By 2023, the UK Home Office reported over 175,000 pending asylum applications. This backlog reflects a complex process. It can delay integration through various mechanisms (Home Office, 2023). Housing and accommodation are central to this broader labyrinth. They serve as a key expression of “biopolitics”—the governance of populations as living bodies (Foucault, 1978). The Bibby Stockholm barge and the Rwanda deportation scheme extend this housing-driven exclusion. They place asylum seekers beyond the physical and metaphorical bounds of UK land. This article draws on qualitative insights (Nikeaateghad, AAC0039) to explore settlement practices for asylum seekers. These practices under the Home Office has constructed a maze for granting settlement for asylum seekers. This is a maze of biopolitical marginalisation. In this maze, refugee status emerges only after prolonged uncertainty.
The Labyrinth of Asylum: Delay as Biopolitical Strategy
The Home Office’s asylum process has systemic delays. There are over 175,000 applications pending by 2023. This includes more than 11,000 Iranian claims from the pre-June 2022 “legacy backlog” (Home Office, 2023). Average wait times for initial decisions span 18 to 24 months, often extending further (Refugee Council, 2023). This is not administrative inefficiency but a biopolitical tactic, regulating who may claim belonging and under what conditions. Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, articulated in The History of Sexuality, posits that modern states govern through the management of life itself—sorting populations into categories of inclusion or exclusion (Foucault, 1978, p. 139). Asylum seekers, subsisting on £9.58 weekly allowances (Home Office, 2024), are reduced to bare existence, their lives suspended in a bureaucratic maze.
This delay serves a disciplinary function, aligning with Foucault’s analysis of power as productive rather than merely repressive (Foucault, 1977). The Home Office holds asylum seekers in limbo. They are neither citizens nor deportees. This allows the Home Office to assert control over their spatial and temporal existence. It dictates their access to resources and mobility. The labyrinth, then, is not a passive structure. It is an active mechanism of exclusion. It marks all asylum seekers as outlanders until they prove their legitimacy.
Bibby Stockholm: A Symbol of Territorial Exclusion
The Bibby Stockholm barge, operational from July 2023 to November 2024, exemplifies this exclusionary logic. It was moored 200 meters off Portland, Dorset. It housed up to 500 single male asylum seekers, predominantly from Iran, Afghanistan, and Eritrea. The cost exceeded £22 million (Home Office, 2024). Far from a pragmatic solution to hotel overcrowding, its offshore location symbolised a refusal of territorial belonging. Residents faced stringent oversight—security screenings, curfews, and shared cabins—conditions that eroded autonomy (The Guardian, 2023b). Health crises were prevalent. This included a Legionella outbreak. A reported suicide in December 2023 further underscored the precarity of this arrangement (BBC, 2024).
Foucault’s Madness and Civilization offers a historical parallel: the medieval “ship of fools,” which expelled the mad beyond societal bounds (Foucault, 1965, p. 11). While asylum seekers are not deemed insane, their placement on the Bibby Stockholm mirrors this expulsion, situating them as outlanders detached from the UK’s social and physical land. The barge’s surveillance—constant monitoring by staff—echoes Foucault’s panoptic model, where visibility enforces discipline (Foucault, 1977, p. 200). When decommissioned in January 2025, its 400 remaining occupants were dispersed elsewhere, yet its legacy persists as a biopolitical artifact of exclusion (Home Office, 2025).
Rwanda Scheme: Banishment as Biopolitical Outsourcing
The Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Partnership, launched in 2022 and terminated in July 2024, extended this exclusion beyond UK waters to a global scale. Costing £700 million, including £370 million paid to Rwanda, it aimed to deport irregular arrivals—particularly Channel crossers—to Kigali for processing (Home Office, 2024; The Independent, 2024). Despite the Safety of Rwanda Act (2024) declaring it a “safe third country,” no forced deportations occurred; only four individuals went voluntarily, incentivized by £3,000 payments (The Guardian, 2024). The scheme’s failure belies its symbolic weight: a biopolitical outsourcing of bodies deemed unfit for British soil.
