‘Reuniting a refugee family is amazing’: how hands-on experience brings law alive for students

Few, if any, professional law practices allow university students on placement to take on live cases. Yet that’s the opportunity offered to law undergraduates and postgraduate interns by Sheffield Hallam University’s Refugee Rights Hub.

Launched in September 2018, the hub exists to reunite refugees with family members who they have had to leave behind while seeking sanctuary in the UK. Refugees get the service free because the university uses it as a supervised learning experience for students.

The hub is part of the law faculty’s Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice, named after the university’s current chancellor, a leading UK lawyer and champion of civil liberties and human rights.

Why take on such an apparently complex task in such a challenging, politically charged area? Hub director Clare Tudor says successive government cuts in legal aid funding have severely affected refugees and their families by dissuading lawyers from taking up legal aid work. Meanwhile, law clinics specialising in immigration remain scarce. She and fellow academic and co-founder Gina Clayton realised there was a void they had to fill.

What fascinated them was why something as simple as reuniting people with their families was proving so difficult. They wanted to do something where students could play a practical role in seeing through a real family reunion application from start to finish. An application for asylum could easily take years to succeed, whereas a final decision on a family reunion application for a refugee (client) with settled UK status might come through in a few months.

“Through the real-life stories our students would hear, we wanted to show them the overarching problems of the UK’s asylum system,” says Tudor, who has worked in the immigration sector for 25 years. “Our clients will have battled through this horrendous system and then have to face another battle to reunite their family.”

Now in its fifth year, the hub is hosting two postgraduate interns and about 50 third-year law undergraduates, who have chosen immigration law and practice as one of their final-year elective modules.

Initially, the undergraduates’ learning focuses on theory. What is a refugee or an asylum seeker? What’s the system and how does it work? What are the real numbers of asylum seekers in the UK, rather than the figures quoted or inferred by some politicians and social media. Students learn about all the routes used to enter the UK.

They also watch how the hub’s qualified practitioners interview clients. Next it’s their turn. They get taken through a case, then a lecturer will sit with them and guide them while they interview the client, take statements from the client and family member/s abroad, compile evidence, complete the application forms and send them off via a government website.

“We throw the students in at a ‘very safe’ deep end on purpose,” says Tudor. “But we never leave them on their own with clients.”

A key moment for students can be ringing up a family member sitting in a refugee camp somewhere and asking why they want to come to the UK and what evidence they can supply to back up their claim. The student might, for example, ask a spouse for proof of marriage such as the date, venue, what they wore and who attended. The answers can then be included in the application.

Tudor says that students often find meeting refugees and hearing their stories more emotional than they had imagined. “Someone might say: ‘I found my wife and my two children, but then one of the children disappeared,’ or ‘I can’t find my wife or husband – I don’t know where they’ve gone’.”

Third-year student Ameena Hussain recalls the first time she saw a client cry. “It can be very difficult in the moment; but you don’t get better learning than this. You can read all the books, but this is real experience.”

At the hub, students learn real skills in real client situations, says Tudor. “We tell them: ‘Draft your letters, hone your interviewing skills, learn how to work with an interpreter in a safe environment so you can catch any mistakes.’”

And the clients gain, too. “What’s really nice is the two-way interaction; refugees realise that the young people, the next generation, are really interested.

“Then there are those penny-dropping moments,” Tudor continues. “Before students come to the hub, many will have seen negative stories on social media. But when they hear the refugees’ true accounts, they begin to realise: ‘Wow, imagine that – she’s like my sister, he acts like my brother.’ They really understand that the refugees are the same as us.

“The only big difference between student and refugee is the terrible situation the refugees find themselves in. Then the students ask themselves what they would do in that situation.”

One key role for the hub is myth-busting. “We teach and challenge the next generation to remember the negative stuff coming out is due to ignorance and misunderstanding,” says Tudor. “So part of their job and training is to actively challenge every time they hear something said that is untrue.”

So in a nutshell, what do students gain from studying in the hub? Hussain says it’s a great chance to get practical experience. “I’ve never come across anything like this module. It’s an amazing feeling to know you’ve helped change someone’s life if and when your client’s family is reunited. It’s also an integral part of your final law degree – you can give it your all rather than seeing it as just an extracurricular activity.”

As a postgraduate intern, Ayah Mahmoud adds: “It’ll give you such a depth of knowledge and experience that you can take it into any job within the sector. You’ll learn to be adaptable, flexible and deal with the unexpected. If you’ve just finished your undergraduate or postgraduate degree and want to specialise in immigration law, the hub is a beautiful place to start.”

For students wanting to work outside of immigration law, the university is also home to SHU Law, a not-for-profit teaching law firm offering students experience on real cases and providing a professional service to clients for little or no cost.

Find out more about law courses at Sheffield Hallam University and the work of the Refugee Rights Hub