Recent years have further revealed the depth of inequality in UK cities, including in relation to race and unequal access to the elusive identity of 'Britishness' in the context of polarized attitudes towards migration, asylum and the UK's imperial past. The experience of Somali diaspora - among the UK's most stigmatized and misunderstood but resourceful communities - throws these issues and the broader challenges of post-Brexit, pandemic Britain into sharp relief. The UK Somali experience sits at the intersection of local and global challenges in ways that are emblematic of contemporary questions of race, refuge and unequal citizenship in the context of problematic ideas of 'integration'. Moreover, the lives of UK Somali communities are often highly transcontinental, with patterns of investment and political engagement in the 'homeland', and the reality or aspiration of 'return', shaping their relationship with the UK and the British state. The Somali experience of life in UK cities is thus intimately connected to development processes in Somalia, and vice versa. Consequently we need to think about policy in more connected ways too, spanning the divides between local communities policy and international development policy. This project will analyse these intersections. It frames the British Somali experience of urban citizenship in relation to the varying 'faces' of Britain both locally and globally, through research in three very different cities that illustrate diverse aspects of the UK's urban political geography and have different roles in Somali migration histories: Sheffield, Bristol and London borough of Camden. This is supplemented by research with returnees and transcontinental communities in Somalia/Somaliland. It combines an interdisciplinary approach drawing across urban studies and development studies with a collaborative, partnership-based design, drawing in civil society partners including the Refugee Council, City of Sanctuary, the Council of Somali Organizations and local Somali community-based organizations in all three cities. The research aims to explore: i) the experiences of multigenerational Somali communities in UK cities in terms of exclusion, representation, service access, aspirations and inter-community engagement; ii) how this relates to changing transcontinental networks and developments in Somalia; iii) how UK policy both globally and locally feeds into the Somali diasporic experience and capacity to manage recurrent crises; and iv) how a better understanding of these dynamics could foster enhanced urban citizenship and solidarity, and improved policy across a range of domains. Through engaging local and national partners and government at different scales, the project will generate new avenues of cross-sectoral dialogue, practitioner guidance and opportunities for research-led civil society activism. Moreover, as Somali refugees were the first significant incoming refugee group in the post Cold-War era, a long-term view on their experiences holds important lessons for present and future refugee experiences. The project will therefore put the research findings relating to the experience of Somali diaspora in conversation with the needs of more recent refugee arrivals, taken forward through project partnerships with the Refugee Council and City of Sanctuary. The overarching vision of this project is to deepen knowledge on the interdependence of global and local challenges through this focus on the urban experience of multigenerational Somali refugee diaspora, in order both to build inter-community solidarity and contribute to improved coherence across relevant policy domains. It offers fresh lenses on interconnected problems through a transcontinental research programme involving sustained inter-sectoral modalities of working, novel forms of multi-sited and interdisciplinary research, and a collaborative plan for impact and knowledge exchange predicated on deep community engagement.

Last year, the UK received 5,152 applications for asylum from unaccompanied children: children under 18 who arrived seeking asylum without a parent or legal guardian to care for them. We refer to this small but vulnerable group as UCYP: Unaccompanied Children and Young People. Their vulnerability is underscored by reports that many UCYP who were housed in hotels since July 2021 have gone missing. Research has also repeatedly found poor mental health among UCYP, often linked to post-migration factors. There is an urgent need for a deeper understanding of the day-to-day lives of UCYP, and to improve their welfare and reduce risks of harm. Critical to this is understanding how UCYP engage with digital technology. Excessive screen time and social media use are affecting mental health of current youth, and young refugees increasingly use digital technology: it is a key tool to meet their needs during their flight, and to support them to establish and maintain social connections and integrate in their new country. However, it also exposes them to risks. Investigating the digital worlds of UCYP is important in examining safeguarding risks, but it is also crucial to investigate how their engagement with digital tools relates to their sense of belonging, social integration and wellbeing. This understanding will enable those responsible for their care to better support and safeguard their wellbeing. We will investigate this in a multidisciplinary, participatory mixed methods project. The research takes place throughout the UK, and adopts a longitudinal approach so that social networks and wellbeing of UCYP can be tracked over time. It addresses the following questions: How do UCYP in the UK engage with and experience digital technology, and how does this change over time and across context and place? How does UCYP's engagement with the digital world link to their social networks (online, offline, in the UK, and elsewhere), their sense of belonging, social risks, and their wellbeing? How can services and stakeholders better support and protect wellbeing of UCYP while they navigate the intersection of child protection and immigration control in an increasingly digital world? The project uses a participatory mixed methods design: we collaborate with organisations supporting UCYP, and four UCYP will have pivotal roles in all stages of the research process as co-researchers, with the Project Leads and Research and Innovation Associate (RIA) providing training and support throughout. Data collection consists of: Life mapping interviews with UCYP in Brighton and Manchester (N = 20) to gain biographical and visual information about how UCYP use digital technology over time, and how this links to their social connections and their wellbeing in various stages in their lives (links to RQ1); A longitudinal online survey of 200 UCYP throughout the UK, available in multiple languages, to measure relationships between variables such as their digital technology use, online/offline social capital, sense of belonging, and wellbeing (links to RQ2); Six group workshops with 15 UCYP each, in Brighton and Manchester, where UCYP will discuss their own experiences, reflect on and add to the findings of the above, and discuss dissemination (links to RQ3) The UK Home Office, Refugee Council, British Red Cross, organisations supporting UCYP, and academics are represented on an Advisory Group to advise on the research, and ensure the widest dissemination and impact. The project will finish with a policy-focused conference.

