4

Deaf Migrants in London

Steven Emery and Sanchayeeta Iyer

According to the United Nations (UN), there is no consensus on a single definition of the term “migrant” (Anderson & Blinder, 2019). It is used in this chapter in a broad sense because the research includes people who may not have settled status in the United Kingdom: For example, those on a spouse visa or people who hold temporary residency, asylum, or refugee status and are seeking settlement; hold long-term residency or British citizenship; or are studying with a view to staying long term. The project we report on initially focused on labor migration, but its scope was later broadened to include participants who had moved as children with their families, as students, as resettled refugees—and, in particular, those who had migrated for marriage. Marriage migration, studied in depth by Sanchayeeta, refers to those who marry with the aim to migrate, or who migrate to join their partner. The categories of labor and marriage migration can, of course, overlap; some marriage migrants also look for work in the new host country. Our data on labor migration cover the experiences of a large number of deaf people from a wide range of nationalities, whereas our data on marriage migration focuses on five Indian women. Because our study was ethnographic (see Chapter 2), we were focusing on participant observation and migrant narratives. We appreciate that we come from positions of privilege, working at academic institutions and not being migrants ourselves; however, whereas one researcher, Steve, is from a white British ethnic background, Sanchayeeta is from an ethnically British-Indian background. We consciously brought our respective “lenses” to the fieldwork (see Chapter 2).

The chapter starts with a review of the literature, which includes a brief outline of the mainstream literature on migration to the United Kingdom. This is admittedly a very broad sweep, but the literature is vast. There follows a longer critique of the deaf migration literature. The latter remains sparse in spite of increasing amounts of scholarship being published since 2015. We then move on to the key themes that make up deaf migrant narratives: the social context; the journey, arrival, and first impressions of London; how migrants navigate connections in the capital; and their experiences of employment and class. Whereas the thematic sections are largely focused on migrants’ individual journeys, the final two sections widen the focus, mapping and exploring deaf migrants’ experiences in deaf spaces more generally. Even though deaf spaces are not migrant-specific spaces and thus have an impact on the wider community, the range of events we discuss provides us with a snapshot of deaf spaces that are vibrant and active. We found it useful to devise a visual map of these deaf spaces and places, which we will introduce by explaining how we designed it and what it means in practice. This map highlights how deaf migrants become part of the fabric of these spaces over a period of time. We conclude with a section on xenophobia and racism within these deaf spaces.

We use a Bourdieusian lens in this chapter (see Chapter 1 and Grenfell, 2012, for an overview). We visualize deaf migrants navigating deaf “fields” across London, their “habitus” (where relevant), and the “capital” they bring or acquire in the process. To summarize these key terms, a field refers to any particular space or place—a deaf center, a sports field, a doctor’s surgery, a refugee camp in Kenya (see Chapter 3), or deaf networks in London (as in this chapter)—but it is important to stress that each field interlocks with habitus (unconscious dispositions internalized from learned behaviors in a particular field) and capital (the resources acquired in or brought to a field that help navigate it). Some of our participants were able to move in some fields differently to others, depending on which learned behaviors they had already internalized—for example, the discourse used within a field (particular words/signs and terms, which may be familiar or not), and its conventions (e.g., the use of sign language in a deaf club).

A Brief History of Migration to the United Kingdom

London is a super-diverse city featuring intense migration (Vertovec, 2007). At least one-third of its citizens were born abroad, with the most recent statistics showing the figure at 40.6% (ONS, 2022). A number of researchers have investigated how diverse people live together in London and the “axes of belonging” along which people tend to associate (Ehrkamp & Leitner, 2006)—for example, associating primarily with people from a specific ethnic group and/or within a specific neighborhood (Wessendorf, 2014).

Migration is not a new or recent phenomenon in the United Kingdom. As Fryer (1984, p. 1) illustrates in his scholarly research, black people have been resident in the British Isles as far back as the time of the Roman Empire, having settled in various parts since then. A similar pattern can be found in various other historical periods regarding people of various ethnicities. For example, there is a long history of Jewish people migrating to the British Isles to escape European expulsion, particularly since the 17th century (Endelman, 2002), and of Huguenots (French Protestants) escaping persecution in France in the 16th century (Cottret, 2009). Fryer (1984) also illustrates historical periods where the settlement of black people was far from voluntary (e.g., during the slave trade of the 17th and 18th centuries) and also when it was encouraged (e.g., after the Second World War with the “Windrush generation”). This term refers to the black and South Asian people and their families who arrived in the United Kingdom from Caribbean countries such as Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, traveling on the ship HMT Empire Windrush. It should be noted that Asian people had been migrating for work to the British Isles as far back as the 16th century, and although this migration was quite small compared to migration in the aftermath of the Second World War, it does nevertheless show that migration (be it for work or enforced) has a very long history and involves far wider ethnicities than we are able to include here.

Returning to the Windrush generation, it was the British Nationality Act of 1948 that granted the rights of subjects of the British Empire to settle in the United Kingdom, whether to live or to work, ostensibly due to an increased demand for a workforce to assist in rebuilding Britain in the aftermath of the Second World War. This act led directly to the Windrush generation moving to and settling in the United Kingdom, but it also gave rights to people from other Commonwealth countries such as India and Pakistan. In fact, it is people from India who make up the largest group of non-British residents in London, as of 2022 (Vargas-Silva & Rienzo, 2022). Britain’s relationship with India goes back to the 1600s, when the East India Company, an English (later, British) company, was formed to trade across East Asia; this predates the era of British colonization of India and the rise of the British Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries. Communities from South Asia were dispersed as a result of this colonization; for example, people from India who were working for British companies in Africa settled in several African countries, including Nigeria, Uganda, and South Africa—all of which had been subject to brutal British rule. This dispersal left the minority Indian communities vulnerable once British colonial rule had been overthrown across African countries in the 1960s and 1970s, leading, for example, to the expulsion of Indian communities from Uganda in the early 1970s under President Idi Amin. The following years saw the growth of the Indian diaspora in London and elsewhere in the United Kingdom (for further details, see Hussein, 2005). The Indian diaspora is made up of various regional, religious, cultural, and ethnic groups from different parts of the Indian subcontinent. However, these groups are lumped together as “Indian” as a single category; Indian as a nationality label is also used as an ethnic category (see Anitha & Pearson, 2013; del Pilar Kaladeen, 2018a, 2018b; and Chapter 5 for a discussion of national stereotypes).

Two factors led to the expansion of migration to the United Kingdom in the 2000s. The first was the election of three New Labour governments in 1997, 2001, and 2005, whose neoliberal outlook and policies favored globalization and free trade; the second was the increased number of countries admitted to the European Union (EU). The EU’s principle of free movement across its nations led to an increased number of European nationals moving to and settling in the United Kingdom, until the United Kingdom formally departed from the EU in 2020 following a U.K.-wide referendum called by the Conservative government in June 2016. Our research took place in the context of both “Brexit” and the ongoing, officially mandated “really hostile environment” (to quote then–Home Secretary Theresa May in 2012) for migrants in the United Kingdom. Of course, hostility to migrants did not begin then; institutionalized racism has long been recognized as being in place in the United Kingdom (Goodfellow, 2019; SSAHE, 2020). However, the adoption of the “hostile environment” as official government policy in the United Kingdom in the early 2010s was a deliberate means to provoke hostility toward people deemed to be “illegal migrants”—that is, “undocumented” (Tyler, 2018). This had the knock-on effect of increasing institutionalized racism and discrimination against migrants in the United Kingdom. Additionally, despite the closeness of the Brexit referendum (with 52% voting in favor and 48% objecting) and strong opposition to it both inside and outside the U.K. Parliament, the vote emboldened right-wing anti-migration political factions, leading to an intensification of the hostile environment policy. A key example was the “Windrush scandal,” which first came to light in 2017. The people of the Windrush generation were, as outlined previously, legally entitled to live and work in the United Kingdom, but they had not been provided with legal documents by the British State at the time; additionally, in some cases, existing documents had been deliberately destroyed by the state. As a consequence of this, and in line with hostile environment policies, people who had lived in the United Kingdom since the 1940s were being deported through force to their country of origin in the Caribbean.

Studies on Deaf Migration

Research and literature on deaf migration is sparse; also, with very few exceptions (e.g., Vasishta, 2011; Wang et al., 2016), it has not been written by those who have experienced the migration journey themselves. We are careful to offer respectful critique to studies on migration, given that much of the literature is aimed at informing social policymakers of the (often adverse, even life-threatening) experiences that migrants go through to arrive at their destination. As there is no strict distinction between labor migration and other forms of migration (see Chapter 1), including that of refugees and asylum seekers, we also discuss some resources on refugees. Some of the data in our own study are heartbreaking, as we will show, with asylum seekers and migrants experiencing a range of struggles in their attempts to seek safety and settlement.

