fundamentally different from those of
Irish citizens. This exclusion from mainstream welfare (see Thornton
2013 for a detailed discussion on this) was further compounded by
the introduction of the Habitual Residence Condition (HRC), which
came into effect in 2003 and was further clarified in 2007. Social wel-
fare payments such as jobseeker’s allowance, non contributory pension,
one parent family payment, disability allowance and child benefit are
now subject to the HRC, meaning that those not seen as ‘habitually res-
ident’ are no longer entitled to them. Section 246 of the Social Welfare
Consolidation Act 2005 provides that:
It shall be presumed, until the contrary is shown, that a person is not

habitually resident in the State at the date of the making of the applica-
tion concerned unless he has been present in the State or any other part
of the Common Travel Area for a continuous period of 2 years ending on
that date. (Department of Social Protection 2012)
The same section states that asylum seekers (no matter how long they
have been residing in Ireland) are not regarded as being habitually res-
ident. The difficulty of accessing payments which require ‘habitual
35
residence’ ensures, as Thornton points out, that ‘asylum seekers are

wholly excluded from mainstream social welfare. Instead, asylum seek-
ers are catered for within an ‘exclusive and excluding Direct Provision
system’ (Thornton 2007: 90). A limited weekly allowance, which
remained unchanged between 2000 and 2017, has almost ensured mar-
ginalization of asylum seekers from mainstream society. This weekly
payment was increased in 2017 from €19.10 per adult to €21.60 and
from €15.60 per child to the same rate as the adult rate. Following
recommendations in the McMahon Report (2015), the payment has
increased in 2019 to €38.74 per adult and €29.80 per child.
The policy of dispersal, established alongside that of Direct Provision,
while seeking to distribute asylum seekers more evenly throughout the
country, thereby reducing demands on accommodation primarily in the
Dublin area, is a further form of exclusion, often leaving asylum seekers
marginalized and socially excluded (Bloch and Schuster 2005). The RIA
states that:
A key determinant in providing accommodation for asylum seekers

is maintaining in as much as possible a sensitive, balanced and propor-
tional approach nationwide. The distribution of asylum seekers in Direct
Provision across Health Services Executive (HSE) areas indicate that in no
case do the numbers exceed one third of 1% of the population of a HSE
area. (RIA 2010)
Lentin and McVeigh note that ‘there is clearly no question of integrat-

ing [residents within local communities, instead these centres] result
in asylum seekers feeling segregated and dehumanised’ (2006: 47).
Dispersal takes away asylum seekers’ freedom to choose where they
settle, removing them, as Bloch and Schuster point out, ‘from kinship
and other social networks as well as community organizations that
are known to be crucial in the early stages of settlement’ (2005: 493).
Zetter (2007) points out that:
A ‘dispersed asylum seeker’ in the UK and Ireland, for example, is

