Multi-stakeholder knowledge exchange events as a tool of migration infrastructure: evidence from the North West of England

Abstract

1. Introduction

This paper reflects on migration infrastructures in areas that are fast diversifying by looking at knowledge exchange (KE) events as an expression of, and a tool for, the development and sustenance of such infrastructures. The impact of migration in different parts of the world is rarely discussed in relation to migration infrastructures. As policymakers increasingly politicize migration and rarely rely on research expertise in a constructive and transparent manner, the dominant discourses revolve around populism, deterrence, and, at best, the vulnerabilities of migrants. At the same time, we know little about KE and its dynamics, and in the migration field, knowledge production has hardly ever been under more scrutiny and criticism (Amelung et al. 2024).

Although they are defined as ‘the systematically interlinked technologies, institutions, and actors that facilitate and condition migrants’ mobility’ (Xiang and Lindquist 2014: 122), migration infrastructures develop but rarely optimize to address the expectations of the different stakeholders in the context of migration. In this paper, we are concerned with migration infrastructures-in-the-making in (re)diversifying UK areas, such as the North West of England, and the role that KE events play as a tool for these infrastructures. Not only has the role of the universities in the KE and impact agenda been overlooked (Broadhead and Allen 2022), but we also know very little about how these events come to be, to what extent and how they affect knowledge production, and whether and how they can affect infrastructures. In diversifying areas, migration infrastructures are necessarily much broader than what sustains migrants’ mobilities, requiring a multi-stakeholder approach. Indeed, we consider as part of these infrastructures the combined impact of the agency and power of various socio-technical assemblages on migration systems and service provision, and as such, on migrants’ lives, and vice versa (Xiang and Lindquist 2018).

Comprehensive data on migration patterns in the North West of England¹ are scarce, except for the data provided from the asylum system. These data indicate that there were 18,045 asylum seekers in the North West at the end of 2022. The highest numbers are concentrated around Greater Manchester (8,110) and the Liverpool City Region (5,278). The impact of dispersal is evident in the high concentration of asylum seekers in the North West; Halton and Liverpool had the highest number of people seeking asylum per 100,000 population. While the North West accounted for 16% of the overall UK asylum population in December 2022, the percentage of those supported on Section 95 with housing and financial support until their application has been processed was even higher, at almost 21% (NWRSMP 2023).

Several recent events across the North West have highlighted tensions at different levels and in different sectors of policy making in relation to migrants’ settlement; for example, the Kirkby violent protest of the far right in front of a hotel hosting asylum seekers, the controversy about the accommodation of asylum seekers on a boat on the River Mersey, and, most recently, the far right, anti-immigration riots in July–August 2024 (BBC 2024). Due to its diverse political landscape and the various migrant flows into the region in the past 10 years, the North West of England consists of a complex environment that is generating multi-stakeholder debates on migration that could galvanize interest and know-how in migration infrastructures.

2. Methodology

The material for this paper derives from a 1 day KE event ‘Setting a Collaborative Migration Research Agenda for the North West of England’. The Migration Working Group—North West, which is based at Edge Hill University, organized the event in Liverpool in June 2023. Stakeholders representing local government, the third sector, service providers, civil society representatives, academics, and migrants themselves were invited. The sampling took a cross-sectional approach in order to capture the diverse set of organizations that form part of the migration infrastructure in the North West.

Setting up a KE event involves relationship building across different sectors, not least because of the apprehension that exists in terms of power imbalances in knowledge production and access, the different approaches to and investment towards migration and migrants’ rights, and constraints and barriers that each sector faces in a time of rapid change. In the new REF2028² agenda, where the focus is on research environment and partnership with external actors (UKRI 2023), understanding the nature and working of KE is important. However, despite being university-led, this event was based on methodologies of precarity and vulnerability (Vathi et al. 2023), as the focus was on outreach, exploring, and voicing the least accessible of subjects, rather than on rigour, validity, and reliability.

The majority of participants utilized Power Point to support their 15-min presentations; individual stories from migrants were presented verbally. Notes were taken by three academics, and a thematic analysis was performed on the notes, combined with a literature review of key relevant writings. We adopted an ‘embedded researcher’ approach (Broadhead and Allen 2022: 438) by acting as a built-in partner and not an external evaluator, by engaging in co-production of discussions, the drawing of conclusions, as well as the digesting of feedback on the event from the participants for this paper and our broader work. The peer learning process that all participants engaged with triggered reflexive accounts and comparative analyses that identified similarities and differences across time, space, and different domains of working.

Since the event was public, participants’ shared material was considered as already in the public domain, but their individual names were not included as the focus was on organizations as stakeholders of migration infrastructure. We focus the analysis of the proceedings and outcomes of this event on three key themes: the agenda-making and setting, dwelling and (im)mobilities, and the role of intersectionality.

