Study title

Data collected in South West England exploring why people seek access to immigration advice, what happens when advice is not available and how to improve access to services in the region. The focus of the data is broadly speaking people with protection-based immigration claims and related human rights. Data were collected during 11 months of fieldwork in the region, semi-structured interviews with people seeking immigration advice, people providing immigration advice and other organisations acting as referral points to legal services. Due to ethical constraints, the data cannot be shared for future reuse. The interview schedules have been uploaded to the record.My PhD research examines how asylum seekers and other people with human rights claims navigate the British immigration system. I am particularly interested in the role that advice plays in mediating the relationship between the state and individuals, in the context of a system where immigration advice is highly regulated and immigration law is exceptionally complex (Law Commission 2020) and access to legal aid has been significantly reduced over the past decade (Singh and Webber 2010; Meyler and Woodhouse 2013; York 2013). The relationship between ideas about who has responsibility for access to justice, and the role of the state within this, is important at a time when policy discourses of austerity and hostile immigration politics have a profound impact on those without legal citizenship and who are unable to afford to pay for private legal advice in relation to their immigration applications. The fellowship is an opportunity for me to develop research to inform justice policy around the impact of the growth of legal aid 'advice deserts' (Burridge and Gill 2017; Wilding 2019) due to the withdrawal of publicly funded legal services. In my PhD, I found that where individuals are unable to access legal aid it can compound and intensify the risks that they face. As part of my PhD research I co-established a...