Press Releases

Building bridges community handbook

Neil Amas and Beth Crosland
Information Centre about Asylum and Refugees (ICAR)

Published by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Price: £10.00 | Paperback | ISBN: 1 903080 06 1 | 88pp |
16 b&w illustrations |

Publication Date: 29 June 2006

ICAR highlights local initiatives that bridge the gap between refugees and asylum seekers and established communities

Understanding the Stranger has been launched today at the Home Office’s Refugee and Integration 2006: Belonging conference in Leeds by Jonathan Duke-Evans, Director of Social Policy at the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, and Beltus Etchu Ojong, Chair of the Greater Pollock Settlement and Integration Network in Glasgow. Jonathan Duke-Evans welcomed the publication and said that this and ICAR’s earlier work would be useful for the Home Office in administering its Gateway resettlement programme.

Understanding the Stranger profiles 21 projects from across the UK, where local communities, councils and other organisations have been working on imaginative projects to build bridges between local people and asylum seekers and refugees. ‘The purpose of the handbook is to generate new thinking and ideas about practical initiatives that might contribute to local integration, community and personal development, increasing understanding and improving public services,’ says Neil Amas, one of the authors of the book.

The handbook presents case studies from across the country, ranging in scope from large-scale, multicultural events organised by the Greater Pollock Settlement and Integration Network in Glasgow, to a Cooking Project at Centrepoint in London and an initiative to help the Spring Bank Tigers, a Kurdish football team in Kingston-upon-Hull, join the local league. Each case study provides information on the project’s background, aims, activities and achievements and contact details for the organisers.

Some common themes emerge:

• Concerns of established residents and newcomers are different. Generally, for one side they relate to competition for resources, for the other to safety and security. Both need to be taken into account so that each side can adapt to the other. Vera Walker of the Victoria Estate Action Group, Stockton-On-Tees reports: ‘There was a lack of preparation for people moving into the area, which caused a lot of misunderstanding… Locals should have been informed and consulted. No one came and told us what was happening.’
• Personal relationships have the most potential for changing attitudes. Maggie Lennon, Project Director of the Bridges Project, a work experience scheme for asylum seekers and refugees in Scotland, explains: ‘Building workers from one particular company had preconceived ideas about asylum seekers being scroungers and claiming benefits. Working with individual asylum seekers on placement they were surprised to find that asylum seekers are not allowed to work and faced other hardships. Personal contact made them change their views.’
• Initiatives are most successful when established residents and newcomers work together on a mutually beneficial project. A good example is the Refugee Accommodate Project run by Canopy Housing in Leeds, where volunteers from local host and asylum-seeking communities together refurbish derelict and disused houses to provide homes for refugees and homeless locals alike. Gail Pringle, Project Manager for Refugee Action in Derwent, endorses this finding. ‘Placing people together when they are enjoying themselves and have a common aim is just as important as a formal awareness-raising event. Many people would run a mile if they see the word “refugee” but would happily come to a football match or a barbeque.’

Understanding the Stranger was commissioned from ICAR by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in London. ‘It seemed to us useful,’ says Paula Ridley, Director of the UK Branch of the Foundation, ‘that ICAR’s expert knowledge of the difficulties faced by refugees and asylum seekers in coming to live in the UK should be disseminated more widely in order that society might deal effectively with their problems and also with the concerns of the host communities.’

The Handbook provides an invaluable resource of ideas, guidance and contacts to assist organisations and individuals working in this field and to make lessons learnt in one neighbourhood available to others. It is also of interest to policymakers and funders who need to make decisions about strategy and the kinds of initiatives that should be supported in the future.

Understanding the Stranger is available through booksellers in the UK or can be ordered from Central Books:
E-mail: orders@centralbooks.com
Website: www.centralbooks.co.uk

Further Information from:

Felicity Luard and Louisa Hooper
Telephone: 020 7908 7604
E-mail: info@gulbenkian.org.uk

Neil Amas and Sarah Eldridge
Telephone: 0207 040 4594; 01433 670300
E-mail: Sarah.Eldridge@city.ac.uk

Notes to Editors

• Neil Amas is a consultant for ICAR. He has worked in the refugee sector in the UK and overseas for 15 years, most recently for Praxis where he first developed a programme of social care for asylum seekers and refugees in London and later led the policy and research programme. During the 1990s he worked in South East Asian refugee camps and for a Vietnamese migration programme based in Bangkok. He has an MSC in Development Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and has also worked in the media, including as producer of a radio news programme.
• Beth Crosland worked at ICAR from 2001 to 2006, where she was manager of its Understanding the Stranger programme, which advises on the promotion of understanding between refugees and asylum seekers and their host communities at a local level. Prior to this she had completed an MA in Human Rights from the University of London, co-authored a United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) working paper on human smuggling and trafficking, and worked for a number of refugee and human rights NGOs.

• The Information Centre about Asylum and Refugees (ICAR) is an academic research and information organisation based at City University. ICAR aims to raise the level of public debate and understanding of asylum in the UK context and to encourage evidence-based policymaking. Established in March 2001, ICAR collects, collates, analyses and disseminates information, research findings, statistics and other data about issues related to asylum and refugees. Through a range of web-based products, project work, commissioned research and participation in conferences, workshops and training sessions, ICAR makes this information and analysis widely available to researchers, service providers, the media, policymakers, refugee populations and members of the general public. ICAR’s work concentrates on improving understanding of the asylum system and developing the understanding of the refugee populations that are resident in the UK. While primarily focused on the UK, ICAR also recognises the importance of the global forced migration context, particularly in relation to the internationalisation of asylum policy and the complexities of cross-border population movements.

  ICAR, School of Social Sciences, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB; tel: 020 7040 4596, e-mail: icar@city.ac.uk; website: www.icar.org.uk

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