Asylum seekers who appeal against initially negative decisions are more than twice as likely to be successful if their case is heard in North London than if their case is heard in Newport or Manchester. This is true for all asylum seekers in the UK, but also applies to specific nationalities. Iranians, for example, enjoy a 34% success rate at one hearing centre and only an 18% success rate at another, Afghans' success rates vary from 31% to 17% depending upon the court, and Zimbabweans' from 54% to 22%. These geographic disparities have not been investigated in the UK because the data on appeal success rates is not publicly available. This proposal draws upon two successful freedom of information requests (FIRs) however, in order to piece together the geography of asylum appeal success rates (see Figure One, case for support). An examination of these disparities is important for various reasons. First, asylum seekers who appeal may be facing a lottery in terms of the court that hears their case, which is arbitrary and unjust. Second, immigration law firms and their clients (such as the Legal Services Commission) may be facing an uneven landscape in terms of the degree of success they can expect in different parts of the country. Understanding this 'lawscape' will empower them with the knowledge to direct their resources more effectively. Third, official bodies with responsibility for asylum appeals, such as the Ministry of Justice and UKBA, need information and analysis in order to make a judgement about whether steps should be taken in order to improve the geographic consistency of the asylum appeal system. Fourth, the wider legal community, beyond immigration law, should be alerted to the existence and impact of geographic disparities in legal processes. The obvious research question arising from these disparities concerns why they exist. Accepting that the discrepancies are unlikely to have occurred by chance (less than 0.01% likelihood according to statistical analysis of the FIRs), four explanations present themselves. First, there may be administrative processes that direct strong cases towards certain courts, although preliminary enquiries put to officials from UKBA, immigration judges and practising immigration lawyers do not support this explanation. Second, some asylum seekers have legal representation and others do not, and this geography of legal aid may be driving the discrepancies. In light of the 10% contraction in legal aid funding in the UK as part of recent austerity measures, this explanation seems particularly important to address. Third, different judges may be predisposed towards particular decisions. This was the finding of quantitative US-based research that demonstrated that the gender and age of immigration judges has significant impact over their decisions, underscoring the importance of investigating this set of factors in the UK case (Ramji-Nogales et al, 2009). And fourth, there may be differences in the daily practices of courts - their rhythms, cultures and routines. This set of factors, centring upon courts as distinct and non-homogenous places, remains understudied in legal geography as well as legal studies more broadly. This research will examine the relative salience of these four groups of variables in explaining disparities in asylum appeal success rates. In so doing, the research will bring together qualitative and quantitative forms of analysis in order to generate a rich and innovative set of explanations for the disparities; constitute the first statistically informed UK-based analysis of national disparities in asylum appeals; impact upon the way policy makers, politicians and lawyers in the field of immigration law, as well as appellants, approach their activities; and have wide implications for the theoretical and empirical study of the relation between geography and law in the future.

