A different approach to immigration policy?
St Andrews alumnus Peter Cummings (MA Hons 1970) argues for a shift in refugee policy within the concept of sanctuary, proposing a university education-style approach to achieving a settled status.
Since graduating from St Andrews in French and Spanish back in 1970, I have had an eclectic career. Having obtained a second degree at St Andrews and another as a mature student at the University of Leeds, I worked as a translator, but in between, I spent some 30 years as a Management Accountant in a number of businesses. My experience has been in languages and cultures different from my own and in the challenges of successfully running organisations’ financial affairs.
As I look back on my life and experiences, one issue upsets me more than any other. Perhaps others share this sentiment, and perhaps the issue needs a more vociferous hearing.
More than a ‘refugee crisis’
This issue is the migration phenomenon that global society is experiencing and how we tackle it. We often refer to a ‘refugee crisis’, which to my mind implies that we think it will go away soon. I would argue that the opposite is true. The refugee situation is a continuum created by the misfortunes of life and exacerbated by an ease of mobility that no previous generation has enjoyed. The main causes of the movement of displaced people around the globe are climate change, natural disasters, war and repressive regimes. These are never going to go away. We must face this fact and develop international arrangements that can manage this ongoing issue.
My thoughts are drawn to the success of the Open University, which as it was originally set up to do, enabled people in Britain who had had limited educational opportunities earlier in life, or who had suffered unexpected upset or disruption, to start again and achieve a level of higher education that served as a gateway to secure – often better – jobs. It also had the power to facilitate the acquisition of the intellectual tools and practical knowledge to tackle life’s problems with renewed success.
People seeking refuge are faced with the challenge of having to start their lives again and re-orient themselves to face a new reality. Many arrive having completed tertiary education and with established skills and careers that are part of their personal and social identities, only to find that the receiving country is unwilling to see these qualifications as valid. Perhaps they are not all that different from some of the students who, in its origins, turned to the Open University for a new start through education.
A shift from ‘containment’ to empowerment through education
What if policies that seek to address the complexity of people seeking refuge in the UK shifted from one of containment and repression to one of empowerment through education? If we think of ‘refugee policy’ as a specialist branch of education, we can begin to think in entirely new ways.
Let us consider how a physical university operates:
- it devises and delivers courses that suit the needs of students and society
- it provides accommodation
- it provides restaurants, clubs, societies, libraries, nurseries and crèches
- it provides subject tutors and personal tutors
- It provides medical and mental health services
- it monitors progress
- it achieves tangible outcomes that add value to the individuals concerned and to society generally
- it is underpinned by professional management and administration.
In other words, universities provide for their students all that people seeking refuge also require to find their feet in a new and unfamiliar society. The university concept is ideally suited to the creation of programmes that support refugees, offer courses tailored to their needs, have all necessary social, medical, psychological and physical support on hand, and monitor and support their progress until their successful departure and settlement in wider society.
Opening doors to possibilities
If such specific programmes were established in universities around the world this could potentially allow a number of things to happen, all of which would resolve the disempowering experience that people seeking refuge currently face in the asylum system and the ensuing hostility that can be difficult to disarm in some receiving communities.
Aligning the granting of orientation visas granted, perhaps automatically on arrival, could reduce the seemingly endless and psychologically detrimental limbo of the ‘seeking asylum’ by limiting processing purely to assessing orientation and determining educational needs to function effectively in the destination society. In this process, allocation to an appropriate university where facilities are provided in full, as is the norm with undergraduate students on first entry and access to tailored courses for all types of people from young children to pensioners, regardless of gender or ability level would ensure that social groups – families – could remain together. As with undergraduate programmes, (re)orientation programmes run and/or supported by personal tutors would be informed by details of refugees’ origin, journey, and their needs in the context of the situations that they have escaped. Support in finding work or becoming self-employed would be addressed by a Careers Service.
Combined, I would suggest that this model would remove the need for detention centres and prevent years of delay for refugees pending settled status. Settled status would come automatically on completion of the course/programme of study.
Changing minds, changing lives
In the UK, there seems to be a pervasive belief that migrants have come here deliberately to take advantage of our facilities. We need to overturn this belief. I suggest that most people who have lived in a different country for a long time yearn to go home. Where that is not possible, they may wish to settle in a country where the language and culture closely resemble those of their homeland.
Permanent settlement in this country should not be the assumed norm. Instead, this country should be viewed as a refuge and sanctuary in times of great challenge, as it has been before at various occurrences of global unrest. Some refugees may stay indefinitely, others will return home when circumstances permit. Some may prefer to settle in a country where the culture more closely resembles their own.
Receive, rebuild, return, redirect, remain
We should therefore receive (freely) asylum seekers and refugees, help them to rebuild their lives, enable them to return home when suitable, or redirect them, voluntarily, to an appropriate third country or enable them to remain here in the UK.
Could such a concept only be achieved without incurring an impossible cost? There are some ideas to consider when addressing this, for instance, funding currently directed to detention centres, Government bureaucracy and policing requirements at borders could be redirected to support appropriate educational establishments. Offering discounts on programmes/courses for each person, would reduce the financial flows that see money going to unscrupulous people smugglers because migrants enter unhindered and go straight to an orientation centre to start their new lives. Any money they have saved can be put towards part payment of the course in an agreed proportion.
Allowing asylum seekers to find jobs whilst they are studying, as many students do nowadays, with some income tax rules suitably adjusted, could align with/parallel the student loan-type arrangement, for example. This would allow for the recovery of the costs of the programme in easy instalments. Similarly to our own alumni networks, the education institutions that were instrumental in turning round their lives could keep in touch and invite them to donate to a fund that will help to support the learning of those who subsequently have to follow the same path. Many universities are generously supported by their alumni, and this could function as an effective channel for philanthropic giving when people seeking refuge leave their programmes of orientation, either immediately or even many years after completing their course, and decide to return home or find work in another country.
A national charity could be established, allowing the public to donate to the welfare and ongoing success of those who are forced to seek sanctuary in this country. The philanthropy and generosity of many ordinary people in this country should not be underestimated as it is already in action across the nation. It is plausible that those who have had a positive experience here will, when they return home, be well disposed towards the UK, will want to remain in contact, and will want to do business with us. This could be an unlimited, albeit unquantifiable, advantage to all parties.
Join the conversation
My suggestion is that through the above approach, we could transform lives, boost the education sector (and, in turn, the economy), foster greater international and intercultural understanding as well as reforming our reputation as a nation of sanctuary to those in need.
I believe that we can and must find a solution to this issue through positivity and compassion that will confound the naysayers.
We are keen to encourage thoughtful conversation so if you would like to share your thoughts with us and the author, please contact Dr Catherine Dunford, Alumni Relations and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) Engagement Officer, at [email protected].