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<h1><span style="color: #0c3951;">Community safety</span></h1><p>For our communities to be safe, we need an end to hostile immigration policy and the politics of divide and rule. </p>

Community safety

For our communities to be safe, we need an end to hostile immigration policy and the politics of divide and rule.

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What is safety?

Safety means something different to all of us. Safety is secure immigration status, free from Home Office renewals and visa fees. It is a safe home, where we feel listened to and connected with the local community. It is living free from fear of raids and detentions. It’s being with family. A community where we and our neighbours feel safe and secure.

But systemic racism means some people in our communities feel less safe than others, based on the colour of their skin and their immigration status, and are unable to trust the systems that are meant to keep us all safe. Government immigration policy, which is based on securitising and criminalising, works directly against the safety of our communities. Long, complex and expensive routes to settlement entrench precarity and destitution. Asylum accommodation is run for profit, with dignity and connection in short supply.

Meanwhile, with communities ravaged by 15 years of austerity, far-right political entrepreneurs peddle false dreams of collective security by scapegoating racialised others. This politics of divide and rule is only emboldened by the anti-migration, anti-asylum rhetoric and policy of successive governments. Recent years have seen a frightening increase in attacks and intimidation on our streets, with protests at asylum hotels and in our towns and cities.

For the people targeted, this is experienced as a continuum of violence. Far-right attacks happen alongside the violence of immigration enforcement, the slow violence of forced destitution or hostile asylum accommodation, and the drip-feed of hostile policy developments. People in the immigration and asylum system hear what the government is saying and understand that they are being scapegoated and targeted. In the words of the Voice action group, “It feels like we’re the first ones to be attacked – not just by rioters but by them as an establishment.”

At the same time, national and local government have ambitions for safe and cohesive communities. We need the government to stop working against itself and to prioritise community-focused policy-making. And we need real experiences and voices to be heard in conversations about what community safety looks like.

Our asks for local government

We need to see a clear and consistent message of welcome, solidarity and support from local government. We need our local authorities to be responsible and accountable, and to keep our communities safe.

1. Local leaders must speak out in support of their residents, and where national policy is affecting the safety of their communities, they must call this out.

2. Local authorities need to keep communities safe with timely communication of risks and threats when our places are under attack, including working with the voluntary sector.

3. People must feel safe to report hate crimes and access support. Local services should be working proactively to build trust.

Our asks for national government

If the government wants to see safer communities, a wholesale overhaul of their approach to immigration is needed. The Home Office should be dismantled, with immigration policy decoupled from Home Office priorities of crime and security.

1. Government should promote policies of community renewal and a rhetoric of hope.

In revitalised communities, people will see a viable, secure future for themselves and their families – which will reduce the power of scapegoating and the politics of division.

2. Human-centred immigration policies that would promote community cohesion include:

3. Politicians must recognise that language has consequences and stop using rhetoric that dehumanises, demonises and others.

Briefing: the impact of detentions and riots

Our November 2024 briefing looks at the impact on our communities of a period of crisis, when the Conservative government ramped up attempts to remove people to Rwanda rather than processing their asylum claims. We discuss links between the 2024 racist riots, prolonged anti-immigrant rhetoric from government, and the state violence of immigration control.

Read our briefing

Asylum hotels and community safety

Greater Manchester Asylum Hotels Group

The Greater Manchester asylum hotels group has been engaging directly with the hatred and misinformation targeted against people living in asylum hotels. With their voices so often unheard in conversations about their lives, they have put their side of the story in a powerful statement that confronts head-on the concerns people might have about asylum hotels.

Watch their video here

Solidarity statement

In the summer of 2025, 81 local organisations signed a message of solidarity when violent protests erupted outside asylum hotels. They said “We are voluntary and community organisations based in Greater Manchester. We are writing to say that you are WELCOME here in our communities.”

Read the statement

Housing Justice Network: rejecting the politics of division

This piece from the Greater Manchester Housing Justice Network explores how housing injustice plays out in the context of asylum hotels and the wider housing crisis.

"It is time to unite these struggles for housing justice, for homes where everyone – no matter skin colour, class background, immigration status – is safe and secure to live their lives as part of thriving, flourishing communities."

Read it here

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