Full Findings Report: Introduction
Elizabeth Finn Care (EFC) commissioned nfpSynergy to complete a broad and ambitioustwo-part research project into the state of the benevolent sector, looking at current issues and challenges in the sector, and the potential for sharing resources and strategic partnerships. The research process comprised a three-phase desk, qualitative and quantitative research programme. The desk-research started in September 2010, the interviews took place in November and December 2010 and the quantitative element from November 2010 to January 2011.
Phase 1: Desk research, collation and analysis of existing informationAn intensive desk-research phase established a picture of the current market status of the
benevolent sector as of late 2010. Key sources for this phase included data from Caritas
Data Financials, the Directory of Social Change, and nfpSynergy’s own databases and sources.
benevolent sector as of late 2010. Key sources for this phase included data from Caritas
Data Financials, the Directory of Social Change, and nfpSynergy’s own databases and sources.
Phase 2: Qualitative interviews, understanding the issues facing the benevolent sector and possibilities for joint working and partnerships
In-depth interviews were completed to understand the issues in the broader context of the
individual benevolent organisations as well as the sector as a whole. These interviews were
undertaken with 26 benevolent organisations (with annual grant-giving to individuals ranging
from £97,000 to over £8 million) plus four interviews with private-sector organisations,
including Corporate Social Responsibility directors in major banking, electricity and water
companies and a commercial Employee Assistance Programme provider.
individual benevolent organisations as well as the sector as a whole. These interviews were
undertaken with 26 benevolent organisations (with annual grant-giving to individuals ranging
from £97,000 to over £8 million) plus four interviews with private-sector organisations,
including Corporate Social Responsibility directors in major banking, electricity and water
companies and a commercial Employee Assistance Programme provider.
Phase 3: Survey of a sample of benevolent organisationsA quantitative survey of a larger sample of benevolent organisations enabled us to fill in
gaps and to obtain more detailed aspects of this information that are not available in public
sources. The online survey went live in the middle of November with email invitations sent to
a contact list provided by EFC and Turn2Us in December 2010. A paper invitation was also
distributed to those with no email details. The survey closed at the end of January 2011, and
116 completed surveys were recorded.
gaps and to obtain more detailed aspects of this information that are not available in public
sources. The online survey went live in the middle of November with email invitations sent to
a contact list provided by EFC and Turn2Us in December 2010. A paper invitation was also
distributed to those with no email details. The survey closed at the end of January 2011, and
116 completed surveys were recorded.
Findings from the sector survey are found throughout the report where relevant, and a full set of charts to accompany this report was also produced detailing all survey findings.
The full report can be found here: Full Report
Advocacy, Activism and Contracts:
the Politics of a Shadow-State Refugee Sector
- Anna Dixie, City University
The purpose of refugee agencies is to provide material aid to refugees and asylum seekers, advocate for them, defend their rights and represent their views and interests to the public and the government. Refugees, and asylum seekers in particular, are exceptionally unpopular in the public imagination as a result of a media and political discourse that depicts them as dishonest, opportunistic and a burden on UK
Most refugee agencies receive the majority of their income from the government in the form of a grant or contract to deliver services. The political dimension of their work could be seen to stand at odds with their status as government contractors in that their loyalty is divided between their funder and their clients. On the other hand, their close relationship with government decision-makers arguably holds the potential for refugee agencies to influence policy for the benefit of refugees and asylum seekers. This research asked how they can be agents of the state as well as agents for change.
Building on the existing literature on voluntary sector-state relations, this research project investigated how government funding shapes the work and the voice of refugee agencies. However, it also explores how the actions and attitudes of refugee agencies themselves determine their political impact. The findings are based on semi-structured interviews with seventeen refugee agency staff members. This represents the views of a very small selection of refugee agency staff and thus can by no means be considered representative of the sector as a whole. Nonetheless, the insights gained from participants’ experiences revealed valid patterns that may be of broader significance.
Research Aim
The aim of this research was to investigate how refugee agencies’ role as government-funded partners affects their civil society function. To this end it asked:
· Does government funding create opportunities or barriers for refugee agencies to influence law and policy?
· What impact does government funding have on refugee agencies’ lobbying voice?
· What impact does government funding have on refugee agencies’ service provision?
· To what extent are refugee agencies independent from the government that funds them?
· How do refugee agencies envisage and enact their role as civil society groups?
Opportunities for political influence
Participants believed that their ability to influence law and policy depends to a large degree on their reputation, their legitimacy and the quality of the evidence on which they base their arguments. Funding creates the conditions to achieve these three things by ensuring that refugee agencies have access to asylum seeker and refugee clients, who provide an invaluable source of evidence with which to lobby and campaign. Although funding from any source would have the same effect, refugee agencies did not believe they could secure alternative funding because the negative perceptions of asylum seekers in the public imagination made them extremely difficult to fundraise for.
