Patterns of migration have changed dramatically over the last 20 years and increased freedom of movement for people living in countries once separated from western Europe by 'the iron curtain' has played an important part in this. The UK has seen new flows of migration coming from Central Eastern Europe and other parts of the former 'Soviet bloc'. Within the UK, Scotland presents a particularly interesting and distinctive case, due to: the specifics of its economic and demographic situation, related political discussion of the need for migration, and the division of responsibilities between UK and Scottish parliaments and local authorities for migration. Both the Scottish Executive and many local authorities have expressed a wish to attract and retain migrant workers. However, challenges have also been highlighted relating to demand for and adequacy of service provision. Meanwhile the experiences and perspectives of migrants themselves remain little understood. This project aims to study perspectives and experiences of 'social security' amongst migrants from Central Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union in Scotland. Through its long-term and deep engagement with migrant communities, the project will deliver significant new and original empirical data. It will generate important new academic insight through its innovative synthesis of existing theoretical frameworks. Moreover, the project proposes a groundbreaking approach to developing practical and policy outcomes and solutions through the use of a participatory action research approach. A first phase of research will identify key themes and areas of concern, drawing particularly on the experiences and perspectives of migrants themselves. This will be followed by the phase of participatory action research, during which we will work directly with migrants, migrant organisations, policy makers, service providers and employers to develop practical projects addressing particular issues. The process of developing these projects will be evaluated as will their short, medium and long-term outcomes with a view to determining 'best practice' and the potential for replication in broader local, regional and national contexts. We use 'social security' to mean the ways in which migrants are able to make themselves socially, economically, personally and culturally secure in a new environment and their strategies for dealing with every day risks. The project will examine the ways in which migrants' experiences and perspectives on 'social security' affect their longer term intentions regarding settlement in Scotland. Migrants' experiences and needs differ depending on their levels of education and skill, the kinds of work they do, their language abilities, their age, which country they come from, whether they are male or female and which part of Scotland they have come to live and work in. Levels of service provision, local economic and demographic needs and local community perceptions of and responses to migration differ quite markedly between, for example, large cities and more remote rural areas. These differences also impact on migrants' experiences and aspirations. The project will pay attention to these various forms of diversity. The research will be conducted in eight locations in Scotland: two cities (Glasgow and Aberdeen) two medium-sized towns (Peterhead and Arbroath) and four more remote rural locations in Aberdeenshire and Angus. In each location, the project will explore the different kinds of resources, networks, structures and services which migrants draw on in order to make themselves materially and emotionally secure within the places where they live and work. It will also tease out which aspects and perceptions of security (economic, personal, cultural, social) are deemed particularly important by migrants and how these influence migrants' decisions to settle in a particular location, to move on, or to return to their countries of origin.

The PRIME project will broaden understanding of online harm and how it can be mitigated through new systems, tools and processes by focusing on Minority Ethnic (ME) communities' experiences of digitalised services, particularly in the areas of housing, health and energy. We will draw on knowledge, methods and skills from social policy, cyber security and privacy, data mining and machine learning; human computer interaction, applied linguistics and educational technology. Working closely with REPHRAIN, we will engage with a wide range of individuals from ME communities, community organisations, public agencies and energy suppliers to identify and categorise the nature of the harms experienced, and assess the adequacy of existing systems and processes to counter them. We will translate this knowledge into the co-design and co-production of novel, effective and scalable social and technological harm-mitigating solutions through a Citizen-led Race Equity Living Lab (CREL). The outputs will include policy guidance in the fields of housing, health and energy as well as cross-cutting recommendations for improving online services more generally; educational resources for harm mitigation to enable individuals and organisations to more effectively protect themselves; as well as better privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) that counter discriminatory processes in digitalised services. We will also produce benchmark datasets, tools and models to enable organisations to address ethnic inequalities in service provision and demonstrate more accountability to the public in terms of greater transparency and equitable service outcomes.