The Somali refugee community in Smethwick is less than ten years old. Muni Abdikarim and Ahmed Sirad spoke to Jenny Morgan about their work with middle-aged Somali women who are being turned away from a doctor's surgery and told 'Come back when you've got an interpreter'
The British government's new anti-trafficking strategy is high on rhetoric about immigration crime and border control, and lacks any real commitment to protecting victims of trafficking, says Jenny Moss
The policy of dispersing migrants in Britain has led to large numbers of Somali refugees in Smethwick, a town notorious for anti-migrant mobilising in the 1960s. In the first of her Letters from Smethwick, Jenny Morgan describes a meeting with charismatic Somali community organiser Hodan Rashid.
Examining the way in which first rulers, and then the state, have coerced the poor in England into mobility and immobility, offers opportunities for developing a new politics of migration, says Bridget Anderson
A new play shines a light on the dark side of the British asylum system, portraying with brutal clarity the inhuman treatment dealt out to those drawn to this country by the hope for sanctuary
