This book is the first in a new series from Facet Publishing, ‘Libraries and Social Justice’. Books in this series are intended to be introductions to each topic, looking briefly at the background, then at how libraries have responded in the past and, particularly, at what provision libraries – of all types – are making now. They will be practical guides, the key idea being that you can take away ideas to develop your own service provision, find out more about the topic, and discover sources should you wish to read more widely.

This title, Libraries and Sanctuary: Supporting Refugees and Other New Arrivals, sadly, could not be more timely. As I write, the after-effects of the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan are still very much with us, and war has broken out as Russia invades Ukraine, causing millions of people to flee their country.

How can libraries (and library and information workers) respond? This book intends to provide some practical starting points.

The book begins by looking at terminology (many of the terms we use have considerable ‘baggage’) and at the range of reasons why people may be forced to flee their countries. This includes people being forced to flee conflict and persecution; people migrating to avoid changing climates, environmental degradation and the lack of work, education and other opportunities; and people coming to the UK for other reasons. New arrivals to the UK can include people seeking sanctuary (refugees, asylum seekers); people coming to the UK to work; international students; people coming to the UK for family reunion/reunification; returning UK citizens; and ‘irregular’ migrants – there will be more on all these groups later, and, in looking at this, it introduces aspects of political responses in the UK.

One of the common factors shared by the people included in this book is that they have all faced hostility, possibly because of the colour of their skin, or their language, or their supposed behaviour – or because of some new prejudice, such as anti-Chinese, anti-east and southeast Asian feelings and anti-Semitism in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic (see, for example: Parveen and Huynh, 2021; Qian, 2021; Dawson, 2021; Ng, 2021; Human Rights Watch, 2020; Detzler, 2020); and anti-Russian feelings following the invasion of Ukraine (Qureshi, 2022), what the Institute of Race Relations (and others) have called xenoracism (Fekete, 2001).