How do you live on £36.95 a week?

It’s a question that 39,000 asylum seekers in Britain are currently grappling with. When people arrive in the UK and apply for asylum, they are not allowed to work while they wait for their claim to be decided. Those who have savings must live off them; those who are destitute – an understandably high number, given the circumstances in which many people flee their countries – are entitled to support in the form of housing and an allowance of £36.95 a person a week.

This works out at £1,921.40 a year – slightly more than 50% of jobseeker’s allowance. It is meant to cover everything except housing and bills: food, transport, clothing and toiletries, obviously. But also mobile phone plans, so that people can stay in touch with families back home, toys and activities for children, trips to the barber, school shoes, birthday presents.



So how is it possible to live on such a small amount? We spoke to four groups of asylum seekers about how they survive.

Nesrîn, 30, Binar, 34, Zara, 7, and Ariya, 18 months

Iraqi Kurds living in St Helens, near Liverpool

Zara, 7, has spent most of her life in the UK and speaks with a strong Liverpool accent. She attends a local primary school and doesn’t understand why she can’t have the things her friends have and why her parents don’t get jobs so the family can have more money.

Nesrîn and Binar have tried to keep their situation hidden from their daughters. “They don’t need to know that we are asylum seekers,” says Binar.

He has a master’s degree from a British university. While completing it he was contacted by his family to say that threats had been made agains him in Iraq and it was not safe for him to return, so he claimed asylum. He has been waiting on his claim for almost two years, is desperate to work and hates not being able to buy his daughters the things they want.

“She couldn’t participate in gymnastics,” says Binar. “Always her friends in school talk about trips – going to the zoo, vacations to places. I looked at going to the zoo and the family tickets were I think £65, it’s too much for me. Also, I don’t have a car.”

Nesrin prepares food (top), and some of the family’s grocery shopping (above)



Zara’s room is decorated with stickers and toys, and is overwhelming in its pinkness. Almost everything in here has been bought at the car boot sale down the road. Her favourite toy is a light-up Hello Kitty that does not light up, which they bought for £1. When I visited it was four days before Zara’s seventh birthday and Nesrîn and Binar had been saving for weeks to buy her presents and a cake, and to throw her a little party.

Stickers in Zara’s room, her Hello Kitty toy and a favourite snack.



“When they come back from the school holiday her friends are talking about what they did, where they went. But we do nothing. We want to make a birthday party for her so she can talk about that with her friends,” says Binar.

He admits he is a soft touch when it comes to buying nice food for his daughters. “I always buy the stuff they want – milk, chocolate, ice-cream – I care about their demands,” he says. “Not sweets, because I think this is bad for them, but anything else I try to buy it for them.”

This is evident when he returns from the daily shop. As well as yoghurt, chickpeas, eggs, milk and nappies, he also has choco rice, milk ice-creams, string cheese snacks and strawberry laces sweets, which Zara rips into as soon as they have been photographed and shares with her sister.

Another difficulty for the family is the cost of transport. In March, they travelled to Liverpool for the appeal of their asylum case; it cost about £50 for them to make the journey. When they got there they were told their case had been delayed and they had to return the next week.

“They didn’t care about how we all travel, and then we have to all travel again the next week for the same amount. They just consider £5 is enough for food, but we need other things,” says Nesrîn.

There is no halal butcher in St Helens so Binar travels to Manchester once a month and buys a large box of halal chicken, which they freeze. The day-return train ticket costs £11.

“They give us asylum benefit so we will not beg, but actually we are begging,” says Nesrîn. “Sometimes I cry for myself; everything is secondhand, everything is help. I can never do something for myself, go to the salon, do something for my hair. When you become a mum you have everything dreamed for your daughter, and I can’t do anything. I’ve given up, actually.”

Mohmand, 43

Afghan, living in Liverpool

Mohmand has spent longer than most trying to live off £36.95. The humanitarian aid worker fled Afghanistan after receiving threats for the work he did with the UN and Red Cross. He arrived in the UK in 2013.

More than two years later he received a decision on his asylum claim – a refusal. Almost two years after that, when he had been in the country for three years and 11 months, this decision was overturned on appeal and he was given refugee status. Mohmand spoke to the Guardian less than a week after getting the good news.

Mohmand estimates that after his phone bill, transport costs, gym membership and toiletries – roughly £10 a month – he is left with about £2 a day for food and clothing. He goes to the nearby Tesco at 7pm, when they put red stickers on food and reduce the price.

He has photographs of the fridge and shelf in his room in the asylum accommodation where he stores his food. There are sometimes fights when people use one another’s food, accidentally or otherwise.

The pictures show potatoes sprouting furiously, bread for 9p, a bag of lemons for 5p, courgettes for 6p. Mohmand buys a lot of eggs, because they’re cheap and he cannot afford meat, he says. Every day he goes to a charity to get a free lunch.

Train ticket and grocery receipts

We wait until they bring the vegetables out. There are many people, mostly asylum seekers, so it’s luck what you get Mohmand

In Afghanistan, Mohmand would wear a suit and tie to work and on other days, a nice shalwar kameez. Now, almost all his clothes come from charity shops.

Today he has put on one of his three pairs of

trousers (£2, Sunday markets) and his nicest shirt (£1, Asylum Link charity shop). “It’s my finest shirt, that’s why I’m wearing it to come and meet you. But the sleeves are really short,” he says, holding out his arms in front of him. “Perhaps that’s why it was so cheap.”

