Migration myth-busting toolkit

Myth-busting can fail or even have the opposite effect if we start with the myth and focus on telling people why that myth is wrong. People sometimes come away remembering the myth and not the evidence against it! Conflict is also unlikely to convince, as people become entrenched in their positions.

We need to take a different approach, that:

1. i) Is “convivial” – creating opportunities for people with different experiences and perspectives to relate to one another through shared values while respecting disagreement and difference;
2. ii) Tells a new story and starts from that story;
3. iii) Is open and safe for all participants, but does not shy away from tension and discomfort;
4. iv) Is flexible and adapted for the particular community.

When building your briefing you need to think about five key elements: values, myths, storytelling, taking it forward, and challenges. You should also consider ethics and evaluation – so you avoid doing harm and know what has worked.

Below, we’ve offered some suggestions and resources for tasks or activities that you might use. You don’t need to do everything listed here – these are just a few ideas to get you started.

Practical considerations to consider before you get going on the design of your briefing:

• Where and when will you hold your briefing? Will it be part of a regular community event (e.g. a coffee morning) or a one-off? How long will it be? What day of the week is best?
• Who is your target audience? You might think about a connection with place, as something that brings people together, but you might decide to work with a particular sub-group within that place.
• What do you need in terms of venue, catering and materials? How will those be funded?

Before you start to discuss myths about migration and exchange personal stories, we recommend working together to set shared values and/or goals at the start. Once people have identified shared values, discussions about migration can be reframed through those values. There are a few ways of doing this.

Shared activity

You can promote a shared purpose through a shared activity. This might be something simple, such as sharing food, or something creative, such as a craft activity. The organisers of one of our pilot briefings organised a community litter pick!

Shared community

Another effective method is to encourage people to discuss their local neighbourhood or community space, as this brings people together around what they value and what they would like to improve (see example below).

• What do you value most about living in Handsworth?
• What is the biggest problem in your neighbourhood?
• How can we address it?

Shared values

You might choose to actively discuss and set values during the meeting. An easy way to do this is to give people 10 minutes (alone) to write down what principles/values they associate with/align with in relation to family, home, community, and neighbourhood. Ask people to share these in 2 minutes with the group and on that basis agree a set of shared values and principles.

The set of cards linked below can also be used to encourage discussion of values (print them double sided and then cut out the individual cards). You might distribute one card to each participant and ask them to discuss in small groups what the value means to them. Or give a group a certain number of cards (say 8) and ask them to rank the values in order of importance – that will encourage them to discuss, share and defend the values that they prioritise.

The cards are designed to be printed double-sided, flipping the paper along the long edge

A further option is to start by asking participants to take the ‘British Values Quiz’ published by The Guardian. Participants could compare their results with those of others in the group and with the overall findings described in the article (which suggest that hard work, fair play and community are most important to British voters).

The Guardian article is also useful for thinking about how identifying shared values can help overcome division.

After setting shared values and goals, the next step is to introduce the migration myths that you want to address. But you need to know what the key myths and misconceptions are in your particular community before you can “bust” them. This might be myths about migration, about other migrant communities, or even myths about your own community.

Myths can take lots of different forms, but key areas are jobs, benefits, housing, routes to the UK, and social and cultural integration.

Before the meeting talk to members of your community to find out their views on migration. What concerns or questions do they have? Are there any myths contributing to those concerns?

If your community regularly use social media, take a look at the community social media pages. Is migration discussed? Can you spot any myths in that discussion?

During the meeting use the myths as a starting point to discuss as a group what concerns and questions people have around migration. Make sure it feels like a safe space in which everyone can share, but also a space in which those myths can be challenged.

Resources to explore myths about migration

We advise you to identify the myths in your particular community; however, we have linked some helpful starting points below.

• North East Migration Partnership - Migration Myth-Buster Resources (focusing on contribution, crime, benefits)
• West London Welcome - Standing in Solidarity with Migrants - and Mythbusting (focusing on both refugees and migration more broadly)
• Unite Immigration Myth-Buster – 5 myths about migrants (focusing on work and contribution)

On refugees and asylum seekers, specifically:

• International Rescue Committee - 11 myths and misconceptions about refugees
• Voice in Exile - Myths About Refugees UK
• Asylum Speakers - Debunking the 8 Most Common Myths About Migration

We know there are myths circulating about potential changes to migration policy announced by the Labour government in May 2025. The Migration and Refugee Organising team at Citizens UK are organising legal education workshops on this topic that may be able to support you.

Story-sharing is at the heart of our approach. Telling new stories about migration, integration and belonging are often more effective ways of combatting entrenched migration myths than directly confronting them. Research shows that testimony creates affective interpersonal connections that engage people with the stories that they are hearing: there is something very powerful about saying “this happened to me”.

For these reasons, you should incorporate personal stories into your briefing in some format. Try to find ways of inspiring stories that are authentic and are relevant to the myths you are trying to “bust”.

