CaSE’s Guide for Engaging the Public with Researcher Immigration

We want to help advocates tell a more compelling story about the value of researcher immigration for the UK

This guide aims to provide advocates with the support and confidence needed to talk about the complex topic of researcher immigration. CaSE has been a vocal advocate for the benefits that researcher immigration delivers for the UK, but messaging from CaSE and the wider sector has struggled to cut through in the wider public debate around immigration.

CaSE developed this guide in partnership with The Social Agency and Icaro, based on a study that developed and tested pro-immigration messaging that resonates with the public – especially those with stronger anti-immigration views. This messaging grew from direct engagement with the public, and was tested as scale through a 2,000-person nationally representative poll.

These insights will inform future campaigns on this topic by CaSE, and we encourage other advocates to draw these principles into their own work to help strengthen the sector’s engagement with the public on the topic of researcher immigration.

CaSE’s Guide for Engaging the Public with Researcher Immigration

Download CaSE’s guide to support your advocacy for skilled immigration to the UK

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Emotionally resonant messaging

The study included a review of research papers, UK polling reports, and grey literature to understand how anti-immigrant sentiment was expressed. This was fed into a co-creation workshop with CaSE stakeholders to develop three broad messaging “territories” that sought to connect with the public via new routes.

Message Territory 1

“Bright ideas are everywhere, let’s get them on our side”
Focus: national and local pride, optimism, bringing ideas to Britain.

Message Territory 2

“Britain is broken. Let’s take back control of our future and fix it”
Focus: nostalgia, addressing dissatisfaction and disillusionment.

Message Territory 3

“Britain is under threat – we need to be strong to keep us safe”
Focus: fear and protectionism, strong leadership, fixing problems.

These broad messaging territories underpinned the development of a range of illustrative campaign materials, which were then tested with the public to understand how they resonated and use this to draw out messaging principles.

Seven core principles

To reach broader public audiences with messages about research immigration, advocates should:

Be clear: ensure people understand that the message is about attracting the best overseas talent to the UK and avoid analogies

Be balanced: highlight the benefits of attracting overseas talent for the Britain and British workers, and avoid implying a reliance on immigration

Be inspiring: the best performing statements talked in positive terms about ‘building’, ‘deserving’, ‘firing up’ and ‘doing it again’ and not about ‘problems’

Be local: people struggle to see the how researcher immigration improves their daily lives, but local examples can help cut through

Be specific: give examples of innovation like antibiotics and the internet, instead of talking about it in general terms

Be mindful of language: either avoid using the word ‘immigration’ in messaging or distinguish it from other forms of immigration (e.g. #smartimmigration)

Be consistent: align on one idea and speak with one voice as a sector – individual executions should always lead back to the big idea

Lessons from discussions with the public

Comprehension and cut-through of the different messages varied significantly during our focus groups. The strongest performing messages were those which framed researcher immigration as an ingredient in fixing national problems and restoring national pride, and the use of analogies proved counterproductive.

This engagement indicated that successful messaging was:

Upfront about the topic of immigration.
Distinguished between skilled immigration and other types of immigration.
Demonstrated that researcher immigration benefits people’s local area.
Clear on the UK and the R&D sector not being overly reliant on immigration.

Lessons from national polling

We developed 18 short pro-immigration statements and tested these via a nationally representative poll of over 2,000 people. We sought to understand whether each statement was convincing and used reaction times to gauge the ease of connection and resonance that respondents had with each statement.

Promisingly, many of the statements we tested demonstrated potential, but there were clear differences in how the messages landed with different voter groups. Notably, the statement which directly used the term “immigrant” was particularly divisive – with good traction with centre/left voters and very low traction with others.

The best performing messages:

Pointed to specific R&D innovations rather than using nebulous phrases such as “fixing problems”, e.g. “From antibiotics to the internet, global researchers helped Britain innovate”
Evoked a sense of optimism for the future, e.g. “Attracting the world’s best researchers will help Britain build the industries of tomorrow”
Pointed to Britain’s past achievements, e.g. “Many inventions that improve your life were developed here in Britain by global teams”
Highlighted the importance of home-grown talent, e.g. “The best team to fix our country is made of the brightest British researchers and top global talent”
Triggered loss aversion, e.g. “Britain could miss out on big breakthroughs if we don’t bring in the best global researchers”