This project seeks to understand the value located in a range of arts/cultural activities to refugees, a group new to British cultural life who are often marginalised from 'mainstream' cultural activities, but who are simultaneously expected to adopt a hegemonic national identity of Britishness and henceforward espouse British cultural values. Refugees are a group who typically have experienced forced migration, oftentimes related specifically to their own - often fiercely defended - cultural activities and values in their country of origin. This migratory biography makes for a complex, rich contribution to how we think about the value of arts and culture, and cultural expression, in the UK today. We will investigate the standpoint of refugees on British cultural values, benefitting from their 'outsider within' perspective. British cultural values are not unitary, nor are they precisely definable, they are shaped and refined by participation and engagement. We will seek to identify the components of cultural value embedded in a set of typically British arts and cultural pursuits, based in and around the city of Brighton. We will break down the components to be identified using a range of methods that focus on the discrete senses, and on the particular forms of embodiment that such activities claim. We want to examine carefully what constitutes the experience of involvement in the arts and cultural sphere, so we will also be collecting information on the cognitions and emotions that are attached to such experiences. Refugees constitute a unique case: migrants pay acute attention to the acculturation of British values. This attention can be a protective mechanism, a philosophical choice, an attempt to move away from a traumatized past or culture of origin, an imposed set of norms, or a way of making their enforced dislocation intelligible. Refugees are legally required to learn British cultural values in order to be 'awarded' citizenship, via the Home Office instrument, the 'Life in the UK' Test (which will be interrogated in group discussion). Whatever the reason, refugees have an acute sensitivity and prescient awareness of 'what makes us British'. Yet, often their access to the cultural industries can be severely restricted, due to explicit factors such as economic barriers, and due to implicit factors such as the perceived 'Whiteness' of some art/cultural pursuits (eg. premier league football, and the opera - two performances that will form part of our programme). This project will take the form of a 16 week course, called 'What is British Culture', offered to 12 women refugees. Through a range of arts and cultural activities, we will assess refugee's embodied experience of participation and reflection, gathering sensory information through creative expression. In order to gather robust data, the course is quite long and demanding; however we have found in previous projects that refugee participants appreciate such commitments as they enable a strong group identity to form, which can continue informally after the planned meetings finish, providing a sustainable resource. As researchers we have our own cultural values: our model is taken from feminist praxis. Feminist epistemologies focus on the way "in which gender does and ought to influence our conceptions of knowledge, the knowing subject, and practices of inquiry and justification" (Anderson 2004). At the core of feminist epistemology is the concept of the situated knower, who produces situated knowledge. Donna Haraway (1998) famously argued that most knowledge, in particular academic knowledge is always "produced by positioned actors working in/between all kinds of locations". Collaborative learning, respect for social difference, creating an environment of mutual support, listening and consideration for others, these characteristics are all markers of the feminist classroom, cultural values which we hope to emulate in the process of the research.

The proposed knowledge exchange project builds on the applicants' on-going Precarious Lives project, a collaboration between academics at the Universities of Leeds and Salford. This research has filled a significant gap in existing knowledge. Despite longstanding recognition of migrants' susceptibility to serious labour exploitation in the Global North and a growing evidence base for the UK, research into forced labour among refugees and (refused) asylum seekers has so far been limited. In response, Precarious Lives set out to identify and understand experiences of forced labour among this highly vulnerable group, principally in the Yorkshire and Humber region, and to engage participants in a discussion of how to tackle it, primarily through 30 in-depth narrative interviews with refugees and (refused) asylum seekers, as well as 20 interviews with front-line practitioners and public agencies. The research has, for the first time, produced conclusive evidence of forced labour as well as other highly exploitative forms of unfree labour among migrants at different stages of the asylum system. The project has uncovered extremely low pay levels or withheld wages, very long hours, insecure and dangerous work. Work is often extracted through a complex web of power relations underpinned by instances of trafficking for domestic and sexual servitude, confinement, and threats/occurrences of physical violence and denunciation of immigration status to the authorities. The data show that international and national labour and human rights laws are not being upheld by UK employers and suggests that existing policy and legislation are currently unfit to adequately tackle these abuses. To respond to these challenges, we have worked together with nine Partner organisations located in different positions along the asylum-labour interface to develop a project designed to produce the most effective way of influencing policy and practice from the research findings. We will work with our Partners as part of a Knowledge Exchange Platform on Forced Labour and Asylum to oversee a programme of collaborative activities aimed at promoting dialogue between social scientists and research users and generating useful outputs for the latter. The activities consist of an opening and closing Platform Meeting, three Stakeholder Dialogue Forums, five Practitioner Surgeries, three User Workshops, and on-going General Networking and processes of Developing and Disseminating Outputs.