“The idea of being bothered about immigration made me laugh! I’m from Birmingham. It’s never been a concern of mine. I can’t imagine caring about someone else being born in a difference place to me. (Black British born female participant).”
The Runnymede Trust has launched a new report about British ethnic minorities’ views on immigration and Europe. The publication entitled ‘This is Still About Us – Why Ethnic Minorities See Immigration Differently’ used high-sample surveys and focus groups across several different areas of the country to gauge opinion.

Produced by the UK’s leading independent thinktank on race equality and race relations, its findings show:

• Immigration is seen more positively by BME groups, because they focus on the economic and cultural contributions an immigrant can make to British life.
• BME people are more likely to feel that the public debate around immigration negatively impacts on them personally, even if they or their parents were born in Britain;
• They feel sometimes they need to ‘prove’ they are British;
• Most broadly share concerns of the wider population around the pace of immigration, but they are more worried about the pressure on services than on cultural impact;
• Participants were more ambivalent about Europe and are less likely to take advantage of free movement within EU borders;
• People were more concerned about Britain being a ‘hostile environment’ for immigrants;
• BME people are more likely to be concerned about the impact of benefit cuts on immigrant families;
• On citizenship and the immigration system, BME groups are more likely to be concerned about the cost of the citizenship process, family visa policies and Home Office responses to immigration queries;
• There were variations between different BME groups: Long-settled communities were more likely to believe newer migrants had easier experiences;
• BME people are more likely to view Europe in explicitly ethnic or racial terms.

You can read the full report here.

Here’s a quick question for you. For every £100 that a man working in Birmingham earns, how much do you think a woman earns? Ninety five pounds? Ninety pounds? Maybe as low as £85?

We’ll reveal the answer at the end, so while you’re mulling over that here’s another one. The unemployment rate for white people in Birmingham is about 9%. What’s the rate for black people? If you doubled 9%, try again. The answer is actually three times higher – 26%. The unemployment rate for Pakistani and Bangladeshi residents is similarly out of kilter, currently standing at 18%. But here’s the really interesting thing. Back in 2004 the white unemployment rate was 6% while the black rate was 18% – again three times higher. Over the course of a decade, despite all its strategies and plans, the city was unable to reduce this stark inequality.

Why is this? Well, it’s not just Birmingham that’s been asking these questions. A number of cities – from Plymouth to Sheffield to York – have held fairness commissions in recent years to understand why entrenched inequalities persist. As useful and, in some cases, penetrating as these commissions have been they have tended to ignore the nuts and bolts of how public agencies ‘do’ equality – how they go about tackling discrimination, eradicating social patterns of disadvantage, and fulfilling their legislative equalities duties. This is a serious gap. Understanding why these approaches have failed may go some way to explain why serious inequalities continue.

New research From Benign Neglect to Citizen Khan, providing a bird’s eye view of equalities practice down the decades shows that many ideas have been resistant to change. Whereas society has changed greatly over the last 30 years, our equalities tools have remained remarkably similar. For example, in 1984 Birmingham City Council set up a Race Equality Unit with the aim of addressing institutional racism and improving access to council services. By 1989 the Unit had 31 staff, including race relations advisers in housing, education, and social services. The Unit’s annual report for that year shows its activities included training, monitoring uptake of services, helping different departments devise race equality schemes, improving access to services (mainly by translating information), and organising outreach events. If you were to include something about community development (helping local community groups to support disadvantaged people) these activities would all be part of the Standard Six – the half a dozen key actions that have dominated equality strategies and policies over the decades. They’re the things that crop up time and time again, regardless of the organisation’s sector or the demographics of its service users. Ideally, equality approaches would be dynamic – constantly evolving as we better understand what works. Unfortunately, this generally hasn’t been the case.

We don’t want to suggest that no progress at all has been made, of course. For one thing, the number of excluded groups considered by equalities practice has increased. For example, public authorities in Birmingham didn’t fund any lesbian or gay groups during the 1970s or 80s – a situation which would be subject to serious scrutiny today. In addition, equalities practice is beginning to explore the impact of leadership and organisational vision when it comes to embedding best practice, and organisations are beginning to focus more on partnership working. However, there are still some things we need to get better at.

