Social justice blogs

Migration, Mobilities and Digital Technologies – a special series published in association with the ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures. By Martin Rogard. Many people had been waiting in Mexico for months to make their asylum claim legally in the US when, at midday on 20th January 2025, all CBP One appointments with the US Border Force… Read more: ‘El Carrusel’: digitising the US-Mexico border with(out) the CBP One app

New writing on migration and mobilities – an MMB special series By Hassan Ould Moctar. In March 2024, the Mauritanian government signed a migration partnership agreement with Spain and the European Commission, the stated aim being to address a surge of unwanted migrant arrivals on the Canary Islands. While unprecedented in financial scope, this was… Read more: After border externalisation: migration, race and labour in Mauritania

A special series from the Migration Research Group of the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol. By Minjae Shin. Military service is mandatory in South Korea (hereafter Korea). Over the past ten years, one of the main concerns of the Republic of Korea Armed Forces (hereafter ‘Korean military’) is the integration of… Read more: Call to arms, but to whom? Conscription, race and the nation in South Korea

A special series from the Migration Research Group of the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol. By Maite Ibáñez Bollerhoff.  As a researcher exploring the experiences of refugee women in small German towns, I have come to understand the critical importance of applying a postcolonial and intersectional lens to capture the complexity… Read more: Refugee women’s struggles for rights and stability: insights from an intersectional lens 

A special series from the Migration Research Group of the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol. By Natalie Brinham. Recently, there has been an increased interest in how a lack of legal identities, or state-issued documents, is connected to the risks of trafficking and modern slavery. As someone who… Read more: The problem of promoting legal identities for all in anti-trafficking work

A special series from the Migration Research Group of the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol. By Julio D’Angelo Davies. Brazil is built on slavery. It was the Americas’ largest importer of enslaved Africans, with Rio de Janeiro serving as the country’s main port of entry. Despite receiving nearly… Read more: ‘Slaves’, migrants and museums: the struggle for places of African memory in Brazil

A special series from the Migration Research Group of the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol. By Samuel Okyere. Welcome to the MMB special series by the SPAIS Migration Group, a collective of researchers in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS) at the University of Bristol… Read more: Moving as being: introducing the SPAIS Migration Group blog series

Borderland Infrastructures – an MMB special series exploring the material and symbolic infrastructure of border regimes in the port cities of Calais and Dover. By Miriam Ticktin. Borders as infrastructure As I looked out the car window in Calais at the enormous white mesh razor-wire lined fences, the surveillance towers and the starkness of the… Read more: Transnational borders: from containment to freedom

By Dan Godshaw, Ann Singleton and Bridget Anderson. We pay respect to the memory of the children killed and to those injured in Southport as well as their families. In early August 2024 the UK experienced a wave of fascist violence and organised hate of the kind not witnessed since the 1980s. Far right activists… Read more: The racist politics of ‘mindless thuggery’

By Orlando Deavila Pertuz and Bethan Fisk. What stories are told about the Caribbean? What do these narratives exclude? How can we broaden the story? And how can we teach a wider vision of the Caribbean to students of all ages and wider publics? Orlando Deavila Pertuz from the Instituto Internacional de Estudios del Caribe… Read more: Across the waters: Caribbean mobilities, itineraries, histories

By Juan Zhang. As co-ordinator of the MMB Research Challenge ‘Bodies, Things, Capital’ I have been reading our recent blogs under this theme and am struck by the range and depth of the projects. They cross many contexts, disciplines and research fields, and engage with critical debates around (in)justice, vulnerability, borders and the politics of… Read more: Bodies, things, capital – intersections in our research themes

By Edanur Yazici and Bridget Anderson. The term ‘illegal immigration’ is often used in discussions about immigration but is widely agreed to be pejorative, misleading, and stigmatising by scholars, refugee and migrant groups, and across the third sector. Instead, ‘irregular migration’ has become the preferred term, especially in Europe. However, this term can be confusing and… Read more: Why do we use the term ‘irregular migration’ and can it be translated?

