Tackling Forced Labour among Refugees and Asylum Seekers

The proposed knowledge exchange project builds on the applicants' on-going Precarious Lives project, a collaboration between academics at the Universities of Leeds and Salford. This research has filled a significant gap in existing knowledge. Despite longstanding recognition of migrants' susceptibility to serious labour exploitation in the Global North and a growing evidence base for the UK, research into forced labour among refugees and (refused) asylum seekers has so far been limited. In response, Precarious Lives set out to identify and understand experiences of forced labour among this highly vulnerable group, principally in the Yorkshire and Humber region, and to engage participants in a discussion of how to tackle it, primarily through 30 in-depth narrative interviews with refugees and (refused) asylum seekers, as well as 20 interviews with front-line practitioners and public agencies.

The research has, for the first time, produced conclusive evidence of forced labour as well as other highly exploitative forms of unfree labour among migrants at different stages of the asylum system. The project has uncovered extremely low pay levels or withheld wages, very long hours, insecure and dangerous work. Work is often extracted through a complex web of power relations underpinned by instances of trafficking for domestic and sexual servitude, confinement, and threats/occurrences of physical violence and denunciation of immigration status to the authorities. The data show that international and national labour and human rights laws are not being upheld by UK employers and suggests that existing policy and legislation are currently unfit to adequately tackle these abuses.

To respond to these challenges, we have worked together with nine Partner organisations located in different positions along the asylum-labour interface to develop a project designed to produce the most effective way of influencing policy and practice from the research findings. We will work with our Partners as part of a Knowledge Exchange Platform on Forced Labour and Asylum to oversee a programme of collaborative activities aimed at promoting dialogue between social scientists and research users and generating useful outputs for the latter. The activities consist of an opening and closing Platform Meeting, three Stakeholder Dialogue Forums, five Practitioner Surgeries, three User Workshops, and on-going General Networking and processes of Developing and Disseminating Outputs.

Maximising the potential for realistic impact for non-academic users and beneficiaries to tackle forced labour among refugees and asylum seekers is central to this knowledge exchange project. Engagement and communication strategies will be co-shaped with users through the involvement of nine Partner organisations and the programme of knowledge exchange activities (see also Pathways to Impact).

Engagement in the activities, and the wider circulation of co-produced outputs, will target prioritised user and beneficiary groups appropriately. Emerging national policy recommendations will be highly relevant to the work of national policy makers, including MPs and civil servants in national government departments, and lobbyists and campaigners seeking to influence them working in a range of human rights, social justice, trafficking, immigration and equalities civil society organisations. Policy and practice solutions identified through the knowledge exchange sequence of activities (see Workplan) will be of direct benefit and use to national, regional and local statutory and third sector stakeholders engaged in improving the integration and cohesion of communities, workers' rights, immigration and refugee services. These include: refugee and migrant and refugee service providers and community organisations, trade unions, legal representatives and funding bodies.

Effective communication and engagement will be ensured through:
1. The commitment, substantial expertise and networks of the nine Partner agencies offering cash and in-kind support that will embed the knowledge exchange dissemination and outputs in their work. The nine Partners work across refugee and migrant labour, worker rights, forced labour and modern slavery, and immigration and employment law and include the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Refugee Council and Anti-Slavery International.
2. A multi-stranded sequence of knowledge exchange activities that will engage users and beneficiaries in an ongoing process to co-produce collaborative strategies and outputs.
3. A dedicated project website that will be regularly updated with working documents, and the co-hosting of materials on key Partner organisation websites to enhance dissemination.
4. Dialogue Forums that will pull together academics, policymakers and practitioners to discuss findings, policy and practice implications, and effective, targeted outputs.
5. Direct engagement with users through Practitioner Surgeries and User Workshops to facilitate take-up of findings into practice and policy recommendations.
6. Strong dissemination through General Networking and established Partner networks to present findings and evolving outputs directly to national and regional stakeholders.
7. The track record of the research team in successfully communicating ideas from research on migrants and refugees to governmental bodies, civil society organisation and private companies using a range of media and dissemination techniques.