Refugee counter-proposals to the New Plan: integration and recognition

In our final seminar, we step back from the approach adopted by the ‘New Plan for Immigration’ to explore what changes refugees themselves see as a priority for improving the quality of asylum in this country. In a discussion organised by RLI Visiting Fellow Dr Ammar Bajboj around his ongoing research on integration, he and other Syrian refugees in the UK will discuss some of the main themes and reflections that emerge from their lived experience of asylum in the UK. In particular, deriving from these insights, the conversation will focus on the challenges of getting professional qualifications verified and the importance of having refugee skills and work experience recognised:

· Does the law and politics focus on refugee arrivals and status determination to the detriment of engaging with the integration of those already here?
· How does acknowledgement of the professional skills and qualifications of refugees feed into their integration and self-identity in countries like the UK?
· How will the proposals contained in the New Plan impact on this reality? Is there a different approach that could productively be taken to these challenges?

Discussants from the Syrian refugee community include:
· Dr Ammar Bajboj, Visiting Fellow, Refugee Law Initiative
· Samer Muhandes, Director at Project Centre Ltd / Lecturer at Imperial College London
· Adnan Haj Omar, CEO and founder of Arabisk Media - Arabisk Magazin London
· Dania Archid, TV presenter and producer at Alarabi TV, London
· Ahmed Abd Rabuoh, Lecturer in Business Analytics at Oxford Brookes University

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“Asylum after COVID-19: the UK ‘New Plan for Immigration’ in global context”
Refugee Law Initiative / Refugee Law Clinic 2021-22 Seminar Series

As uncertainty brought by COVID-19 intersects with shifting underlying political currents in society, some governments are pushing ‘new’ approaches to refugees and asylum. In the United Kingdom, this takes the form of the so-called ‘New Plan for Immigration’, a raft of legal and policy measures aimed principally at restricting protection and assistance for refugees and asylum-seekers.

This seminar series draws on a diverse range of perspectives from practitioners, researchers and affected persons to interrogate the law and politics of the New Plan in the global refugee context. The series aims to facilitate debate within both specialist and public circles in the UK and beyond about the legality and feasibility of approaches to asylum of the kind proposed by the New Plan.

The RLI seminar series this year is run jointly with the University of London Refugee Law Clinic.