Since 2015, there has been an increase in studies looking at deaf migration beyond the United Kingdom, and thus in this context there have been far more sources to draw upon. The authors Holmström and Sivunen (2022) have done much to critically highlight the growing literature, and they cite Crawley et al.’s 2018 assertion that “there has been increasing interest in scientific research into deaf migrants, particularly in connection to the so-called migration crisis in Europe 2015” (in Holmström & Sivunen, 2022, p. 409). A significant working paper undertaken recently by McAuliff (2021) demonstrates this fact. McAuliff critically reviewed all the literature about deaf refugees up to 2021, which is a welcome resource for scholars who are researching this field. We share the author’s conclusion that many studies focus on refugees as victims and hence obscure their agency—indeed, if we have one criticism of McAuliff’s review, it is that the use of the term “refugee” risks placing in the reader’s mind a range of experiences limited to refugees, whereas many people who first migrated as refugees will now be long settled (see Chapter 10 for an example). However, we are also mindful of the second critique that McAuliff raises, namely that there are huge gaps in the literature from the perspective of refugees or migrants from the Global South, a concern also raised by Holmström and Sivunen (2022). We add our voices to these concerns, conscious that our research has been undertaken by scholars from the privileged Global North.

There has been very little research on deaf ethnic/racial minorities in the United Kingdom, with a few notable exceptions (i.e., Ahmad et al., 1998; Atkin et al., 2002; Emery, 2008; James & Woll, 2004). Although it is possible that some of the participants in these studies were not only part of an ethnic minority group or groups but also migrants, migration is not mentioned in these studies; this is a typical pattern within Deaf Studies (see Emery & Iyer, 2022, for more references).

When we set out our analysis of the U.K.-based literature prior to the start of the project, we identified that the central aim of research studies of deaf migrants has been largely positivist in nature, seeking to find out how deaf “immigrants” “integrate” into the United Kingdom. The majority of this literature focuses on deaf refugees or asylum seekers. Emphasis is placed on the problems deaf migrants face; the struggles they experience to integrate; and what role, if any, organizations play in assisting or supporting them. The research literature is further complicated by the way in which deaf migrants tend to be positioned alongside disabled migrants (Patel & Kelley, 2006; Roberts & Harris, 2002; Ward et al., 2008), which means that their similarities to other linguistic minorities have been overlooked, as has their position in the wider deaf community in London. For example, Ward et al. (2008) interviewed representatives of community and voluntary charitable agencies, who suggest that deaf asylum seekers and refugees have no access to refugee community organizations due to the latter’s lack of deaf awareness or provision of sign language interpreters.

There is evidence, however, that once contact is made with local deaf people in the United Kingdom, the social situation of deaf migrants improves (Ward et al., 2008, p. 62). We wanted to explore this further because another prominent and unique research study of “deaf third country nationals” (carried out between 2007 and 2009) confirmed that migrant lives become networked through contact with deaf communities (Parr et al., 2010). The studies also identified an array of multiple intersections that migrants face, in addition to the challenges of communicating in and learning new languages. Whereas these were identified as background issues in previous studies, in our subproject the aim was to foreground such themes, in line with the overall research focus of the MobileDeaf project (see Chapter 1). Whereas the project undertaken by Parr et al. (2010) focused on deaf migrants from non-EU member states who had been in the United Kingdom for 5 years, our project included both non-EU participants (including from the Global South) and EU participants. Our project’s key focus was to seek deaf migrants from all backgrounds who had moved to London, be they laborers, students, professionals, entrepreneurs, job-seekers, or spouses.

Deaf Migrants’ Pathways Into London

Deaf migrants shared with us stories of the journeys they had undertaken to reach London, and their experiences on arrival were also widely discussed. As we will demonstrate, the “field” in which migrants arrived was often one that felt completely outside what they were accustomed to. Often, their journey to London was not linear; they had arrived having passed through several other countries. For example, one East African deaf man had come via Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya (see Chapter 10); others had moved to countries such as Germany, Denmark, or the United States before moving to the United Kingdom. This illustrates that migration cannot be put down as a one-time occurrence in deaf migrants’ lives, and at each stage of their journey, they are likely to encounter different fields that may each require different capital. Habitus is a far more complex concept; deaf migrants may feel familiar in some cultural settings more than in others, depending on their background and upbringing. For example, migrants whose first language is a sign language (i.e., native signers) and who come from another large European city may feel familiarity in London deaf spaces where a large proportion of people are native users of a sign language; this is because of shared aspects of habitus or habiti (i.e., several types of habitus, see Joy et al., 2020).

There were several reasons for and circumstances in which deaf migrants initially moved from their home country. These include arriving in the United Kingdom with their parents when very young; moving to seek work; moving to be united with their partner or family; moving to study, having achieved a scholarship to do so; and having come from a refugee camp after initially fleeing from war in their country. Although the circumstances of, and motivations for, migration are very similar to those of hearing migrants, and although the fields navigated are the same (e.g., the bureaucratic and authoritarian fields of the border force and the Home Office), there are a few “deaf elements” to the stories we collected. To give one example of a “deaf element,” a deaf tutor from City Lit college said in our interview:

The asylum seekers looked to stay here because it was safe, because they had so many stories about the abuse they suffered in their home countries, being thrown in prison for religious reasons or for refusing to wear head or face coverings—there were all sorts of reasons and stories for wanting to stay here. […] One deaf person from a Gypsy [sic] family had no language […] He didn’t even understand the concept of an “alphabet” or question forms or gestures. [our emphasis]

Observations and ideologies regarding deaf refugees “having no language” are common and are critically discussed in Chapter 8.

A few deaf migrants we met during our fieldwork were a child or young person when they came to the United Kingdom. For example, Samba’s parents specifically moved from Sierra Leone so he could obtain a better education in a deaf school in London (see Chapter 9 and the film Finding Spaces to Belong for Samba’s story);¹ This example also highlights how there may be a “deaf element” to a story. First impressions could be quite powerful, especially for young deaf people arriving from Africa or Asia who had never seen a white person before and who were in awe of the buildings and transport networks in comparison to those of their native countries. On arrival, migrants may feel like a “fish out of water” (to quote Bourdieu, in Maton, 2012, p. 56) in their new environment; indeed, our participants reported a general wonderment about infrastructure, race, language, and the way that people in London looked, dressed, and behaved. This was particularly true for young deaf migrants who arrived in the United Kingdom with their parents or family; in our study, all their families were hearing, and many were highly educated. Lena’s father, from Russia, was a university professor, for example. Rohel, originally from Bangladesh, had come to the United Kingdom as a 9-year-old child and vividly expressed his reaction on seeing white people for the first time:

When I was 9, my mother told me that we were going “up,” but communication with my mother was very difficult and we really didn’t understand each other […] The plane arrived at Heathrow; I will never forget it. Honestly, when I tell you when the doors opened my eyes were on stalks! I could not believe it. […] The whole experience is branded on my memory, but one picture sticks in my mind and I cannot forget it: I saw this really large white woman with high heels [she looked so huge] and I was so confused! I thought that everyone had the same skin color—I had never seen a white woman like this before! Then I saw a man in a smart suit, walking confidently—remember, I hadn’t had an education, and seeing white people, Chinese people—all these different people! […] I was so confused […] especially [by] that large woman in her heels.

This example shows that the first impressions of this young deaf migrant are strongly remembered as visual impressions, which is partially due to the lack of information received before his arrival because of communication difficulties within the family.

Some stories of migrants were quite harrowing. Hawa, who arrived from Somalia in her mid-teens with her sister, was placed straight into a mainstream school without communication support (see Emery & Iyer, 2022). Her narrative represents an example of institutional racism and discrimination, in which being a child, female, black, and deaf intersect. The following quote is Hawa’s narrative of when she was attempting to obtain Home Office approval for her application to stay in the United Kingdom, another example that demonstrates the “deaf elements” in the stories told by deaf migrants. In Hawa’s meeting with the Home Office, a sign language interpreter was provided; however, he was evidently not very experienced:

We moved here and my family took me to the Home Office, but it was a really long process without access. I felt like the family dog, being dragged along and not knowing what was happening. There were these big meetings with lots of people, and I had no idea what they were talking about. My sister tried to explain to me what was going on, but the Home Office blocked her. Instead, they brought in a male interpreter; he said he signed but he didn’t really. I remember he brought a book with him, and tried to talk to me but I was really put off and didn’t know what was happening. I tried to talk to the man who leads the meetings, but he told my sister to stop so I had to pull back and put up with it. They made another appointment and again it was full of people, and my sister and I had to sit there passively while they discussed my case. I really don’t know what they said, but I think [bearing in mind I couldn’t access any of the information] that the Home Office were objecting to my application a bit? I’m not sure. They seemed to be saying “why are you here?” and not accepting me.

Other migrants moved to the United Kingdom as adults, on their own, which meant they had more agency than deaf child migrants. They often moved for work; we cover this in detail in the section on employment. On arrival, and with a lack of social capital, they needed to navigate all kinds of mainstream fields (e.g., colleges, workplaces, community and neighborhood centers) in a language (i.e., English) that they may have had little or no knowledge of, which could leave them feeling immobile, stuck, or in limbo; we cover these issues in Chapters 7 and 10. Others moved to be with their partner and were able to make use of the partner’s social capital. For example, Laura moved from Latvia to be with her Latvian husband, who had moved to the United Kingdom to find work.