more than a bureaucratic category. It is a transformative process which
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
a clergyman in the North, who suffered from ‘clergyman’s sore
throat’; he was a popular evangelical preacher, and there was no
end to the sympathy his case evoked; he couldn’t preach, so his
devoted congregation sent him, now to the South of France, now to
Algiers, now to Madeira. After each delightful sojourn he returned,
looking plump and well, but unable to raise his voice above a hardly
audible whisper. This went on for three years or so. Then his Bishop
interfered; he must provide a curate in permanent charge, with
nearly the full emoluments of the living. The following Sunday he
preached, nor did he again lose his voice. And this was an earnest
and honest man, who would rather any day be at his work than
wandering idly about the world. Plainly, too, in the etymological
sense of the word, his complaint was not hysteria. But this is not an
exceptional case: keep any man in his dressing-gown for a week or
two—a bad cold, say—and he will lay himself out to be pitied and
petted, will have half the ailments under the sun, and be at death’s
door with each. And this is your active man; a man of sedentary
habits, notwithstanding his stronger frame, is nearly as open as a
woman to the advances of this stealthy foe. Why, for that matter, I’ve
seen it in a dog! Did you never see a dog limp pathetically on his
three legs that he might be made much of for his lameness, until his
master’s whistle calls him off at a canter on all fours?”
“I get no nearer; what have these illustrations to do with my wife?”
“Wait a bit, and I’ll try to show you. The throat would seem to be a
common seat of the affection. I knew a lady—nice woman she was,
too—who went about for years speaking in a painful whisper, whilst
everybody said, ‘Poor Mrs. Marjoribanks!’ But one evening she
managed to set her bed-curtains alight, when she rushed to the door,
screaming, ‘Ann! Ann! the house is on fire! Come at once!’ The dear
woman believed ever after, that ‘something burst’ in her throat, and
described the sensation minutely; her friends believed, and her
doctor did not contradict. By the way, no remedy has proved more
often effectual than a house on fire, only you will see the difficulties. I
knew of a case, however, where the ‘house-afire’ prescription was
applied with great effect. ’Twas in a London hospital for ladies; a
most baffling case; patient had been for months unable to move a
limb—was lifted in and out of bed like a log, fed as you would pour
into a bottle. A clever young house-surgeon laid a plot with the
nurses. In the middle of the night her room was filled with fumes,
lurid light, &c. She tried to cry out, but the smoke was suffocating;
she jumped out of bed and made for the door—more choking smoke
—threw up the sash—fireman, rope, ladder—she scrambled down,
and was safe. The whole was a hoax, but it cured her, and the
nature of the cure was mercifully kept secret. Another example: A
friend of mine determined to put a young woman under ‘massage’ in
her own home; he got a trained operator, forbade any of her family to
see her, and waited for results. The girl did not mend; ‘very odd!
some reason for this,’ he muttered; and it came out that every night
the mother had crept in to wish her child good-night; the tender visits
were put a stop to, and the girl recovered.”
“Your examples are interesting enough, but I fail to see how they
bear; in each case, you have a person of weak or disordered intellect
simulating a disease with no rational object in view. Now the beggars
who know how to manufacture sores on their persons have the
advantage—they do it for gain.”
“I have told my tale badly; these were not persons of weak or
disordered intellect; some of them very much otherwise; neither did
they consciously simulate disease; not one believed it possible to
make the effort he or she was surprised into. The whole question
belongs to the mysterious borderland of physical and psychological
science—not pathological, observe; the subject of disease and its
treatment is hardly for the lay mind.”
“I am trying to understand.”
“It is worth your while; if every man took the pains to understand
the little that is yet to be known on this interesting subject he might
secure his own household, at any rate, from much misery and waste
of vital powers; and not only his household, but perhaps himself—for,
as I have tried to show, this that is called ‘hysteria’ is not necessarily
an affair of sex.”
“Go on; I am not yet within appreciable distance of anything
bearing on my wife’s case.”
“Ah, the thing is a million-headed monster! hardly to be
recognised by the same features in any two cases. To get at the
rationale of it, we must take up human nature by the roots. We talk
glibly in these days of what we get from our forefathers, what comes
to us through our environment, and consider that in these two we
have the sum of human nature. Not a bit of it; we have only
accounted for some peculiarities in the individual; independently of
these, we come equipped with stock for the business of life of which
too little account is taken. The subject is wide, so I shall confine
myself to an item or two.
“We all come into the world—since we are beings of imperfect
