Newcastle University has introduced a new scholarship scheme specifically for asylum seekers and refugees who wish to study at the University.

Applications are open for the new Sanctuary Scholarships.

Three awards will be available each year. The awards will support students who wish to study an undergraduate, postgraduate taught or postgraduate research degree. Each scholarship runs for the duration of the course and covers full tuition fees as well as providing a bursary towards living expenses.

The scholarships are available to students from asylum seeker and refugee backgrounds. The students must already have a place to study at the University’s city centre campus from the start of the 2020/21 academic year.

Professor Peter Hopkins, Dean of Social Justice, said: “Due to fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a specific social group or political opinion, refugees are forced to search for sanctuary and security in more secure and welcoming places. Newcastle University is committed to offering these new scholarships to the refugee community in the region as part of our work to promote social justice .”

The Sanctuary Scholarships are part of Newcastle University’s work towards becoming a University of Sanctuary. This work is co-led by Professor Hopkins and Professor Judith Rankin, Dean of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI).

Professor Rankin said: “Offering scholarships to students from asylum seeker and refugee backgrounds is an important part of Newcastle University's commitment to social justice and to equality, diversity and inclusion. They will support our aim of fostering a culture of welcome and inclusion for all.”

Find out more information about Sanctuary Scholarships and guidance on how to apply.

Individuals’ rights must be acknowledged in situations of forced displacement.

Current figures from the United Nations estimate the number of those forcibly displaced at 70 million. Every case results in severance of an individual's ties with their home. But displacement because of armed conflict or human rights violations exposes its victims to extra risks, including violence.

The state either causes or cannot prevent such displacement. Thus those displaced are unable to access support mechanisms that would otherwise exist.

• A social justice story: read more about armed conflict and forcible displacement

Investigating the stories of trafficked Slovakians.

Research by Dr Matej Blazek argues that we need to see the problem of human trafficking as one of inequality and structural marginalisation.

Slovakia, like other areas of Eastern Central Europe, has emerged as one of the top source countries for human trafficking into the UK. These areas have the highest rates of poverty and greatest degrees of socio-economic deprivation in the European Union. The scarcity of resources and lifelong lack of prospects are the reasons why people follow traffickers’ deceptive promises of better life in a foreign country.

• A social justice story: read more about human trafficking

In Northern Ireland (NI), there are two major ethnic groups: Roman Catholics and Protestants. These two groups have separate linguistic heritages, Irish Gaelic and Ulster Scots respectively. There has been much research on aspects of language in NI, including policy and practice issues. We now have a deeper understanding of the history and contemporary diversity of the languages and dialects spoken by both groups.

This focus reflects aspects of the social conflict endured by the NI population for much of the 20th century. Heated debates have surrounded the linguistic heritages of these communities. The recent Peace Process has ensured greater legal protections for Irish and Ulster Scots. It has also made NI more attractive to economic migrants. This has resulted in unprecedented inward migration, particularly from the new EU countries. Ethnic minorities in the region, and the languages they speak, have become increasingly audible and visible. This has led to tensions, mostly between young, working-class men and the newcomers.

A changing population has had socio-cultural and linguistic impacts on NI. The project has developed a better understanding of these impacts. We have also compared the experiences of contemporary migrants to NI with those of the NI Diaspora in the 19th century. During the diaspora, Irish people fled abroad because of conflicts, famine and economic depression. We now have better insights into problems with inclusion and integration faced by previous generations of migrants from the ethnic majority communities. By so doing, we have shown that the lives of contemporary newcomers to NI could be improved by attending to the past.

“Just prior to my research, race crimes in Northern Ireland had risen to levels that were higher than ever before, outnumbering sectarian incidents. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that ethnic minorities there have become the new victims of its post-conflict society. This context was thus an important catalyst for impacts stemming from my project. These ameliorated the position of ethnic minorities. In particular, they have tackled head-on the deficit model of multilingualism. This model has prevailed amongst Northern Ireland’s educators. ‘Teaching the children English’ was considered to be the one and only option,” Prof. Corrigan said.

• Professor Karen Corrigan is Professor of Linguistics and English Language and Director of Research in Linguistics, Newcastle University

Find out more:

• Múin Béarla do na Leanbháin
• From Home to Here: Stories of Migration Old and New

The North East Race, Crime and Justice Research Network and the North East Race Equality Forum both promote race equality in the North East of England. Together, they support and carry out engaged research in race equality involving our partners. Their work includes research about crime and social justice.

