PINAR Aksu has had a better insight than most into the lives of people who go through Britain’s asylum system.
Since 2017, she has worked for Maryhill Integration Network (MIN), a charity in the north of Glasgow which helps bring together refugees, asylum seekers, migrants and locals together.
In this time, Aksu has seen global turmoil play out in the streets of her home city, from the influx of Syrian refugees as Isis swept the country and the bewildering upheavals caused by Covid, to the rise of the far-right in the post-pandemic era.
Aksu's work has been focused on helping new arrivals adjust to their adopted homes and fostering cohesion between these communities and those native to Scotland.
She will not say that this has become more difficult – while acknowledging the impact of policies like hotel accommodation and the rise of the far-right – but that this task is “changing”.
The PhD student, who left her job with MIN for a post at Glasgow University earlier this month, told The National: “Communities are resilient. Obviously, the far right is getting smarter, but that’s why we need to find a common ground.”
One thing most people can agree on, said Aksu, is that housing asylum seekers in hotels is a bad idea. Her objections, which are widespread throughout the migrants’ rights movement, are not based on bigoted beliefs that asylum seekers are living the high-life at the taxpayers’ expense – but the opposite.
She only found out that people were being moved out of their homes during lockdown as she messaged people receiving food parcels from MIN, only to discover that the deliveries would not meet their recipients because they had been unceremoniously moved into hotels.
This was the beginning of an issue that would lead to anti-migration protests across the UK, which found their bleakest expression in far-right riots in England last year.
Back in lockdown, upheaval would turn rapidly into tragedy. First came the death of Adnan Olbeh, an asylum seeker who died in a hotel in Glasgow city centre in May 2020.
Aksu described a maddening encounter when she tried to lay flowers for the 30-year-old Syrian only for a member of the hotel’s staff to promptly bin them. She was undeterred, she said, and laid another tribute for him.
Among the most distressing aspects of Olbeh’s death was the lack of information, said Aksu. She had heard on the grapevine that someone had died at the hotel and nothing further.
“Nobody knew about it, somebody died, and that’s it,” she said.
Then in June came the Park Inn hotel stabbings. Badreddin Abadlla Adam, an asylum seeker from Sudan (which remains in the grips of a brutal civil war), stabbed six people – three asylum seekers, two members of staff, and a police officer – before he was shot dead by a police marksman.
This incident is unfinished business for Aksu, who is still calling for a fatal accident inquiry into Abadlla Adam’s shooting. As we speak outside Glasgow University’s St Andrew’s Building on a overcast August morning, she frets about how to represent his family, who she says remain in Sudan.
She is clear that the blame for rising anti-immigrant sentiment in the UK lies primarily with the people in charge, but said that people’s anger was being misdirected.
“When local authorities fail to engage with the people or listen to them, that’s where the far-right will come in,” she said.
“If you say, ‘I’m just a concerned citizen, I’m not racist’ – go and do the protest outside the city council, go and do it outside somewhere with power.”
All this said, Aksu is not leaving MIN without achievements.
She is particularly proud of her involvement with the successful campaign to allow refugees the right to vote, which has been implemented in Scottish Parliament and local elections after lobbying from MIN and others.
Also on the list of wins were the campaign to get free bus travel for asylum seekers – who are forced to live on as little as £9.95 a week – which the Scottish Government has committed to reintroducing from next year, and the campaign to get free university tuition for refugees.
Aksu noted with some regret that the campaign to give asylum seekers the right to work remains unsuccessful so far, but said she had given it her all. “I’ve used all my creativity and all my energy – we even produced a song,” she said.
“Sometimes my friends say that I need to chill out,” said Aksu as we neared the end of our interview. Her departure from MIN may suggest that is just what she intends to do – but spend an hour in her company and Aksu’s burning desire to better the lives of migrants utterly dispels any notion she will be taking it easy.
