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Disorientation and asylum-seeking youth: examining the emotional and embodied impacts of the UK asylum system

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Peter HopkinsORCiD, Dr Matt BenwellORCiD

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

Abstract

Disorientation is a critical emotional and embodied dimension in the slow violence of the UK government’s asylum policies. This paper focuses on young asylum seekers in Newcastle-Gateshead, UK and examines their everyday experiences of the ‘politics of disorientation’. We demonstrate how the effects of overlapping bordering practices can result in dynamic disorientations that ebb and flow but nevertheless endure in the lifeworld of asylum seekers. First, we highlight how the enforced dispersal of asylum seekers around the UK can trigger multi-layered feelings of disorientation. Dispersal destabilises orientation to space, relations with others, bodies, and life directions, triggering what we call dispersal disorientation. Second, we argue that asylum policy can impede key aspects of the transition to adulthood for young asylum seekers, contributing to intense feelings of disorientation. Finally, we examine how asylum seekers carry out reorientation work through their everyday strategies, alongside the support of voluntary and community groups.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Finlay R, Hopkins P, Benwell MC

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Annals of the American Association of Geographers

Year: 2026

Pages: epub ahead of print

Online publication date: 03/03/2026

Acceptance date: 06/01/2026

Date deposited: 27/02/2026

ISSN (print): 2469-4452

ISSN (electronic): 1467-8306

Publisher: Routledge

URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2026.2624742

DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2026.2624742

ePrints DOI: 10.57711/ave3-0912

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