Firstly, as agencies work together more closely we need to be crystal clear about what ‘equality’ means. This may sound simple, but if you speak to people in different organisations you’d be surprised at how many answers you get. This is no longer an option. Different agencies have to be on the same page when it comes to delivering fairer outcomes for the most vulnerable. Secondly, and connected with this, we need a shared vision of what good quality of life looks like for Birmingham’s residents. This needs to be informed by what people think is important and by the common needs of people from different communities in the city. In other words, it will involve much more clarity about the ‘domains’ of equality that are important to a wide range of people in the city. Thirdly, we need to devise a series of entitlements necessary to guarantee these needs and measure the provision of these through a multi-agency, multi-sector programme of activities.

Finally – and perhaps most importantly – we need to take equality, cohesion, and integration seriously. In addition to the Standard Six, the clearest feature arising from a historical survey of equalities practice is that we’re constantly reacting to things. Whether it’s an influx of new migrants, riots, or legislative changes, equalities practice has always been devised in response to a particular crisis or problem. We have never stood back, thought about the type of society we want to create and then pursued this vision with vigour. It’s clear that equalities practice has usually been seen as a side show to the main business of delivering services. This can’t continue. We need to get on the front foot. Rather than react to problems we need to proactively shape the future.

Which brings us back to where we started: how much does a Birmingham woman earn compared to a man? The answer is £81 for every £100 he earns – a gender pay gap of 19%. This is bad enough itself, but it’s also worth noting that at our current rate of progress it’ll be 2038 before pay equality is achieved (and this is assuming there will always be progress: between 2012 and 2013 the gender pay gap actually increased). It’s becoming increasingly obvious that our traditional approaches to equality are delivering progress at too slow a rate. If we do what we’ve always done we’ll get what we’ve always got. And what we’ve always got has let down too many people.

It’s time for a change.

About 100 million people enter the UK every year, and about 100 million leave. Net migration – involving those who come here to stay or leave for at least a year – is a tiny fraction of that, estimated at 260,000 last year. So last year there were 260,000 more immigrants than emigrants.   The accuracy of that net migration estimate is limited – it’s based on a survey of just 4-5,000 migrants interviewed at ports, and that means there’s a large grey area. It could very easily be nearly 40,000 less than that in reality, or 40,000 more. Little wonder, then, that it’s been described as “little better than a best guess” by Public Administration Select Committee Chair Bernard Jenkin MP.   To that you might well ask: “why not just count everyone in and count everyone out?” And you wouldn’t be alone: it used to be an aspiration shared by government, statisticians and politicians alike. It still is in some cases, but delays, management problems and data issues have made this a more distant prospect. 

So how have we got here? Who are we counting now? And can we count people entering and leaving our country in future?

Previous governments abolished paper-based checks

In 1994, the Conservative government of the time partially scrapped exit checks on passengers leaving the UK. In 1998, the Labour government finished the job. Those decisions have provided the background to often–heard criticisms that successive governments stopped ‘counting people in and counting people out’.   The justification at the time was that the then paper-based checks amounted to “an inefficient use of resources and that they contribute little to the integrity of the immigration control” according to the Home Office.

In spite of pledges, exit checks still not fully in place

Since then, the prospect of reintroducing exit checks electronically has gained widespread favour. For the past decade, pledges to reintroduce the checks have been made repeatedly, while the timetable for actually doing so has been repeatedly pushed back.  

Step forward, ‘e-borders’—the whole solution?

The government has rarely been explicit on how exactly it would implement such checks.  Initially a programme called ‘e-borders’ was assumed to be the answer.  E-borders was a project first conceived in 2003 aimed at gathering passenger and travel information electronically and using it to help strengthen the UK’s border records and security – similar to a system used in Australia.    Starting in 2008, it was expected to gather an increasing proportion of passenger data, culminating in 95% coverage by the end of 2010 (reflecting Gordon Brown’s claim above) and 100% coverage by 2014. In fact, by 2010 only about 60% of passengers were being recorded and today about 80% are.  As it stated in its 2007 business case, counting was to be one of the key benefits:

“There are also a number of wider socio-economic benefits, for example the ability, for the first time, to comprehensively count all foreign national passengers in and out of the UK, improving public confidence in the integrity of the border and enabling a more accurate count of migrants for future planning and for informing the population count.”

