Nation, nationality and nationalism: past, present and futures

Increasingly salient, nation, nationality and nationalism both connect ‘race’ and migration and abjure the connections between them. This focus will enable us to engage deeply with historical and decolonial knowledges and make an important contribution to present debates and creative imaginings of futures.

Selected UoB Research Projects

• PRIME – Protecting Irregular Migrants in Europe: Variations in vulnerability, host country needs, and policy effectiveness
• UK-EU couples after ‘Brexit: migrantisation and the UK family immigration regime
• Non-Western Migration Regimes in a Global Perspective – MARS
• Colonial Reels: Histories and Afterlives of Colonial Film Collections

Recent blogs:

• MMB January 2026: Looking back and moving forwards
  By Bridget Anderson & ​Emma Newcombe​. Happy New Year to all our friends, colleagues and members! We hope the break or change in routine have left you energised for 2026. The last year has been bleak for so many. The Gaza horror, needless (and nameless) deaths in the Mediterranean and Channel, physical, legislative and verbal… Read more: MMB January 2026: Looking back and moving forwards
• What Theatre Can Do That Policy Briefs Can’t: Migrant Domestic Workers, Narrative Power, and Antigone
  By Ravi Jaiswal and Nikita. Debates on policy change mainly focus on argument, evidence, and institutional processes. While essential, they can often operate independently and within circles of power. The biases driving decisions and public attitudes shape a dominant narrative in policy demands that diminishes the voices of those affected by the policy. Antigone –… Read more: What Theatre Can Do That Policy Briefs Can’t: Migrant Domestic Workers, Narrative Power, and Antigone
• The environment as a necropolitical actor in global border regimes
  By Marielys Padua Soto. Borders are often depicted as man-made barriers such as fences, checkpoints and walls. But some of the deadliest borders in the world are not built by human hands. Instead, they are deserts, seas and jungles, environments transformed into barriers through policy neglect and the criminalization of mobility. By closing legal pathways,… Read more: The environment as a necropolitical actor in global border regimes
• Vigilante bordering – implications for immigrant rights protection in South Africa
  A special series from the Migration Research Group of the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol. By Enocent Nemuramba. In August 2022, a group of men and women gathered at the entrance of Kalafong Hospital in Atteridgeville, a township near Pretoria, South Africa. They were not patients, nor were they staff.… Read more: Vigilante bordering – implications for immigrant rights protection in South Africa