In Sanchayeeta’s study on marriage migration, two of the Indian women had come to the United Kingdom in their early 20s and had lived in London for nearly 20 years, whereas the other three came in their early 30s. These five women had moved to the United Kingdom from Mumbai and Kolkata to start a new chapter of life with their newlywed husbands, most of whom were men of Indian heritage holding British citizenship. One woman, from Kolkata, had married a man from a Hindu family of Indian heritage, who had originally moved to the United Kingdom from Uganda during the aforementioned period of expulsion. Another was from a Muslim family of Indian origin who had moved from Kenya under similar circumstances. Both women’s husbands had been born in the United Kingdom. Another woman’s husband was a migrant from the Middle East, having arrived in London in the 2000s. Two women were of the Islamic faith and three were Hindu. All five women accepted the condition of migration upon their acceptance of the marriage proposal. Among their motivations were sociocultural expectations, personal desires, aspirations to have a certain lifestyle, and the desire to acquire a British passport for further mobility. Beyond the “getting married and settling down” purpose of their migration, they had their own dreams, desires, and aspirations, including to advance their career path in a foreign country or to travel to new places. These aspirations colored their decision to accept marriage proposals from the men with British citizenship with whom they had interacted for varying lengths of time. Mobility based on education, work, and life experiences is becoming a normative part of imaginary middle-class life trajectories (Robertson, 2021). This shows the complexity of the reasons behind the decision to migrate.

Many migrants were eager to stress that they had a successful or positive journey and were in a good place personally and professionally. This indicates they had learned to navigate the fields in which they had arrived, both by acquiring the necessary capital (e.g., by learning British Sign Language) and, to some extent, by internalizing the habitus or habiti. They ended their narrative or interview with a positive comment, such as “thank you to Britain” (Laura, Latvia), “now I am happy” (Maria, Romania), “I appreciate the opportunity to live here and develop here” (Paul, Tanzania)—potentially to ensure that their narrative was framed as positive because they thought that was what the researchers wanted to hear. Our positions of privilege in academia, particularly deaf academia, may have left participants feeling they had to emphasize that there was a positive side even though they might have had some negative experiences. They reported that things were easier and more relaxed now that they were more settled and that this was due to a number of factors: They had worked hard to get to where they were, their families had been supportive, and they felt a real sense of passion and pride at having become part of a deaf community by participating in deaf spaces (see later in the chapter).

Being a deaf signer was central to our participants’ narratives, both in terms of barriers to information (see Chapter 10) and in terms of socialization within deaf spaces. Stories of first impressions upon arriving in the United Kingdom often involved comments on British Sign Language (BSL). Samba was from Sierra Leone, where ASL is familiar, and was shocked to find that ASL is not a universal language, that ASL is not used in the United Kingdom, and that BSL uses a two-handed fingerspelling alphabet. Abdikal, from Somalia, shared his shock at BSL, too. He had migrated to Denmark when young and learned Danish Sign Language, and then he came to the United Kingdom in his teens: “I started in a new deaf school. But I didn’t understand anything! I couldn’t sign BSL, and they didn’t understand Danish Sign Language.” Learning BSL was an integral part of their journey; we share many examples where deaf migrants have needed to build up their linguistic capital and have stressed the importance of learning BSL (see Chapter 8). By learning BSL, they could begin to feel at ease in deaf spaces. Indeed, most migrants shared their experiences with us by signing in BSL, which they had acquired in the United Kingdom.

However, some migrants also shared their experiences of criticism from British deaf people over the uneven pace of their signing, their slowness in learning BSL, their accents in BSL, and their use of ASL to facilitate communication. Some had responded to this criticism by preserving their own mode of signing, as they felt they could manage to communicate with BSL interpreters and in different sectors of the British deaf community without needing to sign fluently in BSL (see Chapter 8). It is possible that this experience—that is, of continuing to use (an)other sign language(s) in the United Kingdom—is evidence that some migrants find deaf fields in the United Kingdom tricky to navigate; they may only acquire enough BSL to “get by” without reaching a “fully fluent” level, and otherwise they retain their own sign language. This may depend on the field or fields through which they navigate: Some fields are particularly welcoming to migrants, such as City Lit college; the deaf group that gathers at the East London Mosque; or, as Steve observed, at the weekly deaf gathering at the Slug and Lettuce pub in Leicester Square. Alternatively, it is possible that their habitus allowed them to feel familiar across borders and that they felt they possessed enough knowledge and experience to get by in London’s deaf fields.

There were a remarkable number of instances in which migrants “found” their deaf identity in London. Previously, they had either known no sign language or had been getting by largely in mainstream, hearing communities. Francesca, for example, who had started to lose her hearing in her early 20s, moved to London after losing her job and struggling to build a life as an independent woman in her native Italy. She went through various jobs as she struggled both in a hearing environment and in understanding English, especially spoken by people with different accents. She had progressive hearing loss, often felt tired, and felt that her speech had deteriorated.

Initially, when she first started to lose her hearing, Francesca did not view herself as a deaf person but as a (hearing) person with a “problem,” and in London she came to see herself as “a deaf woman.”² She first encountered signing deaf people during a lipreading course in London, which led her to take BSL courses and actively go to meet deaf people in various deaf events around London:

The BSL courses taught me a great deal, and from there I went to deaf clubs, met more deaf people, and I asked where there were deaf clubs in central London, and when I went there for the first time I was quite overwhelmed—I was still on the Level 1 course back then so I struggled a bit initially. But I felt welcomed, and I went along every week, and I still go to that club every week. From there I found other deaf pub nights and meetings and I felt from there more fully involved in the deaf community. Also, I wanted to know more about the deaf world, so I did two courses in deaf history, so really […] I’ve worked hard to become a member of the deaf community—I know a lot of people, and really learning BSL has changed my life.

Her narrative shows she had to “work hard” to become an active member of the deaf community and that gaining linguistic capital in the form of BSL is required in order to move across fields in deaf communities. This involves language adaptation, attending and actively participating in deaf events, and learning BSL in courses; later, she also started working with deaf people. For Francesca, “being deaf” comes with being independent, feeling rooted, and feeling “at home” among “the community.” She expressed feeling more “at home” with the British deaf community than the Italian deaf community because her “deaf identity was born here.” This placed her in the position of knowing BSL but not the sign language of her native country.

Another female migrant, Rosa, originally from Russia, had moved due to her father’s professional occupation. Although she had attended a deaf school in her country of origin, it was only in the United Kingdom that she began to learn sign language and search for her deaf identity. This theme is more common than might at first be imagined: The 30-minute documentary Found in the UK (Swinbourne, 2018b)³ showcases the stories of three deaf migrants who discovered sign language and deaf culture in the United Kingdom. It may be that this phenomenon is facilitated by the existence of an established network of deaf communities across London and the United Kingdom. There are longstanding LGBTQIA+ deaf groups,⁴ for example, and a variety of well-established meeting places such as deaf clubs and particular “deaf cafés” that deaf people can choose from.

We also note in our participants’ stories that some people are prevented from participating in deaf community spaces. In the case of marriage migration from India, the women moved into their new husband’s natal household and encountered various shifts of power—often in relation to their new mother-in-law. For example, Meera explained that her position as deaf, and as a migrant from India with high school qualifications as her highest educational attainment, placed her in a position where she had to take on the household responsibilities (see Chapter 10 for more details). This prevented her from participating in deaf spaces and from building up social and linguistic capital.

While making a new home in London, many migrants retained active links to their home nation and to other countries where they had lived. This could take many forms. The most common (although not during the coronavirus pandemic) was simply regularly returning to visit their family or partner; indeed, several participants had aspirations to return regularly, whether to buy property in their homeland, to undertake advocacy work with their deaf compatriots, or to consult family members for help with running or setting up a business in London. One woman from India had previously lived in the United States, and she often returned there for personal or business matters. That the importance of maintaining links to their country of origin was such a central theme highlights the way in which deaf people’s lives can often be seen through a translocal lens (see Chapter 9).

In studies of mainstream migration, a common feature is the tendency of some migrants to try to find various spaces of national, ethnic, and religious belonging within London, such as through attending a church or mosque (see Chapter 9), and to try to maintain linkages across transnational borders—for example, in the form of remittances (Joy et al., 2020; Kelly & Lusis, 2006). However, this was rarely evident in our fieldwork. The focus of the migrant narratives in our study was on what they experience in the host nation. Rosa, for example, had arrived in London from Russia not knowing anyone, and she decided to attend a mainstream church event relevant to her religious faith; however, communication barriers made this difficult. Kwame, a student in his 20s from West Africa, told us that he believed that it was his duty to attend church with people of a West African ethnicity, and this was the place he went to form connections with other deaf and hearing people when he first arrived in the United Kingdom to undertake a postgraduate course. However, he encountered what he referred to as jealousy from his peers: He believed them to be jealous that he had been able to obtain a scholarship to study in the United Kingdom and to move to London as a result. He found it hard to maintain friendships, and he encountered suspicion from deaf people at the church who believed that he had moved to the United Kingdom for marriage rather than to obtain a qualification and advance his career. As a result, he found it easier to make hearing friends at the church. Similarly, Meera had experienced a sense of jealousy from some British Indian women due to her marriage partnership with a desirable British Indian bachelor (“taken their man”) and her attainment of a desirable lifestyle. She found it more preferable to interact with hearing British Indian people in her residential area with whom she shared similar backgrounds, including class and ethnicity. This shows that people, including other migrants, may doubt others’ reasons for migrating and also that some forms of migration may be more prestigious than others.

