New project looks at the impact of forced removal

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Liza Schuster of City University of London and the Refugee Law Project in Kampala (RLP) Uganda are preparing a research project to document the impact of forced removal on the people removed, their families and their communities.

Before starting the project, they want to bring together people with substantial experience of anti-deportation campaigns to discuss with them:

    a) why/what happens when activists lose contact with the person being deported

    b) what are the key points at which contact is lost (in the UK, during transfer, on arrival at airport (departure or arrival), later

    c) how contact is maintained and what evidence they have for what happens to persons they have been working with who have been deported

    d) what mechanisms they would like to see in place to monitor situation of deportees post deportation, and to create alerts if things are going badly wrong for the returnee

    e) whether and how RLP and the research team can help to build those  mechanisms

    f) stakeholder mapping of both ends of the story (i.e. UK and Uganda)

    g) what kinds of information activists would find important and useful for their advocacy and lobbying in the UK

    h) what format that information should be in - e.g. written reports, statistics, audio or video clips of testimonies from deportees, photographs, etc...

The project will have an academic research dimension, but the project will be explicitly a form of academic activism in collaboration with more traditional 'activists' on the ground.

At this stage, they are interested in deportations to Uganda, but also Afghanistan, DRC, Iran and Pakistan.

Nonetheless, those with experience of deportations to other regions are also welcome.

The project will be launched formally at a workshop in London in Mid May 2011.

Towards that, if you are interested in taking part, monitor what is happening to those around you, who are under threat of deportation or who are removed from date of this bulletin.

• For further information, please contact Liza Schuster. Email  l.schuster@city.ac.uk

Liza Schuster came to City University of London in September 2005 from the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, at Oxford University. Before that she was T. H. Marshall Fellow at the London School of Economics working on a comparative project that explored processes of inclusion and exclusion in four European states: Britain, France, Germany and Italy. This work is currently being written up as 'States, Migrants and Citizens: Rights and Racism in Europe'. At City, Liza is continuing this work, as well as a focus on domestic and European asylum policy (especially deportation and detention) and developing her research interests in migration and racism, and migration and rights.



The Refugee Law Project (RLP) seeks to ensure fundamental human rights for all asylum seekers, refugees, and internally displaced persons within Uganda. We envision a country that treats all people within its borders with the same standards of respect and social justice. We work to see that all people living in Uganda, as specified under national and international law, are treated with the fairness and consideration due fellow human beings.