nature—subject to the uneasy stirring of some few primary desires.
Thus, the gutter child and the infant prince are alike open to the
workings of the desire for esteem, the desire for society, for power,
&c. One child has this, and another that, desire more active and
uneasy. Women, through the very modesty and dependence of their
nature, are greatly moved by the desire for esteem. They must be
thought of, made much of, at any price. A man desires esteem, and
he has meetings in the marketplace, the chief-room at the feast; the
pétroleuse, the city outcast, must have notoriety—the esteem of the
bad—at any price, and we have a city in flames, and Whitechapel
murders. Each falls back on his experience and considers what will
bring him that esteem, a gnawing craving after which is one of his
earliest immaterial cognitions. But the good woman has
comparatively few outlets. The esteem that comes to her is all within
the sphere of her affections. Esteem she must have; it is a necessity
of her nature.
“‘Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles,’
are truly to her, ‘human nature’s daily food.’”
“Now, experience comes to her aid. When she is ill, she is the
centre of attraction, the object of attention, to all who are dear to her;
she will be ill.”
“You contradict yourself, man! don’t you see? You are painting,
not a good woman, but one who will premeditate, and act a lie!”
“Not so fast! I am painting a good woman. Here comes in a
condition which hardly any one takes into account. Mrs. Jumeau will
lie with stiffened limbs and blue pale face for hours at a time. Is she
simulating illness? you might as well say that a man could simulate a
gunshot wound. But the thing people forget is, the intimate relation
and co-operation of body and mind; that the body lends itself
involuntarily to carry out the conceptions of the thinking brain. Mrs.
Jumeau does not think herself into pallor, but every infinitesimal
nerve fibre, which entwines each equally infinitesimal capillary which
brings colour to the cheek, is intimately connected with the thinking
brain, in obedience to whose mandates it relaxes or contracts. Its
relaxation brings colour and vigour with the free flow of the blood, its
contraction, pallor, and stagnation; and the feeling as well as the look
of being sealed in a death-like trance. The whole mystery depends
on this co-operation of thought and substance of which few women
are aware. The diagnosis is simply this, the sufferer has the craving
for outward tokens of the esteem which is essential to her nature;
she recalls how such tokens accompany her seasons of illness, the
sympathetic body perceives the situation, and she is ill; by-and-by,
the tokens of esteem cease to come with the attacks of illness, but
the habit has been set up, and she goes on having ‘attacks ’ which
bring real suffering to herself, and of the slightest agency in which
she is utterly unconscious.”
Conviction slowly forced itself on Mr. Jumeau; now that his wife
was shown entirely blameless, he could concede the rest. More, he
began to suspect something rotten in the State of Denmark, or
women like his wife would never have been compelled to make so
abnormal a vent for a craving proper to human nature.
“I begin to see; what must I do?”
“In Mrs. Jumeau’s case, I may venture to recommend a course
which would not answer with one in a thousand. Tell her all I have
told you. Make her mistress of the situation.—I need not say, save
her as much as you can from the anguish of self-contempt. Trust her,
she will come to the rescue, and devise means to save herself; and,
all the time, she will want help from you, wise as well as tender. For
the rest, those who have in less measure—
“‘The reason firm, the temp’rate will’—
‘massage,’ and other devices for annulling the extraordinary physical
sensibility to mental conditions, and, at the same time, excluding the
patient from the possibility of the affectionate notice she craves, may
do a great deal. But this mischief which, in one shape or other,
blights the lives of, say, forty per cent. of our best and most highly
organised women, is one more instance of how lives are ruined by
an education which is not only imperfect, but proceeds on wrong
lines.”
“How could education help in this?”
“Why, let them know the facts, possess them of even so slight an
outline as we have had to-night, and the best women will take
measures for self-preservation. Put them on their guard, that is all. It
is not enough to give them accomplishments and all sorts of higher
learning; these gratify the desire of esteem only in a very temporary
way. But something more than a danger-signal is wanted. The
woman, as well as the man, must have her share of the world’s
work, whose reward is the world’s esteem. She must, even the
cherished wife and mother of a family, be in touch with the world’s
needs, and must minister of the gifts she has; and that, because it is
no dream that we are all brethren, and must therefore suffer from
any seclusion from the common life.”
Mrs. Jumeau’s life was not “spoilt.” It turned out as the doctor
predicted; for days after his revelations she was ashamed to look her
husband in the face; but then, she called up her forces, fought her
own fight and came off victorious.
CHAPTER IX
“A HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO YOU!”

