The bill for refugees, asylum seekers and/or “people seeking sanctuary” (as the Left is now trying to rename them) gets higher every day. On my own Substack I have calculated that over £660 million in taxpayer funding has gone to asylum and migration charities across the last five years. That’s not including the bills for migrant hotels, obviously.

What people may be more surprised to learn is that universities are being awarded huge sums for research about asylum seekers and related topics. Numerous abstracts are packed with ideologically-loaded statements – “the hostile environment”, “postcolonial sexual identity” – presented as neutral and factual, showing you exactly what stance so-called academics are likely to take. To show you what I mean, I’ve compiled 10 examples below – two of these reearch projects have been completed and the rest are all ongoing:

Co-Creating Asset and Place-Based Approaches to Tackling Refugee and Migrant Health Exclusion (Feb 24 – Apr 27)

£2,124,555 at Anglia Ruskin University

Refugees, asylum seekers and migrants (R/AS/Ms) are varyingly yet systematically disadvantaged (EHRC, 2016) throughout their migration and resettlement journeys, as well as (typically) across the post-migration life-course (Allsopp, Sigona and Phillimore, 2014; BMA, 2021; Kemmak, Nargesi and Saniee, 2021). Inequitable access to health-care (physical and mental) and the ability to meaningfully access NHS/integrated care services, whilst fundamental to counteracting health disadvantage, is but one element in relation to improving wellbeing outcomes for these populations.

Nation of Refuge (Sept 25 – Sept 29)

£2,091,892 at the University of Reading

Nation of Refuge explores Britain’s track record of offering a home to refugees and asylum seekers. A history of offering safety to those fleeing persecution in the past is an important feature of British identity narratives, and the Kindertransport is the most well-known example. Yet recent decades have seen a rise in anti-migration measures, which present a real challenge to this element of Britain’s self-image, and bring the British asylum system into conflict with human rights laws. My research programme will stimulate a public conversation about Britain’s treatment of refugees and asylum seekers by looking backwards at the last century of British history, considering our present, and reflecting for the future. Do we want to be a nation of refuge, or not?

Transforming LGBTIQ+ Asylum Policies: A Multi-Country Cross-Sectoral Approach to Research, Policy, and Advocacy (Feb 26 – Feb 30)

£1,555,506 at the University of Leicester

This Future Leaders Fellowship (FLF) will revolutionise the academic understanding and policy frameworks surrounding LGBTIQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer, and questioning) asylum. This ground-breaking study addresses the critical lack of data and support for LGBTIQ+ asylum-seekers and refugees amidst the global crisis of displaced individuals, which reached 30.5 million in mid-2023. LGBTIQ+ asylum-seekers face unique challenges when compared to non-LGBTIQ+ individuals, including homophobia and transphobia leading to mental and physical health issues, barriers to legal support, economic hardship, and heightened vulnerability to violence, which have been understudied cross-geographically in asylum research.

Archive of Solidarity: Precarity, Creativity and Shared Future-Making Across Closed Borders (Aug 24 – Aug 27)

£795,723 at SOAS, University of London

Focusing on the border areas of Turkey and the United Kingdom (UK), The Archive of Solidarity is a collaborative project that involves local youth (refugees and citizens) and activists to investigate, document and disseminate refugee-citizen solidarity practices that contribute to the future economic, social and emotional wellbeing of refugee and citizen youth in particular. In co-creating and harnessing positive pathways forward for refugees and citizens at large, this project adopts the position of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on the Global Youth Advisory Council that the “talent, energy and potential of young refugees are vital resources in global efforts to prevent and respond to challenges affecting all refugees”. We will focus on the lived experiences of (1) refugee and citizen youth (18-30 years) living in UK and Turkish border provinces as they are the most precarious, mobile and active communities, and (2) refugee and citizen activists from within and outside of humanitarian organisations who have been involved in solidarity work or refugee rights advocacy.

Understanding Displacement Aesthetics and Creating Change in the Art Gallery for Refugees, Migrants and Host Communities (Feb 21 – Dec 24)

£785,359 at the University of Manchester

There are 70.8 million forcibly displaced people in the world today (UNHCR Global Trends in Forced Displacement, 2018). Refugees, migrants and asylum seekers are at the forefront of international politics as populations defined by ‘crisis’, while the UN and humanitarian agencies attempt to bridge gaps in national policies on aid and resettlement. Visual and craft artists have played an historically important yet lesser-studied role in UN and humanitarian welfare programmes, in art therapy, and in communicating human rights. However, refugees and migrants can also be represented as nameless human flows and passive recipients of aid, which may strain both refugee and host communities. Significantly, the art industry and art galleries encounter parallel problems in aestheticizing the experience of people affected by war and displacement. While art asserts a powerful role in challenging hostile representations of refugees and migrants, in reality opportunities for refugee artists and curators in mainstream gallery culture, and opportunities for interpersonal dialogue and intercultural exchange with host communities, remain limited.

