Migration, racism and the hostile environment: making the case for the social sciences

Brexit, the European immigration and refugee situation and the Grenfell and Windrush scandals are just some of the recent major events which issues of migration have been at the heart of British social and political agenda. These highlight racism and the fundamental relations people who have settled in the UK have to British collective identity and belonging as well as to the British economy, polity and social relations. 9.4 million UK residents are foreign-born, 14% of the population, just over a third of whom are EU-born. Less than 10% of UK residents are not UK nationals. 20% of the population is of an ethnicity other than White British. Social scientists have observed and analysed such public issues and the public policies that both framed and resulted from them throughout the years. In doing so they have not only helped to document and analyse them but contributed towards their critique and problematisation as part of a public intellectual endeavour towards a more equal and just society. In doing so, much of social sciences research has been empirically informed, often methodologically innovative, theoretically productive and has contributed to our understanding of how processes of racialization and migration have been experienced in diverse ways by different groupings. In this report we aim to highlight some of these contributions and their importance to British society and institutions. At the end of this report, we list, as Further Readings, some of the main contributions members of AcSS and other social scientists have made throughout the years in the field of migration and refugees, racism, and belonging. Rather than attempting to sum up these contributions in the report itself, however, we have selected some of the main issues in this field of study, which present particular challenges to contemporary British society and institutions. We focus in this report on the specific contributions of social sciences to these issues. British social science has been playing for many years an important, often leading, innovative conceptual role in international social science debates. Although the issues we study are presented within their historical and locational contexts, we focus in this report on present day issues which have been crucial to our areas of study, such as the development of a ‘hostile environment’ and everyday bordering as a major governmental technology in the control and disciplining of diversity and discourses on migrants and racialized minorities. We also examine how the issues we have been studying have been affected by the rise of extreme right and neo-nativist politics in the UK and the role of Brexit in these, as well as the ways different groups and social movements have been resisting these processes of exclusion and racialisation. In this report, we do not present British social sciences as unified and non-conflictual; nor do we see social sciences in the UK as isolated from professional or political developments in other countries and regions. In addition, the report is multi-disciplinary; it covers research from the fields of psychosocial studies, sociology, social policy, economics and politics. It stretches from the local, to the regional and the national. And it is consistentlyintersectional, addressing gender, class, generation, race, ethnicity and religion

Marburg virus disease outbreak in Kween District Uganda, 2017: Epidemiological and laboratory findings.

INTRODUCTION: In October 2017, a blood sample from a resident of Kween District, Eastern Uganda, tested positive for Marburg virus. Within 24 hour of confirmation, a rapid outbreak response was initiated. Here, we present results of epidemiological and laboratory investigations. METHODS: A district task force was activated consisting of specialised teams to conduct case finding, case management and isolation, contact listing and follow up, sample collection and testing, and community engagement. An ecological investigation was also carried out to identify the potential source of infection. Virus isolation and Next Generation sequencing were performed to identify the strain of Marburg virus. RESULTS: Seventy individuals (34 MVD suspected cases and 36 close contacts of confirmed cases) were epidemiologically investigated, with blood samples tested for MVD. Only four cases met the MVD case definition; one was categorized as a probable case while the other three were confirmed cases. A total of 299 contacts were identified; during follow- up, two were confirmed as MVD. Of the four confirmed and probable MVD cases, three died, yielding a case fatality rate of 75%. All four cases belonged to a single family and 50% (2/4) of the MVD cases were female. All confirmed cases had clinical symptoms of fever, vomiting, abdominal pain and bleeding from body orifices. Viral sequences indicated that the Marburg virus strain responsible for this outbreak was closely related to virus strains previously shown to be circulating in Uganda. CONCLUSION: This outbreak of MVD occurred as a family cluster with no additional transmission outside of the four related cases. Rapid case detection, prompt laboratory testing at the Uganda National VHF Reference Laboratory and presence of pre-trained, well-prepared national and district rapid response teams facilitated the containment and control of this outbreak within one month, preventing nationwide and global transmission of the disease

Insiders and outsiders: working with peer researchers in researching Muslim communities

This paper draws upon our experiences as non-Muslim researchers working on two local studies with Muslim communities in North London. The paper aims firstly, to consider issues of access and trust in the context of the current political climate, secondly, to critically explore the relationship between academics and community organisations, and thirdly, to discuss the opportunities and challenges involved in employing peer researchers. Our discussion utilises the concept of positionality to analyse the insider/outsider status of researchers (both peer researchers and academics) and its impact on the research process. In so doing, we analyse the complexity and multiplicity of identities and positionings and suggest the ways in which religion, ethnicity, gender and age may impact on the research process

Family migration policies in the United Kingdom: actors, practices and concerns.