By Melanie Griffiths. The UK’s asylum system is in crisis. Despite the government’s rhetoric, this is largely a crisis of the Home Office’s own making. Years of painfully slow decision-making has created a massive backlog of tens of thousands of people. The recent political hysteria around small boats crossing the Channel and the cruel, fear-mongering… Read more: Hysteria and disinterest: accommodating asylum seekers

New 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

By Jáfia Naftali Câmara. ‘Refugee Stories: Education: Obstacles and Aspirations‘ draws on findings from my doctoral research project on young refugees’ educational experiences in the UK. The study investigated how young refugee people and their families have encountered the education system while considering the implications of living as refugees in England. Young refugee people’s right… Read more: Obstacles and aspirations: stories from young refugees in the UK education system

By Edanur Yazici. On 4th December 2023, the Home Secretary announced a series of policy changes with the aim of reducing net migration. Among the changes announced was an increase in the general salary threshold for the Skilled Worker Visa from £26,200 to £38,700 a year and an increase in the salary requirement for settled… Read more: Debordering Higher Education

By Amanda Schmid-Scott. Forty minutes into the bus journey that takes me from the bustling streets of Bristol’s city centre, through Bishopston and Horfield, and slowly along Gloucester Road, with its vibrant array of independent shops and cafes, we eventually head onto the busy dual carriage way. As we leave the shopfronts and people on… Read more: Reporting Sounds: the lived impact of UK Home Office reporting on the lives of asylum seekers

By Valentina Montoya Robledo and Rachel Randall. Read the Spanish version here. Domestic workers make up one in every five working women in Latin America, totalling approximately 13 million individuals. In recent decades, a significant transformation has occurred as many domestic workers have shifted from living in their employers’ homes to commuting daily from their… Read more: Invisible: domestic workers’ commutes in Latin America

By Bridget Anderson. Happy New Year all. Let’s hope that 2024 brings more peace and justice than 2023. We need it. It is difficult to be hopeful in the face of the ongoing Gaza horror, more needless (and nameless) deaths in the Mediterranean and Channel, the fall out from the Illegal Migration Act, and the… Read more: Migration and mobilities research: making connections for social justice

By Natalie Brinham. Eight months after Myanmar’s genocidal violence in 2017, which saw more than a million Rohingyas driven into Bangladesh, 55-year-old Rafique (not his real name) welcomed me into his shelter in a busy section of the refugee camp. He served me tea and asked me to wait – he wanted to show me… Read more: Looking for the ‘state’ in statelessness research

By Colin Yeo. The power to denaturalise a British subject on the basis of their behaviour was first introduced by legislation in 1918. With some adjustments, the power remained broadly the same until as late as 2002. Essentially, only a person who had naturalised as British could be stripped of their citizenship and the main… Read more: Bad cases make bad law: the unintended consequences of denaturalising bad guys

Borderland Infrastructures – an MMB special series exploring the material and symbolic infrastructure of border regimes in the port cities of Calais and Dover. By Victoria Hattam. Governments around the globe have been building border walls for decades: Calais is no exception. At least since the Touquet Treaty, the UK government has helped fund the… Read more: Borderscapes: policing within

By Sylvanna Falcón. From October 2021 through to May 2022 undergraduate students from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the University of California, Berkeley, participated in a human rights investigation with Human Rights First (HRF) and El Instituto para las Mujeres en la Migración, AC (IMUMI, The Institute for Migration of Women). Under the… Read more: The ethics of mapping migrant violence through Mexico

By Anamaria Fonsêca. In April this year I visited the University of Brasilia (UnB), Brazil, with Professor Foluke Adebisi from the Bristol Law School to take part in a series of lectures organised by the postgraduate programmes in Law and in Human Rights. I have been collaborating with UnB’s Research Group on International Private Law,… Read more: From Bristol to Brasilia: collaborating on migration and mobilities research

New 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

New 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

Borderland Infrastructures – an MMB special series exploring the material and symbolic infrastructure of border regimes in the port cities of Calais and Dover. By Juan Zhang. At the Dover border crossing I sat in the backseat in silence waiting for questions from the immigration officer inspecting the four passports we handed over together as… Read more: Time and (im)mobility in Calais’ borderlands

Borderland Infrastructures – an MMB special series exploring the material and symbolic infrastructure of border regimes in the port cities of Calais and Dover. By Nariman Massoumi. Nariman Massoumi is a Senior Lecturer in Film and Television at the Department of Film and Television, University of Bristol, and Co-ordinator of the MMB Research Challenge Representation, Belonging,… Read more: Notes from a visit to Calais

By Leah Simmons Wood. The poetry of Warsan Shire – a Kenya born, UK raised and US based second generation migrant of Somali origin – addresses the topic of journeys. She often deliberately fails to clarify the point of departure and of arrival. In this way, she centres journeys at the heart of the migration… Read more: ‘I’ll see you on the other side’: migrant journeys and the (re)formation of diasporic identities

