UK Cities of Sanctuary - Welcoming the Stranger

As laid in bed ill for the last week and a half, I scrolled through my Facebook feed mindlessly passing the time in between naps. Amongst the doom and gloom posts covering the current state of political affairs in the US and memes related to eating Tide Pods, something caught my eye. A video shared by a friend on Facebook made me pause because of its relevance to our coursework.

Video found here

The video (linked above)featured Widden Primary School in Gloucester, England. The school was recently named a "School of Sanctuary" and has opened its doors to welcome refugees and asylum seekers, particularly refugees from Syria.  The school strives to be a safe place for not only students but their parents as well.  At the school, students and their parents are tutored in English. Currently, seven families with twelve children attend the school. 

Widden Primary seems unique in its "whole child" approach. The school has trained staff in post traumatic stress to deal with emotional and psychological scars brought about by the traumas the children have faced. The lessons go far beyond the classroom by emphasizing acceptance and embracing diversity. The city has also truly "welcomed the stranger" as well.  

I have learned that throughout the United Kingdom, communities have committed to taking in refugees and asylum seekers through a grassroots effort known as "City of Sanctuary". Cities which are economically disadvantaged (mostly found in the Northern region of England) are accepting refugees into their communities in exchange for governmental contracts which help bring much needed resources to the area. Because of the low cost of living, the communities  outside of London and larger cities, are able to provide housing at the governmental standard for refugees and asylum seekers. Initial impressions lead one to believe it is a mutually beneficial scheme. 

The UK's commitment to accepting refugees is perhaps even more impressive given that the program which began in 2014 as the UK's Vulnerable Person Resettlement Program has been expanded under the Conservative leadership of the British Prime Minister, Teresa May. This struck me as it is in stark contrast to the conservative leadership we have in the United States today which is vehemently anti-refugee. It seems that the United Kingdom has put party politics aside and despite its recent decision on Brexit which would tend to think it could have a "country first" agenda, it has made a strong commitment to accepting and relocating refugees.  So, why has the UK, who has also suffered incidents of terrorism at the hands of extremist groups been able to separate out the risk of so called "letting terrorists in" by accepting refugees from areas like Syria?  Why haven't they adopted stricter limitations and why are we not seeing more racist rhetoric from politicians?  I am perplexed and would like to dive deeper.....

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Refugees, U. (2018). UK sanctuary network offers vital backstop for refugees, asylum-seekers. [online] UNHCR. Available at: http://www.unhcr.org/uk/news/stories/2018/1/5a54af934/uk-sanctuary-network-offers-vital-backstop-for-refugees-asylum-seekers.html [Accessed 5 Feb. 2018].

McGuinness, Terry. "The UK Response to the Syrian Refugee Crisis", House of Commons Library Briefing Paper Number 06805, 14 June 2017 

abandoning reason and suspending sense

I hope to lay bare the ridiculousness of the issues we are dealing with in this course; how all these notions are at their heart built on fictions that people have bent over backward trying to maintain.

White lies can seem harmless, we make up an explanation, something simple, something neat, something that sounds agreeable.  We tell these white lies and like all lies, they stare back at us, their well meaning parents, and make us do and say things that we may have thought otherwise quite ludicrous.  We pull a tooth out from under a pillow and replace it with a coin, things that go bump in the night, clumsy lies in clean white smocks.  We told a tale to humour ourselves, but now it has us fishing in our pockets, rendering between the sheets what belongs to Caesar.  White lies are pleasant, they are spun like spider’s silk across the map, writing fiction so believably onto what is real.  A realist’s map would describe what is real; elevation, a road, a body of water, a cemetery, a swamp.  When the map is under the poet’s pen; the landscape may be crowded with myths and delusions; borders and boundaries.  

When we share a myth and all behave as if it is a reality, does that make it real?  If we repeat to ourselves our precious white lies long enough, will they, as Adolf Hitler declared, become true?  Are we past the part of civilisation's course when facts had to prove themselves under human scrutiny and the laws of nature held sway?  Have the leaders of the free world finally freed the world from all things cold and hard, have we escaped the glare of the enlightenment?

It helps to have consequences and symptoms, coins beneath pillows if you will, to make the fantasy jump off the page, to make the borders jump from being spider webs on otherwise trustworthy maps to being real, impregnable, however intangible, slashes on the face of the planet.  Who could doubt that the borders are real, provided such consequences garnered in crossing them?  So we tell the white lie that there is a line in the sand that separates I from you and we make the Isolation and yousolation seem real by sending you back to your side and bringing I back to I side.  You can stay in the third world, and I may stray into the world as I see fit.  Thus our mythical narrative goes, our shared fantasy, our white lie.