From the mid 1960s until 1997 immigration policy was largely concerned with curbing nonwhite immigration, and especially restricting marriage migration and other family members from the Indian sub continent. Much political and administrative effort was devoted to this end. Campaigning groups formed around these issues. There were also many legal challenges to the rules regulating the entry of family members. However with the abolition of the primary purpose rule in 1997 and the shift towards an interest in increasing labour migration within an overall managed migration policy and controlling the numbers of asylum seekers, family migration ceased to be a major preoccupation. This was demonstrated by the lack of attention paid to family migration in the Home Office and the difficulty of following through how decisions were made about the EU family reunification directive. Amongst academics too family migration has been under-researched. This situation has begun to change as marriage in particular has once again come to be the focus of legislative activity and drawn the attention of academic research1. Ethnic minority organisations, especially women’s groups, have also taken up a number of issues, such as the probationary period after marriage migration, no recourse to public funds for women with insecure immigration status, inability to access child tax credits, divided families and forced marriage. The paper examines the relevant activities and views of government authorities, independent public bodies, NGOs, community organisations and experts in relation to familyrelated migration and associated issues. The first section deals with the perceived significance of family migration policies, how and by whom they have been shaped, and especially the extent to which legal, advice and community organisations have played a role in changing and challenging them. The second section lists some of the key organisations involved and interested in family migration issues

Family migration to United Kingdom: trends, statistics and policies.

This report covers the main policy areas in relation to family migration to the UK

Family Migration to United Kingdom: Trends, Statistics and policies

This report covers the main policy areas in relation to family migration to the UK

Lassa Fever in Travelers from West Africa, 1969–2016

Lassa virus is a rodentborne arenavirus responsible for human cases of Lassa fever, a viral hemorrhagic fever, in West Africa and in travelers arriving to non–Lassa-endemic countries from West Africa. We describe a retrospective review performed through literature search of clinical and epidemiologic characteristics of all imported Lassa fever cases worldwide during 1969–2016. Our findings demonstrate that approximately half of imported cases had distinctive clinical features (defined as fever and >1 of the following: pharyngitis, sore throat, tonsillitis, conjunctivitis, oropharyngeal ulcers, or proteinuria). Delays in clinical suspicion of this diagnosis were common. In addition, no secondary transmission of Lassa fever to contacts of patients with low-risk exposures occurred, and infection of high-risk contacts was rare. Future public health investigations of such cases should focus on timely recognition of distinctive clinical features, earlier treatment of patients, and targeted public health responses focused on high-risk contacts

Bringing Our Whole Person to Whole Person Care: Fostering Reflective Capacity with Interactive Reflective Writing in Health Professions Education

Reflective learning and practice foster personal, professional, and interprofessional identity development within health professions education to encourage humanistic, competent patient care. Reflection on experience nurtures mindful presence and adaptive expertise/”practical wisdom,” enabling the health care professional to recognize and address patients’ and families’ emotional, psychosocial, cultural, and spiritual needs for optimizing whole person care (WPC). By heightening awareness of strengths, values, biases, and/or limitations, reflection also helps the provider bring more of his/her “whole person” to WPC, strengthening the provider-patient therapeutic relationship (reciprocity for healing). The use of reflective writing (RW) to augment reflective practice is well documented. RW in the small group setting fosters narrative competence (hearing/responding to a patient’s story, awareness of one’s own stories), self-assessment, moral sensitivity, empathy, emotional processing, and provider well-being. At Alpert Med, we have implemented an “interactive reflective writing” (IRW) paradigm of guided individualized feedback from interdisciplinary faculty to students’ RW in a Doctoring course and Family Medicine clerkship (with small group peer-based narrative sharing and collaborative feedback). Frameworks for enhancing educational value of feedback (BEGAN and REFLECT-reflective level evaluation rubric) were developed, incorporated into student and faculty guides, and applied in faculty development.INTERACTIVE WORKSHOP OBJECTIVES: 1) Participants will be familiarized with constructs of reflective learning/practice and IRW, 2) Participants will apply BEGAN and REFLECT to a student’s reflective essay as exemplar, 3) Participants will engage in interactive dialogue with medical student presenters on positive learning outcomes of IRW for WPC 4) Participants will consider and share merits, limitations, and possible utility of presented curricula/evaluative tools for their settings. FORMAT/ACTIVITIES:1. Didactic - Reflective Learning/Practice for WPC2. Participants provide feedback to student’s RW3. Discussion4. Introduce BEGAN/REFLECT frameworks5. Participants re-craft feedback with frameworks/Discuss6. Student/faculty presenters share experiences of IRW pedagogy for fostering reflection and WPC7. Wrap-up/Q and A