Talking Migration

Migrants Rights Network recently published a report on the extent and nature of immigration raids in the UK. This episode interviews two of its co-authors. In this episode: Julia Tinsley-Kent, Head of Policy and Communications Lauren Fernandes, Policy and Campaigns Assistant https://migrantsrights.org.uk/about/our-people/ To read the report 'Immigration Raids: An Anatomy of Racist Intimidation': https://migrantsrights.org.uk/projects/hostile-office/immigration-raids-an-anatomy-of-racist-intimidation/ Research referenced in the episode: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/48675912.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%3Ae070afe890cb0445565697dad034ef76&ab_segments=&origin=&initiator=&acceptTC=1 Apologies for the occasional poor sound quality. This podcast is supported by the Department of Politics, the University of Manchester

What role do memories play in displacement? Are memories political? In this episode, we discuss questions of memory, war, exile and building a new home. In this episode: Ammar Azzouz, Research Fellow at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford and the Principal Investigator of Slow Violence and the City https://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/staff/aazzouz.html Talking Migration is supported by the University of Manchester and produced by Clara Sandelind.

In this episode: Guy Aitchison, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Studies at Loughborough University https://www.lboro.ac.uk/subjects/politics-international-studies/staff/guy-aitchison/#tab3 If you need help or someone to talk to: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/guides-to-support-and-services/seeking-help-for-a-mental-health-problem/mental-health-helplines/ Article discussed in this episode in The Journal of Politics: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/729936?journalCode=jop Article in the Journal of Social Philosophy: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/josp.12557 This podcast is supported by the Department of Politics at the University of Manchester

In 2017, Dina Nayeri, an American-Iranian author, wrote an article for the Guardian with the title ‘The ungrateful refugee: We have no debt to repay’. Last year, she published the book ‘The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You’, which tells her own and several other refugees’ stories while exploring themes of refugee life. In this episode: Dina Nayeri http://www.dinanayeri.com/ Book: The Ungrateful Refuge https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-ungrateful-refugee/dina-nayeri/9781786893499 Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/04/dina-nayeri-ungrateful-refugee Charities: Refugee Support https://www.refugeesupport.eu/ Freedom From Torture https://www.freedomfromtorture.org/ SecondTree https://secondtree.org/ HostNation https://www.hostnation.org.uk/ RAID(Rights and Accountability in Development)https://www.raid-uk.org/

In her new book, No Refuge, Serena Parekh describes what she calls the second refugee. This crisis means that the vast majority of refugees cannot find safety or conditions for a life with dignity. Parekh argues that this amounts to a structural injustice and she joins this episode to discuss her book. In this episode: Serena Parekh, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University in Boston https://cssh.northeastern.edu/faculty/serena-parekh/ Book discussed: No Refuge https://global.oup.com/academic/product/no-refuge-9780197507995?cc=us&lang=en&#

What role does colonialism play in contemporary asylum and migration politics? Do European asylum and migration policies reflect colonial power relations, or is colonialism something that exits in the past whilst different logics govern contemporary migration policies? And can the link between colonialism and asylum and migration even tell us something about Brexit? In this episode: Lucy Mayblin, Senior Leturer in Sociology at the University of Sheffield. This episode is particularly focused on Mayblin's book Asylum After Empire: Colonial Legacies in the Politics of Asylum Seeking. https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/socstudies/staff/staff-profiles/lucy-mayblin#tab00 https://www.rowmaninternational.com/book/asylum_after_empire/3-156-969ab234-2088-42e2-b8f0-bfa6042ac19b Gurminder Bhambra, Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies in the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex. http://www.sussex.ac.uk/profiles/27518 http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/71299/

The Refugee Convention classes anyone as a refugee who fears persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. This does not include one group of people who are frequently persecuted for who they are, namely LGBTQ+ people. Yet many countries do recognise sexual orientation as a ground of asylum, at least in theory. In practice, LGBTQ asylum seekers face many obstacles in trying to prove their cases. The episode will mainly focus on the situation in Germany and in the UK. In this episode: Mengia Tschalaer - Marie Curie Research Fellow at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol (http://www.bristol.ac.uk/spais/people/person/mengia-tschalaer/) Read more about Tschalaer's research here: https://www.queerasylum.org/ Kerri Woods, Lecturer in Political Theory at the School of Politics and International Studies at the University of Leeds (https://essl.leeds.ac.uk/politics/staff/111/dr-kerri-woods)

