MMB is oriented around three research challenges and we use these to group and profile research projects conducted by colleagues in Bristol. Our take on migration and mobilities is both innovative and capacious, connecting mainstream Migration Studies to research on movements within borders and non-human movement. This places us very much at the cutting edge of migration and mobilities scholarship.
MMB’s primary purpose is to foster and promote new thinking on migration and mobilities that is critical, creative and distinctively ‘Bristol’. Within UoB we continue to build a strong, interdisciplinary community of scholars working on all aspects of mobilities, with an emphasis on the human. MMB members are interested in a very wide range of migration and mobilities related subjects, come from different disciplinary traditions and deploy different conceptual and empirical tools. Some are migration scholars, others have researched migration from a particular disciplinary perspective as one among several areas of interest, others research mobility related topics such as bus services or glacial movement that are distinct from migration studies but benefit from theories, networks and interconnections that become apparent when brought into conversation with migration scholars.
The Bristol Approach
Conceptually driven, critical, creative
While there is no consensus of views on migration among our members, and neither does MMB seek to shape one, we have fostered the emergence of a shared approach which we strive to promote as unique to Bristol.
MMB’s shared approach is one that: recognises that borders are productive, making ‘migrants’ not only admitting and rejecting them; acknowledges that research changes our worlds and that researchers therefore have a responsibility to change it for the better; recognises that migration is connected to many other scales and forms of mobilities; explores connections including between migrants and citizens.
- Conceptually driven – Human movement is entangled in multiple mobilities (think of trade, money and non-human species). Not all human movement counts as ‘migration’. Taking these insights as a starting point, MMB facilitates new thinking on people and movement that is distinctively ‘Bristol’.
- Critical – MMB supports all UoB research on migration, asylum, integration and related topics. It also fosters ‘migration as method’: research that connects human movement to other social challenges, including climate change, resilience and transformation, health, creative and cultural, and sociodigital technologies. It works with researchers to connect migration with other social justice related issues, especially racism and nationalism.
- Constructive – MMB facilitates multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary research orientated to the past, present and future. It works across faculties, facilitating conversations between diverse perspectives and disciplines, from life sciences to English scholars, historians to management.
This approach makes for innovative connections across different Faculties and research fields, encourages intellectual exchange and collaborations and boosts research capacity. We do not simply see human movement as a problem to be solved but as a lens that discovers unexpected connections between migration and other issues including race, welfare, environment and development. From this perspective we also act as a critical friend to policymakers, lawyers, NGOs and activists. Through this innovative Bristol approach we seek to contribute to the development of the next generation of leading scholars.
University of Bristol Connections
MMB is currently based within the Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences, with an administrative home in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS). We are pleased to support SPAIS’ Migration Research Group.
From 2018-2025 we have received financial funding from the PVC Research and Innovation and the Strategic Research Investment Fund. MMB supports the development of the ‘University research strategy 2030’ and plays an important role in connecting existing projects and outputs to University’s research foci, including:
- Social justice – MMB’s work seeks to understand people’s different capacities to move and how lives are shaped by constraints on movement (across and within borders), enforced mobility and access to citizenship. It analyses how borders produce and manage difference. It attends to how borders are enforced and challenged, and it makes efforts to counter ‘methodological nationalism’ – for example, by exploring how histories of colonisation and anti-colonial struggles shape cross-border movements and contemporary immigration controls. Activities have included:
- Race, Nation and Migration Blog series based on reflections from Benjamin Meaker visiting Professor Nandita Sharma and the events MMB ran during this period
- Using work that will be developed by a new Horizon project launching in 2023, MMB will publish blogs reflecting on the conditions of irregular migrants across institutional contexts in Europe. Centre for Black Humanities Perivoli Africa Research Centre (PARC)
- Climate and Environment – MMB is interested in the relationships between migration and other non-human mobilities such as the movement of goods, data and living beings. These relationships can be direct, indirect and metaphorical. By taking this broad approach and making connections with other forms of mobility and with the non-human that moves we can better understand how human movement impacts on and reflects eco-systems, socio-economic relations and technological change Activities have included:
- a special blog series on migration, mobilities and the environment – a joint blog series with Cabot Institute for the Environment,
- the (de)Bordering spaces in Royal Fort Gardens with Brigstow Institute
- a Wild about Weeds walking tour of Bristol thinking about connections between weeds, indigeneity and mobility.
- Equitable and sustainable health outcomes – Areas of interest related to migration include health and asylum, racism and health inequalities, mental health and health and social care workers. There is also interest in health and mobilities including organ donation and transplantation, infection and tissue economies. Activities have included:
- With Trevor Thompson, Bristol Medical School, we helped to develop an option course for third year medical students in 2024 – ‘Migration Studies with language development’,
- an online seminar series in 2023 on migration and health with Bristol Medical School and a collaborator in Glasgow – ‘The Health of Migrants and the Right to Health’
- a Migration and Health Blog Collection.
- Data and digitalization – To date most of the UoB research on the intersection of digital and data and mobilities has been on the impact of new technology on labour markets and migration. However, there is an emerging interest in the ways digital technologies are embedded in everyday mobility/mobility regulatory practices with significant implications for citizenship in theory and practice. This raises questions about the impact of the production of new types and unprecedented volumes of digital data on labour mobility, on existing categorisations of migration and on state capacity to enforce immigration controls. Activities have included:
- a joint blog series with CenSoF on Migration, Mobility and Digital Technologies
- MMB Tour of Bristol Digital Futures Institute (BDFI) experimental sociotechnical research facilities and learn about what they mean for co-creation, methodologies and theory.
MMB makes connections between those working on migration related issues from across the University of Bristol and beyond. Bristol has a wide range of expertise and the core network has scholars from the following faculties and schools:
Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences
- School of Arts
- School of Economics
- School of Education
- School of Humanities
- School of Modern Languages
- School for Policy Studies
- School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies
- University of Bristol Business School
- University of Bristol Law School