\u201ccultural smashing\u201d<\/a> of the city. Something similar is anticipated when he visits Edinburgh to announce the party\u2019s Scottish leader this week.<\/p>\nSo how do Glaswegians on the frontline respond to these attacks?<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the beginning of Refuwegee, I\u2019d have been the person in George Square with the placard saying: \u2018We have room,\u2019 Hales says. \u201cNow my perspective is completely different. I know how much it takes to successfully resettle one person. Underestimating that is what gets us to where we\u2019re at \u2013 a crisis situation where people are being failed and you\u2019ve got a community organisation picking up the pieces for statutory care provision.\u201d<\/p>\n
Glasgow\u2019s housing crisis has been building for years, with Shelter saying Scotland\u2019s more progressive homeless rights exist only on paper and housebuilding across the country is at a record low.<\/p>\n
This has tipped over into a housing emergency because of an unhappy alignment of UK and Scottish government policies, with Holyrood putting a new duty on councils to house anyone who is unintentionally homeless and the Home Office rushing people out of hotels.<\/p>\n
Refuweegee supports hundreds of asylum seekers and refugees in Glasgow every day. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
The head of Glasgow city council, Susan Aitken, says \u201chuge numbers\u201d of newly accepted refugees are \u201cpiling unsustainable pressure\u201d on city finances.<\/p>\n
As of last month, an estimated half of homeless applications in the city were from refugees and in this financial year the overspend is expected to be more than \u00a340m. Aitken says both Labour and Tory UK governments have refused to meet the council. She is less willing to criticise SNP colleagues at Holyrood, who slashed the affordable housing budget and blame the UK government for failing to fund its policy.<\/p>\n
Glasgow\u2019s Labour MPs throw the accusation right back, accusing the SNP of \u201cvirtue signalling\u2019. Joani Reid, the Labour MP for East Kilbride and Strathaven said: \u201cThey chose to turn Glasgow into a sanctuary for asylum seekers \u2026 and now they want the Home Office to bail them out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Refugee agencies argue the picture is more complex, and that migrants are drawn to Glasgow by established communities and support networks decades in the making. \u201cGlasgow has a reputation as being welcoming,\u201d says Hales. \u201cWe hear it all the time: \u2018I was told it\u2019s safe here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
An anti-immigration rally in Glasgow in September. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
In the last year, she adds, it has been especially difficult to watch people receive their status then go back into hotel accommodation. The Scottish Refugee Council supports many such cases.<\/p>\n
It is like this for Omar, who had spent five years in Glasgow awaiting his asylum decision with his wife and teenage daughter. When he was finally granted refugee status in November, a council flat fell through, and the family are living in one hotel room. \u201cAs soon as I got my decision I\u2019ve been trying to get a job, trying hard to build a better future for my family,\u201d Omar says. But he missed a crucial English language exam because he had to move hotels, employment applications are difficult without a fixed address, and his daughter is struggling to travel the long distance to school.<\/p>\n
Susan Aitken warns that \u2018huge numbers\u2019 of newly accepted refugees are \u2018piling unsustainable pressure\u2019 on city finances. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
In Milton, a close-knit housing scheme on the northern edge of the city centre, saltire flags appeared on lamp-posts in summer.<\/p>\n
Alex O\u2019Kane is a community activist who has given evidence on poverty to the Scottish parliament. He also runs a Facebook service that alerts local residents to traffic incidents, petty crimes, lost property and, most recently, an escaped budgie.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I put a saltire flag up it\u2019s to send a signal to the SNP to change before it\u2019s too late, before people get so frustrated that they end up voting in anger for Reform,\u201d says O\u2019Kane.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m terrified of Reform getting in,\u201d he adds. \u201cI don\u2019t know what their policies are on poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n
But there is \u201cgenuine tension\u201d in the area over housing, he adds. When locals see migrant families moving into the area when their own children are moving away for social housing, it is inevitable they have questions, he says. \u201cIt\u2019s not racism. It\u2019s genuine frustration over a lack of housing stock.\u201d<\/p>\n
The St Andrew\u2019s secondary school catchment takes in most of the East End and its pupils\u2019 heritage encompasses more than 50 countries and 20 languages.<\/p>\n
The teacher Lee Ahmed is chatting about the benefits of multilingual learning with a group of 15- and 16-year-olds who speak English as their second language.<\/p>\n
Maria, who speaks Portuguese and English, expresses her bilingualism as \u201chaving two homes, two minds\u201d. She is baffled by Farage\u2019s criticism: \u201cSpeaking another language definitely improved my cognitive skills and my memory. And it opens doors for jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a way of connecting with other people,\u201d says Jiyan, who also speaks Sorani Kurdish. \u201cThe best way to learn a language is to speak it, so at school you\u2019re hearing people use different phrases all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ahmed with some of her English language pupils at St Andrew\u2019s secondary school. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
It is worth digging into those numbers Farage referenced. According to Glasgow city council, 27.8% of pupils are bilingual learners who have an English Language Level, a data score which allows teachers to track their progress through to fluency. Of these, only 16.4% are at the level of \u201cnew to English\u201d, meaning the vast majority range from good conversational fluency to a very advanced level of English.<\/p>\n
Ahmed says Farage\u2019s claims of a \u201ccultural smashing\u201d of Glasgow are \u201coutrageous\u201d. Bilingualism \u201cbrings a lovely atmosphere to the classroom when we can interact with each other in different languages\u201d.<\/p>\n
The young people agree the city is changing. \u201cGlasgow is a welcoming city,\u201d says Aisha, originally from Iraq, \u201cbut in the past few years I feel some people have become more against immigrants.\u201d A friend of hers was beaten up in nearby woods recently and told to \u201cgo back to his own country\u201d.<\/p>\n
While it\u2019s undeniable that community frustrations are sharpening \u2013 and being amplified for political gain \u2013 in areas across Glasgow, nobody the Guardian spoke to reflected the rhetoric of Thomas Kerr, Reform UK\u2019s most prominent city councillor, who claimed last week that the city was \u201cat boiling point\u201d.<\/p>\n
And back at Refuweegee, Hales insists the power of the Glasgow welcome has not diminished.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there\u2019s an increase in tensions, Glasgow rallies. We\u2019re very privileged in that we get to see the larger community response, which is: what can I do? How can I share? What do you need at the moment? That\u2019s a beautiful thing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Selina Hales has a thing about pineapples. She is talking in a quiet office, set aside from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":690579,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7826],"tags":[748,918,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-690578","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-glasgow","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-glasgow","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-scotland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115880951980966824","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=690578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/690579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=690578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=690578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=690578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}