The transcripts of 72 in-depth interviews conducted with volunteers active in different refugee support charities in London, Birmingham, Sheffield and the Midlands. The interviews were conducted between May 2017 and November 2019.This research project seeks to analyse what motivates volunteers to engage with charities that support asylum seekers and refugees, as well as how they define their engagement and reflect upon their experience. In particular, the study wants to analyse whether and how these actors distinguish between altruistic action and social or political protest. In doing so, it seeks to explore how the frontiers between different forms of engagement in society are constructed and negotiated. Looking at immigration and asylum politics ‘from below’, it also aims to analyse how public debates and policies on these issues are reflected in the forms of engagement in support of asylum seekers and refugees.

Our analysis draws on 72 in-depth interviews with British volunteers supporting refugees in Britain (London, Birmingham, Sheffield and the Midlands) and in France (Calais region). The interviews were conducted between May 2017 and November 2019, with participants who engaged in different types of activities, such as hosting, offering language courses, donating food and clothes, offering emotional support in immigration removal centres, or providing legal assistance. Our respondents (all non-paid volunteers) were involved in a variety of organisations, from established and professionalised national charities, to more local and informal networks that emerged during the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’. In the interviews, we asked participants about their personal trajectories, their initial motivations for engaging in the field of refugee support, the dynamics of their encounters with refugees and, more generally, their practice of volunteering. Our analysis focused on the ways they describe and explain how their own engagement has evolved over time. We paid particular attention to changes in terms of how they define the beneficiaries of their action, how they view their own role and, more generally, how they make sense of their relation with refugees. Respondents were approached through gatekeepers (e.g. charity representatives) or directly. In our sampling strategy, we aimed to recruit a variety of participants in terms of age, ethnicity, gender and socio-economic background. However, it should be noted that the majority self-identified as white women, middle-class and retired (which, according to the charity representatives we worked with reflected the composition of the volunteer population).