We have a plan for refugees — England should learn from it

After the rioting and headlines from journalists who should, but sadly do not, know better, a toxic legacy of top-down and bottom-up racism in England, and in Northern Ireland, has been thoroughly exposed. Politicians and pundits in London are now rightly calling for a “better plan for integration”. But what has Scotland been doing with its devolved powers?
Well, we have a plan. In fact, we’ve had a plan for integration — the New Scots refugee integration strategy — for 12 years. In 2020 Scotland received funding from the EU asylum, migration and integration fund.
This allowed the New Scots partnership — the Scottish government, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the Scottish Refugee Council — to work with me, as convener of the New Scots partnership, to evaluate, research and engage with communities to refresh the strategy and develop Scotland’s integration model.
This strategy aims to reduce the hate, racism, fear and impoverishment of social and intercultural life that has been fostered, especially in England and online, for more than a decade. It starts at day one. We believe new Scots should be supported to integrate into communities from the first day of arrival, and not just once leave to remain has been granted.
Refugee rights are human rights and the New Scots strategy has rights at its heart. It will give people access to information about rights and entitlements, ensuring they are empowered to exercise them and giving access to the services they need. Using restorative and trauma-informed approaches, the strategy will directly involve people with experience in decision-making. There is strong evidence that when this happens, outcomes for all people involved are improved.
Integration is an intercultural process: it involves dialogue and mutual learning between different cultures. Lived and learned experience has shown that integration can be successfully developed by ensuring language and cultural learning are well supported. This is a dynamic intercultural, restorative and collective task which counters hate speech and disinformation, and works to ensure all can flourish in communities.
Compared to the cost of policies such as the Rwanda scheme, or preventing people from working or living well in families — or even insisting on waiting until police stations, citizens advice bureaux and asylum hotels are burned down — the New Scots refugee integration approach represents excellent value for taxpayers’ money, more so than ever under austerity. It is vital to cohesion that it is fully resourced.
Alison Phipps is chair of the New Scots partnership and Unesco chair for refugee integration at the University of Glasgow