The Women’s Groups Targeted by the Far-Right (The Ferret, April 2026)

What happens when far-right groups who claim to “protect women” systematically target and abuse the female anti-racist activists standing against them? This piece summarises an investigation which documents the experiences of at least 14 women in Scotland who faced gendered intimidation, doxxing, death threats, and the promise of gang rape for supporting asylum seekers. The piece reveals a campaign of “misogynist-fascism”. Despite the trauma, they remained resolute that their solidarity was the only thing that mattered.

A View from the Frontline of the Legal Aid Crisis (Migrants Organise, March 2026)

What happens when the very system designed to provide asylum seekers with legal representation collapses under the weight of its own failures, leaving vulnerable people to navigate a hostile environment alone? This 34-page report from Migrants Organise captures the reality of the asylum legal aid crisis. Drawing on the experiences of advisors and lawyers, the piece details how underfunding, a shrinking pool of  solicitors, and contract changes are creating a system where people are forced to attend interviews alone, submit flawed applications, and face removal without ever having spoken to a lawyer, rendering the right to legal aid a fiction.

How to Approach Safeguarding (Third Sector Podcast, March 2026)

How should charities tasked with supporting the most vulnerable people (LGBTQI refugees, trafficking survivors, destitute families, etc.) approach safeguarding? This 30-minute episode of the Third Sector Podcast features Sebastian Rocca of Micro Rainbow and specialist Joanna Nicolas. The conversation addresses the power imbalances inherent to charities, the specific challenges posed by rising public hostility, and argues that the identification of safeguarding issues is not a sign of organisational failure but instead indicates that the systems in place are working as they should.

A Super Simple Guide to the 7 May Elections (BBC News, April 2026)

What should you know about the procedures when you head to the polls next month? This 5-minute video from BBC News breaks down everything voters need to know ahead of the biggest set of elections since 2024. The guide covers vital information about the UK, most relevant to us: the Scottish Parliament’s two-vote system and practicalities, including registration and postal or proxy voting.

No More NRPF: Submission to the APPG (No Recourse North East, April 2026)

Why is the UK government proposing to expand a policy that existing evidence shows pushes migrants into destitution, debt, and exploitation, directly reversing the recommendations of a recent parliamentary inquiry? In a condensed summary of the partnerships formal submission to the APPG on Migration, the No Recourse North East Partnership analyses two proposals: making the 10-year NRPF route the standard and adding NRPF to settlement (ILR). Drawing on post-2024 research, the submission finds this would expand a “well-documented” crisis.

I See It As Trafficking: The Reality for International Students (The Guardian, April 2026)

What happens when a promise of a British education becomes a trap of debt, exploitation, and dashed hopes, paid for through an unregulated system of “student trafficking”? This short article follows students who took out ruinous loans based on agents’ promises. Drawing on insider accounts, the piece reveals a factory-like production line where lower-ranked universities pay high commissions, agents churn out 15-minute applications, and students arrive unable to speak English or find work, facing a brutal job market and a government that keeps moving the goalposts on post-study visas.

The Women’s Groups Targeted by the Far-Right (The Ferret, April 2026)

What happens when far-right groups who claim to “protect women” systematically target and abuse the female anti-racist activists standing against them? This piece summarises an investigation which documents the experiences of at least 14 women in Scotland who faced gendered intimidation, doxxing, death threats, and the promise of gang rape for supporting asylum seekers. The piece reveals a campaign of “misogynist-fascism”. Despite the trauma, they remained resolute that their solidarity was the only thing that mattered.

How to Keep LGBTQI People Seeking Asylum Safe and Connected (Micro Rainbow, April 2026)

What happens when a sudden wave of far-right protests and hotel filming makes leaving the house impossible for LGBTQI asylum seekers, and isolation becomes a daily threat to safety and mental health? In this short online article, Micro Rainbow reports on their weekly community check-in sessions, which they launched in August 2025 as a direct response to rising anti-immigration hostility. The piece finds that the simple acts of a creative prompt, an open conversation, and a shared stretch became a lifeline and that consistent attendance proved that even a virtual room can generate belonging, pride, and psychological support when the physical world has become hostile.

A View from the Frontline of the Legal Aid Crisis (Migrants Organise, March 2026)

What happens when the very system designed to provide asylum seekers with legal representation collapses under the weight of its own failures, leaving vulnerable people to navigate a hostile environment alone? This 34-page report from Migrants Organise captures the reality of the asylum legal aid crisis. Drawing on the experiences of advisors and lawyers, the piece details how underfunding, a shrinking pool of  solicitors, and contract changes are creating a system where people are forced to attend interviews alone, submit flawed applications, and face removal without ever having spoken to a lawyer, rendering the right to legal aid a fiction.

Deaths of Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Young People (Daaro Youth, April 2026)

What happens when a young person who has survived trafficking, separation, or life in the asylum system turns 18, and the state simply walks away? This 25-page report from Daaro Youth captures the voices of young people navigating the collision between the care system and immigration control. Drawing on direct testimony, the findings reveal a catastrophic gap. The report documents how this abandonment, often combined with hostile environment policies, pushes young people directly into the hands of criminal gangs, sex traffickers, and homelessness, and makes a series of recommendations for bridging the gap between child and adult services.

