The UK’s hostile monitoring regime poisoned my PhD

In September 2014, I arrived in the UK from Australia bubbling with excitement to start my PhD at Aberystwyth University. I had won a scholarship that covered my fees and living expenses, and my Tier 4 student visa was all arranged and in order.

What I did not anticipate was the monitoring regime that came with that visa. The university, on behalf of the Home Office, monitored my attendance in ways I found perplexing. Across the three years I lived in the UK, I was required to regularly “prove” that I was still residing in Aberystwyth and still completing my research studies. I felt prejudged as a risk to British society, whose safety needed to be constantly verified.

At the end of fortnightly supervision meetings (monthly during university breaks), my supervisor and I were required to sign an attendance form, which detailed my name, degree, year of attendance and a short summary of the meeting. In addition, I needed to “sign in” my attendance to the departmental front office once every month, including during breaks. And twice a year, I was required to attend a Tier 4 census, at which university compliance officials checked my student card, passport, visa, contact details, address of residence and student record.

To leave the UK for a family visit, Christmas holiday or academic conference, I had to follow an onerous set procedure. I needed to request an “authorised absence”, which required my supervisor to confirm that it would not adversely affect the completion of my PhD. He then had to forward my request to the institute manager and the university compliance office, which “authorised” my absence in the form of a letter that enabled me to re-enter the UK.

Nevertheless, each return to the UK after the Christmas break was a traumatic experience. I stood in long lines, only to reach a Border Force officer who often asked what the letter was for.

All of this bureaucratic monitoring of my physical presence and movements cast a long shadow over my experience in the UK. I was unable to catch up and maintain contact with friends in continental Europe because even a short flight required the permission of at least three people. Over time, those friendships have faded.

In its best moments, my PhD was a thrilling investigative adventure, but it was also a pact with loneliness. The challenge of investigating, collating, synthesising and writing a PhD thesis parallels the challenge of the lone composer writing a symphony. Doctoral research means wrestling with a range of emotional, intellectual and practical pressures. The monitoring regime of the Tier 4 visa further exacerbated these stresses.

There was a pervading feeling that my presence was unwelcome. I was captive to the completion of my PhD and the conditions of my visa. The UK became a golden cage, a place to fulfil my ambitions to become a scholar, where I enjoyed teaching undergraduate students and presenting my research, but where I also felt insecure and unsettled. This added to the challenges of developing a research topic, sources, refining an argument and crafting the symphony as a whole. The only way to overcome my insecure orientations was to focus on my writing and research, but this demanded exertions of mental fortitude that left me weary most days.

I was fortunate to have supportive supervisors. My primary supervisor ensured that his office remained a place of dialogue and learning, which helped me focus more on the research I wanted to do and less on the forms I had to fill in. I can imagine different circumstances, where one’s supervisor becomes one’s jailer, and the university a prison. The academic and administrative staff of my department seemed forced into coercive roles that they did not desire.

This transformation of supervisors and departments into immigration control agents also diverts the attention and energies of universities, distorting their commitment to conceptualise and disseminate research for the benefit of all of society.

The postscript to my story is that for my viva voce exam last November I needed to apply for a short-term study visa, following the advice from Aberystwyth’s compliance office, which duly wrote me a letter. On arrival in the UK, I was subjected to checks on whether my leave to remain was cancelled. The Border Force officer was unfamiliar with the reason I had returned.

Then, in July, when I briefly visited the UK, I was detained for 30 minutes and was once again subject to further checks to confirm that my leave to remain was cancelled and that I was not entering for further study.

Post-Brexit, it appears that European students will face similar experiences. Their physical presence and movements in the UK will become more permission-based, and they too will be left feeling guilty even though they haven’t committed any crime.

UK universities idealise and promote themselves as welcoming places to complete a PhD, but I experienced degrees of hostility and ignorance that are the chilling characteristics of a more closed society.

Alexander Mack is an independent researcher based in Brisbane, Australia. He was awarded his PhD from Aberystwyth University this year.