The current situation in Afghanistan has got us thinking again about the role that community and commercial repair can play for refugees and asylum seekers.
Sharing repair skills connects refugees and asylum seekers to their new communities, and contributes to our society.
Yep, we found mixed results in a rather quick review of the policy. The effect was hard to separate from the effect of the media and information that also made repair more visible to the public. The actual cost savings for a customer or repairer is often small compared to other costs involved in repair. Link to our study: http://lup.lub.lu.se/record/fc5c1b73-6c30-469d-a86e-db8a83e2bff7 and an EU summary of the RUT part of the VAT reduction: https://ec.europa.eu/social/ajax/BlobServlet?docId=21736&langId=en. At the end of the day though, regardless of exactly how much repair is incentivised or jobs are created, this kind of shift of taxation policies is needed in my opinion (i.e. the argument that we should tax the things we don’t want more of and not tax what we want to see more of in society).
Thanks I suppose no insights about commercial repair, and to what extent it does help integrate immigrants in particular? I’m thinking it would be super fascinating to conduct some kind of “census” of people repairing to generate income, here in the UK.
… and from my own photography project, I found that in ReTuna (Sweden) and, especially, Kierratysekskus (Helsinki) migrants and refugees were a key element. They often already had some repair skills, but these centres helped them build on those skills, provided wider environmental education, whilst helping them learn local language/English and also earn a living. Resulting in helping them join/contribute to society and local community. Its a win-win-win, but sadly something most UK politicians fail to grasp.
We’re just developing a link with the Care 4 Calais Refugee charity in Nottingham and Derby. Our aim is to collect unwanted devices, mobiles particularly and set-up them up (repair them where necessary) and pass them on to those in the group who need them. It’s very early days and we’ll need to see who volunteers to do the repairs, but it would be good to tap into the skills of the refugee community who need to the phones etc, and support repair skill development too.
We did some repairs for Care4calais two months ago, we manage to fix most of the phones. It took us some time to fix because we had to order the parts from China to keep the cost low.
There is one last phone due to collect. I tried emailing Jess but I think she left the organisation. Could you please contact me to arrange collection.
Hi @Sarah_Maloy Just wondering how this project went, and if things have developped at all.
In Portsmouth we’re exploring some projects with Asylum Action which supports asylum seekers who are initially housed in the city for 6 months and we don’t know where they may end up afterwards.
We’re exploring ideas with them to make use of their existing skills and build confidence and training for the UK environment, and are interested in anything that others have done.
One avenue we’re currently exploring is creating a group of PAT testing volunteers to support local charity shops.
