Migration Policy Scotland plays a pivotal role in meeting the need for a greater capacity on migration-related issues in Scotland. We offer to a focal point for organisations and individuals working on migration or with migrants across Scotland. Our work helps build bridges and drive action on the complex, cross-cutting issues that migration impacts. We are pioneering new approaches to integrating lived experience in policy work.
Migration Policy Scotland was founded to meet the need for policy work on migration in Scotland beyond an existing focus on asylum seekers and refugees. We also seek to meet the need across the UK for policy work on migration that adopts a regional lens and focuses on issues often obscured in national level debates.
Before setting up Migration Policy Scotland we conducted a scoping work in 2019. Funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, we investigated the need for more policy capacity and how it could be met. The scoping exercise included conversations with over 30 people working on migration across Scotland in various roles. We held consultative workshops in Aberdeen and Glasgow that involved a further 20 people. What we found is written up in this scoping report and formed the basis of an online discussion in July 2020 to share our findings and consider the options for meeting the clear need for greater migration policy capacity in Scotland.
Following this consultation and deliberation, MPS Director Sarah Kyambi and our Founding Trustees made the decision to set up an organisation that helps people think together and work together to get the most out of migration and Migration Policy Scotland was born.
We launched in October 2021, having received charitable status and initial funding earlier that year.
Previous years annual reports:
Annual Report and Financial Statement 2023-24