Netty Yasin, second-year part-time LLM student, and Patrick Page, Senior Caseworker, Duncan Lewis Public Law discuss the Birkbeck School of Law’s recent residential weekend at Cumberland Lodge, where they took part in discussions and workshops with eminent legal scholars.
Each year the School of Law at Birkbeck hosts a residential weekend at Cumberland Lodge, Windsor, giving staff and students the opportunity to participate in discussions, workshops and lectures with internationally renowned researchers. This year the discussions centred around the themes of Hospitality, the Hostile Environment, and the Law. Two of those who attended reflect on the weekend’s events:
Netty Yasin, second-year part-time LLM Qualifying Law Degree student
The presentations covered a broad range of topics, including the creation of the ‘bad immigrant’, racist narratives in the sentencing of migrants, as well as detention and deportation policies and practices. Speakers included a former barrister, PhD students, a solicitor who shared some harrowing case studies from his experience of representing clients with medical needs in detention centres and even a personal perspective from a former detainee. Although there was a full schedule of seminars, there was also plenty of time to relax and enjoy the beautiful environment of Cumberland Lodge and its surroundings. It was also a great opportunity to network and have informal discussions with the speakers over dinner or drinks at the bar. It was a hugely interesting, informative and enjoyable weekend in a wonderful setting and I hope to return next year. Thanks to the School of Law for organising such a fantastic event.
Patrick Page, Senior Caseworker, Duncan Lewis Public Law
‘You don’t need permission to be anti-establishment.’ This was a response to a question by one of the speakers at the Cumberland Lodge conference on Hospitality, the Hostile Environment, and the Law. The speaker in question had been detained at Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre, and has since been shining a light on the injustice of immigration detention – what she calls ‘the hostile environment on steroids.’ For me, the answer encapsulated the spirit of the weekend. With its range of lawyers, academics and activists (many, indeed, wearing a number of these hats at once), the programme thoroughly exposed the hostile environment in all its manifestations. We were taken through the way in which the UK government has conscripted civil society in its racialised system of immigration control, how the ‘good migrant/bad migrant’ narratives dominate the legal system, and how executive powers to detain and remove have steadily expanded. Frances Webber, a barrister who has been working in this area for decades, put it simply: ‘it was never good, but it was never this bad.’ But this sombre tone was lightened by a cautious optimism that change is possible, that resistance isn’t always futile. As we saw with the Windrush scandal, those targeted by the hostile environment, like the speaker mentioned above, are increasingly mobilised to expose injustice. In the last talk of the weekend, we were reminded of the words of James Baldwin: “The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.”
Read more of Patrick’s thoughts on the Cumberland Lodge weekend at the No Walls blog
