This is what Christmas is like for thousands of asylum seekers in hotels: 'It's more like a prison'

This will be Mohsen’s first proper Christmas. Eight months ago, he arrived in the UK from Iran, having fled because he was a Christian, unable to openly practice his religion.

“It’s sort of like acting,” Mohsen says of Christmas in Iran, with most information about the holiday gleaned from the internet. An estimated 10,000 Christians leave Iran each year, with laws prohibiting Muslim citizens from converting to the religion. 

He is reluctant to complain about the asylum hotel he is living in. For some of those in the asylum hotel, says Mohsen, it is the first time in their lives having three meals a day. “I can’t ask more. I arrived in this country illegally, because my life was in danger. I was searching for safety and peace, and that is what they give to me,” he says. Yet, he still feels strange when people tell him he’s lucky: “It’s more like a prison, not like a hotel”. So he leaves the hotel as early in the morning as he can and comes back as late as he’s allowed.

Church is where he often finds himself. Here he has found a community, volunteering and using his skills as a carpenter to build shelves for the food pantry. “Believe me it was a life-changer for me. When I arrived in this country, I was in an awful situation physically and mentally,” he says. “It’s helped me to lift up my spirit actually. I find amazing people inside the church.”

Mohsen will be one of tens of thousands of asylum seekers spending Christmas in an asylum hotel.

Last Christmas, around 45,000 people were in asylum hotels. This year, as Labour works through the backlog and aims to shut hotels, the number is significantly lower. A total of 35,651 asylum seekers were in hotels as of the end of September – though this is a 20% increase since the pre-election count in June.

It is a time of year when minds turn to home, family and comfort. But after a year when asylum hotels were targeted by racist riots, what does the period hold for those who have fled war, persecution and torture, seeking sanctuary in the UK? Asylum seekers living in the hotels – usually commercial sites turned into mass dormitories – have long complained of a lack of privacy, unsuitable food and isolation. Even for those who do not celebrate Christmas itself, the festive period is a reminder of physically existing in a country but – unable to work, confined to hotels and away from family – being kept apart from its society.

Fahad, an asylum seeker who came to the UK from Kuwait in March 2023, lived under the threat of deportation to Rwanda. “I was scared, absolutely,” he says. “We were very scared. It was not just me, many people in the hotel.” It was a cloud which lifted when Keir Starmer’s government was elected and scrapped the scheme. Being in the hotel was “just living”, but now Fahad lives with a host through Refugees at Home.

As he walks around the streets and notices Christmas decorations everywhere, he hopes he can finish school and open a business. “In the future, if I have enough money I can buy a tree,” he says. “I don’t want small, I want bigger. Small is not good.”

Ali has been granted refugee status, but remembers last Christmas as a light point while he waited for a decision. Him and friends from the asylum hotel, from Yemen and Sudan, got together. “It is a celebration. Even in our home country, we did this celebration with my family and with others,” he says. “I am a Muslim, but as I am in Sudan, I do this with other Christians, I did here”. They made chicken and rice, walked around the streets and watched fireworks.

This Christmas, he is hoping to reunite with his family, and is waiting for a legal advisor who can help with the paperwork. “I need to reunite my family as soon as possible,” says Ali, who speaks to them every day.

For all the hardship of life as an asylum seeker, there is a reminder for Mohsen of what can change. Were he able to work, he says, he’d buy Christmas presents for those who’ve helped him. He says: “I have dreams and it is because of these people.”

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