Robina Qureshi - Positive Action in Housing

 

Back to EIN Headleins Front Page Robina Qureshi is the Executive Director of Positive Action in Housing, a Scotland-based charity founded eleven years ago that has, under her leadership as founding Director, played a pivotal role in challenging racism and discrimination, particularly in housing. Still in her thirties, Robina has acquired a justifiable reputation as an effective activist for nearly fifteen years, whether empowering a grassroots organisation, leading a street demonstration or passionately rousing a conference Robina Qureshi - "There was a time when England was leading on anti-racism issues but now Scotland is taking the lead in working with and campaigning on behalf of asylum seekers.” "Robina is committed, dedicated and passionate about fighting injustice," says Najimee Parveen, the Chair of Positive Action in Housing, when I ask her for a descriptive quote about Robina. Malcolm Chisholm, Member of the Scottish Parliament and Minister of Housing of its Executive states that Robina "… is a very formidable campaigner and completely dedicated to the housing and other rights of ethnic minority communities . She has been a passionate and persuasive advocate of those rights and has advanced them in practical ways. She organises campaigns very effectively and has recently built up a broad based alliance around asylum issues. She is widely respected…" Meeting Robina Qureshi at PAiH's bright and spacious offices in the centre of Glasgow, after catching up on what we had been up to since we last met some years ago, one of my first questions was to ask what project she was currently involved in that she was most concerned about. Her answer was immediate.   "We're campaigning for an amnesty for asylum seekers," she spurted, eyes shining. "We are campaigning for people who have been living here for many years in Scotland and particularly in Glasgow. Scotland has the fastest falling population anywhere in Europe. The government here in Scotland is trying to find ways of getting more people to come in. What we are saying is that there are thousands of asylum seekers living here right now who want to stay; instead some are being turned out of their houses and being made destitute, others are being locked up in detention centres to be deported, others are being taken in dawn raids by immigration snatch squads; whole families are being deported in the middle of the night. Husbands are being handcuffed, brothers are being handcuffed. Young girls wet themselves because they don't know what's happening. These people won't answer their front door because they don't know when the snatch squads will be coming; people are terrified. We have cases of families who have been living here for five years with young children, who have settled here, being sent back to dangerous places. We went to Albania to follow up what was happening to one of these families after they had been deported. We found they were desperate to come back, the children wanted to go back to school in Drumchapel, which is one of the most deprived areas in Scotland, because they have got a connection there, they were part of a community there, they went to school there and just want to go back to where they lived.   "Liam Byrne, the new Immigration Minister, is now looking at these cases and considering whether we should have an amnesty, not just in Scotland but in the whole of Britain. Although Downing Street says there is no immediate plan for an amnesty. Yet Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal have granted amnesties to illegal immigrants, Sweden also. And in the UK, the precedent exists."   "To uproot people who have settled here, built a life here and worked here, is just a travesty and a complete waste of resources as it costs thousands of pounds to carry out a dawn raid. It's horrific when you see what happen; children are separated from their mothers. They want to stay here and they have earned their right to live here. We are not saying they have a right to stay here we are saying they should be allowed to stay here in Scotland. They should stop sending back asylum seekers who been settled here for years and years. This regime of terror is shocking and has no place in any half decent society. The Home Office isn't happy about us campaigning, because we have had a high profile here in Scotland. So far we have accumulated over 2,300 signatures for a petition calling for an amnesty, a campaign started in November 2005."   PAiH started off confronting racism in housing, in recent years the emphasis has changed towards refugee communities. "Housing is just one of the problems we are trying to deal with. As well as poverty, racism and stigmatisation." she stated firmly. "You've got deep, ingrained, systematic, institutionalised poverty against people who are stigmatised. I don't think that even as discriminated minorities we had or have the problems that refugees and asylum seekers face here. We have a right to be here, society might not think or act as if we do but we know we have a right to be here....But we never suffered the way the new minorities, refugees and asylum seekers, are suffering right now, driven into an underclass." Born in Glasgow one of seven sisters, Robina's parents were from Pakistan and came to Glasgow in the 1960s. "I knew we were different, that we were not as equal as white people from the age of 5. We spoke a different language and we dressed differently. I spoke some English, of course, but we spoke mainly in our own language, Urdu and Punjabi. It always seemed better to have a white or black friend than an Asian friend. It was also the way the teachers talked to you. I remember the head teacher asking me 'what's your name?' I said 'Robina.' 