This sounds impressive. By scanning passports at check-in and departure and making use of other travel information, details such as people’s name, age and nationality can be combined with flight number, times and port of departure or arrival.  A survey of a few thousand migrants versus actual passport data on people entering and leaving the country doesn’t sound like much of a contest.  Except it is, because while counting everyone in and out is relatively straightforward (though no simple task, as has been found); counting migrants and filtering out everyone else is hard.  Passports provide names and numbers, but they don’t tell stories. Your passport doesn’t know why you’re travelling, how long you’re intending to stay, or whereabouts exactly you’re planning to stay. So neither do the authorities — unless you happen to be interviewed on your way in or out.

There are ways around this, but they don’t fully solve the problem. For instance recording the date a person arrives in and leaves the UK: if it was a stay of less than a year, they’re a visitor, if more than a year, they’re a migrant. But that’s not very helpful for finding out about people coming to the UK now.   Visas are another potential source of information, and integrating that into an electronic counting system was recommended by MPs last year. That would, of course, be limited to non-EU nationals because EU citizens don’t need a visa to enter the UK.   Using the Census every 10 years to help identify migration flows to local areas is another option, but those figures become obsolete very quickly, and they’re not without accuracy problems of their own.

Not the whole solution any more

Because of these limitations, and other problems with implementation, the government has backtracked from its original business case, saying in evidence to MPs last year:

“while valuable, this data is by itself insufficient to provide a direct measurement of migration flows. As the information on entries and exits from the UK gets more comprehensive however it will, when combined with other data sources, help improve our statistics in this area.”

A similar view has since been expressed by the UK Statistics Authority and—after feasibility testing the data itself—the Office for National Statistics. The Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration questioned why the government hasn’t realised this sooner:  “It was not clear why the language of counting in and counting out had survived in each of the business cases.”   As things now stand, the e-borders’ project has been terminated. The systems are still there, but they’re now referred to as ‘Semaphore data’ and there are separate systems for enforcement purposes. Still, the coverage isn’t comprehensive, and as of last month, rail routes into and out of the UK still weren’t being counted at all.   The future for counting is uncertain, but it’s not necessarily confined to electronic measurement.

One recommendation from MPs last year was the possible creation of a new “routine migrant survey”, an option the Home Office investigated back in 2011. That could provide more detailed information on migrants’ reasons for coming and what they’re contributing to the UK.  For now, though, the government thinks a new survey would be bad value for money, and continues to indicate its commitment towards bringing back full exit checks at the border.    As for meeting this particular commitment, 100% or near 100% coverage isn’t the only condition. As the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration has commented “it must be capable of facilitating physical interventions where appropriate” — i.e. intercepting departing passengers before they leave, instead of realising they’ve left afterwards. The time needed to do this is running out.

TIMELINE

Charles Clarke (then Home Secretary), 2005: “The new borders technology will record people’s departure from the country”
Home Office, 2006: “We will progressively reinstate exit—in other words, embarkation—controls in stages, starting with the higher-risk routes and people, identify who overstays and count everyone in and out by 2014.”
Gordon Brown, April 2010: “border controls have been brought in and we’re counting people out and in from the end of this year”
Coalition Programme for Government: “We support E-borders and will reintroduce exit checks.”
Home Office, 2012: “The Government have committed to the reintroduction of exit checks by March 2015″
Nick Clegg, March 2013: “we are reintroducing exit checks.”
Nick Clegg, July 2013: [quoted] “I’m not going to pretend to you that exit checks will be restored in full, according to the Home Office’s present plans, by the end of this Parliament”
Home Office, October 2014: “The Government is committed to introducing exit checks by April 2015″
David Cameron, November 2014: “We have also brought back vital exit checks at ports and airports”
Ed Miliband, December 2014: “We will introduce those [proper entry and exit] checks”  

Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX) will be co-sponsoring a briefing session in the House of Lords this Wednesday, 16 July, from 5-7 pm.  The session is being chaired by Baroness Young of Hornsey, with speakers including Diana Johnson MP, Kathryn Cronin (Garden Court Chambers), Klara Skrivankova (Anti-Slavery International) and Caroline Robinson (FLEX). 

In this blog Caroline Robinson, co-director and founder of Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX) makes the case for a more effective response to human trafficking for labour exploitation.

As the public’s response to recent strike action on the part of public sector workers shows, it is not always easy to convince people of the need to protect the rights of all workers, British or migrant.  It is particularly hard in the face of high unemployment and a struggling economy, when the argument is put that migrant workers are filling roles British workers could take.

