Name: Skeptics in the Pub Social
Start: 2025-06-05T19:00:00.000Z
Location: Dr Duncan's

Children and young people seeking asylum in the UK experience violence - not just in the persecutory circumstances or harmful threats that led them to seek asylum, but perpetrated by and within the State that purports to provide sanctuary. It is a violence that takes many forms: psychological, physical, emotional, financial, racial and gender-based. It is a violence that is hidden or euphemised as security, public order or even justice. It is violence that is embedded, legitimised and normalised through processes, law and policy, and through media reporting and political debates. This violence affects thousands of children who arrive in the UK unaccompanied every year. It stays with them for the rest of their lives and is passed on intergenerationally.

As the racist riots of summer 2024 highlight, so-called ‘hostile’ laws, policies and unrelenting media misrepresentation of asylum seekers readily feeds into direct, interpersonal violence that destabilises entire communities. Professor Helen Stalford calls for a shift in how we talk about our current asylum system to more accurately reflect and confront the political intentions of such policies and their direct effects on children and young people seeking asylum. Helen presents the case for characterising legal, policy and social responses to unaccompanied children seeking asylum as state-sanctioned and perpetrated violence, and identifies a series of ‘tipping points’ – moments at which legal and policy responses shift from being strategic and, for some, legitimate features of the so-called ‘hostile environment’, to acts of violence in flagrant breach of our international human rights obligations, particularly where children are concerned.

Merseyside Skeptics Society

Connaire Treloar

Tessa

Rania Hassan

Robert

Caitlin

Zana 

Ashleigh 

Rebekkah 

Simon

Shannon

Erin Lloyd 

Asylum As Violence: How the State Harms Unaccompanied Asylum Seekers in the UK

The Casa

Join us for good times and good conversation at Dr Duncan's in Liverpool City Centre. Don't be shy, come along and say hello! We're very friendly to people coming alone!

**COVID SAFETY NOTE:**
We're looking forward to seeing those of you who will join us for our social. Here are some things you could do to help look after yourself and our other attendees (if you like):

If you have access to a lateral flow test, why not take a test before you join us? If it's positive for COVID-19, please stay at home.

If you have new symptoms of COVID-19, even if a lateral flow test is negative - we'd prefer you stay at home. We'll have other social events in the future that you can join in when you're feeling better. (And remember that the symptoms of COVID-19 can look a lot like a standard cold!)

Please be respectful of other people's boundaries. Give each other plenty of space and be considerate. If you need to cough or sneeze, cough into your elbow or a tissue and throw the tissue away before sanitising your hands.

Bob Brady

Rabia AZIZA

Gena Jeremiah

Carlos Lorenzo

Skeptics in the Pub Social

Dr Duncan's

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