The Somali refugee community in Smethwick is less than ten years old. Muni Abdikarim and Ahmed Sirad spoke to Jenny Morgan about their work with middle-aged Somali women who are being turned away from a doctor's surgery and told 'Come back when you've got an interpreter'
The British government's new anti-trafficking strategy is high on rhetoric about immigration crime and border control, and lacks any real commitment to protecting victims of trafficking, says Jenny Moss
The policy of dispersing migrants in Britain has led to large numbers of Somali refugees in Smethwick, a town notorious for anti-migrant mobilising in the 1960s. In the first of her Letters from Smethwick, Jenny Morgan describes a meeting with charismatic Somali community organiser Hodan Rashid.
Examining the way in which first rulers, and then the state, have coerced the poor in England into mobility and immobility, offers opportunities for developing a new politics of migration, says Bridget Anderson
A new play shines a light on the dark side of the British asylum system, portraying with brutal clarity the inhuman treatment dealt out to those drawn to this country by the hope for sanctuary
Racialised and forced migrants are the spectre of the 'other' in the autochthonic dream of the 'pure' otherless universe which we must confront. This border-zone is our political as well as our analytical challenge, says Nira Yuval Davis
"We are really going back a few steps. . . . just lost expertise, data, everything . . . for me, it’s almost like burning down a library". Elizabeth Kennedy reports on the severe impact funding cuts are having on Roma youth in the UK
The opening of the first purpose-built immigration detention centre in Northern Ireland this month, is a sad day as it will expand the detention estate once again. But we can resist the simultaneous expansion of our own mental barriers against human equality and freedom, by denying the necessity a
Ironically, working through the idiom of multicultural failure is a form of political correctness; a way of talking about issues of migration, identity, power, belonging, legitimacy and socio-political anxiety while steering clear of a lexicon associated with the overt history of a shameful, racis
Migrants offer the broader society some reminders of what it's losing under the tarmac of corporate Britain, says Vaughan Jones
In a time of globalization, the renaissance of cultural nationalism is remarkable. Classical countries of immigration, such as Australia, Canada and the United States, have been joined for the first time by the countries of western Europe in this strong global tide towards citizenship testing.
The European Commission has been at the forefront of criticism of France and Denmark for re-introducing border controls. This was not because they in fact threatened Schengen but because such decisions undermine the Commission’s power as the executive of Europe, argues Polly Pallister-Wilkins
