I spent the first week of research really trying to understand the state of the asylum system currently. As a non-law student, I had to put a lot of extra time trying to get to grips with legislation. I then spent the rest of the week reading from publications from a wide range of sources, trying to understand arguments from every side of the political spectrum and really hunting for anything that could challenge my current views. How the asylum system should function and what laws should be in place, has no shortage of opinions to read, so it was initially quite overwhelming as I felt like I had to read everything out there, to ensure what I was writing was actually original. However, I soon learnt how to target my reading to the most useful publications and accepted that I couldn't read everything.

After the first week, I felt as though I was too detached from the real experience of people in the system, so I set out to find people to interview. After completing the ethical evaluation, I decided to email people from all different areas: immigration lawyers, charity-workers, asylum-decision-makers, activists, NGOs, Home Office-workers and really anyone I could find who had experience in the system.  After sending probably a hundred emails, after about 5 days I had received around 5 polite declines and nothing else. I tried networking on linkedIn and they told me I didn't have enough followers to message most people :(. Although, I persisted and contacted some people who I had collaborated with in the past in some volunteer work and finally managed to find a range of people to interview from different areas. So, the third week I set out talking to people which has honestly been my favourite part so far, they told me about their work and gave me some honestly quite simple ideas that I probably would have never thought of, but are obvious to anyone going through the system, and could have such a beneficial impact, and they were also lacking from anything I had read so far. I've been reading along the whole time, as every day more comes out about the new government's plan for immigration, so I really need to be on top of it. Changing current affairs have also redirected what I'm reading. For example, last week Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper announced the opening of new immigration detention centres, so I'm also looking at their efficiency.  

I've been meeting weekly with my supervisor, which has been really helpful in guiding me and hearing someone else's (more-educated-than mine) views. I've really been given full autonomy over what I'm doing so I'm excited to start the planning and writing process over the next few weeks!