The Christmas holidays! Boys and girls at school are counting off the
days till the home-coming. Young men and maidens, who have put
away childish things, do not reckon with date-stones, but consult
their Bradshaws. The little ones at home are storing up surprises.
The father says genially, “We shall soon have our young folk at home
again.” The mother? Nobody, not the youngest of the schoolgirls, is
so glad as she. She thinks of setting out for church on Christmas
Day with, let us hope, the whole of her scattered flock about her.
Already she pictures to herself how each has altered and grown, and
yet how every one is just as of old. She knows how Lucy will return
prettier and more lovable than ever; Willie, more amusing; Harry,
kinder; and how the elders will rejoice in baby May!
And yet, there is a shade of anxiety in the mother’s face as she
plans for the holidays. The brunt of domestic difficulties falls,
necessarily, upon her. It is not quite easy to arrange a household for
a sudden incursion of new inmates whose stay is not measured by
days. Servants must be considered, and may be tiresome.
Amusements, interests, must be thought of, and then—— Does the
mother stop short and avoid putting into shape the “and then,” which
belongs to the holiday weeks after Christmas Day is over?
“Let us have a happy Christmas, any way,” she says; “we must
leave the rest.”
What is it? Pretty Lucy’s face clouds into sullenness. Kind Harry is
quick to take offence, and his outbursts spoil people’s comfort. Willie,
with all his nonsense, has fits of positive moroseness. Tom argues—
is always in the right. Alice—is the child always quite
straightforward? There is reason enough for the strain of anxiety that
mingles with the mother’s joy. It is not easy to keep eight or nine
young people at their best for weeks together, without their usual
employments, when you consider that, wanting their elders’
modicum of self-control, they may have their father’s failings, and
their mother’s failings, and ugly traits besides hardly to be accounted
for. Is it a counsel of perfection that mothers should have “Quiet
Days” of rest for body and mind, and for such spiritual refreshment
as may be, to prepare them for the exhausting (however delightful)
strain of the holidays?
Much arrears of work must fall to the heads of the house in the
young folk’s holidays. They will want to estimate, as they get
opportunity, the new thought that is leavening their children’s minds;
to modify, without appearing to do so, the opinions the young people
are forming. They must keep a clear line of demarcation between
duties and pastimes, even in the holidays; and they must resume the
work of character-training, relinquished to some extent while the
children are away at school. But, after all, the holiday problem is
much easier than it looks, as many a light-hearted mother knows.
There is a way of it, a certain “Open sesame,” which mothers
know, or, if they do not, all the worse for the happiness of Holiday
House. Occupation? Many interests? Occupation, of course; we
know what befalls idle hands; but “interests” are only successful in
conjunction with the password; without it, the more excitingly
interesting the interests the more apt are they to disturb the domestic
atmosphere and make one sulky, and another domineering, and a
third selfish, and each “naughty” in that particular way in which “’tis
his nature to.”
Every mother knows the secret, but some may have forgotten the
magic of it. Paradoxical as the statement may sound, there is no one
thing of which it is harder to convince young people than that their
parents love them. They do not talk about the matter, but supposing
they did, this would be the avowal of nine children out of ten:
“Oh, of course, mother loves me in a way, but not as she loves X
.”
“How ‘in a way’?”
“You know what I mean. She is mother, so of course she cares
about things for me and all that.”
“But how does she love X .?”
“Oh, I can’t explain; she’s fond of her, likes to look at her, and
touch her, and—now don’t go and think I’m saying things about
mother. She’s quite fair and treats us all just alike; but who could
help liking X . best? I’m so horrid! Nobody cares for me.”
Put most of the children (including X .) of good and loving parents
into the Palace of Truth, children of all ages, from six, say, to twenty,
and this is the sort of thing you would get. Boys would, as a rule,
credit “mother,” and girls, “father,” with the more love; but that is only
by comparison; the one parent is only “nicer” than the other. As for
appropriating or recognising the fulness of love lavished on them,
they simply do not do it.
And why? Our little friend has told us; mother and father are quite
fair, there is no fault to be found in them, but “I’m so horrid, nobody
cares for me.” There you have the secret of “naughtiness.” There is
nothing more pathetic than the sort of dual life of which the young
are dimly conscious. On the one hand there are premonitions of full
and perfect being, the budding wings of which their thoughts are full,
and for which their strong sense of justice demands credit. Mother
and father ought to know how great and good and beautiful they are
in possibility, in prospective. They must have the comprehension,
appreciation, which, if they cannot get in the drawing-room, they will
seek in the kitchen or the stable-yard. Alnaschar visions? If so, it is
not young Alnaschar, but his parents, who kick over the basket of
eggs.
If the young folk are pugnacious about their “rights,” and are over-
ready with their “It’s not fair!” “It’s a shame!” it is because they reckon
their claims by the great possible self, while, alas! they measure
what they get by the actual self, of which they think small things.
There is no word for it but “horrid;” bring them to book, and the
scornful, or vain, or bumptious young persons we may know are
alike in this—every one of them is “horrid” in his or her own eyes.
Now, if you know yourself to be horrid, you know that, of course,
people do not love you; how can they? They are kind to you and all
that, but that is because it’s their business, or their nature, or their
duty to be kind. It has really nothing to do with you personally. What
you want is some one who will find you out, and be kind to you, and
love you just for your own sake and nothing else. So do we reason
when we are young. It is the old story. The good that I would I do not,
but the evil that I would not, that I do. Only we feel things more
acutely when we are young, and take sides alternately with
ourselves and against ourselves; small is the wonder that their
elders find young people “difficult;” that is just what they find
themselves.
“Fudge!” says the reader, who satisfies himself with the surface,
and recalls the fun and frolic and gaiety of heart, the laughter and
