Despite significant research into media and political coverage of refugees and asylum seekers, and ongoing Commonwealth policies to resettle refugees to regional areas, analysis of the regional press ...is lacking. We reviewed articles from four regional newspapers using quantitative content analysis and qualitative content analysis to examine some initial trends in how regional newspapers represent refugees and asylum seekers. Despite the dominant negative framing of refugee issues at the national level, the regional media used positive, humanising frames and a broader range of sources in articles on local topics such as refugees' personal stories. This reflects the communitybuilding role of local journalism and challenges the familiar boundaries of the debate. However, there was a compelling distinction between articles on local and national topics, with the negative national discourse and dominance of government sources reflected in articles on national topics such as legislation and events.
Each year, hundreds of thousands of people apply for asylum in Europe, North America, and Australia. Some fear political persecution and genocide; some are escaping civil war or environmental ...catastrophe; others flee poverty, crime, or domestic violence. Who should qualify for asylum? Traditionally, asylum has been reserved for the targets of government persecution, but many believe that its scope should be widened to protect others exposed to serious harm. Matthew Price argues for retaining asylum's focus on persecution - even as other types of refugee aid are expanded - and offers a framework for deciding what constitutes persecution. Asylum, he argues, not only protects refugees but also expresses political values by condemning states for mistreating those refugees. Price's argument explains not only why asylum remains politically relevant and valuable, but also why states should dismantle many of the barriers they have erected against asylum seekers over the last fifteen years.
This article aims to illuminate the little-studied phenomenon of asylum-seeking child-bearing women in the UK, survivors of violence and human trafficking. This is a significant issue in terms of the ...proportion of women affected and the paucity of care and support currently available to them as mother survivors. This study looked to examine the frontline support services of one project to survivor mothers through two collaborating organisations, Happy Baby Community and Hestia, and how their services support mothers’ experiences of perinatal mental health, infant feeding, and the general experiences of migrant women and trafficking survivors in maternity care in the UK. Using evidence collected from semi-structured service-users’ interviews and focus groups, and an anonymous online staff survey, this article shows the types of care and support that are required to address not only the challenges faced by any new mother, but also the additional challenges experienced with trafficking and seeking asylum such as mental health, housing, and legal and access to other support. This article illustrates the many complex and inter-related challenges these women face, and the way the project meets practical, informational, emotional, appraisal, and social needs. It concludes by identifying several implications of the support provided and/or needed, which could be considered by other services or policymakers looking to meet the fundamental needs and rights of this cohort.
El asilo tiene una tradición importante en lo relativo a su existencia, lo cual lo convierte en un derecho con un rodaje relevante. El presente estudio pretende ofrecer al lector una visión general ...del derecho al asilo en el marco del ordenamiento jurídico español. Para ello se sigue un método según el cual se examina la normativa existente, la doctrina más relevante sobre el tema y los pronunciamientos jurisprudenciales que se consideren más destacables. Ello permite que se forme una visión básica del derecho, el cual tiene una vertiente internacional innegable e imprescindible, pero del que también es necesario conocer su vertiente nacional, para entenderlo mejor. En el caso de España, partimos de la regulación constitucional para llegar a la legal, la cual también se adapta a los instrumentos internacionales. La clave del trabajo consiste en determinar por un lado quien puede ser solicitante del derecho de asilo, y bajo qué circunstancias, dejando para otro estudio el procedimiento a seguir. La conclusión básica consiste en que nos encontramos no solo con un derecho internacional sino también, en el caso español, con un derecho constitucional novedoso, ante la inexistencia de otras Constituciones Españolas que contengan el mismo. Además para poder ser solicitante de este derecho se debe tener la condición de refugiado, lo cual lleva aparejado un grave temor a ser perseguido, que deberá ser probado y encontrar su base en una serie de motivos previstos normativamente.Palabras clave: derecho de asilo; refugiado; persecución.
Over the past decade, asylum seekers and refugees arriving in Italy were accommodated in reception facilities located not only in large metropolitan centres but also in Small-medium Towns and Rural ...Areas (STRAs). Italy’s reception system evolved quickly to face the peaks of asylum applications, especially in the 2015-2017 period. At the same time, the changes in Italy’s reception policies were pushed by the increased polarisation in the asylum debate, which, in turn, has led to great heterogeneity in the development of reception practices. This paper argues that the reception-territory nexus is a critical dimension to focus on when investigating the implications connected to the arrival and establishment of asylum seekers and refugees. This appears particularly true in STRAs where the reception system provided new resources that, when well-managed, showed transformative potential, developing virtuous interconnections with the local territories and communities. These virtuous interconnections have, however, been affected by the continuous changes in reception policies and came to a critical juncture in 2018, when the so-called Security Decree entered into force. While further modifications are currently underway, such legislation profoundly affected the Italian reception system’s functioning and working principles, creating new frictions and tensions among institutional actors and within the local governance of the reception system itself. We argue that the reform contributed to disrupting, both materially and symbolically, the previous virtuous combination of refugee inclusion and local development, especially in STRAs. Our situated qualitative analysis – carried out between 2019 and 2020 through discursive in-depth interviews – investigates the interconnections between territory and reception in three small to medium-sized towns and rural areas before and after this regulatory shift. It does so by introducing a novel analytic framework, focusing on symbolic and material aspects within and around reception. The analysis suggests that the stress and disruptions connected to the regulatory changes have had a negative impact on the internal organisation of the reception as well as on the refugees’ inclusion and on the chances of local development.
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