🖋 SWANK Dispatch | 23 November 2024
“We Moved Here to Breathe, Not to Be Blamed for It”
Filed Under: Asthma Stigma · Cultural Displacement · Institutional Suspicion · Social Exclusion · SWANK London Ltd
Dear Kirsty,
“We felt isolated in Turks and Caicos and came here because we love the people and socialising…”
We did not arrive in Britain looking for handouts.
We came seeking kinship — in breath, in conversation, in care.
“However, people here don’t like that we have asthma.”
As if a respiratory condition were a social offense.
As if needing air meant forfeiting belonging.
“It’s like you are all angry at us for having asthma. That’s how we feel.”
And in this house, feelings are not anecdotes — they are evidence.
A long data trail of:
– blank stares when we ask for help
– withheld empathy
– and silence when your policies fail us
This is not a cry for inclusion.
It is a record of administrative aversion dressed as neutrality.
“(But we feel better now that you are all helping.)”
Hope. Noted. But qualified.
Because assistance without stability is not care.
It’s crisis management with manners.
If help evaporates at the first boundary, it was never real.
📍 Filed on Behalf of All Uninvited From Their Own Lungs
Polly Chromatic
Asthmatic Witness · Displaced Care-Seeker · Misread Visitor
✉ director@swanklondon.com
🌐 www.swanklondon.com
© SWANK London Ltd. All Rejections Remembered.