Mohmand in his best shirt (£1), jacket (£1.50), trainers (£5) and the rucksack he brought from Afghanistan

Mohmand spent his first winter in the UK sharing a coat with two asylum seekers he lived with, which meant they had to take it in turns to leave the house. Every shop he walked past had coats starting at £30 or £40, which he could not afford. One day a friend told him about charity shops. “I didn’t know,” he says. He now has a jacket (£1.50, Sunday markets) which was badly stained with grease when he bought it and took a lot of cleaning to make wearable, and a winter coat, bought at a charity shop for £2.

His belt is his longest-serving piece of British clothing – he bought it soon after he arrived. “When I came to London, I was put in a detention centre. I had to wear my Afghan clothes, because they were more comfortable to sleep in. When I was released they brought me my other clothes, but my belt was missing. I bought this belt from Primark, it was reduced to £3 from about £10.”

The shoes are the newest addition to his ensemble. He bought them for £5 two weeks ago from another asylum seeker who paid £3 for them at the Asylum Link charity store. “He wanted to make a few pounds” says Mohmand, shrugging.

Mohmand brought his rucksack with him when he came to claim asylum. It contained all the papers he thought he might need to prove his identity and support his claim: “All my education documents, all the letters, everything I had to prove I’m genuine,” he says. In the end, these documents persuaded the judge to grant him refugee status.

Ahive, 36

Iranian, living in Huddersfield

Each week, Ahive, who fled Iran due to religious persecution, has several regular appointments – his English class, going to church, and Destitute Asylum Seekers Huddersfield (Dash), a drop-in centre for asylum seekers.

But his most important appointment is a daily phone call that happens every afternoon at 3:30pm. “The big problem is I need unlimited data to speak on the phone to my family in Iran, and every month this is £25,” he says. “It’s so I can talk to my wife and [eight-year-old] daughter; it’s very important.”

Mobile phone credit is Ahive’s priority each month



Mobile phone credit is the first thing Ahive buys each month; if necessary he will sacrifice food to do so. Ahive’s house is north of Huddersfield, about a 45-minute walk from Dash and his church. A daily bus ticket is £4, though sometimes he buys a weekly ticket, which costs £13. He usually eats lunch at Dash and in the afternoon has tea and biscuits at home. Most days, that’s all he eats.

Receipts for his groceries show he buys small amounts of discounted food, with one glaring exception – one receipt shows he spent £12, roughly a third of his weekly allowance, on a bottle of whisky . “It was Iranian new year and I had a party and all the Iranian people came over,” he says, smiling. He does not regret the purchase.



Ahive’s supermarket receipts and bus ticket



If I have the money I get the bus. If I don’t have the money I walk. It’s rainy and cold but I am walking Ahive





Alia, 30, Zainab, 7, and Ibrahim, 4

From Pakistan, living in Huddersfield

Alia has been in the UK for six years, and has been living in Huddersfield since she claimed asylum. “When we came to this house it was nothing. It had three broken chairs, no settee,” she says. But she has slowly cobbled together furniture, decorations and toys to make a comfortable home.

Alia spends money on groceries, clothing, shoes and entertainment for the children. They have a TV, bought from a secondhand market for £30. “There is no guarantee that it’ll work. If it works, you’re lucky, if not too bad, no returns no refunds.”



Children can’t stay home with no activities. We keep staying at home so we try to make it nice Alia

She spends quite a bit on entertaining the children, paying to get wifi at the house and to have a TV licence, which she says is “torture” for her to afford.



Scattered around the house are also books and toys, almost all of which were given to the family by a charity that helps asylum seekers. There is a puzzle on the table. “Most of the pieces are missing, but whatever we get, we get from the charity.” Fortunately, she says, “At this age, they don’t have any idea about new and old as long as they have it.”

The children’s books and toys were donated by a charity that helps asylum seekers



The family live some distance from the grocery store, so Alia gets a weekly bus ticket – £13 for herself and £7.50 for her daughter – and travels into town several times a week to do her shopping. There is a small convenience store nearby, but Alia says it’s too expensive for them to use. “A bucket of yoghurt, 400g, is £1.45. I said to the woman, it’s 45p at Tesco. So we don’t shop there. It’s better to have tea without sugar than go there.’’

Alia’s family were affected by changes to payments to asylum seekers in 2015, which saw the rate for children cut significantly. Whereas before she received roughly £150 a week, she now receives just over £100, which effectively prices them out of anything but charity stores when it comes to clothing.

For me it’s all right. It’s hard, but at least you’re safe. We’re OK with less money. It’s better to be safe and spend less Alia

“This is a big issue. We could go to Primark in the sale, but now, no. One pair of leggings is £6 – that’s one day’s allowance.” But even charity shops, she thinks, have got more expensive in recent years.

The most difficult thing is when they have an unexpected expense. A few months ago, Alia was out shopping for ingredients for her son’s birthday cake when someone stole her phone. She went for a month without while she saved to buy another one – secondhand, of course.

But she is philosophical about these difficulties. “For me it’s all right. It’s hard, but at least you’re safe. We’re OK with less money. It’s better to be safe and spend less. There are more people in worse situations.”