June 2025
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336 Reads
BioScience
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June 2025
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336 Reads
BioScience
September 2024
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13 Reads
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4 Citations
International Migration Review
This article examines the emergence of a new immigration regime in the United Kingdom, following its exit from the European Union, to uncover the entanglements and intersections of biopolitics, geopolitics and ideology in migration and migration governance. It draws a clear line between Brexit as a political and geopolitical rupture, the ideological project of “Global Britain” that emerged from it, and the forms of migrant and citizen subjectivity that these paired projects produced as the body politic was re-modelled in this image. It demonstrates this through a critical analysis of recent immigration data and trends that consider who is coming to the UK, through what routes and under what conditions, and of recently introduced changes to the immigration system, including the curtailment of asylum and the emergence of new humanitarian routes. Building on scholarship that has shown the impact of migration on the outcome of the 2016 Brexit referendum, our analysis of migration and migration governance after Brexit offers unique insights into how migration continues to play a central role in the ideological reimagining and geopolitical repositioning of the UK on the global stage and develops the concept of rebordering to capture the nexus between ideological and geopolitical transformations and the making — through migration and migration governance — of a new body politic and its “others” that embody and can serve their purposes.
June 2024
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3 Reads
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3 Citations
The Political Quarterly
In this article, the UK's ‘safe and legal (humanitarian) routes’ are evaluated by examining how they are positioned in the post‐Brexit migration regime, and how these domestic provisions compare to those underwritten by international protections. The Hong Kong British Nationals (Overseas)—HK BN(O)s—and Ukraine visa schemes are an area of focus which, combined, account for the vast majority of those arriving in the UK for the purposes of humanitarian protections since Brexit. Despite being formally presented under the same banner, the schemes have significant differences in terms of eligibility criteria, costs, rights and entitlements. Moreover, on closer inspection, while they share an overarching policy vision informed by foreign policy priorities, these new provisions are underpinned by different genealogies and policy logics. While the HK BN(O) scheme is rooted in the tradition of ancestry visas and colonial entanglements and requires that potential beneficiaries pay for protections, the Ukrainian schemes are more closely aligned with recent refugee resettlement schemes and share with them the push towards greater involvement of private and community stakeholders in humanitarian protection.
April 2024
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105 Reads
This report examines the legal and policy infrastructures of irregular migration in the United Kingdom (UK). It investigates the intersection between immigration, labour and welfare regimes and how they contribute to the irregularisation of migrants and determine their living and working conditions. The analysis of legal and policy frameworks in the UK is informed by the concept of irregularity assemblage, whereby irregularity is understood as produced by policies, practices and narratives occurring in different fields and sites and across different levels of governance and policy domains. This approach not only enables us to move away from essentialising understandings of irregular migration as a clear-cut phenomenon, and irregularity as an intrinsic and fixed characteristic of some individuals on the move, but also to account for a wider range of factors that come into play in the production of the condition of irregularity at a particular time and place. We argue that irregularity is produced at the nexus of different regulatory frameworks and embedded in specific labour market and welfare regimes, and unevenly impacts individuals depending on their national origin, gender, class and belonging to racialised communities. The EU enlargement in the 2000s marked a significant transformation in the population of irregular migrants in the UK. It also highlighted the impact of changing regulatory frameworks in making and unmaking some migrants as ‘irregular’ and viceversa, as in the case of the transition of central and eastern Europeans from Third Country Nationals subject to immigration control into EU citizens. The policy measures introduced by the UK government since the early 2010s to create a hostile environment for irregular migrants define the contours within which irregular migrants enter and settle in the UK. Brexit and the end of freedom of movement for EU citizens has dramatically transformed the socio-demographic profile of the new migrant population into the UK and