Asylum seekers in Scotland – what’s the background to the SERCO contract issues?
Despite all the fuss about migration levels, the numbers applying for asylum in the UK are at historically low levels. They ran at over 100,000 annually in the early noughties, then fell to around 30,000 per year and are back near that level again after another short peak linked to the migrant crisis in the […]
Housing associations can help keep refugees off the streets
Up to 90% of Syrian and other asylum seekers who make it to Britain face homelessness. Social landlords can offer advice, support – and homes. When the plight of Syrian refugees made September’s headlines, housing organisations rushed to offer rehousing across Britain. But can they contribute to the government’s resettlement scheme and, if not, how […]
Syrian refugees – how can we help?
Up to 20,000 refugees will be resettled in Britain from Syria. How can social landlords engage with this and other schemes to help those on their way or already here? What is the scale of the crisis? Around half of Syria’s 23 million people have been displaced by civil war since 2011. Most are still […]
The chequered history of housing asylum seekers
Ever since numbers of asylum seekers began to shoot upwards in the late 1990s, government support has had two conflicting objectives: complying with international obligations to care for the victims, while at the same time deterring as many asylum seekers as possible from coming here. More recently we could add a third: cutting the costs […]
Democracy under attack
Democracy under attack is the title of a new book which looks at the role of the media in driving social policy. It accuses journalists of distortion, dumbing down, hunting in packs and several other sins. Nothing remarkable about that, you might think, except that the author is a journalist – Malcolm Dean, until 2006 […]
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on