Finally, there was some evidence of what was called “modern-day slavery” (used here, in line with the U.K.’s Modern Slavery Act of 2015, to mean “the recruitment, movement, harboring or receiving of children, women or men through the use of force, coercion, abuse of vulnerability, deception or other means for the purpose of exploitation,” as per Such & Salway, 2017) in relation to deaf migrants. This was highlighted by Samba and Lenka N. (from Sierra Leone and the Czech Republic, respectively; their stories feature in Finding Spaces to Belong) in an open webinar event, "Deaf Migration London," run by the MobileDeaf team via Zoom in 2020.⁵ Both Samba and Lenka have come across modern-day slavery in their respective work fields of the church and mental health services. They highlighted a form of migration that renders deaf people very vulnerable: deaf people being brought into the country (e.g., by relatives) and being forced to work for no pay. Samba knew of at least three cases, including one in which the deaf migrant had been claiming the benefits to which they were legally entitled, but they had not been receiving the money themselves; instead, it was being controlled by family or someone else close to them. Lenka shared another example:

A deaf young woman who is in her early 20s, who moved to the United Kingdom to be with her auntie and uncle because she was told that she would have better quality of education here. She attended school and then went to college. But she told the staff there that when she’s in the home she was actually sleeping in a cupboard under the stairs and she was being forced to work all hours. She had these really cramped quarters. She was deprived of food and because she was being hosted by her aunt and uncle, she thought it was normal. She had no idea that she was being abused in this way, so it was only when she mentioned this to college staff that they were able to intervene.

Lenka suggested that this issue requires more exposure and stated that it is something the deaf mental health support organization SignHealth is aware of and are working with the Home Office to address. Harrowing examples similar to those Lenka shared have been reported in the national media (Addley, 2012). Crucially, it is not only at an official level that this matter is being recognized. As Samba suggests, community also plays a role, because migrants may not find it easy to report the matter to the police and may be wary of going through official channels:

They don’t have any power and it makes you wonder what’s happening. They are really invisible. These are very difficult situations that they find themselves in […] But of course we can hopefully identify people through persistent communication, asking them out to the park or taking them to deaf events or football [soccer] and encouraging them to take part in life, and piecing together the information to work out what is going on in their lives.

This is another example of the crucial role of deaf spaces for supporting deaf migrants, and it also shows the need for people to advocate for vulnerable deaf migrants.

Employment and Class

Class is about power relations in society, and given that the initial focus of this project was on labor migration, and that the majority of deaf migrants we met had moved to the United Kingdom for work, had searched for work there, or were currently seeking work, class was hugely relevant to how they searched for or found employment. The deaf migrants in our study were seeking economic capital; however, as many examples have already illustrated, they were conscious of the need to acquire symbolic capital in its various forms too. Linguistic capital in the form of BSL was particularly marked. This is a language that can be learned over time, but not all deaf migrants will necessarily become fluent in BSL, which may limit the extent to which they can engage in and move within deaf fields.

When discussing employment, deaf migrants narrated a range of strategies and issues that were specifically related to their being deaf and a migrant. Lenka from the Czech Republic was anxious when applying for jobs in regard to her combined status as a foreign deaf person:

Sometimes, when I’ve applied for a job, I’m anxious about it as my name isn’t English and then to add that I’m deaf would be too much. So, I don’t put on the application form that I’m deaf. If I get on a shortlist, then offered an interview and asked if I have any special requirements, then I’ll tell them I need an interpreter. They may get a bit flustered but, by that stage, they can’t do anything. Well, they can actually, and it’s happened a lot. So, that’s problematic…

Deaf migrants, in common with deaf nonmigrants, sometimes deemphasize their status as a deaf person in job applications. This can be a difficult decision to make; sometimes emphasizing the status of being deaf can help one gain access to services, get employment in deaf-related jobs, or speed up the bureaucracy process. For example, deaf people are legally entitled to an interpreter at a job interview through the British government’s Access to Work scheme, but to obtain it, they must state that they are deaf on the application form. Additionally, some employers have “positive discrimination” policies in place, which guarantee an interview to a deaf person who meets the requirements in the job description. These and other employers may, unbeknown to the applicant, already have an interpreter or speech-to-text technology reserved for job interviews, particularly if the job is with a large company or one with a policy of ensuring provisions are already in place for deaf applicants and employees (see Napier et al., 2020, for recent research on deaf people’s experiences of employment in Britain).

Although deaf migrants have these experiences in common with British deaf people, they also discussed experiences that struck them as a migrant. Aisha, a deaf Indian woman who is a marriage migrant, shared her experience of frustration with the job application process in the United Kingdom, comparing it to applying for a job in India:

When applying for a job, you can’t physically go somewhere to apply—I was always being told to apply online and to make an appointment at a specific time on a specific date. You have to get permission for this by email, but in India you don’t need the email exchange, you can simply go somewhere and write notes, quickly getting to the point. The long waiting time in the electronic process here was difficult for me.

In India, Aisha could physically meet with an agent who would help her to find a job; she appreciated that this enabled her to get the face-to-face communication with which she feels comfortable. A direct approach suited her better because she could directly explain her situation as a deaf person, and the agent could adapt to her. The United Kingdom’s application system, in contrast, seemed cold and impersonal, with the obligation to apply online and the insistence on making appointments and receiving permission through email exchanges. In other words, job-seeking is a bureaucratic and labor-intensive process with long waiting times. Following the British approach, Aisha could be rejected for a job in a cursory manner without knowing the reasons behind the refusal. There is the added stress of having to write in English on a job application form or in an email to the prospective employer, whom she would never get to meet beforehand and to whom she would have no opportunity to showcase her initiative and flexibility. Hence, there are different cultural expectations with regard to the temporal aspects of migration (see Chapter 10) that deaf migrants in London have to negotiate or get used to, including in the process of applying for jobs.

We met many deaf migrants working in deaf fields. Francesca, from Italy, was employed as a deaf support worker at a mainstream college, having initially worked in many different occupations when she first arrived in London. Samba, from Sierra Leone, was well respected by his local church (where BSL events were organized) and worked there as a caretaker (see Chapter 9). Chris, from Burundi, was employed as a social worker working with deaf people, having migrated to London from Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya, 20 years previously. Hawa, from Somalia, worked in the deaf care sector. Charlotte, a young woman from Canada in her 20s, had moved to the United Kingdom to teach an American deaf parents’ child ASL, and she eventually found employment working in the arts. These, and many more examples, give credence to the assertion that deaf migrants become part of the fabric of deaf spaces to the extent that they are employed in these spaces. We regularly met migrants who had moved to the United Kingdom years ago and who were now working in occupations with other deaf people as tutors, social workers, or artists, or in business. There have been well-known deaf migrants who became vibrant “movers and shakers” within deaf spaces and beyond: Examples include Heroda and Hermon, deaf female twins in their 30s who are originally from Eritrea-Ethiopia, who are now renowned fashion bloggers.

Deaf migrants who worked with deaf people in their country of origin also experienced barriers getting employment in a similar field in the United Kingdom. Aisha’s attempt to enter the labor market was met with obstacles. Her bachelor of arts degree and experience working with deaf children had been discredited because they were not recognized by the British qualification system. She resorted to low-skilled employment while returning to education to acquire the essential qualifications (in Bourdieusian terms, to acquire cultural capital in the form of a recognized qualification) with which to get her foot in the door of the deaf education sector in the United Kingdom (see Chapter 8).

Cultural capital in the form of education was a key theme in the stories of other migrants, with emphasis on gaining qualifications that opened up job opportunities, whether with deaf people or generally, and for which they were grateful to the United Kingdom. Laura (Latvian), whose words were cited earlier, shared her experience:

I have qualifications, but could not find work because people only saw my deafness as a barrier and wouldn’t take me on. I found this very frustrating. When we moved here, I thought maybe I could try to find work here as the attitude might be better. I could see that here there are many deaf people who set up their own businesses, and these were very positive role models for me. I tried to find work with my qualifications, but found that they were not recognized here as they are European qualifications, not British ones. I was not deterred; I was patient and went back to study again. I now have my qualifications and can work in the United Kingdom, and am much happier […] Oh yes, last February I was invited to go to a prestigious fashion and sewing show in [Royal Castle], as I work in tailoring and dressmaking. I work in Savile Row. Thank you to Britain.

A central aspect in relation to employment is class as it relates to economic capital. The term class arose from the Enlightenment period of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and its nature and meaning have subsequently been strongly influenced by Marxists. Even though the concept may not be as well studied in the 21st century as it was in the 20th, it still attracts scholarly attention (Carter & Brook, 2021; Mattos, 2022) and remains influential among scholars like David Harvey and Noam Chomsky. Yet, class as an identity category is one that has been largely subsumed (or left out entirely) in Deaf Studies, notable exceptions being Ladd (2003), Robinson (2016), and Sommer Lindsay (2022). With very few exceptions (e.g., Ladd, 2003), the nuances of the term class have received no deep analysis in Deaf Studies, and indeed, it is rarely clarified at all (see Emery & Iyer, 2022). Although class did occasionally come up explicitly in our interviews and observations, this was extremely rare. One instance was the following extract taken from an interview with the tutor at City Lit who told us about a deaf man from Kuwait who had said to him that:

There are two different groups of people in Kuwait: the rich people, and those segregated living in a fenced-off compound full of housing. People in this lower class are really dismissed and don’t even have passports. I couldn’t believe his story. He said they didn’t have enough food, they can’t work and they are bottom of the heap. This man who came here escaped from that life with his brother, traveling through Turkey. They didn’t have a passport but had a special identity document.