produced new forms of irregularisation for migrants. The New Plan for Immigration launched in the early 2020s captures the changing politics of migration and connects it to the new ideological project of ‘Global Britain’. Over the last few years, rising anti-immigrant hostility and the fight against irregular immigration in the UK, particularly around so called ‘small boat crossings’ has come to shape the overall narrative on migration. The criminalisation of asylum has gained traction in this period and is a pillar of the 2023 Illegal Migration Act. The emerging post-Brexit immigration regime takes the Australian Point-based System as a reference point but has some significant differences which make it more employer-led. The sponsorship system that underpins the immigration system creates structural conditions that can lead to the exploitation of migrant workers. This report identifies the co-option of private and public actors into the role of immigration control as a key feature of the hostile environment. This form of everyday bordering further confines and restricts the lives of irregular migrants, pushing them further under the radar and making them vulnerable to exploitation and abuses, particularly in the absence of safe reporting pathways. The precarisation of status and the intensification of the bureaucratic checks and requirements associated with visas contribute to a further irregularisation of migration and migrants, making the transition from regular to irregular status easier. Finally, we argue that immigration controls also impact on the labour market and working conditions available to individuals with no or precarious legal status. Moreover, the increased role of the platform economy is creating new opportunities and vulnerabilities for irregular migrants. The report is part of the Horizon Europe and UKRI-funded Improving the Living and Labour Conditions of Irregularised Migrant Households in Europe (I-CLAIM) project. The main objective of I-CLAIM is to understand the various forms of irregularity experienced by migrant workers and their families and the factors that determine and amplify them. The research is carried out in six European countries (Finland, Poland, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK) and at the EU level.
March 2024
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9 Reads
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2 Citations
Critical Social Policy
This article examines the production, working and impact of the UK's hostile environment on migrant families with precarious legal status. Our approach is informed by two bodies of scholarly work: critical border studies and research on migrant families. We bridge these literatures to show how the hostile environment is neither a singular, neatly bounded space, nor limited to a set of interactions between immigration enforcement and a clear-cut group of people (so-called ‘illegal immigrants’). It affects the lives of a wider segment of the UK population, in particular racialised migrants and citizens, by making their legal status more insecure and precarious, and percolates in multiple and intersecting domains in the lives of families, such as education, housing and welfare, making them ambivalent sites of protection and safety as well as control and enforcement. Drawing on ethnographic engagement with families with insecure immigration statuses, we explore how the hostile environment manifests in the everyday lives of families; how the hostile environment circulates and is re-enacted within the micro-politics of families; and how families negotiate the continuous work of protecting children from the effects of the hostile environment. In conclusion we argue that dramatic and rapid shifts in immigration rules and regulations undermine the capacity of mothers to navigate the policy environment and welfare for their children and to shield them from the consequences of state-driven hostility towards immigrants.
November 2023
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11 Reads
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2 Citations
September 2023
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18 Reads
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3 Citations
Sociology
This article examines the Brexit-driven remaking of some EU families into mixed-status families. Drawing on original research conducted in 2021–2022 with British, EU/EEA and non-EU/EEA citizens living in the UK or the EU/EEA, it shows how families whose members have previously enjoyed equal rights to freedom of movement across the EU/EEA variously negotiate the consequences of Brexit on their lives. Central to our analysis is the interplay between hardening borders and the stickiness of family relations, and its effects on families’ migration and settlement projects. The article brings to the fore these emerging entanglements offering a much-needed relational analysis of the impact of Brexit on the directly affected populations, while contributing more widely to expanding the existing scholarship on mixed-status families, by attending to the peculiar ways in which families whose members previously enjoyed equal status under EU law have experienced their transformation into subjects with unequal rights.
