MigrantVoice on Refuge: all articles

In a special feature to mark Refugee Week 2008, openDemocracy ran a short project to bring unheard voices, new ideas and testimony of the lived experiences of refugees in Britain into the public debate. MigrantVoice incorporated a multiauthored blog, podcasts, and a substantial article debate including contributions from Saskia Sassen and Philippe Legrain, and edited by Rosemary Bechler. Partnerships with Sheffield's City of Sanctuary and the Migrant and Refugee Communities Forum (MRCF) based in west London added valuable new topics and voices to the discussion. You can access the blog, read the article series, and listen to the podcast for World Refugee Day here.

Tuesday 9th December
Friday 20th June

Foreigners: victims or villains?- a political debate

When it comes to the salami slicing around which foreigners are deserving and which not, the moral high ground is a treacherous terrain. What is needed is less rhetoric and far more politics.

Asylum aside: making it real

What turns a bystander into a playwright? And how do you know if you are just preaching to the converted? Only the best will do when you are working with those seeking asylum.

World Refugee Day

A special podcast from Sheffield's City of Sanctuary, marking Refugee Week. Listen now
Thursday 19th June

Fear and strange arithmetics: when powerful states confront powerless immigrants

The unsettling effect of immigrants and refugees is a signal of their pivotal global role 

The pull factor

The imminent UK ratification of a European convention which describes women in the sex trade as the victims of trafficking is to be welcomed, not least because it will lead to more prosecutions. Isn't it time that the government criminalised the buyers of these services?
Wednesday 18th June

Things can only get worse

The introduction of an EU Returns Directive demonstrates an official capacity to privilege state interests over those of the individual

Asylum and health: insult and injury

We are all implicated in the tragedies that result from shifts in access to healthcare for refugees and asylum seekers in the UK.

Tuesday 17th June

For a future bigger than our past

Migrants' belief in the American dream has fuelled the nation for years. It shouldn't stop now
Monday 16th June

Open Britain

Immigration controls trap the excluding society as well as block migrants. Open up to breathe free

Iraq: between false refuge and the peril of return

The UK's Iraqi asylum seekers are now being forced to return to all areas of Iraq. Are the lives of refugees being used for political gain?

Asylum UK – a history (part two)

Britain prides itself on a tradition of providing refuge for those fleeing persecution. But asylum policy has undergone many changes through the ages. Here we outline some of the key events in history.

Four thousand years of asylum (part one)

Asylum has a pedigree stretching back to the Greek empire, but many liberal states are still struggling with a central question: how do you reconcile the rights of people, which are universal, and citizens, which are particular?
Sunday 15th June

A mirror image of our society

South Africa's young democracy must meet the test of the wave of anti-foreigner violence
Wednesday 4th June

Open borders, global future

An era of worldwide "people flow" demands radical new thinking on migration
Friday 30th May

Chinese migrant workers: lives in shadow

The work of Chinese immigrants in the rich west puts them in a trap with many locked doors
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