Imagine! Belfast 2023 – What would a welcoming NI look like?

This event will invite people to look at what a truly hospitable Northern Ireland would look like. Our event will be a joint collaboration by a number of organisations across NI concerned with migrant justice. Emily Malcolm, a guest speaker from Action Foundation will present an overview of their pilot Alternatives to Detention project. We will then host facilitated a table discussion on some of the topics raised by the guest speaker. You would be very welcome to join us, and please let us know at enddeportationsbelfast@gmail.com if there is anything we can do to make it easier for you to attend.

Action Access was the very first government-funded ‘Alternatives to Detention’ (ATD) pilot in the UK. Action Foundation delivered the two-year project between 2019 and 2021 and supported 20 women asylum seekers in a community setting in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The majority had previously been detained in Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre, Bedfordshire.

The findings of the pilot were officially published in January 2022 by the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, who commissioned the evaluation. The report, Evaluation of the Action Access Pilot, was researched and compiled by Britain’s largest independent social research organisation, the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen).

The report states: “Our evaluation found qualitative evidence that participants experienced more stability and better health and wellbeing outcomes whilst being supported by Action Access in the community than they had received while in detention. Evidence from this pilot suggests that these outcomes were achievable without decreasing compliance with the immigration system.”

Event partners End Deportations Belfast and the Centre for Gender in Politics, QUB.

Please book your place through eventbrite