Deaf migrants did not generally refer explicitly to themselves as coming from a particular class background. However, as we show below, it is still possible to categorize people by class, even if we only do so tentatively or strategically.

It is worth remembering why this categorization is taking place. Despite having been largely omitted from Deaf Studies scholarship, class continues to be commented on and researched in U.K. academia, and it is featured in considerations of intersectionality—that is, it is accepted that class relations and class positions are a significant intersection of people’s lives. Table 4.1 shows the working copy of a spreadsheet used by Steve during his observations, in which we have attempted to categorize those we met through our fieldwork, placing each into a respective “class” in relation to their job description. This is because a “class” of people is defined not by their salaries, or what or how much they own, but their relationship to production and ownership of capital, inherited or possessed.⁶ In line with the methodology used by the United Kingdom’s Social Mobility Commission (2021), we use three broad class categories: laborers (working class), professionals (middle class), and those forming an upper class. Our categorization is necessarily simplistic and observational, and it is illustrative of the whole field; it includes class categorizations for some hearing people who were present—whose data are not otherwise used in this subproject. We offer the caveat that our categorization is temporary and strategic, used to illustrate what is meant when we refer to “class” in the context of our study. We recognize the limitations of our study; our sample is far too small to be deemed empirical; our approach temporarily defers deeper analysis of issues such as the tensions that exist between classes; and, in our avoidance of treating class as the central, overarching power structuring wider society, our analysis is not strictly Marxist. Furthermore, we acknowledge that dividing our sample into more class categories—for example, lower and upper middle class, precariat, elite—could yield further sociological insights. However, we find the three provisional and strategic class categories sufficiently useful for this study because a deeper analysis of the meaning of class is beyond its scope.

Table 4.1. Copy of spreadsheet used by Steve during observations, to simplistically denote the class background of participants he met.

The first category, deaf laborers, contains those who use their labor purely to work for a wage. Good examples of this are Adrian, from Romania, and Fareed, from the Middle East, who both worked in the hospitality services sector. Adrian had arrived from Romania with no fixed guarantee of a place to stay. A hearing compatriot had provided him with the name of a hotel, and he traveled there to work and stay; he took this risk without any guarantees of employment. Fareed had become stranded in the United Kingdom on a longer migration journey (see Chapter 10), and he had been obliged to find work. They were both “selling their labor” in the traditional sense, in that they worked for an employer who paid them a regular wage at the end of the week or month. Adrian and Fareed had clear similarities to traditional working-class people who need to sell their labor to earn a living, with all the struggles that can often entail, but being migrants and of non-British ethnicity, they were at a disadvantage in the labor market and more liable to discrimination, especially in a contemporary neoliberalist labor market where precarious work situations are increasing, including zero-hours contracts. One deaf man in his 30s, originally from Albania, had been working undocumented for several years, and the threat of deportation by the U.K. state was ever-present for him. There are many common class experiences associated with this category, including feeling let down by the local job center, being bullied at work, and holding down several jobs, as well as a lack of insurance preventing the capacity to work at all; several of these were experienced by our participants.

The second category, deaf professionals and managers, overlaps with the first. As workers, professionals sell their labor too, but they have some degree of control over how they organize their work, or they have some supervisory duties and therefore have some privileges (in the labor sense) in comparison to the first category. For example, Lena, from Russia, worked in the information technology sector and had some supervisory responsibilities. Similarly, Katerina, also from Russia, whom we met tutoring at City Lit college, organizes her own workload and supervises deaf students; she may have a paid job, but she can be flexible in terms of the materials and activities she brings to the classroom. In fact, the majority of those interviewed could be deemed to be part of this class; for example, Luis (Guatemala), Emily (Canada), and Pedro (Brazil) were or had been students or travelers, studying or aiming to work in the arts or education sectors. Samba (Sierra Leone), Amar (Burundi), Francesca (Italy), and many more also had some leeway to organize and structure their work. A key point of concern common to this group of workers was whether they could obtain BSL interpreting provision to help them in their job, and whether Access to Work payments could be used to cover these costs.

The third category is the rarest and includes those who use and own capital, and/or employ people, to make profit. Shahina, a mobile woman from India (see Chapters 7–10 for her story), was one example because she ran her own business along with her family. She had more mobility and was at less risk of poverty than other participants. However, she also experienced barriers due to her deafness, gender, and ethnicity, and she was not able to make use of Access to Work provision due to her status as self-employed in a business based abroad. Another example of those we met in this category is of deaf people working in the cryptocurrency field. Care is needed in categorizing deaf people in this class, because those we interviewed or observed cannot, arguably, be placed in the same category as, say, an Elon Musk or a Bill Gates—that is, highly wealthy and powerful individuals. Yet, this category tends to include small business owners (or the petit bourgeoisie) who, in hearing society, are mainly men and overwhelmingly white, and whose mobility means they can jet with ease from one country to another. When Steve attended a large event encouraging people to invest in cryptocurrencies, one of the striking features was that it showcased successful investors, deaf and hearing, who had fallen on hard times in some way or who had experienced lifetime struggles with their mental health. This point is stressed to highlight how disability can be an intersection in class and employment.

We are treading carefully, mindful that class is an unexplored area in Deaf Studies, and further research, critiques, and discussions are welcome. Breaking down migrant experiences by class carries with it disadvantages. Migrant experiences are intersectional, for example, and factors such as ethnicity, gender, and disability play a crucial role; thus, any categorizing around class is intended to be temporary in the context of this study. Migrants, regardless of their class background, need to navigate a new environment that entails a different level of mobility. Also, how a deaf migrant navigates various deaf spaces and places in the field is not as simplistic as depending entirely on gaining capital in the form of, for example, knowledge of a language or a qualification. Seema, for example, held an established position in the fashion and design industry in her native India. Since arriving in the United Kingdom for marriage, however, she has had to start over in her skilled trade: making new contacts, advertising her abilities, and enrolling in a course at a further education institution. She needed to gain cultural capital in the form of qualifications and skills, but she also needed to network and learn to navigate the new fields in the United Kingdom that are related to her expertise. Shahina experienced a higher class status when traveling to India or the United States compared to when she was in London. This points to the complexity of the experience of class in relation to mobility. As they moved to London, the Indian marriage migrants entered a “middling” stage where they experienced uncertainty and precarity in their position—first, as they attempted to access resources and maintain their lifestyles, and second, as they moved through multiple social locations, social milieus, and economic situations (Robertson & Roberts, 2022).

We recognize that although there may not be evidence of class consciousness among deaf migrants, there may be a cultural consciousness. This is why a Bourdieusian framework is valuable when we think about class, albeit one that is not entirely without critique; we will address this later in the chapter.

Mapping Migrants’ Involvement in Deaf Spaces

We have mentioned how deaf migrants become part of the fabric of London deaf spaces in terms of employment. Becoming part of the deaf community can often be a long process. Many deaf migrants arrive with no idea of where they can find deaf spaces in the fields that constitute London, and they have minimal social, cultural, or even linguistic capital to navigate these fields. At the time of our research (2018–2022), there was no organization or group in the United Kingdom that specifically supports deaf migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees. London was thus lacking in having no obvious central place where deaf migrants can congregate, and deaf spaces (not specifically for migrants) are geographically dispersed across the capital. Despite this, many deaf migrants have been successful in connecting with deaf networks in London. In 2023, Steve and Sanchu were invited to present their research at a workshop event hosted by the University College London in which 10 migrants from different countries took part (Woolfe et al., 2023). Following the event, the migrants present were invited to be part of the London Assembly “Migrant Londoners Hub” to support future planning and developments.

Migrant deaf people found deaf spaces in a number of different ways. Hawa (Somalia), for example, was visited by a deaf male teacher from her day college who taught her some BSL signs and encouraged her to visit the deaf center in Harrow; she did this, and from that point she became more involved. When Chris arrived in the United Kingdom from Kakuma Refugee Camp, he was supported by the UN’s Red Cross. He asked his hearing contact for information about where he could go to meet deaf people, and he was told about City Lit college (see Chapters 7 and 8). He went there to learn BSL and found that he had to start completely from scratch because his language was ASL; by continuing to learn BSL at City Lit, and also at another mainstream college, he met deaf people in London from then on. However, it was the internet that was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the most prominent place through which to find information and knowledge on where to go and what to do. Luis, a young man from Guatemala/Portugal (and a participant in Finding Spaces to Belong), cited his use of social media as a means to find out where deaf people met. Adrian, from Romania, had used Facebook to make friendships and find out information about London before he arrived, and Lena, from Russia, tried to set up a Facebook group in an attempt to make friends. There were numerous other examples.

