Co-production · Developed with Iranian and Afghan people with lived experience of seeking sanctuary in the UK
Poems by Sanctuary Seekers
““I thought that here they value what is true.” — Morteza, contributor”
The challenge
Research on asylum and mental health risked losing the people, emotion and language behind the findings
Academic research can describe the mental-health effects of asylum policy in careful analytical language while stripping away the rhythm, contradiction, anger and humour of the accounts on which that analysis depends. People who took part in the underlying research had spoken about waiting, disbelief, isolation, bureaucracy, survival and the spaces where they found relief. We wanted those experiences to remain visible in the form in which people expressed them.
What we did
Research encounters and lived experience were developed into poetry, visual work and an accessible anthology
Open Routes Research worked with material emerging from long-term qualitative research with Iranian and Afghan sanctuary seekers and developed a creative publication centred on contributors’ words and poetry. The anthology gave space to forms of knowledge that would usually sit outside a journal article and was designed so it could be read and discussed by audiences well beyond academia.
What changed
The anthology became a teaching and public-engagement resource in schools, universities and community workshops
The publication has been used repeatedly to teach and facilitate discussions about migration, mental health and the asylum system. Poetry allows audiences to encounter the effects of policy at a human scale and has also informed later Open Routes projects using creative writing as a method for research, reflection and social dialogue.
Outputs
Creative anthology / zine; poetry; teaching and workshop resource: sohailj.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Final-Zine.pdf