The Everyday Bordering in the UK project, funded by the Economics and Social Research Council (ESRC), was launched in 2020, amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, and sought to understand if immigration legislation prevents or limits practitioners from providing social care to migrant families, and how this affects the families involved.
Now, as the COVID restrictions are being lifted in the UK, the team is coming to the end of a year of socially distanced fieldwork. In March 2020, the difficult decision was made to work with practitioners using online platforms, and to suspend work with migrant families. Since that time, practitioners have shared their experiences of working with people that have come to live in the UK.
Researchers and practitioners have worked together to complete online focus groups, one-to-one interviews and they attended online activities facilitated by our collaborators in Hull and Sheffield. From this, the team learnt that the UK’s hostile environment towards immigration shapes practitioner’s work in multiple ways.
Dr Julie Walsh, Project Lead, said: “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 the research team has been able to complete this work with migrant families in Hull, they 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 the team for more information that will help you decide if you would like to volunteer. Contact Julie Walsh at: j.c.walsh@sheffield.ac.uk, or Maria Ferazzoli at: m.t.ferazzoli@sheffield.ac.uk.