In order to study how and where deaf migrants take part in deaf spaces, we engaged in a mapping exercise, noting where we encountered deaf migrants. The spaces we visited were mainly generic rather than migrant related. Each service was for British deaf people too, and each event was managed mainly by deaf, but sometimes hearing, volunteers and/or development workers—some of whom were migrants themselves. The activities taking place included viewing films; playing sports or other games, including bingo; betting on horse races; and artistic performances, including music. Two were places intended for the activity of learning: one for learning English and the other for learning BSL (albeit aimed at hearing people, but these places were also attended by deaf migrants). By far, the most significant activity was attending a presentation of some sort, whether about dementia, Access to Work funding, Brexit, the MobileDeaf project, racism, Islam, or the Somalia and Somaliland communities in London and abroad. These became spaces where information could be shared and passed on, and where people learned about other countries and cultures through discussing their experiences (see Chapter 7).

Most of these spaces provided a bar; some were held where café drinks and food could be purchased, and at others, soft drinks and snacks were provided for sale or for free by the organizers. For the larger events, free Indian vegetarian food was on offer. The wide range of activities and the provision of food and drink reflects the “everyday” nature of these events, in that these were proactive and vibrant spaces offering a variety of activities to attract deaf people, including deaf migrants. For migrants, these were places where the habitus will feel somewhat familiar because (nearly) everyone is deaf and is using sign language; these were also spaces, particularly for new migrants, where they had the opportunity to build on their social and cultural capital and to learn how to navigate fields in the United Kingdom. These spaces were thus vital knowledge exchange hubs for deaf people, a trope that is familiar in Deaf Studies (see Chapter 7). In other words, they catered to people who were hungry for information as well as for fun, friendships, and relationships. Examples of conversations observed during these events included deaf migrants asking where they could learn BSL, how they could obtain U.K. residency status, how to pass their driving test, where to go out—and, of course, how to find work.

The map of deaf spaces participated in by deaf migrants (Figure 4.1) was created as the result of 44 observations at 23 locations, making a “snapshot” of the year 2018. The majority of locations were meeting places for deaf people, with the exception of two events for deaf and disabled people (the “Brexit and You” and Somaliland events); one was a nation-themed event (Somalia), and one was a business-themed event (cryptocurrency). Two took place in spiritual or religious spaces, one being a Hare Krishna event and the other at a mosque. Most of these occasions were attended by a large number of deaf people. We categorize the 23 locations as follows:

•Two are traditionally rooted deaf spaces, permanent buildings for the use of deaf people (Saint John’s Deaf Club; the Jewish Deaf Association)

•Thirteen are mainstream deaf spaces, permanent established buildings that deaf people frequent (e.g., City Lit college, the Shakespeare’s Head pub in Holborn, the “deaf cafés” at Redbridge or Starbucks in central London; several observations shared in this book took place in these locations)

•Eight are temporal deaf spaces, for example, a one-off event, or the same event being held at a different place in the city (e.g., Beckton Deaf Club and Deaf Rave)

Figure 4.1. The map we used to mark places visited for fieldwork. Map data @2022 Google.

We estimate that we met deaf people of 44 nationalities in this mapping exercise; however, this figure should be taken as a minimum. Migrants were present in the spaces but were generally in a minority. Between January and April 2018, Steve estimates that a total of 360 people were present across all the observed places, of whom 32 were migrants; this means that for every 23 people observed, at least two were migrants. This summarizes just 4 months of observations across the vast metropolis of London, and it highlights the mobility of migrants across the capital city. The migrant figure is a minimum because it pertains to those we knew were migrants in these spaces—because, for example, the contact person we had communicated with pointed them out to us. Participants who were interviewed were often witnessed at these locations, and sometimes we recruited individuals to take part in the interviews during the observation stages of the project.

Of the 23 locations, we suggest (based on our observations and discussions with those present) that only seven (roughly one-third) could be considered truly local spaces—that is, places that are mainly attended by people who live locally. This observation is crucial because it provides compelling evidence that, for deaf migrants, their place of community belonging, or “home,” in London is geographically variable rather than geographically rooted. With regard to the nature of the mobility of deaf people, it is rare that they live their lives almost entirely within a localized geographical boundary. Researchers studying deaf migrants’ experience of living only in the London borough of Hackney, for example, would be limited because deaf people’s social lives beyond Hackney are likely to be extensive. Deaf people receive a free travel pass, enabling travel all over London, whereas hearing residents may be restricted from traveling across the city due to high transport costs. The fact that two-thirds of the spaces we recorded in London are not considered “local” in a geographically bounded sense reflects how the concept of “scale” (as highlighted in Chapter 1 of this book) is crucial for visualizing the lives of deaf migrants—that is, as highly mobile, almost diasporic in nature (Emery, 2015). Note, however, that deaf migrants also do socialize in localized ways, such as Indian female migrants meeting in Indian neighborhoods (see Chapter 9).

We suggest that what we have observed can best be understood as an encapsulation of migrant lives in London. The places on the map we have drawn may not always remain deaf spaces, host deaf spaces, or even exist at all in the future. The deaf spaces within the field that we frequented tended to be precarious or under threat, and this issue is explored in more detail in Chapter 7, where we look more closely at networks. Additionally, there are many more places we could have visited than those we observed, as is apparent from the Facebook page “Deaf UK Socials.” We did not visit spaces frequented by deaf LGBTQIA+ people, although we did meet migrant deaf people who identified with this community and were aware that these spaces existed (see Chapter 9). There are many other examples of fields that are an important part of the landscape of deaf lives but that are not included in this study: deafblind groups, friendship groups that migrants may become part of, places where migrants of a particular nationality meet (a migrant from Nepal and another from Somalia told Steve that deaf people from these nations meet regularly socially), migrants working within mental health services, and sport events such as football (soccer) matches.

London deaf schools (e.g., Frank Barnes, Oak Lodge) are not mapped, specifically because we could not ethically include anyone younger than age 18 in the research project. However, we know that there are deaf migrant young people at these places (see Oktar, 2019). Sanchayeeta had worked at Oak Lodge School for more than 6 years; during that time, the majority of the students were from migrant families (mostly from Africa and Bangladesh), and most of the deaf students were migrants themselves. Some of these students had not attended school prior to joining this secondary school, and they were first exposed to sign language there. This is a common pattern in relation to migration and deaf children (Oktar, 2019). Deaf schools, along with deaf clubs, have long been in decline, but we recognize their ongoing value and importance as vital, traditionally rooted places for the nurturing of sign language and deaf culture.

Migrants Experiencing Discrimination in Deaf Spaces

Despite their presence in deaf spaces across the city, many deaf migrants experienced difficulties “integrating” in the deaf community (especially during the pandemic; see Chapter 10). Several female migrants felt unsafe at deaf spaces due to the behavior of men, and female migrants avoided spaces where alcohol was served. We were also struck by the isolation that many reported feeling, including feeling culturally less respected in the United Kingdom and living on the outskirts of London with little opportunity to meet other deaf people or go to deaf events. We discuss some of the experiences regarding (lack of) belonging in deaf spaces in Chapter 9. In this section, we focus on xenophobia and racism, demonstrating that these—especially racism—were consistent themes not only in institutional contexts and in relation to hearing people but also at the grassroots level and among deaf people.

In terms of xenophobia, from our observations, the migrants we communicated with were generally not fully aware of the discourse around the “hostile environment” in the United Kingdom. This is probably partially due to not having full access to media coverage of this issue—that is, because of their limited English. Thus, they may not be aware that they are being discriminated against due to their migrant status. Also, deaf migrants from outside the EU might not necessarily have seen Brexit and the “hostile environment” (at the time, directed primarily toward EU workers) as affecting their lives, as compared to hearing migrants who would be able to hear negative remarks being made around them and would receive abuse based on their accented English.

A notable example of experiencing xenophobia comes from Lenka, a white European woman, who was able to overhear what people around her were saying in a way that many deaf people would not. She challenged the xenophobia she heard expressed when she was on a train one day:

A family was sitting opposite me, eating burgers. I was looking at my phone, as deaf people usually do. I didn’t know the people opposite me. My friend was sitting next to me and we were chatting in Czech. It was time for my friend to get off the train, so I said goodbye to them, and they left. The next thing that happened was I noticed one of the people opposite saying “Bloody foreigners. They come here and take over.” I wasn’t sure if they were referring to me. Anyway, I said nothing, ignored it and continued looking at my phone. They continued their discussion until I felt I had had enough. So, I stood up and I asked them “Can you tell me how many languages you all speak?” and I also asked them what school qualifications they had. When I found out they claimed benefits, I told them that since the time I arrived in the country, I have never claimed benefits and worked hard to pay off university fees and my mortgage. I work and pay my bills. I’ve never even had a loan. I contribute to this society, so how could they tell me that I was a “bloody foreigner.” I advised them to think twice before speaking because what they said was very offensive. They were so shocked that one of them dropped their burger. I told them that I was proud to be a foreigner, then I walked off.

Additionally, some deaf migrants may also feel sheltered from xenophobia by the deaf community. For example, Francesca, from Italy, did not feel affected by xenophobia because she felt she had a strong attachment to the deaf community in London. She had seen some of her friends experiencing xenophobic abuse, and she felt lucky to be sheltered by the community (and, at the time of the interview, her British hearing white partner).

