Welcoming Futures

1 April 2024 - 28 February 2025

Overview

Welcoming Futures aims to bring about a more equal society by working to better the well-being of migrants and provide more opportunities for communities across the UK. It aims to do this by improving how integration and welcoming work is structured and by approaching this problem in partnership with influential stakeholders in different capacities in this field.

A key outcome of this project is a briefing that makes a case for doing integration differently in the UK by, for example, the introduction of a funding model that promotes longer-term, strategic workflows and resource allocation at a critical time: the post-general election period in the UK when priorities and policies are redefined by incoming, or re-elected, administrations at local and UK-wide levels.

The Future of Welcoming partnership will be comprised of those who made commitments to take this agenda forward over the past year and specifically at an Inclusive Cities event the PI and co-I hosted with Coventry City Council in January 2024, including existing networks, thinktanks, international organisations, funders, national charities, migrant-led NGOs and, critically, all levels of government, but specifically Local Authorities.

We see Welcoming Futures as a springboard to a more joined-up approach to integration and welcoming in the UK that will extend beyond the lifespan and ambition of this specific project.

Please see the Note for Action - the Future of Welcoming for more information on the project's launch and aims.

The Welcome Partnership

British Future, City of Sanctuary UK, Coventry City Council, IMIX, Trust for London

If you are interested in supporting this work or learning more about it, contact Denis Kierans.

Principal Investigator

Denis Kierans

Researchers

Jacqueline Broadhead, Co-Investigator

Nathan Grassi, Administration

Delphine Boagey, Communications

Funding

Oxford's ESRC Impact Acceleration Account. Grant reference ES/X004511/1

Like many parts of the world, 2024 is an election year for the UK, with local elections in the spring and a general election in the summer. While migration will be of high salience during these election campaigns, many migration questions ultimately become questions of integration, welcoming and inclusion. This means grappling with how to live well together in our communities, providing skills and support to get into work (e.g. English language), enabling access to services for newcomer communities, and tackling narratives of exclusion.

Welcoming Futures is premised on two related ideas: there is a better way to ‘do integration’, and now is the time to set out what that looks like. We know from research that certain migrant groups are more likely to experience worse life outcomes than their native-born peers. For example, on the whole, migrants are more likely to live in sub-standard housing, be over-qualified for their jobs and experience discrimination (Kierans, 2021). Specific groups, such as asylum-seekers and refugees, fare even worse than other types of migrants due in part to government policy which prevents asylum-seekers from working and a lack of English language skills (MAC, 2021; Ruiz and Vargas-Silva, 2018). The UN’s SDG 10 calls upon the whole of society to reduce inequalities and “empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status” (UN, 2015:23).

Governments of many European and Commonwealth countries provide leadership and resources for this type of work, typically by empowering local governments and other actors to plan and deliver relevant services based on consistent resourcing and frameworks for good practices (Welcoming New Zealand, 2024; BMI, 2024). In the United States, philanthropic organisations have stepped up to provide similar support to those working in the field (Welcoming America, 2023:32). Although these two approaches have their critics (Kreisberg et al., 2024; Hertner, 2022), there is broad consensus among those working on integration in the UK that we have the worst of both worlds: a largely absent central government and very few other types of funders willing and able to buy into this kind of work in the long-term (Broadhead and Spencer, 2020).

In the UK, integration has been handed over to cities and their local partners for management. On the one hand, this is sensible: migrants (like the rest of the population) typically move to and live in cities, and local actors are sensitive to the changing needs of those in their area. On the other hand, when coupled with a lack of funding, guidance and coordination, this approach has meant integration in the UK is primarily reactive, with gaps and overlaps in provision within and across different areas. This has created a vicious cycle wherein the fractured and short-termism of the current integration landscape means actors in this space struggle to make a robust and coherent case for support to government or philanthropy, which puts them and the programmes they run increasingly on the back foot. In turn, migrants and communities suffer.

One of the actors trying to break this cycle was Inclusive Cities (2017 to 2024), a network of 12 UK cities led by the PI and co-I of Welcoming Futures. At the final meeting of the programme in January 2024, member cities demonstrated the need and appetite for policy development on welcoming. They identified the elections as a significant opportunity to make the case for long-term, sustainable change in how we ‘do integration’. In particular, there was interest in taking advantage of the post-election period when incoming or re-elected administrations redefine priorities and policies. Conversations with other relevant stakeholders over the past year and at the January event have echoed the need for institutionalising this work, the gaps in the thinking around current integration policy and the opportunity convening to create lasting policy and societal impact.

Welcoming Futures brings together the key actors – including Inclusive Cities- as well as think tanks, practitioners, policymakers, international organisations, funders, and other cities and city networks. As a group, we will consolidate the learnings from across our work to make a case for a sustainable model for integration in the UK during significant challenges, opportunities, and political change.