It’s been a rough but interesting six months for me: appealing my asylum claim, expanding my advocacy work and starting my own NGO in Doncaster. I have been so busy—I could do with a little “me time”!
How about you? With the demands of a post-Brexit economy, a toxic political climate, rises in petrol and energy prices, industrial strikes, inflation and the war in Ukraine, you must be in a state of uncertainty.
Being stateless, I feel this every day: when will the rug be pulled from under me and other asylum seekers? I’ve felt especially anxious since the Rwanda policy was passed in parliament. With no right to work and no increase in asylum allowance, it is hard to keep above water.
Rises in the price of food, daily essentials and travel have made it hard to be frugal on £40.85 a week. And after speaking to others in the asylum community, such as families and people with disabilities, I have discovered that many are struggling even more than I am. I have a friend who is an asylum seeker and a single mother of two, living in Leeds. She has to visit multiple food banks each week due to the rise in food prices.
When I speak to her, I can hear the uncertainty in her voice. She is trying so hard to keep it all together. When she talks about her kids I can tell that their happy playfulness revitalises her, and washes away her stress temporarily.
Here in Doncaster, we have an ageing population. The cost of household utilities has hit some of the older folk very hard. I have an elderly neighbour with a disability who lives on her own, and who has had to cut back on her weekly expenditure and switch utility providers. The price hikes were too steep for her to keep up with the payments on her previous plan.
Meanwhile, only a bus ride away, my elderly neighbour’s son has had to sublet his two-bedroom flat, as escalating rents have opened a highway into debt. Some other friends of mine have been forced into shared housing. I feel useless at times because I cannot help those around me with their basic needs. But perhaps these uncertain times are making me melancholy.
And what about workers’ wages? I wonder how a government can measure progress if it doesn’t know how much people need to afford the basics—the minimum wage is too low. Watching my grandfather work in a market back home in the Caribbean taught me how much effort, skill and labour goes into producing our food, clothes and appliances—and this deserves to be rewarded with a liveable wage. To make matters worse, we have shut our doors to millions of workers from Europe who kept our economy afloat; we have almost no fruit pickers for the summer season.
In my opinion, when the government says it will be giving an additional financial boost to get the public through these tough times, what they mean is that they are applying an emergency Band-Aid. And with this current government’s record, I wouldn’t be surprised if even that will turn out to be part of some praetorian business enterprise.