Yet, when it comes to debates about modern slavery, there is widespread sympathy and support for the victims, the majority of whom are migrant workers exploited for their labour. This paradox arises, simply put, because victims are viewed as deserving protections whereas potential victims are not. Our job is to make the argument that protections are most useful before someone becomes a victim and therefore should be applied to all workers regardless of migrant status.

In debate on this question, people often suggest that greater labour protections would act as a pull factor towards the UK. Yet, the recent Migration Advisory Committee report on low skilled migration suggests that in fact the opposite is true – that the absence of labour protections creates the demand for migrant workers, ergo labour protections reduce that demand.

But it is not just public opinion that is contradictory: migrant workers also face a confusing policy landscape. On the one hand there are increasing checks on immigration status at work and home provided for in the new Immigration Act and reduced labour protections as a result of the Government’s ‘red tape challenge’; then on the other hand there is Theresa May’s high-profile campaign against  ‘modern day slavery’.

Only last month the UK government, in adopting a new Protocol to the international Forced Labour Convention, recognised that greater labour protections serve to prevent acts of modern slavery from taking place. This supports the case made by Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX) in our working paper on Preventing Trafficking for Labour Exploitation, that the UK needs a much stronger labour inspection system to prevent people from being exploited for their labour. We know that where gaps in the enforcement of labour protections exist, unscrupulous employers will take advantage of such gaps and exploitation will snowball from minor infringements of employment law to severe exploitation that constitutes modern slavery.

The Modern Slavery Bill offers an opportunity to improve labour protections for vulnerable workers as a means of preventing acts of severe exploitation. The debate around the Bill should focus on why, in modern Britain, workers are still being exploited for their labour in the restaurants we visit, hotels we stay in and on the construction sites all around us.

Yet, so far the Home Secretary has resisted calls for an expanded Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA) in this Bill that could serve as an effective labour inspectorate, particularly in high-risk sectors where exploitation is rife. Instead the GLA has been moved into the Home Office, placing in great jeopardy its role to protect all workers regardless of status.

As politicians of all parties declare their support for ending slavery in the UK, there is a unique opportunity to put in place measures that would ensure no worker ends up in exploitation. But this opportunity will be missed if our leaders continue to talk tough on modern slavery without recognising that labour protections for all workers is the first line of defence in this fight.

Caroline Robinson is co-Director and founder of Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX). FLEX promotes effective responses to human trafficking for labour exploitation that prioritise the needs and voice of the victims and their human rights. Caroline is also a founder and Editorial Board Member of the Anti-Trafficking Review, an international open access journal that offers an outlet for dialogue between academics, practitioners, trafficked persons and advocates on anti-trafficking issues.

A cultural polarisation over attitudes to immigration, according to the authors of the new British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey chapter on immigration published today, could generate long-term political headaches for politicians who adopt a tough anti-immigration agenda in search of public support.

‘Responding to the concerns of voters worried about immigration today risks alienating the rising sections of the electorate whose political voice will become steadily louder in elections to come’, say authors Anthony Heath and Rob Ford. Their BSA report shows that levels of education are a strong predictor of attitudes towards immigration, with an especially stark polarisation between the attitudes of graduates and those with no qualifications. Sixty per cent of those with a degree believe that immigration is beneficial for the economy, and another 16 per cent see it as having neutral impacts, leaving just 22% of graduates who believe that the economic impacts of immigration are negative.

Yet this three-to-one margin in favour of the economic benefits of migration among graduates is reversed among Britons who left school with no educational qualifications: where 61 per cent believe that the impact is negative, 21% see it as neutral, and just 16 per cent believe that the economic benefits are positive.

The political dilemma, according to academics Anthony Heath and Rob Ford, co-authors of the BSA study, arises from how short-term and longer-term political pressures pull in opposite directions.

“Although UKIP competition creates a short-term demand for restrictive migration policies, such policies may cause problems in the longer run. Advocating strongly restrictive immigration policies risks alienating the more liberal third of the population – and given constraints on policy and high political distrust, may not convince the most anti-immigration voters anyway. Moreover, long-term demographic change is moving society in the opposite direction, because the most pro-migration social groups – university graduates and professionals – are steadily growing while the most anti-migrant groups – unskilled  manual workers and those with no qualifications – are in sharp decline,” the authors write.

