OUR PLAN

The Asylum Project, established under the Narrative Realignment Initiative, is dedicated to transforming how asylum is represented and understood within the British and European public spheres. Drawing on interdisciplinary research, ethical storytelling, and targeted advocacy, the project seeks to move public conversation from one of fear and division toward empathy, truth, and dignity.

The incoming publication of Reframing Refuge: A New Narrative on Asylum marks a critical step in that mission. The publication serves as both a foundational policy document and a collaborative platform, bringing together asylum support organisations, researchers, journalists, and advocates. It establishes an evidence-based framework for reshaping the national discourse on asylum and outlines a path toward more humane and effective policy-making.

At its core, the project recognises that narratives shape policy, and policy, in turn, shapes lives. Public understanding of asylum has been eroded by years of politicisation and misinformation, often detached from the realities faced by those seeking refuge. Through rigorous media analysis, data visualisation, and the amplification of lived experience, The Asylum Project seeks to restore truth and humanity to this conversation.

The Asylum Project will produce several publications over the coming months, including the results of the first Asylum Narrative Index, a comprehensive study of British media coverage and political discourse since 2015. It exposes systemic patterns of bias and fear-based framing while highlighting emerging examples of ethical journalism and constructive reporting. These findings are complemented by a series of visual essays and personal testimonies, drawn from our storytelling initiative Beyond the Headlines, which foreground the human realities too often obscured by political rhetoric.

The advocacy dimension of Reframing Refuge presents a series of policy recommendations grounded in both research and lived experience. It calls for a renewed government commitment to accuracy and dignity in public communication, the expansion of community-based accommodation schemes, the establishment of an independent asylum ombudsperson to oversee narrative standards, and an end to the detention of vulnerable groups. These proposals are aligned with international standards under the UN Refugee Convention and have been developed in collaboration with partners including the Refugee Council, JCWI, and Asylum Matters.

The launch marks the beginning of a growing coalition of organisations and individuals working to reshape the asylum narrative across the UK and, in time, Europe. The Asylum Project seeks to build enduring partnerships with charities, universities, media professionals, and local authorities committed to evidence-based reform and public understanding. A forthcoming advisory group will ensure that voices with lived experience are central to this process, guiding the project’s ethical and strategic direction.

In its next phase, The Asylum Project will extend its work to the European level, engaging with like-minded initiatives and research networks to coordinate efforts in narrative transformation. Plans for a Reframing Refuge Europe Summit are underway, and will bring together policymakers, journalists, and civil society actors to share strategies for rebuilding public trust and empathy in migration discourse.

The Asylum Project’s success will be measured not merely in policy citations or press coverage but in the gradual restoration of a more truthful and compassionate public discourse. It represents a collective effort to rebuild the moral and factual foundations upon which asylum, as both a legal right and a human experience, must stand.

THE LAUNCH OF THE ASYLUM PROJECT

ESA BUTT AND ADRIJA ZAMAN

Across the political sphere, from ministerial speeches to sensationalist headlines, the language used to describe those seeking asylum in the United Kingdom has become increasingly charged. It should not be dismissed as mere rhetoric or seen as peripheral to the issue itself. The words we use are not neutral: they have consequences. This language has become a catalyst, feeding the currents of resentment and fear that have intensified across the country.

“...illegal working and streams of taxis – BBC gains rare access into asylum seeker hotel…”

The summer of 2024 marked a profound turning point. The riots that erupted across Britain, triggered by the Southport stabbings, revealed how swiftly misinformation can ignite underlying tensions. Rumours circulated online — first that the perpetrator was a migrant, then an asylum seeker, and even that he was on an intelligence watchlist. Each distortion gathered speed through social media, inflamed by far-right networks and political opportunists. Within days, thousands took to the streets, many in areas where asylum seekers had recently been housed. The violence was later condemned as “far-right thuggery” by the Prime Minister, a description that, while accurate in part, obscured the deeper issue at hand.

“Stop the Boats”

To reduce these events to a story of online misinformation or extremist manipulation would be to overlook a far more entrenched cause. The riots did not emerge in a vacuum, nor were they the work of a few fringe agitators. The participation of ordinary citizens reflected a climate of fear and alienation that has been steadily normalised through political discourse. As Luke de Noronha observed, “Racist street violence and immigration controls are both forms of bordering which feed off one another.” The borders being policed are not only physical but linguistic and psychological – boundaries drawn through words, policies, and narratives.

“I think it is inevitable a man I grant asylum to will rape or murder a young girl.”

In the aftermath of the pandemic, political attention turned sharply toward migration. Campaigns such as Stop the Boats and the Rwanda policy recast asylum not as a humanitarian obligation but as a question of cost, security, and national identity. In this reframing, migrants were no longer individuals with rights and stories but figures of economic burden or potential threat. The collapse of linguistic precision, the conflation of “asylum seeker”, “migrant”, “refugee”, and “citizen”, has further blurred understanding, allowing rhetoric to eclipse reality, a dichotomy defined by division, surveillance, and suspicion rather than empathy and truth.

“Invasion of our southern coast”

It was from this recognition that The Asylum Project, co-directed by Esa Butt and Adrija Zaman, was founded. The project begins from the premise that the unrest and polarisation witnessed in recent years are not spontaneous eruptions of prejudice but symptoms of a deeper narrative architecture, one sustained by political language, media framing, and public misunderstanding. Its purpose is not to apportion blame but to illuminate these patterns, to expose how words become policies, and how policies, in turn, shape lives.

By combining rigorous research with storytelling grounded in lived experience, The Asylum Project seeks to recentre the human within the asylum debate. Its mission is to replace fear with fact, rhetoric with reality, and silence with dialogue. In doing so, it does not seek to hold ideology or agenda but to hold space for truth – a truth that acknowledges both the challenges of migration and the enduring moral duty to treat every person with dignity.