August 2023
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15 Reads
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4 Citations
Sociological Review
Since the 2016 EU referendum, estimates on net-migration by the UK’s Office for National Statistics have shown two parallel trends: declining new arrivals from the EU (EU immigration) and increasing departure of EU nationals formerly living in the UK (EU emigration). To date, little is known of the latter and of the circumstances and factors that inform and shape EU citizens’ decisions to leave the UK. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with 37 EU families who left the UK after the EU referendum, this article offers insights into their social hopes, migratory trajectories, motivations and decision-making. Using a family-centred approach, the analysis of these ‘exit trajectories’ through the lens of migration infrastructures reveals a range of challenges EU migrants must negotiate and overcome – often within their households. The analysis complicates assumptions of the meaning and experience of ‘going home’ as seen from a family perspective and reveals the intergenerational tensions, challenges and accommodations that ‘return’ produces and how these differently affect each family member. Faced with diverging interests, needs and expectations, families pursued two main strategies for accommodating these differences: a spatial strategy, namely negotiating and choosing a destination that would suit the present and future of the family members, or a temporal one, planning the exit strategy not as a one-off event but taking place over a longer period. However, accommodation and reconciliation are not always possible, leading in some cases to the fragmentation or dissolution of the family unit.
August 2023
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16 Reads
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1 Citation
This concluding chapter considers some of the ongoing and contemporary challenges for migrant children and young people as they navigate global, as well as European and national, migration governance regimes. The chapter highlights how the Global Compacts for refugees and migrants mark a step change in the engagement of the international community with child and youth migration which, despite policy rhetoric, is not always in their best interests. Researchers therefore have a clear role in ensuring scrutiny and accountability through capturing the impacts of these policies on children and young people subject to immigration control and in countering some of the potentially harmful effects of the datafication of migration research, which risks dehumanising migrant young people and reducing the complexity of their lived experiences on the move to questions of numbers and frequency.KeywordsMigrant young peopleGlobal Compacts‘Best interests’DataficationScrutinyChild protection
August 2023
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2 Reads
Through a series of conversations with Dan, this chapter captures the encounter between a boy and the asylum regime and illustrates some of the hidden complexities, idiosyncrasies and pitfalls of the asylum bureaucracy. It highlights the impacts of liminality and uncertainty on young people’s day-to-day lives and how some can end up in situations of complete impasse, where they are neither returnable to countries of origin nor have any eligibility to public funding in the UK. With no permission to work in order to develop their own independence, nor access to education or training, they are essentially caught in a proverbial ‘no man’s land’. The chapter highlights complex questions of truth and credibility in the asylum process and the vital role of informal networks which, in the absence of public services, provide the material and emotional support to sustain young people for substantial periods of time.KeywordsEritreanSeeking asylumBecoming adultRefusalLiving in limboFamilySupport networks
... Western universities increasingly develop economic dependencies on international students, seen in the 2024 spooking of UK student visas being withdrawn. Such turmoil turned HE sectors into uncertainty, yet exposed universities' historical vulnerability to commercial forces (Benson & Sigona, 2024). ...
September 2024
International Migration Review
... Insufficient research has been conducted on a vague category of non-Western migrants that falls between "potential displaced persons," "indentured migrants," and "anticipatory refugees" (Ullah & Azizuddin, 2022, p. 184), such as Hong Kong citizens with BN(O) status. The UK categorises the BN(O) visa as one of the "safe and legal" humanitarian routes that highlights the unique case of Hong Kong people in the context of the UK Conservative government's stringent border and immigration controls (Benson et al., 2024). However, as Benson et al. (2024) point out, the BN(O) visa requires beneficiaries to pay a sum of money to apply for the visa and support a minimum of six months of living expenses, which "sets a precedent in paying for protections" (p. ...
June 2024
The Political Quarterly
... Hurricane refugees in the US felt less receptivity among the host country locals when they experienced resource depletion and less well-being support (Kristjánsdóttir & DeTurk, 2013). Benchekroun et al. (2024) explained how immigrant mothers with insecure immigration status experienced difficulties in seeking support from social workers, availing social housing, and qualifying for social protection. Skilled migrants in Japan felt identity threats because of the need to conform to the host country's workplace values (Xie & Peltokorpi, 2024). ...
