Updates

As the Covid-19 restrictions are being lifted in the UK, we are coming to the end of a year of socially distanced fieldwork. 

In March 2020, we made the difficult decision to work with practitioners using online platforms, and to suspend our work with migrant families. Since that time, practitioners have shared their experiences of working with people that have come to live in the UK. 

We have worked together to complete online focus groups, one-to-one interviews and we have attended online activities facilitated by our collaborators in Hull and Sheffield. From this, we have learnt that the UK’s hostile environment towards immigration shapes practitioner’s work in multiple ways. 

As the pandemic unfolded, we realised that social distancing measures were not going to end any time soon. This meant that we needed to be able to speak with migrant families living in Hull and Sheffield, and we agreed with collaborators to develop ways to work remotely with migrant families, or individuals within families. 

We created four short activities and asked members of migrant families to complete these in their own time, and then talk to us about the activities in an online interview.  This is helping us to start to understand how everyday borders impact on the lives of migrant families in the UK.  

Although we have been able to complete this work with migrant families in Hull, we still want to hear from Sheffield based migrant families – or individuals within families – about their experiences of coming to live in the UK. 

If you would like to know more, please email us and we will send you some information that will help you decide if you would like to volunteer.