'Go Home' vans research gets £200,000 grant Researchers from across the country will conduct interviews, organise large-scale surveys and analyse material posted online to work out how the campaign influenced community ties and public debate. "Understanding the impact of the 'Go Home' posters and related campaigns is crucial," said Dr Emma Jackson, a Glasgow academic who will help lead the research. We need to understand how such policies affect the lives of migrants, local communities and good community relations. She added: "This provides a real opportunity to examine the impact of policy interventions on public debate about immigration across the UK." The £200,000 grant came from the Economic and Social Research Council - a Government-funded body - and was one of the first projects to win funding under their "Urgency Grants Mechanism" initiative. Operation Vaken, which ran between July 22 and August 22 in six London boroughs, saw mobile billboards take to the streets emblazoned with the slogan "go home or face arrest." The posters encouraged illegal immigrants to text "HOME" for help to leave the country and saw the Home Office tweet pictures of raids and arrests alongside the hashtag #immigrationoffenders. A report into the scheme published last month found 125 illegal immigrants came forward after seeing the publicity, of whom 60 have already left the country. Just 11 people left specifically because of the ad vans, while more than 1,000 of the 1,561 texts received by the Home Office were hoaxes.