Emma Patchett

Latest blog: “This is not protection, this is punishment”. Inside our Radical Solidarity Hub meeting; Labour’s proposed changes to asylum protection ow.ly/3ZES50XFHtY #MigrationisLIfe #NoOneisIllegal #TheseWallsMustFall

My review of 'Immigration detention and social harm – The collateral impacts of migrant incarceration', edited by @MichPeterie @carceralgeog carceralgeographies.co.uk/book-review-im…

The night did not fall. It broke. A sound tore through the silence, not like thunder, but like something deeper collapsing, something within the world itself. News came: an entire residential block crushed into dust. We ran. We didn’t speak. There was no room for thoughts, no space for hope. We moved patients from beds to chairs, from chairs to floors. Anything to make space. The ER transformed into a corridor of shadows. And then, they came. Waves. Ambulances screeched like some beast in agony. Doors slammed open, stretchers collided. Blood smeared across the floor, across the hands of the living. Screams echoed, not cries, but something more terrible, like truth made sound. People begged for names. Others wept without knowing what they’d lost. We treated the ones whose lungs couldn’t hold air. Those whose blood refused to stay inside. Broken arms could wait. But death, death could not be reasoned with. It barged in. It took whoever was slowest to flee. One man died while I held his hand. Still warm. I whispered something, I don’t know what. I told security to take the body. We needed the bed. I needed the bed. And then, the girl. She was five. Curled on a bed like a forgotten doll. Not screaming. Not even speaking. Just a soft, continuous sob, like someone apologizing for being alive. Another doctor had checked her. Stable vitals. Left aside. I passed again. She was still crying. Still no one with her. “What’s your name?” I asked. “Dima Awad,” she whispered. I shouted into the corridor: “Whose daughter is this? Who is with her?” Silence. I moved on. We all did. We kept moving. That’s the horror, not the screams, but the fact that we move on. That we must. Time becomes something else. Something sick. An hour passed. Then another. I returned to her. Still there. Still crying. I examined her, a fracture in the leg. Orthopedics came. Still no name. No family. Someone called neighbors of the Awad family. No one recognized her. Three hours passed. Then a young man came with lab results. “You asked for these,” he said. “I don’t know the patient,” I replied. He pointed to her. Her name was Lana Muqbil. Her whole family, gone. Mother. Father. Brothers. Aunts. Uncles. All of them. Vaporized. Not even remains to identify. Just dust and a name she barely knew how to spell. The young man? Not even a cousin. Just a neighbor. He remembered her face from somewhere. And because the dead were beyond help, he sat beside the only one who was still breathing. This is Gaza. This is what war truly is. Not the speeches. Not the maps. But a child sobbing in a corner, surrounded by people who are too busy keeping others alive to sit and hold her hand. This is not strategy. This is not defense. This is a mechanism of destruction, cold, calculated, eternal. It eats memory. It devours names. It is the silence after a child says her name and no one replies. #GazaGenocide‌

Denying refugees citizenship simply on the grounds that they arrived here “illegally” on small boats *when there are no legal routes* for most of them to use takes cynicism to new heights. And such performative cruelty won’t see off Reform - it’s more likely to strengthen them

🚨 'UK to deny citizenship to small boat refugees' - Colin Yeo of Garden Court Chambers quoted in @BBCNews on new Home Office guidance: "clear breach of the refugee convention" 🚨 Read the article here 🔽 bbc.co.uk/news/articles/… #RefugeeConvention #ImmigrationLaw

‘Embracing the mess’ of entangled space,place&research: ‘unpacking complicity w/n systems we critique is messy.Yet sitting with discomfort &untidiness is central to a research praxis committed to change’ @sam_odonnell_, @BreeAnderson199 @kajsa_lundberg blogs.law.ox.ac.uk/border-crimino…

On view now: BY THE RIVERS OF SHADOWS AND MATTER by @annaxmalina This new work examines the multilayered relationships between cinema, history, and fragmented cultural memory.

@BenjaminArcher_ Also, interested to find out what counts as “intimidating music”….

Respect Orders are a ‘new’ power, but their scope seems broadly similar to several powers that already exist, and will seemingly continue to do so. I’ll be keeping an eye on the findings of the pilot, and hope that their introduction is more than political posturing.

Waking up today to the anticipated announcement of Respect Orders to address anti-social behaviour. In doing so, I’m disappointed to see the return of a stigmatic rhetoric to describe young people. gov.uk/government/new…

🧵 Today, NACCOM shares shocking new data that shows rising levels of destitution & homelessness among people in the asylum & immigration system. Our new briefing draws on evidence from our frontline network in 2023-24, & reveals some alarming trends ⬇️ naccom.org.uk/launching-our-…

89 months since our 72 loved ones were killed at Grenfell. 89 months, no justice. Join us at the Silent Walk on 14 December to #demandcharges and show those responsible that we won’t stop until justice is served. Nottinghill Methodist Church, 6pm 💚

"We are strange and unbelonging. Yes. We are just enough of ourselves to catch the wind in our feathers, and fly so perfectly away." - The Ragged and the Beautiful @SafiyaSinclair poetryfoundation.org/poems/155740/t…

Being an academic is about being critical and analytical as Stuart Hall said, 'The university is a critical institution or it is nothing'.

It's a perfect day to disappear into an old forest & never be seen again

Take the latest announcement: new surveillance technologies for the NCA, and celebrations of the deportations since they came to office. tinyurl.com/4dbp4jdz. Nothing about supporting communities, reducing backlogs or enabling the positive contributions that migrants make 2/3

'Fisher's grotesque stratigraphic imaginary conceptualises place as formed from a riot of cultural, social, and political detritus...cracks are generated by the desires of a common, transtemporal and transpatial struggle.' @Callum1234 journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

I’m seeing people talk about the worldwide trend of countries moving right, and I think that has to be largely understood as the failure of neoliberalism. As liberal parties move right they stop delivering for people and find themselves in political no mans land.

'turbulent seas,impassable forests,untrodden mtn ranges are at once corridors,cemeteries,meeting points&living memorials at the edges of the world-the lyrical archive of the global politics of migration guides us through paths long closed-off,while envisioning others yet-to-come'

NEW: ‘A Cartography of Genocide’. Since October 2023, we have collected and analysed data related to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Our findings indicate that Israel has systematically targeted all aspects of civilian life. tinyurl.com/bdcrnzka

Man dies in detention at immigration detention centre near Gatwick airport @GatDetainees said “Brook House is prison architecture and no one should take their last breath there. We mourn that a young man died before he could be free.” Borders kill. theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/o…