Unprecedented Political Volatility of Zimbabwe - Coursework Example

Zimbabwe has been faced with unprecedented political volatility and economic failure. UK has received so many of Zimbabwe asylum seekers. According to UNHCR (2009), UK is also Zimbabweans top destination after South Africa. United Kingdom is one of the places that receive the highest numbers of immigration people. Asylum seekers are people who have applied to get recognition in the foreign country as refugees but their applications have not yet been decided on. It is always assumed that countries that have the poorest records of human rights record the produce the highest number of asylum as they escape the countries to seek safety in other countries. This overturns assumptions that refugees get into UK for economic purposes. In previous times, principle refugee applicants were male but recently females are also assuming the roles the males had. UK does not have a standard induction programme for immigrants. The Zimbabweans asylums do not have to have knowledge of living and working in UK. The accessible services vary with the regions that they live in. The asylum seekers receive support from the UK Border Agency (BIA) which provides accommodation for the asylum seekers. Zimbabwe has been having volatile elections which have been stained by violence, intimidation, rigging and buying of votes by use of food (Home Office: 2009b).in the 2000’s drought, food shortages and land seizures continued to destroy Zimbabwe (Reuters Alertnet: 2009). 2005 saw the formulation of the Operation Restore Order. The political as well as economic instability caused inflation in that country when money got printed to meet the budget deficit. The International community criticized Mugabe for the tarnished human rights record. The political unrest and worsening of the economy in Zimbabwe took place at a time UK was reforming its asylum system (Scott, 2010). The bequest of this is a not straight forward patchwork of Zimbabweans refugees. In accordance with the 2001 census, the number of Zimbabweans living in the UK is 49,303. This indicated a 130% increase from 1991 when there were only 21,427 Zimbabweans in the UK. This increase is attributed to the opening out of the NHS which had many Zimbabweans attracted and also political turmoil Zimbabwe. In a recent study which researched among the Zimbabweans living in UK revealed that political unrest is the major reason for immigration to the UK. London and its environments commuter towns have the highest concentration of Zimbabweans. However, they still remain scattered around the UK. The Zimbabweans legal situation in UK has been faced with a number of debates regarding the returns policy, (Grimwood: 2009). In 2009, the government announced that there would be no barriers in the restarting of returns for the asylum seekers who failed. Zimbabweans were not required to have any skills that they would use in employment in UK. They underwent deskilling (Bloch: 2006. A survey of 2000 refugees was carried out by the Home Office which indicated that the Zimbabweans had highest education levels, wide work experiences and high levels of literacy in general. According to a research by 500 Zimbabweans, 97% had formal qualifications in comparison to British population. In 2009 refugee Council Association showed that 35% of the asylum Zimbabweans could not take up education because of financial difficulties. These people cannot get employment because they have an immigration status. There are very many Zimbabweans in the U.K and a significant number of them do not have positive responses upon their requests of asylum. This population cannot get paid employment and does not get any government support. They face destitution as they have no sources of income and rely on family and friends. Their temporary status of living limits so many benefits they ought to get. Selection bias is one of the issues that were highlighted that contributed to unfairness in the selection process of the immigrants in getting jobs. Despite the Zimbabweans having good education that would otherwise be considered useful, they are sidelined mainly because of their origin and prejudice which renders them unable to handle jobs in the U.K. this is supported by a Refugee council Association report that echoes that by stating that 35% of the Zimbabweans are unable to undergo training or further education because of financial constraints,88% are willing and able to work while 8% are the only ones given the go-ahead to work. These limitations in the number and ability of Asylum Zimbabweans to work do so much to cripple the economic capability. It becomes difficult to empower this group of people while there are limited chances in the economy for them. Young people who have also grown and gotten education in the UK are unable to get education because purposely because of their immigration status. They are either limited from gaining university degrees or get employment because they are deemed as not fit or capable enough. The number of undocumented Zimbabweans facing destitution is also of concern as many of them are not able to get any meaningful employment (Bloch et.al:2010). There are several policies on employment regarding asylum employment. Zimbabwean asylum seekers can seek permission to get employed if they have been on a 12 month and over wait for their response on asylum claim. When the asylum claim is decided on, the permission to work gets expired. Asylum seekers whose claims have been rejected are not eligible to apply for employment permission. They are only allowed to seek the permission when they submit more asylum submissions and have had a 12 month wait period. The asylum seekers who got permission to work since September 2010 have job restrictions on occupation list. The UK government policy has restrictions that prevent the asylum seekers from getting jobs. This is a big obstacle for they miss out economically and they are not able to progress in other areas of life when they cannot get employment. The policies designed by the UK government ostensibly lessen the opportunities of Zimbabwean asylum seekers from getting employment. The section 8 of the Asylum and Migration Act 1996 prohibits asylum seekers form seeking employment. Most of the Zimbabwean asylum seekers are skilled