Government-funded forums or steering groups give refugee agencies the chance to comment on policy and promote their clients’ interests before government representatives, usually through input in strategy documents. Being a government partner entailed membership of these forums. However, they are equally accessible to refugee agencies that do not receive government funding.
What impact does government funding have on refugee agencies’ voice?
Most participants felt they had to be careful to phrase criticism in a way that appeared non-confrontational for fear of damaging valuable relationships with civil servants. Whether this attitude is characterised as political diplomacy or self-censorship is subjective. The stigmatisation of disagreement implicit in the discourse of partnership may be a factor. Some participants attributed it to fear of losing funding. However, others asserted that a degree of diplomacy is necessary in order to maintain their status as government partners, which potentially creates political influence. Participants stressed that partnership with the government is essential because it gives them a decision-making role in planning and delivering refugee services. Some believed that as external critics their voices would hold less weight. Significantly, this position was shared by refugee agencies that received government funding as well as those that did not, suggesting that funding is not the only reason that refugee agencies avoid conflict.
Some refugee agency staff gave examples of overt intrusion in their work by their government funder, such as being asked to report illegal migrants or the UKBA vetting their public statements. This represents an infringement of their independent mandate.
What impact does government funding have on refugee agencies’ work?
More than half of participants reported having to carry out activities that they felt contradicted their organisation’s values. In some instances, refugee agencies refused to do so. However, it transpired that in other cases such activities were contractually agreed, indicating that the organisation had consented to them.
Most of the government contracts discussed in this research had eligibility criteria that excluded asylum seekers, or failed asylum seekers. Many participants disagreed with restrictions in their grant agreement that prevented them from assisting these groups, who are most likely to be destitute and therefore in greatest need of their services. On a linguistic level, these restrictions meant that refugee agencies were drawn into using and perpetuating a discursive hierarchy through which the credibility and deservingness of different categories of asylum claimant was implied. Thus, it would seem that partnership often entails collusion in linguistic as well as practical government strategies to create categories of claimant to whom support can be denied.
The fact that government grants and contracts are awarded through a tendering process that is open to private, public and voluntary sector bidders means that refugee agencies have evolved from small grass-roots, nonprofessional organisations to larger, more businesslike organisations. As a result, participants observed an increasing focus on outcomes and targets. Some participants felt that performance targets resulted in poorer quality services for refugee and asylum seekers because their complex needs did not correspond to simplistic targets. However, refugee agencies had, for the most part, proposed these targets themselves, under pressure to present attractive funding bids.
In recent months some refugee agencies have sought to improve immigration practices that they regard as morally questionable, such as assisted voluntary return (AVR) and child detention, by taking on contracts to run them and endeavouring to do so in a more compassionate or ethical way. However, carrying out these services is often interpreted, in the public eye, as an endorsement rather than a criticism. Consequently, it is suggested that the government encourages voluntary sector partnerships in controversial areas in order to legitimise policies that they anticipate will be met with condemnation.
Other barriers to political influence
Sector-wide campaigns were seen to be the most effective way to make a tangible impact on asylum policy. However, collaboration between refugee agencies is undermined by the competitive tendering process used by the government to contract refugee services.
To what extent are refugee agencies independent from the government?All
participants agreed that their organisations could not survive in their current form without government funding. Financial dependence was seen by some to act as a constraint on what refugee agencies could say. However, the political opportunities funding brought, through access to clients, was considered by many to outweigh this drawback.
How do refugee agencies envisage and enact their role as civil society groups?
This research revealed a lack of will on the part of some refugee agencies to translate political opportunities into action. Many consider it their role to provide services to refugees and asylum seekers and nothing more. As such, they deliberately do not engage in campaigning or lobbying. They believe that positioning themselves as ‘political’ organisations might detract from their reputation as reliable service providers and jeopardise their relationship with their government funder.
Conclusions
The research findings strongly suggest that government funding-partnerships impinge on refugee agencies’ voice and activity, which undermines their ability to fully perform their role as independent civil society actors. Refugee agencies are ostensibly free to criticise or condemn law and policy, but their perception that doing so might result in loss of funding or exclusion from policy decision-making creates a disincentive to express criticism. While in some cases, government funding gives refugee agencies an insider role in the state, which can result in policy influence, it appears that political inclusion has a price: refugee agencies are expected to express themselves ‘in the forms envisaged by such context, which often means co-optation’[1]. The extent of this co-optation depends on the organisation’s political consciousness, resources and priorities.
