This ongoing blog series brings together MMB posts about new books and other publications that focus on migration and mobilities. Some of these posts are part of other MMB series (such as Race, Nation and Migration) while others stand alone, introducing new thinking on a particular aspect of human and non-human movement.
- Navigating ethical emotions in European migration enforcementNew writing on migration and mobilities – an MMB special series By Ioana Vrăbiescu and Bridget Anderson. The European Union represents itself as a global champion of human rights, yet its external borders are marked by hostility, surveillance and death. Despite official claims to equality and that Black Lives Matter, the vast majority of those… Read more: Navigating ethical emotions in European migration enforcement
- Expatriate: why we need to study migration categoriesNew writing on migration and mobilities – an MMB special series By Sarah Kunz. My new book Expatriate: Following a Migration Category explores the postcolonial history and politics of the category expatriate. It asks what expatriate has been taken to mean in different places and times. How has it been employed and shaped by political… Read more: Expatriate: why we need to study migration categories
- Roots and routes: debating indigenous rights in twentieth-century Latin AmericaNew writing on migration and mobilities – an MMB special series By Jo Crow. My recent book Itinerant Ideas (2022) explores the multiple meanings and languages of indigeneity (Merlan, 2009) circulating across borders in early twentieth-century Latin America. It takes readers through an extensive visual and written representational repertoire to show how ideas about indigenous… Read more: Roots and routes: debating indigenous rights in twentieth-century Latin America
- Many Turkish people in Europe are worse off than those who stayed at homeNew writing on migration and mobilities – an MMB special series By Şebnem Eroğlu. Many people migrate to another country to earn a decent income and to attain a better standard of living. But my recent research shows that across all destinations and generations studied, many migrants from Turkey to European countries are financially worse off than those who stayed… Read more: Many Turkish people in Europe are worse off than those who stayed at home
- Asylum and extraction in the Republic of NauruNew writing on migration and mobilities – an MMB special series By Julia Morris. My book, Asylum and Extraction in the Republic of Nauru (2023), looks at the impacts of outsourcing asylum to the world’s smallest island nation. The Pacific Island of Nauru was almost entirely economically dependent on the phosphate industry in the twentieth century.… Read more: Asylum and extraction in the Republic of Nauru
- Looking back to ‘The Postcolonial Age of Migration’: a post-pandemic viewNew writing on migration and mobilities – an MMB special series By Ranabir Samaddar. My book The Postcolonial Age of Migration was published in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic raged in India and elsewhere. Global mobility had screeched to a halt, as had mobility within India. Locked down in my house when I received a copy,… Read more: Looking back to ‘The Postcolonial Age of Migration’: a post-pandemic view
- Researching Western privilege in Dubai: a conversation with Saba A. Le RenardNew writing on migration and mobilities – an MMB special series This is an edited version of an interview with Saba A. Le Renard in Jadaliyya* about their recent book Western Privilege. Work, Intimacy, and Postcolonial Hierarchies in Dubai (Stanford University Press, 2021). Jadaliyya (J): What made you write the book? Saba A. Le Renard (SLR): When I was… Read more: Researching Western privilege in Dubai: a conversation with Saba A. Le Renard
- The bifurcated migration lexicon and trend-defying trajectoriesNew writing on migration and mobilities – an MMB special series By Rose Jaji. The migration lexicon has consolidated itself around an either/or rather than both-and schematic in which categories resulting from a binary classification of regions and countries have acquired unquestioned normativity. This normativity is evident in what can be termed a regionalised division of… Read more: The bifurcated migration lexicon and trend-defying trajectories
- Organising against fear: migrant nannies and domestic workers during COVIDNew writing on migration and mobilities – an MMB special series By Maud Perrier Migrant nannies and domestic workers were largely absent from mainstream feminist commentary during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as from public discussion of childcare. In the UK broadsheets, most of the media coverage of the childcare crisis during this time was dominated… Read more: Organising against fear: migrant nannies and domestic workers during COVID
- Mobility and mobilization – narrating injusticesNew writing on migration and mobilities – an MMB special series By Hager Ben Driss. Stephen Greenblatt defines ‘mobilizers’ as ‘agents, go-betweens, translators, or intermediaries’ (Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto p. 251) and contends that their function as contact facilitators should be included in mobility studies. This concept of mobilization serves as an ethical lever of… Read more: Mobility and mobilization – narrating injustices
- Ordinary: a new approach to work in migration researchNew writing on migration and mobilities – an MMB special series By Dora-Olivia Vicol. In the world of mobility research, scholars have long cast a critical look at work. In most immigration regimes in the Global North, worker status is what is used to distinguish between those who are allowed to migrate and those who… Read more: Ordinary: a new approach to work in migration research