nonsense and bright looks of scores of young people he knows: of
course they are gay, because they are young; but we should have
many books about the sadness of youth if people in their “teens”
might have the making of them. Glad and sad are not a whole octave
apart.
How soon does this trouble of youth begin? That very delightful
little person, the Baby, is quite exempted. So, too, are the three, four,
and five-year-old darlings of the nursery. They gather on your knee,
and take possession of you, and make no doubt at all of your love or
their deserts. But a child cannot always get out of the nursery before
this doubt with two faces is upon him. I know a boy of four, a healthy
intelligent child, full of glee and frolic and sense, who yet has many
sad moments because one and another do not love him, and other
very joyful, grateful moments because some little gift or attention
assures him of love. His mother, with the delicate tact mothers have,
perceives that the child needs to be continually reinstated in his own
esteem. She calls him her “only boy,” treats him half as her little
lover, and so evens him with the two bright little sisters whom,
somehow, and without any telling, poor Georgie feels to be sweeter
in temper and more lovable than he. An exceedingly instructive little
memorial of a child who died young came under our notice some
time ago. His parents kept their children always in an atmosphere of
love and gladness; and it was curious to notice that this boy, a merry,
bright little fellow, was quite incapable of realising his parents’ love.
That they should love his sister was natural, but how could they love
him?
The little ones in the nursery revel in love, but how is it with even
the nursery elders? Are they not soon taught to give place to the little
ones and look for small show of love, because they are “big boys”
and “big girls”? The rather sad aloofness and self-containedness of
these little folk in some families is worth thinking about. Even the
nursery is a microcosm, suffering from the world’s ailment, love-
hunger, a sickness which drives little children and grown-up people
into naughty thoughts and wicked ways.
I knew a girl whose parents devoted themselves entirely to
training her; they surrounded her with care and sufficient tenderness;
they did not make much of her openly, because they held old-
fashioned notions about not fostering a child’s self-importance and
vanity. They were so successful in suppressing the girl’s self-esteem
that it never occurred to her that all their cares meant love until she
was woman-grown, and could discern character, and, alas! had her
parents no more to give them back love for love. The girl herself
must have been unloving? In one sense, all young beings are
unloving; in another, they are as vessels filled, brimming over with
love seeking an outlet. This girl would watch her mother about a
room, walk behind her in the streets—adoringly. Such intense
worship of their parents is more common in children than we
imagine. A boy of five years was asked what he thought the most
beautiful thing in the world. “Velvet,” he replied, with dreamy eyes,
evidently thinking of his mother in a velvet gown. His parents are the
greatest and wisest, the most powerful, and the best people within
the narrow range of the child’s world. They are royal personages—
his kings and queens. Is it any wonder he worships, even when he
rebels?
But is it not more common, now-a-days, for children to caress and
patronise their parents, and make all too sure of their love? It may
be; but only where parents have lost that indescribable attribute—
dignity? authority?—which is their title to their children’s love and
worship; and the affection which is lavished too creaturely-wise on
children fails to meet the craving of their nature. What is it they want,
those young things so gaily happy with doll or bat or racquet? They
want to be reinstated; they labour, some poor children almost from
infancy, under a sad sense of demerit. They find themselves so little
loveworthy, that no sign short of absolute telling with lip and eye and
touch will convince them they are beloved.
But if one whom they trust and honour, one who knows, will,
seeing how faulty they are, yet love them, regarding the hateful faults
as alien things to be got rid of, and holding them, in spite of the
faults, in close measureless love and confidence, why, then, the
young lives expand like flowers in sunny weather, and where parents
know this secret of loving there are no morose boys nor sullen girls.
Actions do not speak louder than words to a young heart; he must
feel it in your touch, see it in your eye, hear it in your tones, or you
will never convince child or boy that you love him, though you labour
day and night for his good and his pleasure. Perhaps this is the
special lesson of Christmas-tide for parents. The Son came—for
what else we need not inquire now—to reinstate men by compelling
them to believe that they—the poorest shrinking and ashamèd souls
of them—that they live enfolded in infinite personal love, desiring
with desire the response of love for love. And who, like the parent,
can help forward this “wonderful redemption”? The boy who knows
that his father and his mother love him with measureless patience in
his faults, and love him out of them, is not slow to perceive, and
receive, and understand the dealings of the higher Love.
But why should good parents, more than the rest of us, be
expected to exhibit so divine a love? Perhaps because they are
better than most of us; anyway, that appears to be their vocation.
And that it is possible to fulfil even so high a calling we all know,
because we know good mothers and good fathers.
Parents, love your children, is, probably, an unnecessary counsel
to any who read this paper; at any rate, it is a presuming one. But let
us say to reserved undemonstrative parents who follow the example
of righteous Abraham and rule their households,—Rule none the
less, but let your children feel and see and be quite sure that you
love them.
We do not suggest endearments in public, which the young folk
cannot always abide. But, dear mother, take your big schoolgirl in
your arms just once in the holidays, and let her have a good talk, all
to your two selves; it will be to her like a meal to a hungry man. For
the youths and maidens—remember, they would sell their souls for
love; they do it too, and that is the reason of many of the ruined lives
we sigh over. Who will break down the partition between supply and
demand in many a home where there are hungry hearts on either
side of the wall?
CHAPTER X
PARENTS IN COUNCIL
Part I
“Now, let us address ourselves to the serious business of the
evening. Here we are:
‘Six precious (pairs), and all agog,
To dash through thick and thin!’
Imprimis—our desire is for reform! Not reform by Act of Parliament, if