Race, Crime and Justice Regional Research Network (RCJRRN)

The RCJRRN is a group of researchers from academic, research and policy backgrounds. All five North East Universities are members: Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside. The group undertakes independent and commissioned research. It analyses and comments on policy and practice issues in the experience of ethnic minorities in the criminal justice system. It publishes reports on relevant issues. Members speak at conferences around these and related issues.

• For more information, contact racecrimejustice@ncl.ac.uk

North East Race Equality Forum (NEREF)

RCJRRN supports the work of the NEREF. The forum was formally launched in December 2014. It provides a voice for all involved in promoting and ensuring Race Equality throughout the region. Its members include community based organisations, policymakers, institutions and academics.

NEREF met in May 2015 to develop core organisation priorities for the group. It has held two events per year since then. It provides regular information and research briefings.

• For more information, contact NEREF at equalityforum@ncl.ac.uk

Gary Craig, Visiting Professor at Law School, noted:

“Events of the last three years – Grenfell, Windrush, Covid-19 – all point to the negative impacts of racism on Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people in the UK. Despite their enormous contribution to our society, culture and economy, BAME people continue to be profoundly disadvantaged in most ways. The North East Race Equality Forum aims to raise awareness of racism in the region and take action to confront it.”

• Jenny Johnstone is a Lecturer in the Law School. She can be contacted about both groups.

Our students are creating sustainable solutions for refugees and asylum seekers in the region.

In August 2016, Phil Hay set up a homework club for a family of Syrian refugees as a Newcastle University Students’ Union ‘Go Volunteer’ project. North East Solidarity and Teaching (NEST) is now a movement of approximately 400 students. They create change in the lives of refugees and asylum seekers in the region.

Supporting learners

The project supports around 250 learners. Service provision is approximately 25 hours every week, spread over the full seven days.

We educate and empower refugees and asylum seekers. We provide a holistic programme of support, which includes:

• English language lessons
• art and reading classes
• conversation groups
• community outreach support
• football and basketball sessions
• science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workshops
• nursery support for children
• trips into the community for integration support

We provide practical support, such as food and clothes donations.

We collaborate with University academics to provide research-based practice.

NEST has support from both public and private funding. We have a large referral network. The network includes most relevant organisations in the region, such as Job Centres and Newcastle City Council. We have gained both national and international recognition through awards. We were highly commended at the Times Higher Education Awards. We presented at the 14th Annual LESLLA (Literacy Education and Second Language Education for Adults) Symposium in Palermo, Italy.

Student volunteers

We receive ongoing support from NUSU ‘Go Volunteer’. But our work would not be possible without Newcastle University students. They have decided that they will not turn away from the needs of their peers, brothers and sisters from other ends of the earth, whose rights have been stripped away from them through conflict and political unrest.

Students have taken on responsibility for creating a warm and nurturing environment for those who have experienced forced migration, to begin to rebuild their lives.

“Unless we make other people’s problems our own, we will never have the urgency that is needed to create change.”

• Bridget Stratford is the co-founder and volunteer project manager of NEST and a postgraduate student at Newcastle
  

A history of racism against Roma is present today in social and educational exclusion.

We collaborate with teachers and Roma parents to show how to produce multilingual school resources. These resources enable a translanguaging pedagogy. Translanguaging involves using more than one language, often at the same time.

ROMtels

ROMtels is a European project co-led by academics at Newcastle University and Middlesex University. It works against the normalised discourses and monoglossic language policies that exacerbate educational inequities.

We work with teachers and Roma parents. We show them how to co-produce prestigious multilingual school resources. This, in turn, enables pupils to draw on all their languaging resources in the pursuit of learning.

The project shows how relations with schools improve dramatically when Roma parents act as languaging experts. It demonstrates how liberating and powerful translanguaging is to the learning process.

Marginalisation of Roma people in education

Roma people have faced systematic persecution in Europe since the 15th century. Discourses of racial inferiority arose in the 19th century. This led to the death of between 250,000 and 300,000 Roma during the Porrajmos Romani (Roma Holocaust).

Remnants of this history remain in current and persistent forms of subordination across Europe. For example, tenacious racist stereotyping of Roma as child-stealers occurs in both traditional songs and popular children’s literature.

The perpetuation of such representations has serious consequences for systems such as our policing and education. In UK education systems, deficit discourses abound, such as Roma families being ‘hard to reach’. This is an assumed cultural deficit born of earlier assumptions of racial inferiority.

In England, Roma pupils are collapsed into the ethnicity category Roma/Gypsy. They are consistently, and by a very large margin, achieving far less well than other black and minority ethnic pupils.