Until 2015, racism was not a subject that had had much exposure, discussion, or debate within Deaf Studies in the United Kingdom. James and Woll (2004) highlighted empirical evidence of racism in deaf spaces in the United Kingdom in the early 2000s, although interestingly, they state the study was “outside London” (p. 198), within deaf clubs, and the racist views were expressed by older generations. James and Woll (2004) stated that Asian and Jewish deaf groups “also slighted Black people” (p. 199), an issue that is beyond the scope of this study but which the authors conclude is evidence of “Deaf apartheid” (p. 199) and requires deep, wide-ranging further research. Studies on the subject of racism go back much further in the United States, with the first U.S.-born black deaf person to receive a doctorate, Glenn B. Anderson, coauthoring Racism Within the Deaf Community (Anderson & Bowe, 1972). Although a large number of publications on the experience of black deaf Americans followed, these do not seem to have included the experiences of black migrants. Similarly, discrimination and racism toward migrants more generally have been documented (Fernández-Reino, 2020; Quinn, 2013; Rzepnikowska, 2019), but the extent to which it pervades deaf spaces is less researched. It is for these reasons that, as part of the research process, we collaborated with the 888 Club (a monthly cinema club for deaf people held at the Stratford Picturehouse in East London) to publicly show Rinkoo Barpaga’s documentary Double Discrimination (Barpaga, 2014).⁷ The film explores the subject of racism in the British deaf community, examining whether it existed and, if so, to what extent. We invited Barpaga to give a presentation about his film and run a question-and-answer discussion after the film showing. Before showing Barpaga’s film, we held a short presentation about the MobileDeaf project in the lobby of the cinema and invited people present to share their experiences of migration. We filmed this discussion, and it has formed part of our research findings. One of the most vivid accounts of racial discrimination was given by Sarla, a woman of Indian heritage in her early 50s, and her deaf brothers. Their parents had come to the United Kingdom when she was still a baby:

[My two brothers went to] Oak Lodge School, which in 1966 had a lot of racism. My brothers had their hair pulled and were told they smelled, and the teachers wrote home to tell my father to cut their hair; they had no idea what was happening or why. They were constantly teased and bullied […] I went to a deaf school in Fulham […] but the teacher there said I didn’t suit a deaf school and sent me to a mainstream school. The mainstream school was even worse! I was targeted because I was Asian, deaf, and used sign language! I had to lipread there. I didn’t understand why they called me “Paki”—my family are from India, not Pakistan! They told me I smelled of curry. The worst thing was this duplication of discrimination: being deaf as well as Asian. They used to say, what have you come here for? Are you an illegal immigrant? But they didn’t know about the history of the British Empire welcoming Indians to come here.

Sarla’s story highlights the intersectional nature of her experiences as an Asian British deaf woman, in addition to the racism experienced at a deaf school and the combined experience of micro- and macroaggressions. In Double Discrimination, deaf people from ethnic minorities share similar experiences of racism, although it is important to note that migrant deaf people did not feature in the film—symptomatic of the pattern we noticed in the literature on deaf people from ethnic minorities.

At the event, Barpaga stated: “I wanted to get to grips with what I was finding in the deaf community, and when I started doing this, many people in the deaf community did not believe that there was racism in the deaf community.” The film discussion took place in 2018, prior to the explosion of activities around the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the United Kingdom, and it should be understood in that context. BLM as a movement had been well established in the United States since 2013, and the first formal U.K. BLM movement emerged in 2016 following police racism and the Brexit referendum; however, it was only with the worldwide protests against the killing of George Floyd in the United States in 2020 that BLM reached wider recognition. At the film discussion, Barpaga stated that although Double Discrimination had stimulated much open debate in Chile, Italy, and Spain since its release in 2014, the MobileDeaf/888 Club screening—which took place in 2018—was the first time there had been a public discussion of it in the United Kingdom.

We want to stress that we are aware that there have been discussions and debates in the United Kingdom by activists within deaf black and ethnic minority communities since well before the BLM movement began, and much of which will not have been documented in academia. Since we finished our fieldwork, Black Deaf UK was established (in 2020), and this organization may well include and involve deaf migrants. However, this material is beyond the scope of the book. As we highlighted previously, post–Second World War discussions of racism started to be included in Deaf Studies academic discourse in the United States as far back as the 1970s (Anderson & Bowe, 1972); the United Kingdom has lagged behind. Barpaga stated that the initial reaction to the film in Britain was a reluctance to admit racism even existed in the United Kingdom but that gradually there was some acceptance that it did. The event included a discussion around what signs should be used for the term black. Barpaga, a working-class man born to Punjabi parents and who grew up in Birmingham, stressed that racism took place on different levels and that there could be linguistic racism and/or attitudinal racism at play. He also referred to the historical roots of British colonization and how previous generations of his family had been forcibly moved out of Africa. Note that he addressed migration within the larger time frame of colonialism, situating the migration found in the family histories of people who have been born in the United Kingdom:

My family was from a part of the world colonized by the British Empire, in my case forcibly removed from Africa. We were supporting the British, helping them in war, and we had a huge involvement in British history, and then I thought to myself, “right, now that I know this history, I can challenge and fight back against these comments.” So I think that immigrants have to find a way to respond and maybe they are in too weak a position to do so.

In response to a question from an audience member as to whether racism was being “swept under the carpet,” Barpaga suggested that in the making of his film, “deaf people weren’t ready to talk about racism. A lot of deaf people who had experienced racism were really uncomfortable, saying ‘we’re fine’ […] [or] ‘latterly it has got better.’” Similarly, in our research, there appeared to be a reluctance to elaborate on experiences of racism, especially to Steve—probably influenced by his status as a white British man (see Chapter 2). Often, the question was answered quickly—again, likely due to the participant feeling the need to provide positive representations of life in the United Kingdom. For example, when Hawa, who had migrated from East Africa with her family when she was a teenager, was asked if she had experienced racism, she stated “I have experienced plenty of what you have described” before quickly stressing that she enjoys meeting people “and the attitudes are good.” There was a similar refrain in other interviews. A typical pattern was that interviewees stressed that any racism and prejudice was more the result of ignorance than, say, deliberate actions intended to flame racial tensions within deaf communities.

Nonetheless, racism was a theme that arose consistently throughout our study. There were the experiences of migrants who had faced violence. These instances and experiences were shared with us very briefly and sensitively, so it was difficult to follow up on them without potentially causing distress; however, due to the fact that we were coming across many such narratives, we concluded that they are clearly happening regularly and require addressing by deaf communities in the United Kingdom. Some examples are given here. We learned of the suicide of a deaf migrant. Another deaf migrant had left the country because of being fed up with “being picked on.” Another migrant, an African man, had been threatened with a knife by a white deaf person when he was a young man. At the time of research, there was also a Facebook group called “UK Deaf Britannia” that posted highly inflammatory Islamophobic comments, ostensibly under the guise of being supportive of Brexit. Despite many complaints to Facebook, this group remained active, although at the time of writing (2023) it appears to have been deactivated. The views expressed by the group were constantly and persistently challenged, with deaf people regularly being expelled from the group for challenging the racism that the moderators did nothing to curtail.

Racism (and, indeed, xenophobia and Islamophobia) can exist in the form of microaggressions. Amare, a woman in her 30s from India who had also spent many years in the United States, stated that “some people when they found out I had not long arrived in the United Kingdom, they would just walk off and not try to communicate with me.” She elaborated:

When first meeting someone, they might not engage with me because they would see me as different. I would have to reassure them; others would be very direct with me, but I always had to respond with patience and stay calm. Yes, there is racism in the United Kingdom; for example, they would ask me “where are you from?” […] Sometimes they were very direct about it, and would ask why I came here […] So yes, there was a lot of that definitely.

These are examples of “racial microaggressions,” a term first coined by Pierce in 1970 and which has been further developed through empirical research by Sue et al. (2007) and others. This racism is mainly hidden and covert, but the daily experience of this form of racism accumulates and impacts the feeling of black and ethnic minority people that they are marginalized by a majority white society. Additionally, racism and xenophobia were often combined, such as in comments like “Where are you from?” being targeted at black and brown people, and are often difficult to disentangle. This is a newer manifestation of racism in society, as Delanty et al. (2008) write:

The “new” racism differs from the older kinds in that it is not expressed in overtly racist terms or in the terms of neo-fascist discourse, for instance by some notion of biological or racial superiority, white supremacism or skin colour. Instead, the repertoires of justification that are typically employed use social characteristics (for example, protecting jobs, concern about welfare benefits) or cultural incompatibilities or differences (migrants lack “cultural competences,” “they do not want to integrate,” they are not “tolerant”). The new racism exploits established xenophobic frames (fear of the other), ethnocentrism, masculinities and “ordinary” prejudices in subtle ways and often, too, in ways that are unconscious or routinized. (p. 2)

Xenophobia and racism often overlap, and also intersect with Islamophobia. Islamophobia, or anti-Muslim sentiment, is one form of discrimination, exclusion, and oppression that Muslim communities, including deaf Muslim migrants, are subjected to in the United Kingdom. Since the attack on the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in New York (9/11), hate crimes toward Muslim communities have multiplied, especially toward Muslim women (Allen et al., 2013). Muslim women serve as a visual identifier of Islam due to Islamic attire such as hijab and niqab; for oppressors, these symbols represent “Muslimness” (or perceived Muslimness) and Muslim identity in a way that is viewed as “other” and thus as synonymous with anti-Britishness (Allen et al., 2013). All Muslims have arguably been branded an extremist group, with differentiation between Muslims ignored. Discourse has arisen over the definition of Islamophobia and whether it should be seen as a form of racism. Yet, Islamophobia is rooted in racism. The function and processes of racism and Islamophobia are similar, with Muslim women being targeted due to their visibility (Allen et al., 2013; also, see Bonnett, 2022, for further information on different forms of racism linked with modernity).