you please; but, will the world believe?—we veritably desire to be
reformed! And that, as a vicarious effort for the coming race. Why, to
have conceived the notion entitles us to sit by for our term of years
and see how the others do it!”
“Don’t be absurd, Ned, as if it were all a joke! We’re dreadfully in
earnest, and can’t bear to have the time wasted. A pretty President
you are.”
“Why, my dear, that’s the joke; how can a man preside over a few
friends who have done him the honour to dine at his table?”
“Mrs. Clough is quite right. It’s ‘Up boys, and at it!’ we want to be;
so, my dear fellow, don’t let any graceful scruples on your part hinder
work.”
“Then, Henderson, as the most rabid of us all, you must begin.”
“I do not know that what I have to say should come first in order;
but to save time I’ll begin. What I complain of is the crass ignorance
of us—of myself, I mean. You know what a magnificent spectacle the
heavens have offered these last few frosty nights. Well, one of our
youngsters has, I think, some turn for astronomy. ‘Look, father, what
a great star! It’s big enough to make the night light without the moon.
It isn’t always there; what’s its name, and where does it go?’ The boy
was in the receptive ‘How I wonder what you are’ mood; anything
and everything I could have told him would have been his—a
possession for life.
“‘That’s not a star, it’s a planet, Tom,’ with a little twaddle about
how planets are like our earth, more or less, was all I had for his
hungry wonder. As for how one planet differs from another in glory,
his sifting questions got nothing out of me; what nothing has, can
nothing give. Again, he has, all of his own wit, singled out groups of
stars and, like Hugh Miller, wasn’t it?—pricked them into paper with a
pin. ‘Have they names? What is this, and this?’ ‘Those three stars
are the belt of Orion’—the sum of my acquaintance with the
constellations, if you will believe it! He bombarded me with questions
all to the point. I tried bits of book knowledge which he did not want.
It was a ‘bowing’ acquaintance, if no more, with the glorious objects
before him that the child coveted, and he cornered me till his mother
interfered with, ‘That will do, Tom: don’t tease father with your
questions.’ A trifling incident, perhaps, but do you know I didn’t sleep
a wink that night, or rather, I did sleep, and dreamt, and woke for
good. I dreamt the child was crying for hunger and I had not a crust
to give him. You know how vivid some dreams are. The moral
flashed on me. The child had been crying to me with the hunger of
the mind. He had asked for bread and got a stone. A thing like that
stirs you. From that moment I had a new conception of a parent’s
vocation and of my unfitness for it. I determined that night to find
some way to help ourselves and the thousands of parents in the
same ignorant case.”
“Well, but, Henderson, you don’t mean to say that every parent
should be an astronomer? Why, how can a man with other work
tackle the study of a lifetime?”
“No, but I do think our veneration for science frightens us off open
ground. Huxley somewhere draws a line between science and what
he calls ‘common information,’ and this I take to mean an
acquaintance with the facts about us, whether of Nature or of
society. It’s a shameful thing to be unable to answer such questions
as Tom’s. Every one should know something about such facts of
Nature as the child is likely to come across. But how to get at this
knowledge! Books? Well, I don’t say but you may get to know about
most things from books, but as for knowing the thing itself, let me be
introduced by him that knew it before me!”
“I see what you mean; we want the help of the naturalist, an
enthusiast who will not only teach but fire us with the desire to know.”
“But don’t you find, Morris, that even your enthusiast, if he’s a
man of science, is slow to recognise the neutral ground of common
information?”
“That may be; but, as for getting what we want—pooh! it’s a
question of demand and supply. If you don’t mind my talking about
ourselves I should like just to tell you what we did last summer.
Perhaps you may know that I dabble a little in geology—only dabble
—but every tyro must have noticed how the features of a landscape
depend on its geological formation, and not only the look of the
landscape, but the occupations of the people. Well, it occurred to me
that if, instead of the hideous ‘resources’—save the word!—of a
watering-place, what if we were to study the ‘scape’ of a single
formation? The children would have that, at any rate, in visible
presentation, and would hold a key to much besides.
“My wife and I love the South Downs, perhaps for auld sake’s
sake, so we put up at a farmhouse in one of the lovely ‘Lavants’ near
Goodwood. Chalk and a blackboard were inseparably associated;
and a hill of chalk was as surprising to the children as if all the trees
were bread and cheese. Here was wonder to start with, wonder and
desire to know. Truly, a man hath joy in the answer of his mouth! The
delight, the deliciousness of pouring out answers to their eager
questions! and the illimitable receptivity of the children! This was the
sort of thing—after scrawling on a flint with a fragment of chalk:—
“‘What is that white line on the flint, Bob?’—‘Chalk, father,’ with
surprise at my dulness; and then the unfolding of the tale of wonder
—thousands of lovely infinitely small shells in that scrawl of chalk;
each had, ages and ages ago, its little inmate, and so on. Wide eyes
and open mouths, until sceptical Dick—‘Well, but, father, how did
they get here? How could they crawl or swim to the dry land when
they were dead?’ More wonders, and a snub for that small boy. ‘Why,
this hillside we are sitting on is a bit of that old sea-bottom!’ And still
the marvel grew, until, trust me, there is not a feature of the chalk
that is not written down in le journal intime of each child’s soul. They
know the soft roll of the hills, the smooth dip of the valleys, the
delights of travellers’ joy, queer old yews, and black-berrying in the
sudden ‘bottoms’ of the chalk. The endless singing of a solitary lark
—nothing but larks—the trailing of cloud-shadows over the hills, the
blue skies of Sussex, blue as those of Naples—these things are
theirs to have and to hold, and are all associated with the chalk; they
have the sense of the earth-mother, of the connection of things,
which makes for poetry.
“Then their mother has rather a happy way of getting pictures
printed on the ‘sensitive plate’ of each. She hits on a view, of narrow
range generally, and makes the children look at it well and then
describe it with closed eyes. One never-to-be forgotten view was
seized in this way. ‘First grass, the hill-slopes below us, with sheep
feeding about: and then a great field of red poppies—there’s corn,
but we can’t see it; then fields and fields of corn, quite yellow and
ripe, reaching out a long way; next, the sea, very blue, and three
rather little boats with white sails; a lark a long way up in the sky
singing as loud as a band of music; and such a shining sun!’ No
doubt our little maid will have all that to her dying day; and isn’t it a
picture worth having?”
“Mr. Morris’s hint admits of endless expansion; why, you could
cover the surface formations of England in the course of the summer
holidays of a boy’s schooldays, and thus give him a key to the
landscape, fauna, and flora of much of the earth’s surface. It’s
admirable.”
“What a salvage! The long holidays, which are apt to hang on
hand, would be more fully and usefully employed than schooldays,
and in ways full of out-of-door delights. I see how it would work.
Think of the dales of Yorkshire, where the vivid green of the
mountain limestone forms a distinct line of junction with the dim tints
of the heather on the millstone grit of the moors, of the innumerable
rocky nests where the ferns of the limestone—hartstongue,
limestone polypody, beech fern, and the rest—grow delicately green