They note that, in 1989, just 7 per cent of BSA respondents were graduates, while 44 per cent had no qualifications. Now graduates (25 per cent) outnumber those without any qualifications (20 per cent), according to the BSA study. It also reports that those whose parents were migrants to Britain see both the cultural and economic impacts of migration as positive, as do Londoners.

The challenge to business

If the BSA study presents dilemmas for politicians, it presents a significant challenge for business advocates of the economic benefits of migration too. The BSA survey presents clear evidence that graduates have been convinced, while those who didn’t go to university have not, leaving the public as a whole sceptical that migration will have a net benefit to Britain’s economy.

Yet both the content and style of economic advocacy about migration – which often focuses on the factual evidence about positive net contributions – remains pitched primarily to the more elite, educated audience which is already onside. A focus on the arguments and messengers who could connect with those who didn’t go to university –engaging their concerns about migration constructively – will be important if business advocates want to preach beyond the converted, and to seek majority public support.

Joining the club

BSA respondents were also asked how long it should be before migrants have full and equal access to the same welfare rights as British citizens. Most people believe that citizenship is a ‘club’ and that people need to earn entitlements to it. But the BSA findings show that the majority are pragmatic about how this works in practice: only a fairly small niche take a highly restrictive view.
One per cent say that migrants should ‘never’ have the same access to welfare as British citizens. Only a minority of around a quarter believe that the qualifying period for full welfare access should be five years or more. (18 per cent proposed a five-year wait for EU migrants, and 25 per cent proposed that this would be the right approach for non-EU migrants).

Around one in four (37 per cent) of respondents believe EU migrants should have full and equal access immediately (14 per cent) or after one year (23 per cent). In the BSA findings, most people would see two to three years as fair. Citizenship usually takes five years from those outside the EU, but EU membership constrains governments from discriminating between EU citizens.

This belief, that the willingness to contribute is important, goes with another feature of ‘fair play’ – which is that those who do contribute and play by the rules have to be accepted as fully and equal members of the club.

Lack of knowledge

Public attitudes may not always prove highly responsive to policy changes on immigration, where there is a lack of public knowledge, or low trust about policy. Respondents to the BSA survey were asked whether it was true that ‘there is a limit on the number of work permits the government issues each year to migrants to Britain coming from outside the EU who want to come and work in Britain. Most of these permits are reserved for those with better qualifications and English language skills’.

Forty-five per cent knew this was true, but 42 per cent thought it was false, while 14% didn’t know. Those who were most sceptical about immigration were more likely to give an incorrect answer about work permits.

Contact matters

The BSA report also shows that contact with migrants is associated with more positive, rather than negative views, about the impacts of immigration. ‘While socially marginal groups worry the most about the impact of immigration, those most likely to be directly exposed to migration in their daily lives have much more positive views. Londoners, those with migrant heritage and those with migrant friends (all of whom are more likely to have regular direct contact with migrants) have more positive than negative views about immigration’s effects. The most intensely negative views are found among the oldest voters, and those with no migrant friends’, Heath and Ford conclude.

Reaching the pragmatic middle

The challenge for those who seek to make the positive case for immigration – whether they are political parties, business interests, migrants’ rights advocates or universities seeking continuing openness to international students – is to reach beyond these groups who already agree with them and engage the ‘pragmatic middle’ that the BSA survey identifies.

A rejectionist rump would pull up the drawbridge tomorrow. They are unlikely to ever engage with any argument that would still hold some appeal to the growing group who hold liberal attitudes already. Many have found their political home with UKIP, though it remains to be seen how many will stick with Nigel Farage right through to May 2015’s general election.

The BSA survey echoes existing analysis of public attitudes on immigration. This identifies, sitting between the liberals and rejectionists, a ‘pragmatic middle’ who have reasonable anxieties about the pace of change in Britain and what this means both economically and culturally, but who acknowledge that pulling up the drawbridge is not the answer. It is this group who will accept that migrants can ‘join the club’ and be ‘one of us’ – including accessing the British welfare system – but only if they first show their willingness to play by it’s rules: working hard and paying taxes, learning English and joining in with the community.

It’s this group that politicians and others need to engage. Like others, they have had enough of ‘tough’ promises that can’t be kept. As the issue of immigration becomes increasingly salient in the lead-up to May 2015, they will listen to those who make a pragmatic offer on immigration, one that acknowledges and engages their worries but which is both principled and achievable.