3. The discursive and political aspects of agenda making and setting

A circular, albeit unequal, effect between different levels and themes of governance was a key characteristic of migration infrastructures in Liverpool. The development of the ‘Our Liverpool’ Strategy³ itself was in response to the demand from grassroots organizations, and the Liverpool City Council further revised it in cooperation with the multi-agency forum it chairs for these purposes. Funding the third sector to support strategic areas with action on the ground is a key Council agenda item, with a view to responding to acute issues and empowering local organizations to lead in the sector. In turn, the local organizations’ engagement with migration issues in the area creates a feedback loop on the operation of different nationally funded schemes, such as Homes for Ukraine, Hong Kong British National (Overseas) visa, Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme, and the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme for Syrian citizens as dedicated support for specific groups. Evidence shared in the event showed that these schemes lacked proper integrated support, since they are part of a very ineffective asylum system, as demonstrated by the major issues that asylum seekers still face.

Alongside the pragmatic and moral dimensions of every work on the ground, education appeared as a major arena in which actors are invested but also contrast in their approaches. For example, Migration Stories North-West works in this area from the bottom up, challenging negative migration discourse through civic education. Their work is underpinned by the rationale that bringing to light stories of migration from the UK historically would help young people relate to migration in a more civic way. Promoting a ‘think past for present’ understanding of migration aims to normalize migration as an intrinsic part of human history. This was operationalized by providing an online database of ‘migration stories’ to be used as a pedagogical resource.

Discussions of the historical aspects of lived multiculture are otherwise lacking in the way the public and political discourse treats migration. Key issues concerning asylum seekers’ welfare, such as the waiting for a Home Office decision and not knowing one’s fate, the hotel accommodation where their autonomy is severely restricted, anti-migrant racism and inequalities in transport and everyday mobilities are indeed ‘new topics, old stories’, and symptomatic of states’ treatment of migrants in recent European history (Sayad 2004). Academics in the event pointed to the experience of transnational policing faced by Belgian refugees during World War I and how they were quickly repatriated was a stark reminder of today’s realities. The Aliens Restriction Acts also led people to come under great duress and surveillance from authorities, which are the origins of contemporary immigration policies.

Instead, a practical and solution-focused approach is taken by the local government; Liverpool City Council has invested in teacher training in order to respond to the needs of migrant children in schools. However, there is a massive need for more work in this area across the different levels of education in the UK. For charities in smaller towns such as Ask Club Skelmersdale, the focus on education is much broader and often ad hoc, such as English language classes with the help of local university students, education groups, and self-help workshops. Their efforts in trying to become a supplier of legal aid were also within the broader framework of education for asylum seekers, as well as representing them in court, but this appeared as a huge unmet need as it is difficult for small charities to achieve this without proper funding and training. Civic education to stay on the right side of the law was considered as invaluable, but finer details, such as insurance policy and customer rights and obligations, are not usually covered by community programmes for asylum seekers.

The power of numbers is evident within the framework of local policy-making and action, even though it is less emphasized than at the national level. Local migration strategies appear to expose, as well as try to fill in, the holes in the system. For example, while the new ‘Our Liverpool’ strategy aims to move its focus on the integration of migrants with a concerted multi-sectoral plan, issues of destitution and the welfare of those migrants who have no recourse to public funds are not catered for in a systematic way; it is the third sector that deals with these cases. Yet, through KE events and the focus on the day-to-day work of actors and the details on smaller groups and emerging issues, research, and other parts of infrastructure can respond better.

4. Local infrastructures: dwelling and everyday (im)mobilities

What are the daily lives of migrants vis-à-vis the opportunities and constraints embedded in local infrastructures? Here, issues of (in)visibility are evident, particularly in terms of housing, eviction and destitution, and daily (im)mobilities; nonetheless, the way they play out in everyday life and in policy-making and programming is contextual.

SWAP in Wigan gave an overview of some of the issues facing migrants in smaller towns in the North West. The context of deindustrialization was an important background in which the early stages of inclusion take place, but this is rarely talked about in the policy discourse surrounding the dispersal system; the mundane is often left out (Ramachandran and Vathi 2022). In the context of a fast-developing asylum industry, many private companies profit from making housing available for government contracts; this is even more the case in already deprived post-industrial towns with cheap housing. The way housing is managed in the context of asylum seeking shows also that it is mostly focused on homelessness, and broader destitution is rather overlooked. Questions about who created the system of hotel accommodation and who benefits financially from it are rarely scrutinized, as the focus is on migrants as burdens on the UK economy (UK Government 2023).