and perfect as if conserved under glass. Think of the endless ferns
and mosses and the picturesque outlines of the slate, both in the
Lake Country and in Wales. What collections the children might form,
always having the geological formation of the district as the leading
idea.”
“You are getting excited, Mrs. Tremlow. For my part, I cannot rise
to the occasion. It is dull to have ‘delicious!’ ‘delightful!’ ‘lovely!’
hailing about one’s ears, and to be out of it. Pray, do not turn me out
for the admission, but my own feeling is strongly against this sort of
dabbling in science. In this bird’s-eye view of geology, for instance,
why in the world did you begin with the chalk? At least you might
have started with, say, Cornwall.”
“That is just one of the points where the line is to be drawn; you
specialists do one thing thoroughly—begin at the beginning, if a
beginning there is, and go on to the end, if life is long enough. Now,
we contend that the specialist’s work should be laid on a wide basis
of common information, which differs from science in this amongst
other things—you take it as it occurs. A fact comes under your
notice; you want to know why it is, and what it is; but its relations to
other facts must settle themselves as time goes on, and the other
facts turn up. For instance, a child of mine should know the
‘blackcap’ by its rich note and black upstanding headgear, and take
his chance of ever knowing even the name of the family to which his
friend belongs.”
“And surely, Mr. Morris, you would teach history in the same way;
while you are doing a county, or a ‘formation’—isn’t it?—you get fine
opportunities for making history a real thing. For instance, supposing
you are doing the—what is it?—of Dorsetshire? You come across
Corfe Castle standing in a dip of the hills, like the trough between
two waves, and how real you can make the story of the bleeding
prince dragged over the downs at the heels of his horse.”
“Yes, and speaking of the downs, do you happen to know, Mrs.
Tremlow, the glorious downs behind Lewes, and the Abbey and the
Castle below, all concerned in the story of the great battle; and the
ridge of Mount Harry across which De Montfort and his men
marched while the royal party were holding orgies in the Abbey, and
where, in the grey of the early morning, each man vowed his life to
the cause of liberty, face downwards to the cool grass, and arms
outstretched in the form of a cross? Once you have made a study on
the spot of one of those historic sites, why, the place and the scene
is a part of you. You couldn’t forget it if you would.”
“That is interesting, and it touches on a point to which I want to
call your attention; have you noticed that in certain districts you come
across, not only the spots associated with critical events, but
monuments of the leading idea of centuries? Such as these are the
ruined abbeys which still dominate every lovely dale in Yorkshire; the
twelfth-century churches, four or five of which—in certain English
counties—you come across in the course of a single day’s tramp,
and of which there is hardly a secluded out-of-the-way nook in some
counties that has not its example to show; such, again, are the
endless castles on the Welsh border, the Roman camps on the
downs, each bearing witness to the dominant thought, during a long
period, whether of war, or, of a time when men had some leisure
from fighting.”
“And not only so. Think of how the better half of English literature
has a local colouring; think of the thousand spots round which there
lingers an aroma of poetry and of character, which seems to get into
your brain somehow, and leave there an image of the man, a feeling
of his work, which you cannot arrive at elsewhere. The Quantocks,
Grasmere, Haworth Moors, the Selborne ‘Hanger,’ the Lincolnshire
levels—it is needless to multiply examples of spots where you may
see the raw material of poetry, and compare it with the finished
work.”
“All this is an inspiring glimpse of the possible; but surely,
gentlemen, you do not suppose that a family party, the children, say,
from fifteen downwards, can get in touch with such wide interests in
the course of a six weeks’ holiday? I doubt if, even amongst
ourselves, any but you, Mr. Meredith, and Mr. Clough, have this sort
of grasp of historical and personal associations.”
“We must leave that an open question, Mrs. Henderson; but what
I do contend for is, that children have illimitable capacity for all
knowledge which reaches them in some sort through the vehicle of
the senses: what they see and delight in you may pin endless facts,
innumerable associations, upon, and children have capacity for them
all: nor will they ever treat you to lack-lustre eye and vacant
countenance. Believe me ‘’tis their nature to’ hunger after knowledge
as a labouring man hungers for his dinner; only, the thing must come
in the first, the words which interpret it in the second place.”
“You mean that everything they see is to lead to a sort of object
lesson?”
“Indeed I do not! Object lesson! talkee, talkee, about a miserable
cut-and-dried scrap, hardly to be recognised by one who knows the
thing. I should not wonder if it were better for a child to go without
information than to get it in this unnatural way. No, let him see the
thing big and living before him, behaving according to its wont.
Specimens are of infinite use to the scientist whose business it is to
generalise, but are misleading to the child who has yet to learn his
individuals. I don’t doubt for a minute that an intelligent family out for
a holiday might well cover all the ground we have sketched out, and
more; but who in the world is to teach them? A child’s third question
about the fowls of the air or the flowers of the field would probably
floor most of us.”
“That’s coming to the point. I wondered if we ever meant to touch
our subject again to-night. To skim over all creation in an easy, airy
way is exciting, but, from an educational standpoint, ’tis comic to the
father with a young swarm at home who care for none of these
things.”
“Of course they don’t, Withers, if they have never been put in the
way of it; but try ’em, that’s all. Now, listen to my idea; I shall be too
glad if any one strikes out a better, but we must come to a point, and
pull up the next who wanders off on his own hobby. Each of us
wishes to cover all, or more, or some of, the ground suggested in our
desultory talk. Difficulty, we can’t teach because we don’t know. We
are in a corner with but one way out. We must learn what we should
teach. How? Well, let us form ourselves into a college, or club, or
what you like. Now, it’s simply the A B C of many things we wish to
learn. Once organised, we shall see our way to the next step. Even
in the small party here to-night, some know something of geology,
some are at home in the byways of history; what we cannot evolve
from our midst we must get from outside, and either amateur recruits
or professional folk must be pressed into service; recruits would be
much the best, for they would learn as well as teach. Then, when we
are organised, we may consider whether our desire is to exhaust a
single district in the way suggested, or to follow some other plan.
Only, please, if it be a district, let it be a wide one, so that our
intercourse be confined to ‘speaking’ in passing, like ships at sea.
Don’t, for pity’s sake, let it be a social thing, with tennis, talk, and
tea!”
“Suppose we do enrol ourselves, how frequent do you think
should be our meetings?”
“We’ll leave that question; in the meantime, those in favour of Mr.
Morris’s motion that we form ourselves into a society for the
consideration of matters affecting the education of children—the
parents’ part of the work, that is—will signify the same in the usual
way.”
“Carried unanimously!”[23]
FOOTNOTES:
[23] Ancient history now; a forecast fulfilled in the formation
of the Parents’ National Educational Union.

