Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures and photographs
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on contributors
- one Introduction
- two Refugees as researchers: experiences from the project ‘Bridges and fences: paths to refugee integration in the EU’
- three Limited exchanges: approaches to involving people who do not speak English in research and service development
- four Breaking the silence: participatory research processes about health with Somali refugee people seeking asylum
- five Home/lessness as an indicator of integration: interviewing refugees about the meaning of home and accommodation
- six The community leader, the politician and the policeman: a personal perspective
- seven Complexity and community empowerment in regeneration, 2002-04
- eight Refugee voices as evidence in policy and practice
- nine Challenging barriers to participation in qualitative research: involving disabled refugees
- ten Why religion matters
- eleven Action learning: a research approach that helped me to rediscover my integrity
- Appendix Guidelines funded through the Economic and Social Research Council Seminar Series ‘Eliciting the views of refugee people seeking asylum’
- Index
eight - Refugee voices as evidence in policy and practice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 January 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures and photographs
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on contributors
- one Introduction
- two Refugees as researchers: experiences from the project ‘Bridges and fences: paths to refugee integration in the EU’
- three Limited exchanges: approaches to involving people who do not speak English in research and service development
- four Breaking the silence: participatory research processes about health with Somali refugee people seeking asylum
- five Home/lessness as an indicator of integration: interviewing refugees about the meaning of home and accommodation
- six The community leader, the politician and the policeman: a personal perspective
- seven Complexity and community empowerment in regeneration, 2002-04
- eight Refugee voices as evidence in policy and practice
- nine Challenging barriers to participation in qualitative research: involving disabled refugees
- ten Why religion matters
- eleven Action learning: a research approach that helped me to rediscover my integrity
- Appendix Guidelines funded through the Economic and Social Research Council Seminar Series ‘Eliciting the views of refugee people seeking asylum’
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Until recently, asylum seeking in the UK involved only a few high-profile individuals and there was no need for a national asylum policy, statutory forms of support for asylum seekers, or for a formal refugee integration policy. Refugees had been persecuted dissidents from behind the Iron Curtain or individually tortured human rights activists: recognised fugitives from world-stage catastrophes. No complex legal process was required to decide whether claims for asylum were genuine. It was not until the 1993 Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act that asylum was dealt with in primary legislation. Before that, the UN Convention was incorporated into Immigration Rules that operated according to the discretion of the Home Office. Quota refugee resettlement projects in recent years – the Polish programme 1945-49, Ugandan Asian programme 1972-73, Chilean programme 1974-79, Vietnamese programme 1979-82, Bosnian programme 1992-95, and the Kosovan humanitarian programme in 1999 – were one-off responses to specific, recognised emergencies rather than statutory arrangements, each drawing only a little on the lessons of its predecessor. But this all changed in the late 1980s with the arrival of large numbers of spontaneous asylum applicants, from persecuted ethnic groups and from a wide range of countries of origin. It ushered in a decade of national asylum policy making, followed by national asylum support arrangements and, more recently, a national integration policy.
Policy and practice have been developed to meet the new challenges in the context of a government commitment to generate an evidence base to inform national policy making . The research programme on asylum and refugees, introduced by the Labour government in 1997 to underpin asylum and immigration policy, can be seen as part of this. Robinson (1998) describes the ideal process:
… problems which are deemed worthy of resolution (and resourcing) now become subject of policy. In order to formulate policy, accurate factual information has to be generated on the nature, scale and location of the problem. Evaluative information is also needed on what policy responses might be available, whether they have been implemented elsewhere, and with what success…. Policy options need to be discussed widely with those who will implement them and those who will supposedly benefit from them…. (pp 148-9)
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Doing Research with RefugeesIssues and Guidelines, pp. 133 - 154Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2006