This blog was posted initially on the British Future website. 

According to research carried out by NatCen Social Research for British Social Attitudes (BSA), the British view on current immigration levels is hardening, with 55% of those with the most negative view of the impact immigration has had on Britain believing that the main reason migrants come to the country is to claim benefits.  Amongst those who have the most positive view of immigration, only 7% see this as the most common reason for immigration.

The most ‘economically advantaged’ are more positive than average about immigration with 60% thinking that immigration has benefited Britain economically, compared with 17% of those with no qualifications.

The survey also examined what the British public see as most important in determining whether or not someone is ‘truly British’, finding that they expect someone who is British to speak English, to have lived here for most of their life, and to have been born in Britain.  The survey showed little change between 1995 and 2003 when the questions were last asked, but since then, according to the survey, the British public have become more likely to expect someone who is British to speak English and live here.  Read the full survey.

Jessica Kennedy of the Migrant and Refugee Communities Forum celebrates  the legacy of the Women on the Move Awards

On Thursday 6th March, 260 people gathered at the Southbank Centre to celebrate the achievements of inspirational women from refugee and migrant communities. The Women on the Move Awards, part of the WOW Festival and supported by Barrow Cadbury Trust are held to recognise the outstanding contributions that refugee women make to empowering and integrating their communities.  My organisation – The Forum – co-hosts the Awards alongside Migrants Rights Network and UNHCR.

The Awards are more than just a one night event, and aim to make an ongoing and lasting difference to the winners and their communities. The women gain recognition for, and raise the profile of, their work.  In addition, a fellowship provides access to high quality leadership development and help to build a network of exceptional women and the organisations they work with.

A month after the awards, as the dust has settled and the plaudits die down, what has changed?

Connections

Lilian Seenoi, who founded the only migrant forum in Derry-Londonderry from her kitchen table, won the Women of the Year Award for her work to ensure migrants and refugees can access support. The North-West Migrants Forum brings together diverse migrant groups and local communities which have suffered years of tension. The Awards have catapulted Lilian onto an international stage – she has just come back from Brussels, where she contributed to a public debate at the European Union on practical steps to challenge the poor treatment of migrants in Greece. She is shortly to fly to Turin, Italy, to take part in a European-wide project to tackle hate speech, before another visit to Brussels. All that before running a festival in June to bring together communities building on Derry-Londonderry’s place as UK City of Culture in 2013.

International attention also followed Tatiana Garavito, winner of the Young Woman of the Year Award for her tireless and determined work with the Latin American community in London. El Espectador, a mainstream newspaper in Colombia, published an article about Tatiana.  A short film commissioned by the Women on the Move Awards about Tatiana’s work will be shown at a documentary film festival in Colombia.  After the Awards Tatiana said they were “an amazing opportunity for us migrant women to show the world what we can achieve given a fair chance”.

Those who attended the Awards also found powerful connections. My personal highlight of the night was seeing, in the crush of the after-party, members of a collective of domestic workers connecting with a woman who works with Lilian and the North-West Migrants Forum and is trying to tackle exploitative labour practices in Northern Ireland. This fledgling relationship is continuing and already leading to mutual support, learning and, ultimately, stronger and more effective organisations.

Interest

Although the Awards receive little coverage from major news organisations, the winners and their organisations gain interest from a variety of other sources. Diana Nammi, who founded the Iranian-Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation (IKWRO) as a reaction to ‘honour’ killing and violence, was given special recognition for her tireless work. On the night, IKWRO’s twitter followers notably increased.  All our winners have been inundated with requests for interviews and articles.

Films that Women on the Move made about the Award winners have reached 5,561 viewers – spreading these courageous stories even further. As organisers, we are so glad to see how the Awards create a platform for extraordinary women to shout about their own and their organisations’ great work.  Tatiana was able to highlight the invisibility of the Latin American community in London: “with this [attention], the whole community get the recognition that we are campaigning for”.

Confidence

Perhaps most important, the women tell me, is an improvement in their confidence. Standing on stage as an Award winner, being celebrated for your work and able to share your story from a place of strength, can have a huge personal impact. From what we already know about these courageous and determined women, the only way from here is up.

