Yearly Archives: 2015

Government reaction to the refugee crisis: humanitarian response or political opportunism?

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Ann Singleton, Senior Research Fellow, University of Bristol and consultant to the Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC), Berlin

Ann Singleton, Senior Research Fellow, University of Bristol and currently on secondment to the Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC), Berlin

Dr Monish Bhatia, Abertay University

Dr Monish Bhatia, Abertay University

Recently the public and media became aware, through one image across Europe (and the world) of the plight of people fleeing for their lives. Within the UK this image produced an awakening after months and years of warnings about the consequences of policy failures, wars and discrimination against migrants. Evidence of the catastrophic failures of UK and EU migration policies, which are based solely on immigration control, borders and ‘security’, have been disbelieved or treated with scepticism by policy makers, officials and many academics.

Repeated reports of deaths in the Mediterranean were ignored or seen as someone else’s problem, the public having been fed a relentless ‘diet’ of poisonous ‘news‘ and rhetoric about migration in general. Institutional racism and discrimination was further embedded as asylum seekers (including children) in the UK were detained, portrayed as troublesome, instead of being welcomed and offered protection. Furthermore, the consequences of austerity are continuously blamed on migrants.

There is a crisis of democracy, as well as policy and a humanitarian crisis, which has been fuelled by the action and inaction of our government.

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Time for a new kind of politics?

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Tessa Coombes - Social Policy PhD student

Tessa Coombes – Social Policy PhD student

At last, the long drawn out Labour leadership election has come to its conclusion and we now know that Jeremy Corbyn has indeed been elected as leader of the Labour Party. After what has been a challenging process, involving intrigue, sub plots and horror stories, we will now see what this new kind of politics is all about. The mandate for change is clear with the scale of the victory born out of a truly democratic process embracing the notion of a real alternative to the status quo.

But what does this mean in practice when you have a leader who will undoubtedly have to fight many internal battles to gain support for his own policies?

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Refugee crisis: Ten practical ways to help

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How can we respond to the refugee crisis? Ten practical ways.

Dr Naomi Millner is a lecturer in human geography at the University of Bristol. She is also part of Bristol Hospitality Network - an organisation which helps support and house refugees.

Dr Naomi Millner is a lecturer in human geography at the University of Bristol. She is also part of Bristol Hospitality Network – an organisation which helps support and house refugees.

In the past couple of weeks, an issue that has long been an issue has hit a ‘tipping point’ in terms of public awareness. It’s strange when this happens. Suddenly the language of ‘crisis’ proliferates. Suddenly everyone wants to know what they can do to help. Historically, it’s often been images of suffering children that either provoke such tipping points, or channel them to a wider audience.

Perhaps it is the powerlessness of a baby in the face of indifferent natural or political forces that brings this rise out of us. Or perhaps it makes a far-off struggle suddenly feel very near.

Personally, I find it problematic that, first, we are (almost) only moved to action by such images and second, that the action we are moved to is largely motivated by pity or sympathy. I wish we were as easily moved by the struggle or suffering of any person. Still more, sympathy can unwittingly depoliticise what are extremely political situations. If I feel sorry for you and want to help you, I am largely ignoring the fact that I have, and am, part of creating this situation that you are in. Better to be angry, outraged, repentant, about it.

Perhaps it would be better if, for once in our long history, we actually did nothing. But we still want to act. It’s also true that systems, attitudes and policies need to change, if people seeking liveable lives are to be able to do this within our current world. So what will we do? How can we respond?

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A terminal crisis of Anglo-America? In the wake of the global financial crisis new strains have emerged within the US-UK ‘Special Relationship’

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Dr Jeremy Green, Honorary Research Fellow, SPERI, & Lecturer in Politics, University of Bristol

Dr Jeremy Green, Honorary Research Fellow, SPERI, & Lecturer in Politics, University of Bristol

Scenes of Lehman Brothers’ employees hurriedly clearing out belongings from their London offices in September 2008, as the bank filed for the largest bankruptcy in US history, became part of the iconic imagery of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC).  Lehman’s collapse was the pivotal moment in the unfolding of the crisis, causing inter-bank lending markets to seize up and demonstrating the magnitude of the peril faced by the global financial system.

Beyond the immediacy of the crisis, however, the image had a wider significance: it represented the catastrophic culmination of a long process – extending over decades – of Anglo-American financial market integration.  The collapse of an American bank was felt in London just as it was in New York.  This was a crisis in the heartland: a financial disaster incubated in liberalised and globally oriented Anglo-American financial markets that served to transmit contagion around the world.

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Migrants, Expats and the Freedom to Move

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Dr Diego Acosta Arcarazo, Lecturer in European Law, Law School

Dr Diego Acosta Arcarazo, Lecturer in European Law, Law School

Given that only 3.2% of the world’s population live outside their country of birth it is remarkable that migration has become such a topic of public debate. Even in those regions where groups of states have granted their citizens freedom to move, like in the EU, the number of people that actually do so remains at the same 3% of the total population. Contrary to popular belief, most people (around 97%) do not move: migration is an exception rather than the rule.

