Clients and Coercions: An ethnographic study of how knowledge and power impact the well-being of children and lawyers in the asylum system

This PhD research project looks to undertake a detailed study of how the lawyer/client relationship operates in the case of children who seek asylum in their own right, and understand how the relationship is affected by the construction of childhood applied in immigration law. It will also consider whether this relationship could be improved by greater application of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

The rhetoric regarding small boat arrivals and the demands by the Home Office for increased 'rigour' in the age assessment of unaccompanied children are anything but welcoming. At the same time, there are concerns regarding poor mental health among social welfare lawyers; immigration lawyers in particular. They have also found themselves at the sharp end of political debate.

Immigration law is one of the few areas of law in which those aged under 18 directly instruct lawyers to act on their behalf. However, it provides few of the procedural safeguards available in other areas of law - there are no specialist youth courts, nor are lawyers required to be separately accredited to represent children, as in family law. This is despite the potential for asylum claims to be life or death decisions or the extreme vulnerability of children claiming asylum in their own right. There seems to be an unspoken assumption that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are independent, resilient and can be treated in the same way as adults seeking asylum.

This project looks to consider how the power that is linked to legal expertise is applied through the lawyer client relationship as this operates in the case of lone children who are seeking sanctuary. This will be explored using the following sub-questions:
i. Why does immigration law not afford children who are seeking sanctuary the same procedural protection as children in other proceedings?
ii. What are the structural contexts that impact legal practice in terms of funding (Legal Aid) and procedural (Asylum law and procedure) requirements?
iii. How does the conception of childhood applied in immigration law impact the practices and wellbeing of lawyers representing children who seek sanctuary alone in England and Wales?
iv. Could approaches to legal practice centred on the UNCRC (Article 3: best interests; Article 5: the right to adult guidance; Article 12: voice of the child; Article 16: right to privacy) move the relationship to less coercive modes.

To address these questions the PhD will integrate approaches from human geography and legal anthropology and consider how this tension manifests in legal practice. The candidate is a practicing immigration lawyer, with training in sociological research methodologies. She is well placed with insider understandings of not only asylum law, but the professional cultures of lawyers. It has additionally been suggested that those within the system are those best placed to challenge it.

The central part of the research will be an ethnography based on time spent embedded in a charity that supports asylum seekers (Gloucester Action for Refugees and Asylum Seekers). The candidate will work alongside a staff member specialising in supporting unaccompanied children. By working in this way, the writer will be able to build relationships of trust before making requests to observe court hearings and other important meetings. This ethnographic study will afford an insight into children's experiences of the system and, it is hoped, allow an understanding of a wider range of legal practices than can be achieved by speaking to practitioners alone.

Additionally, lawyers will be interviewed. Semi-structured interviews will allow detailed discussion of how lawyers understand their role, how it affects them and they might practice differently (with particular reference to iv).