By Jomana Abunahla, MPS Diversity in Policymaking Intern

March 2026

As a masters student of Global Migration and Social Justice, I was already used to thinking about migration through theory, critique, and academic debate. What MPS gave me was the chance to see how those ideas are translated into everyday policy work through research, communications, event support, outreach, and collaboration. 

What I appreciated most about MPS overall was the opportunity to contribute to different parts of the organisation’s work while also being supported to learn and grow. It was not an internship where I felt limited to one narrow role. I worked across a range of tasks and projects. I helped build outreach contacts, assisted with website and publication organisation, and contributed to research for policy primers and scoping work. What stood out to me was that none of these tasks existed in isolation. Each one was part of a wider process of making policy work more accessible, more organised, and more useful. 
 
The internship helped me understand the difference between academic writing and policy writing. In university work, there is often more space for theory and extended argument. In policy work, clarity matters in a different way. A briefing or primer has to be focused, precise, and genuinely useful to the people reading it. Through this process, I learned how important it is not only to research well, but to communicate findings in a way that others can act on. 
 
What I especially appreciated about MPS was the generosity of Sarah and Rebecca with their time. Alongside the day-to-day work, they created space for a number of learning sessions that were shaped around what we, as interns, wanted to learn more about. These sessions were not treated as an afterthought. They were a meaningful part of the internship and gave us the chance to think more deeply about migration research, data, policy writing, and wider questions about careers in the field. 

One of the most valuable parts of these sessions was hearing about their own professional journeys. Both Sarah and Rebecca spoke openly about how their careers developed, the choices they made, the challenges they faced, and how they found their place in migration policy work. Listening to that was genuinely inspiring, because it made the field feel less distant and abstract. It reminded me that careers are not always linear, and that experience, judgement, and persistence matter just as much as formal qualifications.  

Another important lesson was learning to work more carefully with migration data and evidence. I became more aware of how statistics can be interpreted too quickly, and how categories such as nationality, country of birth, and migration status do not always tell the same story. This pushed me to think more critically about how evidence is presented and how policy narratives are shaped. Just as importantly, I felt that learning was taken seriously, and that made the experience both professionally useful and personally encouraging. 

Overall, my time at MPS helped me move beyond studying migration as an academic subject and towards understanding how migration policy is actually built in practice. It strengthened both my professional skills and my sense of purpose, and it made me even more certain that this is the kind of work I want to keep doing.