Eleanor Rathbone Lecture Series

‘Building walls not bridges – State responses to refugees’

Dr Lisa Doyle, Executive Director of Advocacy and Engagement at the Refugee Council.

At the end of 2017, 68.5 million people around the world were forcibly displaced as a result of persecution, conflict or generalised violence with 25.4 million becoming refugees. The vast majority of refugees do not reach Europe, but at a time when providing protection and support to those forced to leave everything behind is more needed than ever, Governments across Europe have introduced policies to prevent, or to try to deter, entry into their countries. Alongside this hostile ‘strategy’, the treatment of those who do make it to Europe is deteriorating. The lecture will explore how policies relating to asylum-seekers and refugees in the UK and in other European countries serve both to obstruct entry -to build walls not bridges -and to place those who do manage to arrive at a profound disadvantage when trying to rebuild their lives.