A Multilingual, Decolonial Approach to Adult Refugee/Migrant Language Education: Bridging Policy, Practice and Theory Across Devolved UK Nations (MDLE) (Dec 25 – Jun 28)

£737,745 at The Open University

Using Critical Participatory Action research and underpinned by decolonising methodology, MDLE uses data from focus groups, interviews and observed knowledge exchange events with key stakeholders (policymakers, refugees/migrants, language teachers) to inform a series of workshops, learning materials and a professional development course for language teachers. This will create a transformative framework for language education which integrates indigenous languages, refugees’/migrants’ home languages and English for the first time… Partnering with 13 influential organisations in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to co-produce the research and maximise impact, MDLE will bridge the gap between policy, practice and theory, thereby making a unique intellectual contribution to refugee integration, ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) and indigenous language learning.

Asylum: Refugees and Mental Health (Nov 24 – Apr 27)

£649,531 at Manchester Metropolitan University

In the First World War, Belgian refugees labelled with melancholia, anxiety and emotional disturbance were documented in British medical records and admitted to British asylums. Until now, their life histories and migratory journeys have remained untold. Asylum: Refugees and Mental Health is an international research project which aims to give voice to refugees’ experience of mental ill-health and make visible the emotional impacts of displacement. Modern-day statistics show that asylum seekers and refugees are more likely to suffer mental distress and less likely to receive support than the general population. Humanitarian agencies and mental-health professionals stress the importance of individual stories in fully understanding the vulnerabilities caused by displacement. While the stories of the 250,000 Belgians who arrived into Britain in 1914–1918 are being made known through public histories (particularly the Tracing the Belgian Refugees database project https://belgianrefugees.leeds.ac.uk/), the emotional impacts of displacement and re-settlement are not. Our project raises timely questions about the relationship between refugee dispersal programmes, sponsorship and well-being.

The Role of Digital Technology in Social Networks and Wellbeing of Unaccompanied Young Refugees (Mar 25 – Dec 27)

£459,926 at the University of Brighton

Last year, the UK received 5,152 applications for asylum from unaccompanied children: children under 18 who arrived seeking asylum without a parent or legal guardian to care for them. We refer to this small but vulnerable group as UCYP: Unaccompanied Children and Young People. Their vulnerability is underscored by reports that many UCYP who were housed in hotels since July 2021 have gone missing. Research has also repeatedly found poor mental health among UCYP, often linked to post-migration factors. There is an urgent need for a deeper understanding of the day-to-day lives of UCYP, and to improve their welfare and reduce risks of harm… Critical to this is understanding how UCYP engage with digital technology.

Negotiating Queer Identities Following Forced Migration (NQIfFM): A Comparative Study of Iranian Queer Refugees Living in Turkey, the UK and Canada (Jan 22 – Jan 25)

£361,067 at the University of Sussex

This study will investigate the processes of identity transition of Iranian diasporic queers seeking international protection in countries generally seen as being of transition, destination or resettlement. It will develop concepts of postcolonial sexual identity, augment life histories of exile, explore trauma-based cultural politics, consider more carefully creative methods, and make a nuanced contribution to emerging queer studies of migration, transnationalism and exile.

The Peripheralisation of Asylum Accommodation: Military Sites, Vessels and Hotels in England (August 25 – August 27)

£248,940 at Aston University

The geographies of UK asylum are changing. After over a decade of the Home Office ‘hostile environment’ policy, first announced in 2012, recent years have registered an increasingly restrictive approach including the use of asylum accommodation centres as an explicit deterrent against immigration. Following a rise in hotel accommodation during the pandemic, asylum seekers are now being relocated to former military sites and vessels. This process, that I am labelling ‘peripheralisation’, indicates an important shift from a dispersal policy (supporting community-based housing) to the physical concentration and confinement of the asylum population in large-scale, sub-standard accommodation centres in peripheral areas of the country. These spaces have already met stark criticism from migrant advocacy groups because of their detrimental effects on asylum seekers’ mental health and social integration. And yet, we know very little about their legal nature and their implications for migrants’ support networks, including local authorities and the voluntary sector. Moreover, whilst some evidence has been collected by migrant support organisations, there is a lack of systematic research which documents the experiences of asylum seekers housed in these new spaces.