How we work

As we are not a frontline charity, we do not generally offer media interviews ourselves, but reach out to our network to see if spokespeople from relevant charities are available. We also regularly work with people with lived experience of the immigration system who want to tell their story. 

We work with a network of fantastic media volunteers who have lived experience of migration, many of whom have experienced the asylum system. While we can sometimes put people in touch for breaking news interviews, we prefer to build relationships and support interviews which have a lead time of more than a few days.  

Among our volunteers are people who experienced the extremes of the immigration system such as crossing the Channel, surviving modern slavery or arriving as an unaccompanied child refugee. Such volunteers are in demand from the media but often need to juggle their willingness to speak with a busy schedule and their own well-being. Please factor in 14 days if you are asking to speak to someone with lived experience of this kind.  

We expect journalists to respect the boundaries our interviewees set.  

Unfortunately, due to our limited capacity, we cannot help students with research requests and must prioritise national media over international requests. We also do not operate an on-call press office out of normal working hours. If your request is urgent, the Refugee Council, Refugee Action, UNHCR, Scottish Refugee Council, Migrant Help, Together With Refugees, Praxis and Rainbow Migration amongst others have active press offices. We can’t guarantee they will have capacity to reply out-of-hours either but you may find the information you need on their websites or social media channels.