and wish to contribute to the economy and gain at the same time. They also want to be less reliant on the state even for the most basic need. These restrictions on employment make them rely on wrong ways of getting money like selling their bodies for money, working in exploitative environments etc. Not being able to work reduces their financial capabilities and therefore they are not able to check their health properly. The National Asylum Support Service (NASS) give the Zimbabweans vouchers which limit the ability to purchase culturally suitable foods. For the Zimbabweans who live with HIV, they are not able to take nutritious foods because of the voucher restrictions and this affects them negatively. There are recommendations on how the existing policies that restrict asylum employment can be amended to make it favorable for the Zimbabweans refugees in UK. One is that the policy that restricts asylum employment should be repealed and two, the voucher system should be reviewed to consider nutritious foods. Asylum seekers rights have been fought for over the past decade but successive governments have resisted the calls with the assumptions that asylum applications could be encouraged. The governments have instead tried to speed up the asylum decision periods. Part 2 A qualitative method of approach to research describes the purpose of the research, the researcher’s role, research stages and ways of data analysis. The qualitative method used in this research is grounded theory. This method will develop a theory form the topic of interest. The theory is grounded on observation and facts on the ground. In this case, the facts are grounded on the Zimbabwean asylum seekers experience in UK. Their experiences regarding employment are real and research is made on this information to develop theory about the phenomena. The phenomenon in this case is grounded in observation. These are the experiences that the Zimbabweans are facing in UK in their effort to get employment. Generative questions about the asylum difficulties have been raised in order to lead the research without being static and confining. The collected data has been studied to find out if there is enough evidence to support the generated questions about Zimbabwean asylum seekers. Tentative linkages get developed between the core concepts and data. The initial stages of this research were open to accommodate all information without bias. The later stages of the research get to be more strict with a lot of verification and summary. This makes it possible to drive to a central objective and attainment of that objective. There are several data analysis strategies. One is coding whereby the qualitative data is categorized and the implications of these categories defined. The data is studied in minute details and then selective coding is done. Memoing is another strategy for analyzing the secondary data. All the ideas collected during secondary data analysis are recording to help in developing the core concept. Integrative sessions assist in combining the details together to help in theory development. The integrative part combines all relevant information from the secondary sources to assist in developing a study with relevant and reliable information to support the research. New observations that would top up to the secondary information can be added to create new linkages that would expand the information available. The secondary data obtained has a lot of information that supports the general question of employment matters to Zimbabwean asylum seekers. Most of the data available is supported by credible sources that have carried out the research and formulated credible information. There is a lot of information based on researches on the impact of the UK employment policies on Zimbabwean asylum seekers. Secondary sources have their pros and cons. The advantages being that it is relatively easy to access secondary data. It is easily available in reports by former researchers, libraries and the internet. It is cost and time effective because less effort gets used in data collection. There is little cost for obtaining this data. The information used in this research is mainly from the government and this makes it extensive and reliable to use because of a wide spectrum of information included that can be correlated to make strong conclusions. Secondary sources also have their disadvantages like the data could be inaccurate and reliable. The data could be biased and not conclusive. Information stored in book, journals, periodicals could be obsolete and fail to reflect the main issues at present. The information captured at that time may not be useful at the present time. Using secondary sources for information may be risky as some of the information has been copyrighted and using them without permission may lead to legal suits. Qualitative research has many advantages and disadvantages. Some of its advantages include the ability to study complex issues and aspects. There are lesser restrictions put on collected data and quantification can be limited. Research can be easily investigated when quantitative methods are used while the studies can be carried out in depth. It is very useful in hypothesis generation as well as exploratory research because there are fewer assumptions. Disadvantages of qualitative research include difficulties in determination of data validity and reliability. It becomes difficult to find out the extent of the researcher’s influence in the results. There can data overload in that too much data can make it difficult and timely in analysis. Literature review by use of secondary sources would not be a good step because literature review needs one to understand the phenomena in question from their own point of view. Work Cited Crush S Jonathan: Zimbabwe’s Exodus; Crisis, Migration, Survival: African Books Collective, 2010 - Social Science Bloch Alice: Making it Work: Refugee Employment in the UK, Institute for Public Policy Research, 2004 - Refugees Great Britain: Parliament: Joint Committee on Human Rights; the Treatment of Asylum Seekers: Tenth Report of Session 2006-07, Vol. 2: Oral and Written Evidence, the Stationery Office, Mar 30, 2007 Stevens Dallal: UK asylum law and policy: Historical and contemporary perspectives, Sweet & Maxwell, 2004 - Law Read More