Continuing delays, disrepair and insanitary conditions have caused one local authority to decide it will tell the Home Office to end its contract with the Mears Group, and will take asylum housing back in-house. Last week Cllr Paul Wood, Sheffield City Council cabinet member for neighbourhoods and community safety, talked to me about the widespread
What will be the ramifications of the Conservative government’s policies, as set out in the December Queen’s Speech, for BAME communities and all those fighting for racial justice, both domestically and internationally? Criminal justice In the field of criminal justice, the proposed new offence of criminal trespass on land dramatically intensifies the war on Gypsies
A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. ASYLUM AND MIGRATION Asylum and migration rights 1 January: Campaign groups Foxglove and the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) criticise the Home Office’s refusal to disclose the list of countries it deems ‘high-risk’ in the
We are looking for a new communications officer at IRR to join our dedicated team at our London office. We are looking for a motivated person with strong communication skills and a commitment to anti-racism to join our team of researcher-writers conveying information and analyses about racism and ways to tackle it, in the UK
A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. ELECTORAL POLITICS – UK 10 December: Open Democracy publishes details of ‘sickening’ ‘inflammatory’ and ‘discriminatory’ anti-Roma, anti-Gypsy statements made by Conservative candidates across the country in the run-up to the election. Michael Gove and Priti Patel are singled
How can a genuinely anti-racist feminist approach tackle serious sexual violence without demonising entire communities? In 2019 we saw the further entrenchment of the ‘grooming gangs’ narrative in the media and in public debate around child sexual exploitation in the UK – a narrative that is has promoted a number of harms both to Muslim
A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. ASYLUM, MIGRATION, CITIZENSHIP Asylum and migrant rights 28 November: The Paris Administrative Court orders the agency in charge of immigration and integration (Ofii) to resume negotiations to make phone calls to immigration services are free of charge. The
When researcher John Grayson visited a family with disabilities living in a Mears asylum house in Rotherham, he was stunned by what he saw. ‘That’s where the rats get in.’ April [all names have been changed] was showing me round the kitchen in her Rotherham asylum house. I was visiting her with a volunteer interpreter
A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. ASYLUM AND MIGRATION Asylum and migrant rights 20 November: Doctors, nurses, and healthcare unions call on the prime minister to scrap the ‘health surcharge’ for non-EU NHS staff accessing NHS treatment after he proposes to increase the amount
Elephant and Castle is London’s gentrification ‘ground zero’ – where a blueprint for other large scale regeneration projects is to be made. There is an ethnically diverse community of traders, workers, shoppers, passers-by and residents who all rely on the affordable services provided by the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre in Southwark. However, this appears