Foucault’s biopolitics illuminates this intent. The state did not merely guard its borders but redefined them, displacing asylum seekers to a distant territory (Foucault, 1978, p. 143). Rwanda was not a site of integration but a repository, ensuring outlanders remained external to the UK’s national body. This aligns with Foucault’s notion of power as a mechanism that “makes live and lets die,” managing populations through spatial control (Foucault, 2003, p. 247). The Home Office’s rhetoric of deterrence masked a deeper aim: to perpetuate the maze’s endpoint as banishment rather than belonging.
The Outlander Condition: A Biopolitical Maze
The Bibby Stockholm and Rwanda scheme are not aberrations but manifestations of a broader Home Office strategy. All asylum seekers—whether Iranians fleeing persecution or Eritreans escaping conflict—are rendered outlanders, navigating a process that delays integration while enforcing exclusion. Foucault’s disciplinary framework (Discipline and Punish) reveals how surveillance (on the barge) and the threat of expulsion (to Rwanda) shape behavior, maintaining their outsider status (Foucault, 1977, p. 195). The maze is both temporal—years of waiting—and spatial—offshore barges, foreign lands—ensuring they remain detached from the UK’s societal core.
The termination of both initiatives—Bibby Stockholm in January 2025, Rwanda in July 2024—does not signal a shift in this biopolitical paradigm. Emerging discussions of alternative offshoring under Labour in 2025 suggest continuity in treating asylum seekers as bodies to be managed rather than lives to be embraced (The Independent, 2025). Foucault’s insight—that power operates through the governance of life—remains pertinent (Foucault, 1978). The Home Office’s labyrinth constructs refugee status as an elusive reward, granted only after enduring a system that prioritizes control over inclusion.
Conclusion
The UK’s asylum process, epitomized by the Bibby Stockholm and Rwanda plan, reveals a biopolitical regime where asylum seekers are outlanders by design. Through delay, containment, and expulsion, the Home Office wields power over their bodies, keeping them beyond the land—physically and metaphorically—until they traverse the maze. Foucault’s theories of biopolitics and discipline offer a critical frame: this is not mere policy but a deliberate exclusion of the “other,” a modern echo of historical practices reimagined for the 21st century. As the system evolves, the outlander’s plight persists, a testament to the enduring tension between control and belonging.
References:
- BBC. (2024, January 30). Bibby Stockholm: Asylum barge leaves Portland Port. Retrieved from [BBC News].
- Foucault, M. (1965). Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. New York: Pantheon Books.
- Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books.
- Foucault, M. (1978). The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. New York: Pantheon Books.
- Foucault, M. (2003). Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-1976. New York: Picador.
- Home Office. (2023). Immigration Statistics, Year Ending December 2023. London: UK Government.
- Home Office. (2024). Asylum and Resettlement Datasets. London: UK Government.
- Home Office. (2025). Bibby Stockholm Operational Update, January 2025. London: UK Government.
- Nikeaateghad, S. (n.d.). Written Evidence Submitted to the UK Parliament (AAC0039). University of Essex & British Red Cross.
- Refugee Council. (2023). The Truth About Asylum: Backlog Briefing. London: Refugee Council.
- The Guardian. (2023a, August 8). Legionella bacteria found on Bibby Stockholm barge. Retrieved from [The Guardian].
- The Guardian. (2023b, December 12). Man dies on Bibby Stockholm asylum barge. Retrieved from [The Guardian].
- The Guardian. (2024, July 23). Labour scraps Rwanda deportation scheme. Retrieved from [The Guardian].
- The Independent. (2024, July 24). Rwanda plan cost £700m but only four volunteers sent. Retrieved from [The Independent].
- The Independent. (2025, March 15). Labour considers new offshoring plans for asylum seekers. Retrieved from [The Independent].
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