Tempelhof

• The arrival of the Bibby Stockholm barge at Portland Port, in Dorset, on July 18 2023, marks a new low in the UK government’s hostile immigration environment.
• The vessel is set to accommodate over 500 asylum seekers.
• My research shows that facilities built to house irregular migrants in Europe and beyond create a temporary infrastructure designed to be hostile.

Precarious space

• Journalists Lizzie Dearden and Martha McHardy have shown this means the asylum seekers housed there – for up to nine months – will have “less living space than an average parking bay”.
• This stands in contravention of international standards of a minimum 4.5m² of covered living space per person in cold climates, where more time is spent indoors.
• Locals are concerned already overstretched services in Portland, including GP practices, will not be able to cope with further pressure.
• The difficulty of escaping a vessel at sea could turn it into a death trap.

Performative hostility

• In 2015, Berlin officials began temporarily housing refugees in the former Tempelhof airport, a noisy, alienating industrial space, lacking in privacy and disconnected from the city.
• French authorities, meanwhile, opened the Centre Humanitaire Paris-Nord in Paris in 2016, temporary migrant housing in a disused train depot.
• Nicknamed la Bulle (the bubble) for its bulbous inflatable covering, this facility was noisy and claustrophobic, lacking in basic comforts.
• Like the barge in Portland Port, these facilities, placed in industrial sites, sit uncomfortably between hospitality and hostility.
• Rather than deterring asylum seekers, the Bibby Stockholm is potentially creating another hazard to them and to their hosting communities.