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This study aims to outlines the findings of the first qualitative evidence synthesis of empirical research on the impact of the No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) rule which prevents most temporary migrants from accessing social security benefits in the UK.

The review used the 2020 Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses protocol guidelines. Data were analysed by using Thomas and Harden’s (2008) thematic synthesis methodology. An initial 321 articles were identified from 13 databases, of which 38 studies met the inclusion criteria.

The key insights were that NRPF causes destitution and extreme poverty and has a disproportionate impact on racialised women. Studies found that support services were underdeveloped, underfunded, inconsistent and had a culture of mistrust and racism towards migrants. Migrants were often fearful of services due to concerns around deportation, destitution and state intervention around children.

The review focussed on qualitative research. Future empirical and theoretical research is needed in the following areas: NRPF as a practice of everyday bordering, the role of the Home Office in creating and sustaining the policy; differing gendered experiences of NRPF; and a broader geographical scope which includes all four UK nations and takes an international comparative approach.

Despite an estimated 1.4 million people in the UK with NRPF (Citizens Advice, 2020), there is little policy or theoretical discussion of the experience of having NRPF or the implications of the rule. This lack of analysis is a significant gap in both our understanding of the landscape of poverty in the UK, and the ways in which immigration policies create extreme poverty. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first systematic qualitative review on NRPF, bringing together the research evidence on how NRPF negatively affects outcomes for migrants, local authority and voluntary sector responses to NRPF and theoretical perspectives on NRPF.

Qualitative and quantitative research on mobile phone use by youth worldwide has been a recurrent theme for social scientists since the early 1990s in the USA, Europe and some parts of Asia. However, very little work is known about this subject contextualized in the often more conservative Arab societies of the Middle East. The purpose of this paper is to provide a foundation for discourse in this area through the study of mobile phone use patterns of a highly educated group of young Saudi women vis-à-vis privacy.

A mixed interpretative approach was used with a quantitative survey initially conducted to gain a broad idea about the social practices around mobile use, followed by the use of a qualitative method (focus groups), aimed to focus the discussion on the concept of privacy and how the participants negotiate their use of mobile services in light of this.

Variable user behaviour was found with regards to privacy, as their own individual view or societal view is driven not only by the capabilities of the technology, but how it is provided, particularly when there is indication of government monitoring of data content. It was also found that there is a duality between individuals ' view of privacy with regard to other individuals and their perception of privacy with regard to their own government.

The sensitive nature of the context (Saudi female participants in case study) makes this research unique but had its own challenges, which the researchers attempted to address by using an interpretative and qualitative collection of data. Unfortunately, it was not possible to gather similar data from male youth for comparison, due to the completely segregated nature of this society. Future research will attempt to address this.

This research provides information that could be used by mobile phone manufacturers, marketers, content and application providers and telecommunication companies in the process of designing, marketing and providing relevant products and services for this increasingly important population segment. Especially in light of the fact that they share some similarities with youth around the world in their attachment to their mobile phones, but the way it is used to negotiate their various work, home and social domains vis-à-vis privacy, is unique.

The paper presents key findings on an under-researched group of Saudi youth; its practices and motivations for mobile use, the particular domain of privacy and how this is negotiated in an Islamic social and cultural context. It also shows there are at least two distinct levels of privacy, and one has a greater influence than the other, on how Saudi Arabian women negotiate their lives in various domains within their society. In fact, the evidence would lead us to believe that one of these privacy levels (individual-government) has almost no influence on these women ' s consumption of mobile technology. These young women place importance on their individual-individual privacy space and are negotiating this privacy boundary among their peers, thereby defining in use, their own particular notion of privacy.