- Forced labour in supply chains: missing links between industrial and sexual labourNew writing on migration and mobilities – an MMB special series By Rutvica Andrijasevic. I was in the midst of fieldwork researching the working conditions of migrant workers in the electronics industry in Central and Eastern Europe when the press ran the story about Serbian workers working and living in slavery-like conditions in Slovakia. Various articles… Read more: Forced labour in supply chains: missing links between industrial and sexual labour
- Addressing discomfort: the politics and ethics of representation in qualitative researchBy the Critical Methodologies Collective. The Politics and Ethics of Representation in Qualitative Research (2021), published in July by Routledge, draws on experiences from nine different PhD projects. These have been brought together by our Critical Methodologies Collective to offer insights into the politics and ethics of representation for researchers working on justice struggles. Moments of… Read more: Addressing discomfort: the politics and ethics of representation in qualitative research
- Maritime mobility and literary culture: ‘Hamlet’ off the coast of Sierra LeoneNew writing on migration and mobilities – an MMB special series By Laurence Publicover. In 1607 three East India Company (EIC) ships set off on the company’s third voyage, aiming to break into the lucrative spice trade dominated by Portugal for the previous century. As the first to reach mainland India, this voyage has clear… Read more: Maritime mobility and literary culture: ‘Hamlet’ off the coast of Sierra Leone
- Britain as the spoils of empireRace, nation and migration – the blog series reframing thinking on movement and racism. By Nadine El-Enany. My parents travelled from Egypt to Britain in 1977, moving from London to Exeter, a city in the South West of England, in 1978. For my parents, Exeter was a place they felt fortunate to have found, an idyll… Read more: Britain as the spoils of empire
- Intimate state encounters: Brexit, European Roma and contested home-landsRace, nation and migration – the blog series reframing thinking on movement and racism. By Rachel Humphris. Brexit and the UK’s relationship with the European Union foregrounds questions of identity, nationhood and who is included or excluded. For those identified as ‘Roma’ these are perennial questions as purported ‘European citizenship’ made little difference to their position… Read more: Intimate state encounters: Brexit, European Roma and contested home-lands
- Racism and the UK’s immigration systemRace, nation and migration – the blog series reframing thinking on movement and racism. By Maya Goodfellow. ‘Hard Brexit,’ Labour’s Andy Burnham warned a few months after the EU referendum result in 2016, would ‘turn Britain into a place it has never been: divided, hostile, narrow-minded.’ This is a theme that has persisted since the initial… Read more: Racism and the UK’s immigration system
- Queer liberalisms and marginal mobility – special issue and interview seriesNew writing on migration and mobilities – an MMB special series By Mengia Tschalaer. To live a life in fear of violence, incarceration, torture, excommunication and isolation is a reality for many lesbian, gay, trans*, bi, intersex and non-binary persons worldwide. Homosexuality is criminalized in 77 countries, out of which seven apply the death penalty. According… Read more: Queer liberalisms and marginal mobility – special issue and interview series
- Deporting Black Britons: mobility and race-making in the life stories of criminalised ‘deportees’Race, nation and migration – the blog series reframing thinking on movement and racism. By Luke de Noronha. My recently published book, Deporting Black Britons: Portraits of Deportation to Jamaica (2020, Manchester University Press), traces the life stories of people who have been exiled from their homes in Britain. The four men who feature most… Read more: Deporting Black Britons: mobility and race-making in the life stories of criminalised ‘deportees’
- Moving difference: Brazilians in LondonRace, nation and migration – the blog series reframing thinking on movement and racism. By Angelo Martins Junior. Portuguese version here. The freedom to move from place to place is a privilege in today’s world, and so ideas about human mobility and human difference are necessarily interwoven. When white people from the global north move… Read more: Moving difference: Brazilians in London
- National sovereignty and postcolonial racismRace, nation and migration – the blog series reframing thinking on movement and racism. By Nandita Sharma. A focus on migration, mobility and ideas of ‘race’ are crucial aspects of nationalist thought and practice. Indeed, today, racism operates through nationalism. Yet, while racism has been largely delegitimised, nationalism has not. The delegitimisation of racism does… Read more: National sovereignty and postcolonial racism
- MMB good reads on race, nation and migrationA new blog series reframing thinking on movement and racism. Introduced by Julia O’Connell Davidson and Bridget Anderson. Not so long ago, many liberal thinkers in countries of the global north were comfortable narrating the story of liberal societies as a romance in which enlightened heroes gradually overcame the forces of barbarism. It was a… Read more: MMB good reads on race, nation and migration
- Home and sense of belonging among Iraqi Kurds in the UKBy Ali Zalme. All too often we are forced into assumptions and caricatures of a particular group that fail to expose nuanced experiences of the members of that group. My new book, Home and Sense of Belonging among Iraqi Kurds in the UK (Lexington Books, 2020),is an effort to voice out lived experiences of an… Read more: Home and sense of belonging among Iraqi Kurds in the UK
- Are transnational marriages bad for integration?By Sarah Spencer The belief that marriage partners from less developed countries are bad for ‘integration’ is firmly held by European policy makers. With pressure to curb immigration, that concern has conveniently justified raising the bar for spouses to enter. Marriage Migration and Integration (2020) interrogates that assumption with substantial evidence from an ESRC-funded study… Read more: Are transnational marriages bad for integration?