In 1968 Arendt described refugees as the only group in history who have persistently clamoured for rights, their transformative vision and ‘violent group consciousness’[2] making them a political force to be reckoned with. This is evidently not the case in the UK
Refugee agencies’ ability to be a conduit for refugee voices and their ground-level insight into their clients’ particular needs, is the quality that gives their research and policy work legitimacy and makes them valued partners of the government. However, as refugee agencies become more institutionalised and less distinguishable from government agents, refugees are less likely to trust and engage with them. Therefore, if refugee agencies lose this contact with refugees and asylum seekers they can no longer claim to be their mouthpiece. Not only do they lose their legitimacy, but they lose their crucial function for the government as means of accessing and understanding the needs of this marginalised community. If this is the case they hold no greater value than a private or public sector provider. Therefore, although in a modern democracy, refugee agencies are not at risk of being denied the freedom of speech, if they can no longer claim to represent refugees and asylum seekers, they do risk losing the relevance of speech.
The refugee sector’s dependency on government funding evidently creates conditions that make it easy for the state to incorporate radical politics. And yet co-optation is not inevitable. This research demonstrates that refugee agencies are not infinitely malleable, they possess agency to resist institutionalising forces. By investigating participants’ motivations for partnership work and the politics within and between refugee agencies, it became clear that a great deal of what is often presented as coercion, sometimes by refugee agencies themselves, is actually a matter of choice. Refugee agencies apply for, freely consent to, and carry out, government contracts, in most cases having devised their own targets. This is not to diminish the considerable constraints and pressures they face in balancing their own organisational objectives with those of the government. Many participants in this study evidently struggled in situations when these agendas became incompatible, such as when an unforeseeable development in asylum support policy changed the nature of their work.
On the other hand, the act of bidding for a controversial contract such as AVR or facilities in detention centres entails a conscious compromise based on the belief that the benefits of delivering the service with compassion outweighed the cost. It is largely irrelevant whether such decisions are motivated by self-interest or a desire to improve immigration practices from the inside. Either way, voluntary sector involvement is read as an endorsement. The benefits to refugees and asylum seekers that can be achieved through government partnership may or may not justify this legitimising effect, but there are undeniably political consequences.
This research indicates that some refugee agencies do not recognise their work as political. However, when refugee agencies assert the rights of their clients before government bodies who seek to deny them they are positioning themselves ‘as an agent capable of judgment about what is just and unjust’[4]. This is the essence of being political. Furthermore, as one participant observed:
‘If you’re not willing to be political you’ll never get anything significant done. It’s all very nice being charitable, but it’s limited. Policy change can do so much more for people’.
Recommendations
Refugee agencies must be accountable to refugees and asylum seekers
Refugee agencies are accountable first and foremost to refugees and asylum seekers. Unlike other voluntary organisations, whose users are instrumental in their operations and in deciding their direction, these groups are not confident in asserting their needs in the face of authority figures, as a result of the persecution they have experienced at the hands of government agencies. Therefore, refugee agencies have a duty to consult their clients to ensure that their views are accurately represented. Further, they must interrogate their motivations for applying for government contracts to ensure that their clients’ interests are best served.
The refugee sector must collaborate
Refugee agencies must assert the needs and rights of refugees uncompromisingly and without fear of being undercut by each other. This requires a united front between all refugee agencies and a mutually agreed end to opportunistic funding bids containing unachievable targets. Despite the fact that government-engineered competition continually conspires against refugee agencies’ efforts to unite, they must come together and insist on the same standards of service delivery, so that the quality of the support they provide to refugees is not debased. Refugee agencies already recognise that many voices are louder than one. They must put this knowledge into practice through collaborative campaigning.
Refugee agencies must recognise that they are political actors
For refugee agencies, being political is not a choice. Therefore, they must acknowledge the political implications of their work, whether these are intended or not. This is not to suggest that the benefits of government contracts can never outweigh the costs. However, it is important for refugee agencies to be politically astute in their choice of contracts and act with awareness that in trying to influence policy from within, they may be seen to condone the very practice they seek to improve. Refugee agencies have a responsibility to their clients to consider the political consequences of their work and to counteract any unavoidable negative impacts with dauntless scrutiny of government policy. In doing this they resist the transformation of their work from agents of political change into mere social administrators.
Refugee agencies must not avoid conflict with their government funder
Refugee agencies must reject a political culture that delegitimises dispute, and recognise that it is a healthy constituent of the democratic process. As civil society actors it is their prerogative and their role to insist that the rights of refugees and asylum seekers are protected.
[1] pg 5, Però, D. and Solomos, J. (2010) Introduction: Migrant Politics and Mobilization: Exclusion, Engagements, Incorporation, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 33 (1), pp.1-18
[3] pg. 10, Zizek, S. (2005) Against Human Rights
[4] pg. x Isin, E. (2002) Being Political
Anna Dixie has worked in the refugee sector as an adviser for five years. She recently completed her Master’s in Refugee Studies at City University, London and currently works for Refugee and Migrant Network Sutton (link to blog http://refugeesutton.blogspot.com/).
Anna Dixie has worked in the refugee sector as an adviser for five years. She recently completed her Master’s in Refugee Studies at City University, London and currently works for Refugee and Migrant Network Sutton (link to blog http://refugeesutton.blogspot.com/).
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