On the topic of housing, GMIAU offered a stark picture of what the temporary housing in hotels for migrants is like in Greater Manchester, with a focus on concerns over public health. Isolation and lack of social space were key barriers preventing migrants from living with dignity; food is inadequate, and staff are sometimes coercive and intrusive. The case of staff performing room checks was highlighted to demonstrate the prison-like nature of these spaces, which deeply disturbed the children. Hotel staff and wardens managing these facilities appear as gatekeepers and low-level actors in the asylum industry. Yet, the job adverts for such roles specify that no previous experience is needed, despite the very sensitive issues they would deal with as part of their roles. Hotels were highlighted as significant places of (in)visibility, which ignite the debate around immigration, without giving a voice to migrants. And yet, there is much diversity amongst the thousands of hotels that make up the hotel accommodation scheme in the North West, which translates into different challenges for asylum seekers: hotels with no support in place, those facing protests in the local community, and others in towns or countryside where there is little opportunity for social inclusion (GMIAU 2023).

Discontinuous dwellings and lives of migrants in asylum accommodation provided in hotels are a story yet to be told, especially considering the desired political end goals of migrant integration. A major contrast emerges in the politics of surveillance and antagonism, with room control being in sharp contrast with the representation of these migrants as feeling entitled to luxury (see e.g. Hymas 2023). An Afghani refugee who reached Britain through the Afghani Citizens Resettlement Scheme gave a moving account of his personal issues staying in temporary accommodation. The family received an ultimatum for a move-out date, but no strategy for alternative accommodation was provided. He highlighted the overpriced funding in relation to renting a house for himself and his family and being moved outside of an area where the family has gained some familiarity, which would prove damaging. They had established roots with their children going to local schools and his wife attending ESOL classes. Issues of deservingness were, albeit controversially, linked with the particular resettlement scheme that entitled Afghans who had been active alongside the British state in Afghanistan to settle in the UK. Even though some asylum seekers have more rights through the specific schemes, housing and accommodation mobility remain issues that actualize the ‘hostile environment’ policies in the intimate lives of migrants regardless of their arrival channels, leading to a downright ‘rescued lives, wasted human capital’ conclusion.

Precarious post-dispersal mobilities are prominent across the board in an asylum system that does not assume any responsibility for migrants once their 28-day deadline following the gain of refugee status expires. Ask Club Skelmersdale highlighted the link between dispersal, local integration, and post-dispersal mobilities for young migrants in particular, who feel isolated in less ethnically diverse areas, such as Skelmersdale. The absence of migrant communities—in general and from their specific country of origin—is a crucial factor that inspires relocation somewhere more diverse. The majority try to move to London, where they may face greater difficulties and precarity, such as homelessness. The club worked throughout the pandemic and supported local schemes, such as bikes for everyday mobility as well as food parcels. Bicycles as an impromptu solution against isolation have parallels elsewhere in recent refugee history, such as in Calais (Gordon 2016). Similarly, Asylum Link—a major charity in Liverpool—organizes walking events in the city and its outskirts with the goals of engaging asylum seekers in everyday exercise whilst stuck waiting for a decision from the Home Office and integrating them through civic engagement with the city’s heritage and leisure infrastructure.

Nonetheless, post-dispersal mobilities as well as local initiatives are severely disrupted by administrative boundaries: for example, asylum seekers in West Lancashire are not allowed to move to Merseyside. Whilst the national level fails to provide coherent social protection to asylum seekers and refugees, the local and regional levels are also fragmented. This may be a heritage from how the UK’s long history of welfare chauvinism often originated and operated at local level (Feldman 2003).

5. Gender, age, and nationality: key variables for local migration infrastructures

The importance of gender, age, and, in particular, nationality lies at the centre of the discussion of fairness among local stakeholders. The local stakeholders discussed fairness in relation to whether there is a joint approach for all migrants or whether different funding allocations are made to different groups based on who is higher on the political agenda. And how local authorities deal with fairness and deservingness served as a central theme of discussion throughout the event and as such a key matter upon which migration infrastructures collide.

The themes of gender, age, and nationality, often masked in the generic political and public discourse of migration, are indeed some of the most crucial ones in the mundane context of migration regimes, service providers’ work and migrants’ lives. As different stakeholders shared, young men dispersed in small post-industrial towns experienced isolation and faced mental ill health problems. Male asylum seekers also attract more attention and are targeted from the right-wing protests. However, wellbeing among male asylum seekers and refugees is not a major focus of policy and practice. And regardless of age or gender, nationality matters, as asylum seekers who do not arrive through government schemes are often bottom of the list. Intersecting with gender, these political hierarchies of deservingness and discontinuities of rights to asylum leave women in very vulnerable positions.

