‘Napier Barracks: the inhumane reality’ – report launch

Thank you for attending the launch of JRS UK’s new report, Napier Barracks: the inhumane reality. We hope the evening was illuminating and enhanced your understanding of people’s experiences of living in hostile, out-of-town institutionalised accommodation settings, and that you had the opportunity to have meaningful and fruitful discussions with others.

Napier Drop-In

The Napier Drop-In provides access to a range of different activities and services which are not provided on site, including impartial refugee advice services and access to legal support.

Activities include English language workshops, cooking, art and music therapy sessions and creative workshops to support mental health. One of the most popular activities is a T-shirt printing workshop. Many of the men have described the workshop as the ‘best day ever’.

In order to continue to run these workshops and provide support to the residents of Napier Barracks, the Napier Drop-In are looking to raise £5,000 to fund materials, and to develop and expand the range of workshops we currently deliver. The money will also go towards essential items including refreshments, toiletries, basic phone chargers and headphones, English learning materials, and warm accessories such as hats and gloves.

If you live in the Folkestone area, the Napier Drop-In are always looking for volunteers who can spare a few hours on a Wednesday. Email sallyhough@napierdropin.org for more information.

If you’d like to learn more about what we discussed tonight, you may find some of the following resources useful:

Napier Barracks: the inhumane reality – Through the voices of those who have been placed there, this research, released at the end of March 2023, explores life in this institutionalised accommodation setting. It describes the effects upon people who have fled hostilities, abuses and life-threatening situations. It exemplifies how placing asylum seekers into remote camps is a punishing, confusing, often re-traumatising experience for those who endure it. This report is published as Illegal Migration Bill is before parliament. One of the many destructive things the Bill would do is to hugely expand the use of detention, and to allow for detention is spaces like Napier. This report gives insight into how destructive that would be.

Asylum in the UK fact sheet – Deciphering and undertanding the asylum system in the UK and how many are affected can be difficult, especially when the government and media use inflammatory rhetoric for the purpose of making headlines. Digging underneath this, numbers and facts show a very different reality facing the UK. This fact sheet, written mid-April 2023, explains some of the current picture.

Contact your MP to call for a fair, person-centred asylum system – We need to put human dignity at the heart of our repsonse to people seeking asylum. This advocacy guide outlines what a fair, person-centred asylum system would look like, and some talking points for speaking about these issues to your local MP or other representatives.

Detained and Dehumanised – Drawing from the accounts of 27 forcibly displaced people supported by JRS UK, with direct experience of detention spanning the last 20 years, this 2020 report recommends an end to the use of detention for the purpose of immigration control, as it is incompatible with a humane and just immigration and asylum system. The research finds that the indefinite and arbitrary process of immigration detention destroys a person’s sense of humanity and fosters a culture of death, suicide and self-harm; causing long-term damage to physical and mental health.