Jesuit Refugee Service UK

Who we are

The Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) accompanies, serves and advocates alongside and for the rights of refugees and forcibly displaced people. JRS in the UK supports people made destitute by the asylum process through advice and casework, practical support, emotional befriending and accompaniment, a programme of creative and therapeutic activities, accommodation, and specialist legal advice. JRS UK also runs a detention outreach service supporting people detained for the administration of immigration procedures at Harmondsworth and Colnbrook, including befriending, social visiting, and casework support. JRS UK undertakes research for advocacy to policy makers, alongside communications and community outreach, to raise awareness of the real situation facing asylum seekers and to argue for a change in policies that undermine their dignity and a just society.

JRS’ distinctive ethos of accompaniment radically alters the beneficiary–service provider relationship and affects all that we do: we place a high value on coming to know refugees as people who are not only defined by their situation in immigration law; we come to know refugees as friends, rather than ‘clients’, ‘beneficiaries’, or ‘service users’. JRS’ services seek to offer specialist intervention and respond to practical needs, but also to create spaces of hospitality, community, friendship and participation, which enable refugees to heal and shape their own future. JRS’ advocacy, communications and outreach are similarly rooted in accompaniment, beginning with listening to the experience of refugees, bringing opportunities for their experience and voices to be heard, understood and create change.

JRS UK is based in the Hurtado Jesuit Centre in Wapping, East London. JRS UK currently has 25 full and part-time staff and around 100 volunteers, drawn from a wide variety of backgrounds, nationalities and generations; people of all faiths and none; including refugees, young graduates and vowed members of religious congregations. This diversity of perspectives and experience is a source of particular strength for JRS’ work. We work collaboratively with JRS offices around the world, other Jesuit projects in the UK and many others in the Church and wider refugee sector.

A Global Mission

The Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) is an international Catholic organisation with a shared global mission to accompany, serve and advocate alongside and for the rights of refugees and forcibly displaced people. JRS’ work is based on hospitality, carried out in a spirit of compassion and solidarity, encouraging participation and community, aiming to kindle hope, secure justice and affirm the dignity of refugees and forced migrants.

JRS' values and ways of working are rooted in Catholic Social Teaching and Jesuit (Ignatian) spirituality: JRS actively encourages reflective practice and participative decision-making at all levels of the organisation, as well as investment in, and care for, our staff and volunteer teams.

JRS worldwide has reconciliation, rooted in justice and sought in dialogue, as one of its core strategic goals, recognising the urgent need to build bridges between refugees and communities hosting refugee populations. In the UK context, which has seen increasingly polarised rhetoric and culture wars focused on immigration, we want to support engagement and encounter between refugees and people who may not otherwise get the chance to meet and come to know refugees or asylum seekers as people and to find ways of building a sense of shared community.