From Hostility to Dignity

Join us to address and challenge the current developments under the UK’s "hostile environment" for migrants and refugees. We will take both local, Oxfordshire-level, and national-level perspectives to understand how migrants and refugees are being adversely affected by recent government attempts to ‘take control’ of immigration.

We present an approach that centres the humanity and dignity of migrants and refugees. Reflections and debates will feature a range of voices from the Oxford area including members of the public, NGO practitioners, academics and other experts.

We will feature two different but complementary panel discussions:

Panel 1 will showcase our local Oxford partners who are experts as NGO or charity workers and service providers to discuss the real-life issues they deal with in their work.

Panel 2 will feature solution-focused work from researchers from across the City of Oxford – from the Oxford Brookes University Migration and Refugees Network and from the University of Oxford. All of whom are doing research on and around migration, asylum and the UK’s hostile environment.

Our panel discussions will consider these questions:

Who can be considered legal and illegal? How do race, gender and LGBTQ+ status and the intersections of these different identities impact the migrant and refugee experience? How can we as a local community take action to support migrants and refugees to express and claim their full humanity beyond politically imposed labels? We will discuss agency, aspiration, identity, belonging, ambivalence, trauma and joy.

The event seeks to join together the insights of the university and charity sectors including practitioners and experts working with migrants, refugees and the community. We will showcase research which collectively contributes to challenging, resisting, and re-writing contemporary anti-migrant and refugee narratives. Yet perhaps even more importantly, this event seeks to foster greater impact of this research through knowledge exchange and collaboration by offering a space to further develop the links between the university and the local third sector organisations working to protect migrant and refugee communities.

Come and join us for a pro-active discussion, where we can develop a positive collective imagination about our role in the Oxford community and recentre a migrant and refugee positive ethos. The event is hosted by the Migration and Refugees Network at Oxford Brookes University for Think Human Festival.