Rationing deservingness in times of Covid-19

Conducting collaborative co-research project with people who have experience of the UK asylum system.

The project conducted collaborative ethnographic research with six co-researchers who had personal experience of the UK asylum system. Berg and Dickson provided an online training programme composed of six phases, for the co-researchers who were recruited via the project's partner organisation, St Augustine’s Centre in Halifax, Yorkshire. Rowe provided the visual methods training component of the research process and the co-researchers were provided with mobile phones and data to enable them to participate. 

The research process is an outcome in itself: it provided training for a group of marginalised people, excluded from work and training in the UK. Of the group of six, one co-researcher is now in full-time employment with the project's partner organisation, and one is in full-time higher education. The partner organisation has decided to implement the co-research method pioneered in this initiative for some of its other projects.

The funding enabled the project team to conduct a collaborative research project with a marginalised group of people whose voices are barely heard in public discussion of asylum and dispersal, yet whose lives are severely circumscribed by punitive policies of enforced destitution and dispersal. It enabled Berg and Dickson to trial an innovative research process, build a mutually beneficial relationship with the partner organisation, and it facilitated access to a wider group of research participants via the co-researchers and the organisation. 

The project's findings have been disseminated through publication of a major report, several blog posts, an online photo gallery, an article for the newsletter of the Doncaster Conversation Club, a voluntary organisation supporting asylum seekers in Doncaster and surrounding areas, and several seminar presentations to academic colleagues and third sector organisations. Berg is also organising a conference panel for the IMISCOE conference in June/July 2022 in Oslo in which a paper by Berg and Dickson will be presented. IMISCOE is Europe’s largest network of migration scholars.

In addition, impacts from the project have also included colleagues in the Thomas Coram Research Unit (IOE) benefitting from a seminar on the participatory co-research process, and other colleagues will benefit from forthcoming publications on the research, including an anticipated book chapter co-written with two of the co-researchers. Dr Dickson successfully applied for promotion to Research Fellow during the research process and the GC funding was part of her application. Both Berg and Dickson are committed to using a participatory co-research process in future research.