At the time of writing, there has been a growing public awareness of racism due to the BLM movement. Black and ethnic minority deaf people have come to the fore to challenge white privilege and power within deaf communities, including within Deaf Studies academia. It is in this historical moment that the black deaf community has been able to find the platform to share its experiences of exclusion and marginalization at the hands of the dominant deaf community, something that Barpaga’s film could not impact to the same extent. Following the arrival of the BLM era, deaf organizations and institutions (often led by white people) invited well-known black deaf figures within the United Kingdom’s deaf communities (including those who had migrated there as a child) to participate in discussions about racism in British deaf communities, which took place online during the pandemic (and which the black deaf community felt were long overdue). One of the main issues identified by Black Deaf UK is that there is a lack of awareness of black history, culture, and identity, and thus there is a need for education to fill this gap in order for the community to be active in challenging systemic racism in the United Kingdom. However, little had been discussed about experiences of discrimination related to how race and ethnicity intersect with migration status. As mentioned previously, some of the well-known black deaf figures who had migrated to the United Kingdom as children had not mentioned or shared their experiences of discrimination as a black migrant. We find this intriguing, and we put forward the suggestion that prioritizing blackness as political identity within black deaf communities could be due to concerns that a recognition of the very diversity of race would be of advantage to white supremacy, and in the process dilute black deaf people’s efforts toward equality and dignity.

Conclusion and Discussion

Our focus in this chapter has been to bring to life the experiences of deaf migrants living in London and to highlight the most common themes we encountered, all the while recognizing the impacts of our positionality as researchers. We have, in our analysis, attempted to cover a wide range of experiences from deaf migrants from all over the world. We were particularly focused on factors of class, race, and gender, and we recognize that there are many intersectional dimensions missing from this chapter, such as the experiences of deafdisabled, deafblind, deaf transgender, and deaf queer migrants (see Chapter 9 for a few examples of some intersectional experiences).

However, given that ethnographical, anthropological, and sociological approaches to deaf migration are newly emerging, our research provides a base from which to explore the subject further. There are also implications here for social policy. In our study and data collection, that is, through exploring the narratives that deaf migrants shared with us, we confirmed that migrant deaf people do experience adverse social exclusion, and we have expanded this narrative by addressing wider issues such as racism and xenophobia. However, an overemphasis on adverse experiences risks missing or neglecting the informal networks that exist, and hence underplaying the way migrants often demonstrate, or negotiate, agency. Recognizing how deaf migrants become part of the fabric of deaf communities throughout the United Kingdom is crucial, not only for the purposes of epistemology but also for social policy. Deaf migrants often have to face and confront racism and xenophobia from within deaf communities, but, as Barparga has been instrumental in highlighting, this subject has not been addressed. The formation of Black Deaf UK (2020) will surely go some way to addressing the issues facing deaf black and brown people in the United Kingdom. The implication of this analysis for social policy, therefore, is a question of how (overwhelmingly white) deaf organizations address and challenge racism from within their ranks. Similarly, regarding deaf women from South Asia who are excluded from deaf spaces due to the assumptions and expectations placed on them after their marriage and arrival in the country, the question must be: What can deaf groups or organizations do to raise awareness of these issues and support the empowerment of deaf migrant women in the United Kingdom?

What deaf organizations emphatically should not do is fall into the practice of misusing funds. We became aware of implicit discussions circulating within various deaf groups in London about the use of deaf migrants for financial gain by certain deaf organizations. This was elaborated on by Shahina, who had worked with a deaf organization where Access to Work funding was used to provide her with an interpreter for certain aspects of her role. Having previously lived and worked in the United States, Shahina had the social and cultural capital to know how an interpreter should be used both effectively and appropriately. At this organization, however, she was surprised to find that the “interpreter” they had employed was not qualified and was treated as though assigned to the organization as a whole rather than to Shahina as an individual. Shahina tapped into her new network of British deaf people (which she had developed through her previous volunteer work with another deaf organization), seeking information about how Access to Work should be used correctly; the information she obtained led her to realize that the organization was misusing the funds. Deaf migrants who are new to the United Kingdom and unfamiliar with the benefits system for deaf and disabled people can be easily manipulated by such organizations, which take advantage of their ignorance to deprive them of the qualified professional support they are entitled to, essentially using the Access to Work funding in lieu of paying the salary of an additional member of office staff. As a result, the deaf migrant is unwittingly implicated in benefit fraud. Shahina used the social and cultural capital at her disposal to assess the situation at work and to advocate for herself and her Access to Work entitlement as a deaf or disabled employee, reporting the misuse of funds to ensure that she was protected.

Shahina’s social and cultural capital gave her agency in a potentially disempowering situation; her experience highlights that the converse is also true and that another migrant in the same position but without her prior knowledge and networks might not have been in a position to exhibit similar agency. Those we interviewed and observed throughout the subproject included deaf migrants who were teachers, social workers, and church leaders, and we know of others who are a vital part of mental health support networks—that is to say, migrants who have demonstrated agency to arrive at their position in society and who also come face to face with migrants who do not experience agency. The majority of literature and research surrounding deaf migration is heavy on the latter but not so much on the former, and in this study, expanding the narrative highlights how agency might be acquired: through support and provision for deaf spaces (the lack of deaf-led and owned deaf centers in the capital is a particular worry); through accessibility and awareness in deaf spaces (challenging racism and Islamophobia); through flexibility in employment recruitment practices (e.g., deaf migrants should be able to apply for jobs through an informal application process); through robust and ongoing support through education (City Lit classes, for example); and through mental health support services and in churches and secular spaces.

Where we have approached our subject with a theoretical lens, we have chiefly used Bourdieu’s capital-field-habitus framework. This framework has proved highly useful and relevant, although we have barely skimmed the surface of what this frame can offer. We were able to identify the various forms of capital that migrants possess or come to acquire, and we could label the fields through which they navigated, but identifying habitus and showing how it works in relation to the field and capital proved more complex. The indications for using a Bourdieusian framework are, however, positive. We also attempted to analyze the data by categorizing migrant people by class, albeit tentatively. Although we found it was possible to do so, we saw that we could do so only temporarily, not least due to the fact that we found migrant narratives rarely covered class and are dominated by issues relating to deaf experience, gender, ethnicity, and, to a lesser extent, sexuality. Nevertheless, because we researchers wore a class lens at times, it was important for us to elaborate and clarify what we meant by class, and we trust this has been achieved to some extent.

Deaf studies academia has, we believe, badly underperformed in studying how racism and discrimination are being tackled in deaf communities and, even though discrimination is not only migrant-specific, there were some overlaps in our research when we asked people about it. As discussed in Chapter 2, there is also evidence that people were more open to sharing experiences with a person from the same or similar background (Sanchayeeta), in comparison to being asked by a white male researcher (Steve). However, Deaf Studies academia in the United Kingdom remains highly dominated by white people; it should therefore come as no surprise that it has lately been called “White Deaf Studies” by those seeking to call out this reality. We were heartened to learn that Gallaudet University has established the first Black Deaf Studies conference, and we have high hopes that this study contributes to opening up academia to deaf people of color and highlights the value of the visibility of migrant deaf people.

Finally, although we see a growing focus on intersectionality in Deaf Studies, the topic of migration is almost absent from these discussions. We also needed to distinguish between people from ethnic minority backgrounds. There are differences between, for example, British deaf people from ethnic minorities, and deaf migrants from ethnic minorities. The experiences of deaf migrants from ethnic minorities are often made invisible within studies of the experiences of deaf ethnic minorities. We hope to have addressed this imbalance to an extent and, in this conclusion, demonstrated the importance and relevance of this study to social policy as well as epistemology. It is, therefore, particularly useful research for deaf communities in London and the United Kingdom, where organizations, policymakers, activists, and academics are striving to support deaf migrants, be they asylum seekers, refugees, or those who have moved to seek employment, a better life, marriage, or to study.

1. https://vimeo.com/854367099#t=10m41s

2. See https://vimeo.com/447619481

3. https://www.bslzone.co.uk/watch/found-uk

4. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, and +. The “+” refers to other sexual identities, including pansexual, asexual, and omnisexual people, who are recognized as not identifying as straight and/or cisgender. Our definition is the result of consulting multiple references, but it is largely drawn from the definition in use at the United Kingdom’s Pink News (Bloodworth, 2019).

5. https://mobiledeaf.org.uk/presentations/deaf-migration-london

6. Britannica online, “social class.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/social-class

7. https://www.bslzone.co.uk/watch/zoom-focus-2014-double-discrimination