Response to the ‘Visa Brake’ Policy (Russell Group, April 2026)

What happens when a government so desperate to cut net migration pulls an emergency ‘brake’ on deserving student visas, treating the universities that depend on international fees as collateral damage? In this 5-page policy briefing, the Russell Group analyses the Home Office’s new ‘visa brake’ power. The paper finds that the ability to suspend or cap recruitment from countries with just 14 days’ notice creates catastrophic uncertainty for university finances, undermines multi-year planning, damages the UK’s reputation as a stable study destination, and punishes students and institutions for the government’s own failure to address systematic agent fraud.

Accountability and Exclusion in the EU Settlement Scheme (New Europeans, April 2026)

What happens when 2.5 million EU citizens granted ‘settled status’ under the post-Brexit scheme discover that a digital-only system with no physical proof can be lost due to a clerical error, a forgotten online form, or a year spent caring for a sick parent abroad, leaving them with no recourse to public funds and no right to return? This report, “Mind the Gaps,” from New Europeans identifies critical vulnerabilities in the EU Settlement Scheme. Drawing on casework and legal analysis, the paper finds that the ‘continuous residence’ rule, the lack of documentation, and the Home Office’s reliance on porous HMRC and DWP data mean that people can lose their status without knowing, be unable to prove it to landlords or employers, and face a hostile environment they thought they had escaped.

Why Is Immigration Policy So Hard to Get Right? (World of Migration, April 2026)

Why, despite decades of evidence and expert consensus, do governments keep making the same predictable mistakes on immigration policy, and what would it actually take to get it right? In this 28-minute episode of the World of Migration podcast, the host unpacks the structural, political, and cognitive reasons why immigration policy is uniquely prone to failure. The conversation explores the gap between stated goals and actual outcomes, the role of hostile narratives, the short-termism of electoral cycles, and why policies designed to ‘control’ borders so often produce the opposite result: chaos, irregular migration, and human suffering.

The Not Fit-for-Purpose Department (BBC Sounds, April 2026)

If two Home Secretaries, 20 years apart, have declared the same department “not fit for purpose”, are the problems fundamental, and can they ever be fixed? In this 57-minute episode (first of a three-part series), BBC Newscast’s Adam Fleming and Chris Mason go deep inside the Home Office. Joined by former insiders, including a Permanent Secretary and advisors to Priti Patel, the episode examines the structural rot, the cycle of crisis-driven policymaking, and the institutional culture that seems to mean the department tasked with some of the most important issues of our time is systemically set up to fail.

In Conversation with Baroness Lister CBE (Let’s Talk Social Work, April 2026)

Is Westminster’s new ‘moral mission’ to end child poverty is anything more than words? In the centenary episode of the Let’s Talk Social Work podcast, Baroness Ruth Lister CBE joins the hosts for a 49-minute conversation that ranges from the deepening blight of UK poverty to the government’s Child Poverty Strategy, age assessments for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, rising refugee homelessness, and proposed ‘earned settlement’ reforms. The discussion holds successive governments to account, asking whether social work’s voice is actually heard in parliament or merely tolerated, and whether the Prime Minister’s self-proclaimed ‘moral mission’ will survive contact with hostile environment politics.

How to Approach Safeguarding (Third Sector Podcast, March 2026)

How should charities tasked with supporting the most vulnerable people (LGBTQI refugees, trafficking survivors, destitute families, etc.) approach safeguarding? This 30-minute episode of the Third Sector Podcast features Sebastian Rocca of Micro Rainbow and specialist Joanna Nicolas. The conversation addresses the power imbalances inherent to charities, the specific challenges posed by rising public hostility, and argues that the identification of safeguarding issues is not a sign of organisational failure but instead indicates that the systems in place are working as they should.

Fix the Five Basics (Trust for London, April 2026)

What happens when families escaping homelessness are placed in temporary accommodation for years, without a kitchen, a washing machine, Wi-Fi, storage, or even clear information about how long they will be there? This short 3-minute film from Trust for London gives a voice to the over 74,000 London households stuck in a ‘temporary’ trap. The video documents the lived reality of this limbo: the inability to cook a hot meal, the humiliation of having no private space, the barrier of no internet for schoolwork or job hunting, and the psychological toll of indefinite uncertainty, as families issue a clear call to ‘fix the five basics’ ahead of the May local elections.

How Divided Are We? (British Red Cross, April 2026)

What does ‘division’ actually look like in our everyday lives, and why is there more reason for hope than the headlines suggest? In this 34-minute episode of the Bridging Divides podcast, Jake Puddle, Director of Research at British Future, unpacks the findings of the in-depth ‘State of Us’ report on community cohesion. The hosts focus on how division is felt personally, navigated daily, and can be overcome through practical actions, offering a data-driven but hopeful look at what holds communities together.

True Sharif – Mental Health and Domestic Abuse (SunDial Centre, March 2026)

What happens when domestic abuse and mental health challenges collide, and the systems designed to help treat them as separate, isolated problems rather than the intersectional issue they are? This 10-minute video raises awareness of the devastating interplay between abuse and mental distress. The film follows individuals whose experiences demonstrate how abuse causes or worsens mental health conditions, and how poor mental health can be used by abusers as a tool of control, making a powerful case for truly integrated, trauma-informed support.

A Super Simple Guide to the 7 May Elections (BBC News, April 2026)

What should you know about the procedures when you head to the polls next month? This 5-minute video from BBC News breaks down everything voters need to know ahead of the biggest set of elections since 2024. The guide covers vital information about the UK, most relevant to us: the Scottish Parliament’s two-vote system and practicalities, including registration and postal or proxy voting.