According to the government’s own calculations, and now represented in their race disparity audit, 30% of Gypsy/Roma pupils achieve the government’s expected target level in reading by age 11. This is in comparison to a national average of 80%.

By the time they are 16, only 10% of Gypsy/Roma pupils achieve grades A* to C.

They are also, by far, the most excluded from school in official statistics, and many more may be excluded by unofficial forms. In 2015/16, 31% of Gypsy/Roma boys were excluded, in comparison to a figure of 14.54% of Black Caribbean boys, the next most excluded group, and 7.47% of White boys.

“ROMtels works against normalised racist discourses of Roma and monoglossic language policies, which exacerbate persistent educational inequities in promoting a translanguaging pedagogy.”

• Dr Heather Smith is Senior Lecturer in Education in the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University

Why do humans choose insider/outsider groups, and what can we do about it?

Dr Tina Gharavi has been working on a film that examines and challenges social divisions, particularly in the context of race and racism.

Her earlier work, the feature film I am Nasrine, was nominated for a BAFTA. She is now continuing her poignant social critique with a new project entitled Tribalism is Killing Us.

Challenging division through film

TRIBALISM IS KILLING US (TIKU) is an essay film about our shared past. It is an attempt to understand the science and social politics of division:

• why we divide
• along what lines we choose to form our division
• how these divisions are damaging to us

When we divide, we seek safety in numbers, comfort in the crowd. This mob mentality removes the need for personal responsibility, insulating us in ignorance and fear.

TIKU is an examination of the intransigent prejudice of racism and its insidious effect on human life. Discrimination is experienced on a personal level. But the bias is also entrenched in public institutions and public thought, from Black doll projects that show how race was engineered, to empathy studies demonstrating humanity’s tremendous capacity for co-operation.

Interviewees share their thoughts on where we have come to in this timely debate. What are the origins of tribalism and how can we move beyond it? In a time when humanity is facing imminent global challenges, do we have what it takes to finally transcend our traditional notions of identity and unite together?

Through archive footage, news, documentaries, film, television, music, art, science and psychology experiments, TIKU is a reminder that this does not have to be the way. It is a reminder of our shared humanity and the power of unity.

Scientists have proven that we are 99.9% the same. TIKU unpicks the logic of discrimination. It demonstrates how and why the system works. It presents solutions that can help us to move forward together in these divided times, by reminding us of our commonalities and of our tremendous capacity to love one another.

The only thing that divides us is our own choices. TIKU calls on you to choose to live with empathy, to choose to act with compassion, to challenge and be challenged. It challenges you not to take the path of least resistance, but to struggle against the tide of tribalism that threatens to overwhelm us.

• Dr Tina Gharavi is Senior Lecturer in Digital Media/Film in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics at Newcastle University

Social researchers at Newcastle have been exploring the complexity of racism and Islamophobia for over 15 years now.

This work is anti-racist in focus. It is about working towards social justice by exposing inequalities in society based on race, ethnicity and religion. It offers routes to social justice by eradicating racism.

Political participation of young Muslims in the face of Islamophobia

Research led by Professor Peter Hopkins has informed policy and practice about Islamophobia.

In 2018, the Westminster All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims published a report based on its inquiry into a working definition of Islamophobia. The inquiry involved widespread consultation with policymakers, legal experts, academics, public sector organisations and community groups. Newcastle University research informed its definition that:

“Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness”

Professor Hopkins and Dr Finlay explored the political participation of young Scottish Muslims. This work found that Islamophobia tended to politicise young people or to silence and marginalise them.

For those who are politicised, experiences of Islamophobia led them to engage with political debates. They stand up for their rights in a positive way. Some take part in volunteering and activism projects. Others join political movements and get involved in formal politics.

But for some young Muslims, Islamophobia made them anxious about appearing overly politicised. For this group, Islamophobia essentially silences them. This discourages them from playing an active role in society. Many of the young Muslim women who participated in this research also talked about gendered Islamophobia. They spoke of how their marginalisation is shaped by a combination of:

• problematic gendered stereotypes
• everyday experiences of racism and Islamophobia

The report contributed to the formation of a Cross-Party Group in the Scottish Parliament, on Tackling Islamophobia.

“An important component of social justice is anti-racism and the action we can take to challenge everyday racism and other forms of intolerance that intersect with this.”

• Professor Peter Hopkins is Professor of Social Geography and Dean of Social Justice and Dr Robin Finlay is Postdoctoral Researcher at Newcastle University