How did the Refugees Welcome Movement in the UK influence the politics of asylum between 2015 and 2025?

2015 is widely understood to mark the beginning of a period of significant public mobilisation across Europe in support of refugees (Monforte, 2019). In the UK, 'refugees welcome' groups emerged from Penzance to the Highlands. The formal refugee sector also grew as donations increased following media coverage of the Syrian conflict (Grove-White and Kaye,

2023). Yet the impact of the refugees welcome movement after 2015 is unclear. The Nationalities and Borders Act 2022 and the Illegal Migration Act 2023 contain the biggest restrictions on asylum since the UK ratified the UN Refugee Convention in 1954 - although some of the central provisions of those Acts are not currently implemented. At the same

time, multiple studies highlight that while public opinion on immigration may have softened since 2015, it is also increasingly polarised (Rolfe, Katwala and Ballinger, 2023). My research aims to explain the relationship between the refugees welcome movement and the changing politics of asylum in the UK between 2015 and 2025: how far did the

movement shape policy, or influence opinion shifts? And how did the movement produce those effects? The refugees welcome movement in the UK has rarely been studied as a social movement. I intend to use a novel temporal framework from social movement studies to conceptualise how the refugees welcome movement both contested and reproduced the

politics of asylum between 2015 and 2025. By bringing together the fields of migration studies and social movement studies, I hope to contribute to our understanding of how collective action can influence asylum policy and public attitudes towards refugees. I am uniquely positioned to conduct this research because I have been employed in the

refugee sector since 2018, and have volunteered in the sector since 2010. I currently work at the Refugee Council where I manage a coalition of more than 100 organisations. Not only does my access to key figures within the refugees welcome movement enhance the feasibility of the project, but I also have an expert understanding of the movement's political

and social context. My current role includes briefing parliamentarians and journalists on policy, and using focus groups and polling to design public campaigns.