Female asylum seekers experience modern slavery through exploitative relationships, debt dependency, and precarity of their family’s legal status, leaving them in a ‘Do or Die’ situation. This theme is little explored in the literature and is low in importance in migration policy making. Refugee Women Connect mentioned the many barriers women who they support face and the incredibly inadequate funding for refugees, which forces them to choose between eating and transport. A moving individual story from a highly skilled refugee was given, which highlighted mental ill health and difficulties with childcare, which uncovered the intersection of gender and modern slavery, currently overlooked in the asylum system. The situation is compounded by the limited provisions of legal aid; GMIAU reported that waiting lists are a few months long.

Against the backdrop of a strained national and local asylum system, feminist methods of working based on lived experience demonstrate the cross-organizational strength within the third sector, as exemplified by the collaboration between 4Wings and Refugee Women Connect. Lived experience is also highlighted as a resource for policy making, galvanizing leadership from below, from the migrant communities themselves (Grove-White and Kaye 2023). It bodes well with initiatives that take an Action Research approach—research with and to empower migrants; ‘Experts by Experience’ as part of Manchester Refugee Experience being one such example. Yet, Black-led migrant organizations contend that they are triply disadvantaged, as they are discriminated against, experience extra scrutiny, and still have to operate in a poorly resourced system.

Issues of gender, age, and nationality as key variables for local migration infrastructures are largely obscured by the lack of coherent local data. Not least because of the disparity of migrants’ intake for smaller towns, with some of them taking a high number in relative terms, a certain datafication of the local governance of migration would help local policy makers and providers to consider those who fall through the cracks of the central social protection system. Indeed, the variables of age, gender, and nationality take a different meaning in the context of local migration infrastructures, not least of the informality that exists in the third sector in which the discretion of professionals features as a major aspect of social protection. As one of the participants put it, a lot of the work on the ground is not very GDPR compliant because of the diversity of needs that they are presented with and the evolving partnerships with different actors, such as city council and SERCO. It is at the local level as well where sentiment on asylum seekers’ access to employment is stronger, due to the proximity and intimacy of interaction between different stakeholders, migrants included, and the unfilled jobs in factories: ‘If they are going to stay, let them work’.

6. Conclusions

The discussions that took place in a KE event on migration in the North West showed that KE events serve the important purpose of de-centring migration discourse through the more mundane, but crucial, collaboration between different stakeholders working on the ground. Indeed, the development of local migration infrastructures appeared as based on mutual aid; regardless of the disparate work of the different actors on migration, mutual aid helps infrastructures develop and evolve, based on formal, semi-formal, and informal networking and interpersonal solidarities. This way, KE enables the capturing of how different migration issues arise in the agenda, shift in importance, and are elaborated on or overlooked by different stakeholders, and most importantly, the rationale behind these processes.

Despite being constrained by the national-level restrictions, in the context of KE, these stakeholders are mobilized to identify spaces of influence and resources that would impact migrants. The semi-formal and informal dimensions of this mobilization should not be underestimated, given the high vulnerability of asylum seekers in a hostile environment and the degree of discretion that service providers have in supporting them. It is on this level that the work on depoliticizing and rehumanizing migration discourse can materialize in better outcomes for migrants, particularly in times of shortage of resources and rapid institutional change.

Multi-stakeholder KE has therefore the advantage of zooming in on to the emerging details by taking a more person-centred approach to the analysis of migration infrastructures for the purpose of ensuring migrants’ human rights. The participant-led content and the open style of sharing information in the words of the stakeholders helped to improve accessibility of scientific knowledge, as well as democratizing the epistemology of migration governance, offering a more tangible and, this way, a more constructive counter-narrative to a bleak national picture.

It is, however, through de-systematizing knowledge production and endorsing methodologies of precarity and vulnerability (Vathi et al. 2023) that KE helps to move away from what matters to politicians to what matters to those working and sharing life on the ground. With a focus on outreach and a de-centred approach to knowledge production, KE can optimize the utilization of academic capital for social change. Apart from serving as an ‘honest broker’ (Broadhead and Allen 2022)—offering logistical, organization, and knowledge production capital—the role of the university’s engagement in KE also serves the purpose of articulating the discursive and assuring other stakeholders on the identified priorities. It enables academics to revisit who is vulnerable, when, where, and how, on a continuous basis, so that research is not delayed in its response to what matters on a day-to-day basis, and it is not constrained by political agendas underpinning research funding.

Conflict of interest. The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.

Footnotes

Funding

The funding for the event on which this paper is based was provided by the Department of History, Geography and Social Sciences at Edge Hill University.

References