Teaching asylum and immigration law in a hostile environment: online education’s role in navigating social work challenges

The impact of COVID-19 restrictions and the shift to online teaching has contributed to a growing interest in distance learning across social work education. The authors of this paper are from the Open University, which has over 50 years of experience in distance learning and over the past 30 years e-learning through blended and fully online methods. The paper shares insights from teaching a social work law module to nearly 400 students across the UK. This paper addresses the challenges of integrating social work values and human rights into teaching asylum and immigration law amidst a UK legal discourse that often creates a ‘hostile environment’ for people with precarious immigration status. It explores teaching from a social justice perspective in the context of restrictive domestic laws. Highlighting the co-production of learning materials with civil society groups through videos and podcasts, the paper emphasizes the importance of including practitioner and migrant, asylum seeker or refugee voices to enrich content. Insights into the practicalities of incorporating these elements into e-learning, along with reflections on the challenges and opportunities, are discussed.