Afghanistan flag on a vintage suitcase. Credit: Sezerozger / Adobe Stock.

Caroline Oliver, with Mustafa Raheal, Mursal Rasa; María López, Louise Ryan, London Metropolitan University; and Janroj Keles, Middlesex University.

The national conversation around immigration often gets caught up in slogans, but sat behind this are complex realities of displacement and resettlement. Our research aims to capture the intricate stories beyond the headlines, focusing on Afghan resettled populations in England. This necessitates a collaborative approach, using novel methods. (more…)

Amalia Pascal, Amy North, Claudia Lapping, Hanna Retallack, Iman Azzi, Rachel Benchekroun, Rachel Rosen, Raphaela Armbruster, Sara Joiko Mujica, Tabitha Millett (as part of Refuge in a Moving World, an interdisciplinary UCL network focused on displacement, forced migration, exile and conflict).
We may think we know about the experience of migrants. We see images of camps, beach landings, tragic losses at sea, the Calais Jungle, targeted racist aggression, disturbing rhetoric about crime and security. We also hear stories of settlement, friendship and educational success. What is our specific responsibility to contribute to this picture?
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Kathryn Riley.

As a stoic Mancunian, I stagger through the sodden winter streets of Nedlands, Western Australia. My flimsy umbrella no match for the deluge, I take shelter in Morgan Marks clothing store. There is a sale on. Conversations unfold.
What brings you here? Where are you from? And the clincher…..What is happening in the UK?  I have been asked this question many times since leaving Heathrow Airport on July 4 for Hong Kong, en route to Australia: by residents at the peaceful Jen Hotel; by a Law applicant to UCL, at the Transit Interchange at Admiralty; and now by this group of interested  Australian women,  keen to share stories about aberrant  politicians.
Since the early hours of June 24, a post Referendum gloom has shrouded me. I have been in mourning for the idiosyncratic Britain I thought I knew: the ‘cultural cacophony’ of my second city, London; the roars that filled the Olympic Stadium in 2012, for British–Somalian Mo Farah. Disaffection, disenfranchisement and disengagement seemed to have prevailed.
Yet on this damp Australian morning I reply, ‘There’s more that holds us together than (more…)