Common misconceptions

This issue of numbers is fertile ground for misconceptions. Usually, the general population vastly overestimates the figures. For example, in 2013, respondents to a survey in the UK guessed the percentage of migrants living in Britain to be 31% when it was in fact 13%. Despite the fact that moving between states is certainly easier in the modern era, the figures of global migration have remained roughly the same during the last 50 years when taken as a percentage of the world’s entire population. Most people still do not move.

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Policy-induced uncertainty

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Professor Alex Marsh has been Professor of Public Policy and Head of the School for Policy Studies since 2007.

George Osborne’s recent “emergency” budget proposed many changes to state support to lower income households in a bid to fulfil the Conservatives’ manifesto pledge to cut £12bn from welfare spending.

One unexpected aspect of this package was the proposal to cut housing association rents by 1% each year for the next four years.

This proposal was justified with reference to social housing rent rises over the last few years. These have pushed up the already substantial housing benefit bill. Households have needed greater state assistance in order to afford the rents being set. Bearing down on rents over the next few years will, it is claimed, both reduce the housing benefit bill and force social landlords to deliver efficiency gains.

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The Community Interest Company: celebrating a ten year anniversary

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Nina Boeger, Senior Lecturer in Law and Director of the Centre for Law and Enterprise

Nina Boeger, Senior Lecturer in Law and Director of the Centre for Law and Enterprise

Social enterprises in the UK are increasingly choosing to incorporate as Community Interest Companies or ‘CIC’. Over the past ten years, since its statutory inception in 2005, the CIC format has aided a total 11,200 social businesses fulfil their social and environmental missions. According to Sara Burgess, Regulator for Community Interest Companies, the last month alone has seen the highest number of new CIC registrations in the format’s ten year history.

These encouraging figures were at the centre of a lively debate during the Ten Years Community Interest Company: Anniversary Celebration, organised by the University of Bristol Law School’s Centre for Law and Enterprise on 16 July 2015. The full-day event, with plenary, workshop and question time sessions, brought to the Law School a vibrant audience of social entrepreneurs, local councillors, civil servants, national and international policy-makers, academics and practitioners, ready to engage in some constructive stock taking, reflection and debate. It also offered social enterprises and community organisations from around Bristol and from further afield the opportunity to showcase their work to others in the sector and more widely.

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Communicating with the world: top tips for media engagement

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interviewEngaging with the media can be tough, as noted by many of the academics who attended the PolicyBristol workshop. Some of the potential barriers they identified included:

–   Requirement for research findings to be ‘timely’
–   Mismatch of pace
–   The feeling of needing to be an expert
–    Distraction from ‘day job’
–    Fear of misrepresentation

But behind these potential challenges, there’s a whole host of benefits. Getting your research into the public domain is often essential for realising its impact, and can also be an important source of participants/collaborators for your research itself. One could also argue that, from a moral or ethical perspective, change should involve public opinion. As Sue Littlemore, former BBC Education Correspondent, pointed out: it’s not about engaging with the media for its own sake – it’s about ‘communicating with the world’.

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Are you skilled in the dark art of Social Media?

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In this blog post, Kim Eggleton, our Journals Executive, explains why she believes social media is the researcher’s new best friend

Kim Eggleton, Journals Executive

Whenever I talk to researchers about using social media, the most common “objection” I hear is that it’s self-promotion, and nothing more than vanity.

The second most common protest is that good research should stand on its own merits, and if it’s good enough, people will find it. I can understand where both these opinions come from, but I think the world has moved on considerably and neither of these concerns are valid any longer.

…in 2012, over 1.8 million articles were published in 28,000 journals.

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Feeling British: the need to recognise the ‘Britishness’ of Muslims in Britain

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Dr Saffron Karlsen, Senior Lecturer in Social Research, University of Bristol

Dr Saffron Karlsen, Senior Lecturer in Social Research, University of Bristol

There is a perception held widely in society that Muslim people living in Britain do not feel British. Comments by David Cameron and others, for example, describe a need to address the lack of integration and sense of Britishness among Muslims. As well as addressing more general concerns, this focus on integration is seen as a solution to the apparent terrorist threat,  both by avoiding young people becoming radicalized and ensuring that those who are becoming radicalized are not protected by their supposedly geographically- and socially-segregated communities (see The Independent).

However, this attitude has developed without any empirical evidence. I have carried out some empirical work into these issues, using quantitative data from the nationally-representative Home Office Citizenship Survey. This indicates that in fact 90% of Muslims, and Hindus, Sikhs and ethnic minority Christians who live in this country report a strong sense of personal belonging to Britain. Indeed, Muslims (with a variety of ethnicities) were more likely to report feeling British than Caribbean Christians. These findings directly contradict the perceived ‘desires’ of British Muslims to live in segregated communities.

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