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The In-Between Spaces of Asylum and

Migration: A Participatory Visual

Migration, Borders and Citizenship: Between Policy and

Geographies of Girlhood in US Latina Writing:

The Spaces Between Us: A Story of Neuroscience,

Idiocy, Imbecility and Insanity in Victorian Society:

Understanding Risk-Taking 1st ed. 2020 Edition Jens O.

The African National Congress and Participatory

Wellbeing from Woodland: A Critical Exploration of

Visual Experience: A Semantic Approach 1st Edition

ISBN 978-3-030-29170-9 ISBN 978-3-030-29171-6 (eBook)

2 Asylum and Direct Provision in Ireland 19

3 The Politics and Practice of Exclusion 57

4 The Politics and Practice of Research 95

6 Resisting Liminality: Connectedness, Belonging

7 Beyond the Space of the Project: The Politics

Fig. 2.1 Number of applications for refugee status to

Fig. 5.2 Number 145

1.1 Direct Provision in Ireland and the Global

© The Author(s) 2020 1

‘sixty nine numbers’3 instead of names, they wait in an institutional limbo

Emigrer signifie toujours démanteler le centre du monde, et l’aménager dans

Mental illness and depression are rife (Chineyre 2011; Ní Raghallaigh

mat 69/---/--. These are often referred to as ‘69 numbers’.

on asylum seekers, representing them as either victim or threat, and

1.2 Research in Direct Provision

centre itself, are not used throughout this book.

To what extent do we, in the countries of immigration, unwittingly

While it is important to remain aware that the act of focusing a study

reinforce it, by focusing on everyday subjective experience and the

1.3 Writing and the Politics of Research

and rethink my approaches, both methodological and theoretical.

The theorization of the work, similarly, was processual and emergent.

they waited for their cases to be processed in a space between an often

… about telling the truth, giving reliable testimony, guaranteeing impor-

Despite the collaborative nature of the work, in its processes of creation,

here in a particular way. The ways in which the participants presented

1.4 Documenting Everyday Experience

interrogations of particular policies, need to be looked at in tandem

the complexities and individual people and experiences which lie

1.5 Structure of the Book

Chapter 3, ‘The Politics and Practice of Exclusion’, places Ireland in a

of expressing the ways in which a chronic sense of fear, insecurity, invisi-

exhibition and co-created book, entitled New Bridges: Experiences of

Group of Faculty of Adult Psychiatry Executive Committee. http://www.

© The Author(s) 2020 19

increasing exclusion of people seeking asylum from mainstream soci-

2.2 Ireland’s Asylum System

proposed changes to the UK system of asylum support, including a shift

of asylum seekers arriving in Ireland and eliminate the ‘pull’ factor of

2.2.1 International Protection Process

Following a comprehensive review of the protection system in Ireland in

Whereas previously, each of these statuses were applied for separate-

2.3 Direct Provision

Accommodation in reception and accommodation centres is provided on

5The responsibilities of the RIA as published in Department of Justice publication Freedom of

In addition to full board and accommodation, asylum seekers are pro-

clothing and footwear allowances. Asylum seekers are provided with a

Fig. 2.5 Numbers of people in the system and waitingtimes (Source

Fig. 2.6 Duration of stay of residents in Direct Provision accommodation in

very small number of applications were generally granted refugee status

(UNHCR 2018). UNHCR adds that where many European coun-

2.4 Direct Provision as a Gradual Mechanism

1.1 Direct Provision in Ireland and the Global

1.2 Research in Direct Provision

1.3 Writing and the Politics of Research

1.4 Documenting Everyday Experience

1.5 Structure of the Book

2.2 Ireland’s Asylum System

2.2.1 International Protection Process

2.3 Direct Provision

2.4 Direct Provision as a Gradual Mechanism