Borderland Infrastructures – an MMB special series exploring the material and symbolic infrastructure of border regimes in the port cities of Calais and Dover. By Bridget Anderson. As we walked around Calais, one of the group remarked ‘It’s just like The City & the City!’ She was spot on. In his novel The City &… Read more: Breaching two worlds: seeing through borders in Calais

By Colin Yeo. As the British empire gradually remodelled itself into a British nation state over the course of the twentieth century, it was inevitable that problems would arise. There was no masterplan or strategy on how to achieve change and successive governments tended to react rather than plan. Nowhere was this more evident than… Read more: Imperial denaturalisation: towards an end to empire

By Nazia Hussein and Anushka Chaudhuri. Since its June 2022 release the Disney Plus series Ms Marvel has brought the conversation around the creation of Independent India and Pakistan – commonly dubbed as ‘Partition’ – to the mainstream. The series has been applauded for introducing the first Muslim superheroine and narratives of the Partition –… Read more: The other side of Partition: tracing Bengal and Bangladesh’s (post-)Partition legacy

By Emily LeRoux-Rutledge. My children are new in Germany like those two flowers. I want my children to be allowed to stay in Germany…. We build something up. We are like LEGO, block by block. These photographs and words belong to Liam* — a young man who made his way to Germany in the midst… Read more: What fosters a sense of belonging? Refugee voices in Germany

By Rebecca Yeo. The distinction between deserving and undeserving individuals has always been core to immigration policy in the UK. However, the hostility and restrictions directed at those framed as ‘undeserving’ has steadily increased. The recently introduced Illegal Migration Bill takes these restrictions to a new level to include detaining and preventing new arrivals from… Read more: Disablement and resistance in the British immigration system

New 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

New 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

By Ella Barclay. A right to health is enshrined in many international agreements, indicating the perceived importance of wellness and accessible healthcare for the development and flourishing of individuals (UDHR, Art. 25:1; ICESCR, Art. 12.1; CEDAW, 12:1; CRC, Art. 24:1). Despite this, one of the main sites of immigration control targeted within the UK’s ‘hostile… Read more: Access to healthcare: human right or civil liberty?

By Bridget Anderson. The Athenian Laws introduced by Draco c. 621 BCE were said to be written not in ink but blood. This government’s Illegal Migration Bill currently going through the UK Parliament, is draconian. It is aimed at people who arrive irregularly – people who the government calls ‘illegal migrants’, but who might better… Read more: ‘An asylum ban’: why the Illegal Migration Bill must be stopped

By Juan Zhang. On 19th March, 2023, British Home Secretary Suella Braverman caused yet another controversy during her two-day visit to Kigali, Rwanda, with a photo of her laughing at the building site of future housing intended for asylum seekers to be deported from the UK to Rwanda. This visit drew new criticism from both… Read more: The ‘Rwanda Solution’: using Australia’s playbook

By Maya Goodfellow. In June 2022 Maya Goodfellow was the discussant for our public lecture ‘Are immigration controls racist? Lessons from history’ by Nandita Sharma. Here we publish her response to Nandita’s lecture. On the evening of 27th June 2022, they were found on a sideroad in Texas. Fifty-three people in the back of a… Read more: The violence of postcolonial border making

By Mary Ryder. In June 2022 the Colombian Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition launched its final report, Hay Futuro Si Hay Verdad: Hallazgos y Recomendaciones (There is a Future if There is Truth: Findings and Recommendations). This was the culmination of three and half years of work investigating the causes and… Read more: Working with the Colombian Truth Commission on illegal drug economies

New 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

By Ryan Lutz. At the MMB postgraduate workshop in July, ‘How Not to Think Like a State,’ visiting scholar Nandita Sharma talked to us about the throughlines of her research. One of these, in particular, gripped me: ‘Anti-immigrant sentiments,’ she said, ‘are used as the basis for fascism.’ I am a migrant PhD student in… Read more: Bad intentions: the UK government and migrants

New 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

By Udeni Salmon and Ann Singleton. Since January 2021 the University of Bristol has been collaborating with ACH in a research project to bring about social and economic change for refugees and migrants in the UK’s South West and West Midlands. ACH is a social enterprise that works to empower these groups to lead self-sufficient… Read more: Researching best practice in supporting refugee and migrant entrepreneurs

