How to speak to friends and family about refugees

We’ve seen just how quickly misinformation can spread, and the violence it can cause. Now more than ever, having productive conversations about refugees is important.

Here’s how to bring your family and friends into the conversation.

1. Show compassion

Avoid focusing on differences, and focus on our shared values of care and compassion. People seeking safety don’t need to ‘deserve’ our compassion, and they definitely don’t need our pity. So avoid discussions around those topics.

We all deserve to live in safety - whatever that looks like for us.

2. Reframe the problem

The violence we’re seeing hasn’t come out of thin air - a result of years of scapegoating and demonisation from politicians and the media to distract from their failures.

Remind loved ones that refugees aren’t causing issues in the country - it’s greedy politicians and their friends.

A photoshopped image of Rishi Sunak superimposed on antagonistic Daily Mail headlines

3. Avoid legal vs illegal

Legal doesn’t always mean that something is moral (looking at you Rwanda Scheme). Avoid using phrases such as refugees should arrive via ‘safe and legal routes’.

The majority of survivors of torture we help are refugees, and for them there simply aren’t any ‘safe and legal routes’, so instead focus on saying

that wherever you come from, everyone deserves the right to seek safety.