We also know this is just the start of working relationships that benefit us all. As Diana, one of the award-winners, said after the ceremony, “it has been a huge pleasure – and I hope this will be a start for partnership work for the future”. The Forum hopes the Awards continue to impact throughout the year and look forward to seeing all our supporters – and more extraordinary women – in 2015! There may be only one day to celebrate international women, but Women on the Move are changing lives everyday.

It’s a commonplace to see the word ‘Roma’ juxtaposed to ‘homeless’, ‘beggar’, ‘benefits’, ‘rubbish’ and ‘migrant’ – when not tied up with trafficking and stealing children.  Unless it’s an absence as in the current UK government’s National Roma Inclusion Strategy, which pointedly hardly refers to Roma at all.  So we are forced to accept Roma ‘deficiency’ and their need for assistance or support (or solidarity even…)

What a joy then to attend an event in Manchester last month[1] where a panel considered the opposite question – how do Roma pose an opportunity for UK cities?   We heard tough head teachers say that the presence of Roma children in school had “brought us an understanding of the work ethic, and how children can be resourceful and adapt, and – a little but important thing – how young children understood how to eat together and with adults….  In fact, Roma children have done us all a service by teaching us to be better at our jobs”.  A point a leading social entrepreneur made: “Personal social services in this country are organised for Mr & Mrs Average – but rarely for anyone slightly different, let alone chaotic.  Roma are different, and if we can co-develop services with Roma then everyone would benefit”.   A young Roma woman said that it was only coming to this country that (a) she knew what discrimination was, as she’d accepted the inevitability of exclusion in her country of birth, and that (b) she became aware of her own capabilities and contribution.  A university teacher spoke about the importance of family relationships, self-reliance, innovation and adaptability (especially to earn a living) – all those virtues that are supposedly upheld by leading politicians and newspaper editors.   A leading politician talked about how young Roma people can enable neighbourhoods to become stronger and more confident as barriers and misunderstandings get broken down initially between young people.  And finally, a writer reminded us that Britain has a long, but variable history of welcoming people trying to both make a better life and escaping oppressive treatment; “do we want to move back from being one of the most tolerant and multi-ethnic countries in the world – and if so, at what cost to many of us?”

There are some critics of migration and EU migrant communities, who focus on the incidents of people who appear willing to work for very low pay in appalling conditions, and families who appear to tolerate substandard and overcrowded housing.    But isn’t this a classic illustration of ‘blame the victim’?  Where are the regulations and enforcement actions taken by, for example, HMRC against rogue employers, or by housing authorities against unscrupulous landlords?  As the social entrepreneur said at the Manchester meeting, if we can develop good services with and for Roma, everyone benefits.

The Government don’t seem to have explored the opportunities that Roma bring.  Twenty years ago, there was a strong offer of friendship and potential welcome to the East/Central European states and peoples.  But is it only their doctors and IT specialists we want; and at a pinch, the hairdresser and plumber?  The Roma communities emerge from decades of forced assimilation or forced exclusion; the UK offers hope.  And the Roma bring with them behaviours and aptitudes that are sorely needed.  What a treat to attend a meeting where the words ‘Roma’ and ‘success’ and ‘opportunity’ were heard.  The Roma Support Group applauds this type of initiative, and welcomes a growing movement within the UK of determined Roma and non-Roma activists who want to concentrate on the potential, rather than allow the mindless stereotypes to prevail in what passes for our national narrative.

www.romasupportgroup.org.uk

The report ‘Migration: a liberal challenge’proposes that migrants should be required to pay a £2,000 National Insurance advance upon first entering the UK.  As well as the National Insurance proposal, which would apply to non-EU economic migrants only, CentreForum’s report contains plans to extend the period before EU migrants can claim out of work benefits to 12 months.

It also joins calls to scrap the Conservative Party’s policy of reducing net migration to “the tens of thousands”, describing this target as “perverse” and “unfulfillable”. CentreForum instead recommends a broader migration and population change target that would be set at the beginning of every Parliament.

Find out more about CentreForum’s work.

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Dividing Lines looks back at ten years of hostile media coverage of asylum and refugee issues, and asks how we might move onto a more positive and progressive public debate. Asylum Aid argues that “with the quantity of hostile stories falling away, and heat coming out of the way asylum is covered in the media, it is time to work more closely and cannily with journalists and editors than ever before”.

Follow the link to the ‘Dividing Lines: Asylum, the media and some reasons for (cautious) optimism’ report