By Bridget Anderson. ‘What angers me most is he chased away our grandparents… and now we have no food. Every child we bring into the world suffers. They must leave to find work and food for us. Some kids never come home. We just get news of their death. So you can see why we… Read more: ‘African Apocalypse’: the imperial violence behind today’s migration

New 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

By Bridget Anderson. In June–July 2022 we were delighted to host Professor Nandita Sharma from the University of Hawai’i as a Bristol Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor. It was a productive month for MMB as we kept her busy with a range of events that got us all thinking more about postcolonial nationalist ideologies, decentring… Read more: Race and nation in an era of postcolonialism: notes from a Bristol Benjamin Meaker Professorship

By Valter Sandell-Maury and Liselott Sundbäck. How is access to the Nordic welfare state services navigated and negotiated by non-citizens? What is the role of social workers and other street-level bureaucrats when delivering these services? As two PhD students exploring the contemporary welfare state regimes in Finland and Sweden, we ask how migration policy is… Read more: Institutional encounters by non-citizens in the Nordic welfare state – a dialogue

By Chris Bertram. One of the consequences of Brexit is that British people are more limited in their freedom of movement. Whereas previously they could travel, work, retire, settle in other European countries, today the default is that they can only visit the Schengen area for 90 days in any 180-day period and lack rights… Read more: Thinking about the positive value of free movement

Special series on Migration, Mobilities and the Environment, in association with the Cabot Institute for the Environment. By Kathryn Allinson. Climate change will impact all our lives in the coming years and many people will experience extreme events due to climate  change resulting in displacement, both internally and across international borders. This has become the… Read more: What protections are available to people displaced by climate change?

By Pieter Bevelander Currently many West European countries and more East European societies are meeting the flow of refugees from war-torn Ukraine with openness and great solidarity. In Sweden 34,000 Ukrainians had officially sought asylum status by 30th April but many more had crossed over the border by this date. The Migration Studies Delegation (DELMI),… Read more: Learning from the past: a humanitarian response to Ukrainian refugees in Sweden

By Nandita Sharma. We live in a world whose political organisation in no way corresponds with the way we live our lives. This is true ecologically. It may be a cliché but it is plainly evident that the Earth’s atmosphere is not divided by national boundaries. Greenhouse gases cause the same degree of global warming… Read more: A tale of two worlds: national borders versus a common planet

By Miranda Butler. The UK-Rwanda memorandum of understanding on asylum processing is now available. It sets out the terms of the agreement between the countries at a high level but provides some insight into how this scheme is supposed to work. Before removal Importantly, the UK has committed to undertaking an ‘initial screening’ of asylum seekers.… Read more: UK-Rwanda refugee deal: first thoughts

By Joel White. ‘We use the word friend here. Not client, or service user. Not asylum seeker, or refugee. We try to say friend.’ These were the words that stuck with me most after a volunteer training at the Unity Centre, a drop-in space for people going through the asylum and immigration system in Glasgow.… Read more: Vicarious strength: friends and befriending in UK immigration detention

By Magda Mogilnicka. Following EU enlargement in 2004, Polish migrants quickly became the largest migrant population in the UK. Since the Brexit referendum in 2016, however, the Office for National Statistics has documented a decline in the Polish population by around a quarter. A further drop in numbers was noticeable after the outbreak of the… Read more: Brexit, COVID and stay/return narratives amongst Polish migrants in the UK

By Rebecca Yeo. On Human Rights Day, 10th December 2021, a mural on the wall of Easton Community Centre was officially opened. It brings together and promotes messages from Deaf, Disabled and asylum-seeking people living in the Bristol area. The collaborative process of creating the mural is the latest in a series of projects facilitated… Read more: The power of collaborative art in research for social change

By Travis Van Isacker. The hostile environment has been shorthand for the United Kingdom’s border regime since it was coined in 2012 by the then-Home Secretary, Theresa May. Originally describing a socio-political environment within the UK designed to make life impossible for people unable to prove their immigration status, it has since been extended to… Read more: Environmental racism in the borderland: the case of Calais

By Bridget Anderson. January always feels like a slog. All the chores put off until ‘the New Year’ in expectation that 2022 would never come have mounted up. It’s dark and too cold/not cold enough. Summer feels it will never happen. And COVID, ugh COVID. So, instead, I’m thinking of things to look forward to… Read more: What can we look forward to in 2022?