Hostile environments: housing and asylum policies as drivers of energy deprivation among UK refugee communities

Manon Burbidge,  S. Bouzarovski, K. Lucas and S. Warren

Although refugees in the UK are highly susceptible to the triad of factors – low income, poor housing and high energy bills – that produce vulnerability to energy deprivation, literature on this issue is rare.

We therefore propose a framework towards understanding the role of “non-energy” policies as drivers of energy deprivation among UK refugees, using the conceptual lenses of deservingness, welfare chauvinism and domicide to demonstrate how the condition has been deliberately produced under the UK government’s Hostile Environment approach.

We argue that this approach not only damages the physical materiality of housing and the emotional space of home, but also deleteriously impacts upon refugees’ ability to access adequate energy services.

Energy deprivation thus emerges as a hidden consequence of policies that normalize precarious housing, a denial of rights, and inadequate incomes, in which “home” becomes a site of exclusion that achieves the Hostile Environment’s goal – making everyday life unbearable.