'You're from India' 'No, I'm from Pakistan. But I wasn't from Pakistan I was born in Scotland, like, leave me alone.' 'No, no,' she said, 'you're from India.' "I remember growing up we felt like outsiders, the minority group.It was difficult to just be a part of something where labels and racism were so strong, and then at home we weren't quite Pakistani Muslim. I wanted to be free from the constraints of my family's expectations but also white society's with its assumptions about particular form of oppression I was supposed to be suffering. And I never wanted to sell out - to either side! So how could you win? It drove me to a nervous breakdown when I was 19 and confronted with the prospect of a regular forced arranged marriage, suicide seemed like a good idea, the pressure was so intense. My breakdown was a reprieve from all the pressure. I literally checked out and daydreamed 24/7 for 2 months or more." Robina's first job was a trainee job advice worker, working with people who were long-term unemployed. "Shortly after that I decided I'd rather work with my minorities. There weren't many Asian girls working in offices at that time and it wasn't really approved of by the older generation. But I was so adamant so I started volunteering with an advice centre for minorities. Then a paid job came up and I got it and worked there for about four years, and I loved it, helping people claim welfare and housing benefits, helping people with their housing problems. Then I got another job trying to build links between black and ethnic communities and housing associations. But whereas I wanted to get minorities into the white housing associations, i.e. shareholders and involvement at all levels not just tokenistically, i.e. real equality, but the ones in control were nervous cos of the results I got with helping to get a predominantly black committee at Charing Cross Housing Association in 1989, well they weren't complaining when it was all white! And they wanted me to do safe, promotional work, and that was dead frustrating. Then I ran into David Orr from the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, a nice straightforward guy. I suggested that the work I was doing should be a national project, he agreed and helped us get funding in the early 1990s and he was my manager and gave me the freedom to be creative and do my job and even when I was doing risky things he backed me up. I really respect him for putting that faith in me cos no one else did, not even me really. Anyway, I did that until 1996 when I got the job that I'm doing now." Robina clearly relishes her work, despite its stresses and frustrations, because it is about empowering people through groups and that's where her strengths lie. "Increasingly," she says, "our work is regarded as political, which I don't care much about as a definition cos what we are doing is frontline humanitarian work and highlighting the injustice and inequality of it all. We are now having to give money to asylum seekers who are destitute, food and shelter and money to buy basic toiletries and ask people to let them into their homes for two or three days a week. We are dealing with people who are left voiceless by government policies and practices. How can you talk about equal opportunities when the people that need equal opportunities the most are the ones that are totally invisibilised and ignored? "There was a time when England was leading on anti-racism issues but now Scotland is taking the lead in working with and campaigning on behalf of asylum seekers. The media in Scotland is quite good in that it is prepared to challenge negative stereotypes about asylum seekers to an extent that just doesn't exist in England. It means that we are better able to put pressure on the government here. "What's good that has happened here is that the refugee and asylum seeking community has been placed in the worst housing, being put in places with poor white people who initially were very hostile to them, but then they became neighbours and mainly good neighbours, because of their dignity, who wanted to take care of the place they were living in and the children wanted to get educated. So these communities lifted standards in the neighbourhood and at school as well. I have met many of these poor white people who have said that before the refugees arrived there was no sense of community. Now their children mix, they talk to each other, they mingle; they share each other's problems. This government is trying to rip these people out of their community, because they haven't met the immigration criteria, yet they have spent years living here rebuilding communities that once had no hope at all. That's an amazing thing to watch" "What's the future" I asked her. " I don't know where I'll be in five years and I like the way that feels.There's work to be done here but I hope I'm not here in ten years time."   By Louis Julienne, (Maternity cover) Director, EIN