March 2024
Critical Social Policy
... With regards to this national collective voice, RCOs play a key role in foregrounding challenges faced by refugees and asylum seekers in the political realm. As Griffiths et al. (2005) highlight, RCOs play a rather distinct role in comparison to other third sector organisations due to their close links with dispersal procedures for asylum seekers and their provision of support. For newly arrived migrant families who access the services provided by RCOs whilst simultaneously experiencing a space in flux, literacies are likely to be survival-related as they navigate the immigration system as well as diverse societal institutions. ...
October 2005
... The UK's decision to leave the European Union (EU), known as Brexit, was driven by the promise to have control over its borders, or what has been described as the 're-bordering of Britain' (Benson et al. 2022;Zambelli, Benson, and Sigona 2023). Sociological research has documented Brexit's impact on the lives of EU nationals living in the UK and Britons in the EU (Remigi et al.2020), who became 'unsettled', moving out of the 'citizen category' and being delegated into the 'migrant' category (Benson et al. 2022). ...
September 2023
Sociology
... Simultaneously, ROHOs have long advocated for refugee participation because their experiences are crucial in policymaking (Johnson, 2016;Nyers, 2006;Panizzon & van Riemsdijk, 2019). But due to cultural and language barriers, such demands have dwindled (Clarke, 2014;Griffith et al., 2005). While organizations dedicated to serving vulnerable communities strive to build IORs aligned with civil societyoriented goals, they often overlook the participation of the very individuals directly impacted by their work (Koschmann & Sanders, 2020). ...
October 2005
... Given the recent refugee movements from Africa and the Near East towards Europe (Crawley et al., 2018), the role of anxieties linked to immigration and foreigners in the fear of crime is of particular interest here. Accordingly, this work draws on worries about immigration as a proxy measure of anxieties related to social change. ...
April 2023
... As such they had the right to, at least in theory, live and work anywhere within the territories of the UK and Colonies. This freedom of movement, which also extended to all citizens of the Commonwealth, enabled British businesses and employers, including the National Health Service (NHS), to recruit workers from other countries when needed, such as to support reconstruction and economic growth after the Second World War (Yeo et al, 2019). Freedom of movement also existed between the UK and the Republic of Ireland for the most part after the latter seceded from the UK in 1922. ...
January 2022
SSRN Electronic Journal
... In recent times, one concept that has proven to enshrine a significant explanatory and transformative potential for identifying and addressing these features and needs is that of "superdiversity" (Vertovec, 2007). This term has been explored in a vast array of disciplines-including Political Science (Phillimore, Sigona & Tonkiss, 2020), Legal Studies (Ballard, 2007;Shah, 2008), Linguistics (Creese & Blackledge, 2018), Translation Studies (Kredens & Drugan, 2018) and Legal Translation Studies (McAuliffe & Trklja, 2018)in which, in any event, claims for interdisciplinary efforts are frequent. Superdiversity does not merely describe the "diversification of diversity", i.e., the heterogeneity and complexity of experiences brought about by migration, displacement, mobility and interconnectedness which coexist in our increasingly multicultural, multilingual, and ethnodiverse social formations and institutional and digital landscapes. ...
October 2020
... The need for new conceptual models and methodological tools to capture and account for the new urban diversity is indicated by the extensive and rapid growth of studies concerning "superdiversity" (Vertovec, 2007)a concept that denotes the multidimensional character of current-day diversity. While the superdiversity concept has been variously invoked and critiqued (see Creese & Blackledge, 2018;Vertovec, 2019;Meissner et al., in press), many scholars find the concept useful because, similarly to the concept of intersectionality (Khazaei, 2018), it emphasizes the need to look beyond ethnicity as a primary or sole marker and determinant of migrant trajectories of settlement, integration and social mobility (Piekut et al., 2012). In a condensed way, the concept of superdiversity seeks to emphasize the complex nature of these trajectories and their outcomes (Crul, 2016). ...
March 2022