Review: Glasgow Girls
Kamena Dorling
Monday, July 21, 2014
Written by Joe Barton and Brian Welsh - Produced by Kate Cook - Directed by Brian Welsh - BBC Three
Glasgow Girls take on the asylum system
Originally a stage production, musical drama Glasgow Girls tells the true story of seven teenage girls at Drumchapel High in Glasgow fighting against the treatment of a school friend seeking asylum in the UK. When 15-year-old Agnesa Murselaj, a Roma from Kosovo, is taken by immigration officers in a dawn raid to await forced removal at a detention centre in London, fellow pupils Amal, from Somalia; Roza, from Kurdistan; Ewelina, a Polish Roma; and local teenagers Emma, Jennifer and Toni-Lee, band together to call for her release. They launch a high-profile campaign, urging the Scottish government and the Home Office to reform the asylum system and inspiring the community to unite behind its residents.
Glasgow Girls succeeds in intelligently conveying many of the complex issues in the asylum and immigration debate, alongside the human impact of Home Office actions - the fear and uncertainty that young people seeking asylum face, and the effect that their presence, and removal, can have on the wider community.
The portrayal of dawn raids on families is particularly compelling. But it is not just a tale of injustices in a system; it is an inspiring story of how campaigning can unite people from different backgrounds to effect change.
Those watching the musical drama may wonder what has changed since the Glasgow Girls came together in 2005. One positive development has been that in May 2010, the coalition government committed to ending the immigration detention of children. The campaign contributed to the public pressure which prompted that commitment. But the problems illustrated are still far from resolved.
According to Home Office figures, 242 children were detained in the UK in 2012, 130 of whom were subsequently released, raising serious questions about why they were detained in the first place. The amenities at the Home Office's new pre-departure accommodation facility for families, called Cedars, are a marked improvement on other detention facilities, and families are held there for a maximum of seven days (previously there was no time limit on their incarceration), but the facility is still a detention centre. Serious concerns have been raised about the treatment of families, including the use of force against children and pregnant women.
In addition, there is the ongoing detention of children who are unable to prove their age and are treated as adults. In 2011 and 2012, the Refugee Council worked with about 50 children who had been wrongly detained as adults. In its 2013 report, the Independent Monitoring Board for Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre expressed deep concern regarding children being detained, and the delay in securing their release and referral to social services.
There is still much work to be done if the UK is to have a fair asylum system, but in a climate of increasing hostility to immigration, positive change is hard to achieve. Public campaigns such as that led by the Glasgow Girls are vital if there is to be the shift in political will necessary to ensure that families fleeing persecution are granted protection in the UK and the inhumane practice of immigration detention is brought to a an end.
Kamena Dorling, policy and programmes manager, Migrant Children's Project, Coram Children's Legal Centre