Individual story-sharing: Selected individuals might be asked to share their stories with the rest of the group (give them a chance to prepare in advance). These might be people with particularly powerful accounts and coming from different perspectives. For example, an account of someone displaced from their home by war might sit alongside the account of someone who has seen their neighbourhood transformed by migration over many decades.

Story-sharing through activity: incorporate story-sharing into an activity. For example, a craft activity might ask participants to produce something on a subject such as “home” or “journey” – participants are then asked to share the meaning behind their work. Photography can be particularly effective here: participants could be asked to use their phones to take photographs of the local area and explain their meaning to one another (for an example see the ‘Communities’ strand of the Post-Socialist Britain project). Other examples include sewing, mosaic, or zine-making – anything where shared purpose can be combined with storytelling.

Group story-sharing: In small groups/pairs, participants share with each other the story of – for example – “how you came to be in the place you are in” (you will want to set a time limit for each speaker). The other person needs to listen and come ready to share your story with the group (so A shares B’s story and vice versa). People share each other’s stories with the larger group and comment on one thing that surprised them and one thing that they didn’t know.

The story-sharing cards linked below are a simple but effective way of inspiring group story-sharing. Participants pick a card and tell a personal story that reflects the word or image that they see.

The cards are designed to be printed double-sided, flipping the paper along the long edge.

A way of combining value-sharing and storytelling is to explore those stories that exist across cultures and the meanings that they hold. The “Folktales from Sudan” podcast gives a great example of this!

Read more about the power of sharing stories in this post about an event co-hosted by Citizens UK in Bristol under the title “Weaving Trust into a Divided City”.

If you want to read more about different forms of testimony, this handbook is very comprehensive!

The myth-busting briefings should not only be a method of debunking migration myths (although this is a very important outcome!). They should also motivate communities to tackle the injustices that they identify through their conversations with one another. Spend some time at the end of your briefing to map with your participants:

• What issues do you want to act on as a community?
• Who has the power to make change happen?
• What is the next action and who will lead on it?

Tension and challenge are an important part of myth-busting. But participants also need to feel safe and able to share and ask questions.

We recommend that you set values and house rules at the start. For example, after you have identified shared values, it might be a good point to agree what it means to act on those values in relation to one another.

Give everyone the chance to speak and be heard. This doesn’t mean anything goes, but people should feel empowered to ask difficult questions and be challenged in their thinking. This might mean allowing some kind of anonymity (e.g., through tools such as Mentimeter, or using Post-it notes to ask questions) or small group work.

Incorporate a “de-brief” into your session. Give participants a chance to reflect on what they’ve heard and how they feel. This can also feed into the evaluation!

Citizens UK offer training on Organising Together across Difference, which you might find useful as preparation for your myth-busting briefing.

Myth-busting, especially where it involves story-sharing, can be an emotionally challenging activity and it should not be sprung on participants. They should know what to expect and be able to make an informed decision as to whether or not they want to participate. We recommend the following:

1. Participants should be fully informed about what the objective of the session is, what will happen and what their role will be. They should have this information before they arrive and again at the start of the session.
2. Make it clear to participants that you won’t be recording or collecting any information about anything they say or do during the session, but that you will ask for their feedback at different points. Explain how you will ask for that feedback and what you will do with it (e.g., will it be used to design future sessions? Will you share a summary with the University of Birmingham and Citizens UK team?).
3. Explain that they are free to leave at any point for any reason and they are under no pressure to share anything they don’t want to.
4. Confirm with all participants verbally that they have understood the above and make sure they have the chance to ask any questions.

You should evaluate the success of your briefing, so you can understand what has worked for next time. Key questions you might ask are:

1. Did participants learn anything new?
2. Do participants feel more confident about identifying and challenging myths and misconceptions about migration?
3. Do participants feel empowered to talk to friends and family about migration myths?
4. Did participants hear a story that changed or challenged their thinking?
5. Was any particular activity especially effective at making participants think differently?
6. Do participants feel more connected to, or have a greater understanding of, people from different backgrounds?

The University of Birmingham and Citizens UK team leading on this toolkit would also be very grateful for a summary of any feedback (send to: Sara Jones on s.jones.1@bham.ac.uk).

Evaluation could take lots of different forms; these are just a few examples:

1. Informal discussion at different points throughout the day to gauge participant responses.
2. Surveys: paper or online. Surveys can be used to get feedback on process and enjoyment, but more importantly, using them at the start and end of an event can help you understand if attitudes and knowledge have changed. We recommend that surveys should be anonymous and include a data protection statement.
3. For really detailed feedback, you might decide to do 1:1 interviews with a selection of participants. You should make sure that interviewees know what will happen in the interview, how you will record their answers, what will happen to the data and their right to change their mind at any time. We recommend getting written consent.
4. If you do an activity that involves creative outputs, these can tell you a lot about participant experience. Make sure you document these with the permission of participants (e.g., through photographs).