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration was adopted at the end of 2018. Will is safeguard migrants' human rights, or undermine state sovereignty? In this episode: Elspeth Guild, Professor of Law at Queen Mary University of London https://www.qmul.ac.uk/law/staff/guild.html Tugba Basaran, Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Global Human Movement University of Cambridge https://www.crim.cam.ac.uk/People/tb317 They have edited a series of blog posts analysing the final draft of the Compact, published by the Refugee Law Initiative: https://t.co/ief51ru1MG and https://rli.blogs.sas.ac.uk/themed-content/global-compact-for-migration/

There are many calls for reforming the way the world protects, or fails to protect, refugees. Some have suggested that the UN Refugee Convention is out-dated, others that the right to seek asylum should be abolished or that asylum claims should be processed off-shore. At the same time, the UNHCR has been drafting a Global Compact on Refugees, promising to increase global cooperation on refugee protection. James Hathaway, James E. and Sarah A. Degan Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, is the founding director of the University of Michigan’s Program in Refugee Asylum Law and author of two leading treatises: The Law of Refugee Status and of The Rights of Refugees under International Law. James Hathaway has put forward a model for a global solution to refugee protection, based on a five year project involving over 100 participants, including six governments. You can read the findings of that project here: https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=5732735&orden=0&info=link (pdf)

The images of children in cages, separated from their parents, at the US-Mexico border have upset people across the world. Part of a so called 'zero-tolerance' policy against 'illegal' migration, everyone crossing the border, even to apply for asylum, become subject of criminal prosecution. To facilitate this, almost 2000 children have been separated from their parents. But why is this happening now? What is being done to reunite the families? Who are the people trying to cross the border and what about their right to apply for asylum? To help answer these questions, we speak to Gabriella Sanchez, Research Fellow at the Migration Policy Centre at the European University Institute.

Public and policy debates about immigration in most parts of the world are pursued on the assumption that states have the right to exclude immigrants, if they so wish, perhaps with the exception of refugees. The main questions are how states can manage migration - who and how many immigrants a state should let in. But do states really have this right, morally, to exclude others from settling on their territory? In his new book, Do States Have the Right to Exclude Immigrants?, Christopher Bertram, Professor in Social and Political Philosophy at the University of Bristol, argues that in most cases states do not have such a right. Instead, Bertram suggests, migration should be governed globally and states would have to justify to this global governance entity any restrictions they wanted to place on movement. In this episode, Bertram discusses his book, its methodology and central argument. You can get the book here: https://www.amazon.com/States-Have-Right-Exclude-Immigrants/dp/150952195X Apologies for some light banging noise in the background, mainly towards the end of the episode.

Many people express and urge others to stand in solidarity with refugees. In 2016, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke about the 65 million forcibly displaced in the world, addressing the UNHCR Executive Committee. He said: ‘The numbers are staggering. Each one represents a human life. But this is not a crisis of numbers. It is a crisis of solidarity.’ But, what does it mean to stand in solidarity with refugees? What precisely is a crisis of solidarity? What is one committed to when one expresses solidarity? This has been the topic of a project funded by the White Rose University Consortium, led by Kerri Woods, Lecturer in Political Theory at the University of Leeds, Alice Nah, Lecturer at the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York, and the producer of this podcast, Clara Sandelind, Leverhulme Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield. You can read more about the project, 'Understanding Solidarity Amid Refugee Crises', here: https://www.whiterose.ac.uk/collaborationfunds/understanding-solidarity-amid-refugee-crises/ In this episode, we discuss some of the topics and conclusions drawn throughout this project, which are currently being collated and finalised for a Special Issue.

If you have worked for a Western military in places such as Afghanistan or Iraq, you may think that you would be able to settle in the Western country that you worked for, especially if your life is at risk due to the work you performed. But things are not that straight forward. A new report by the UK parliament’s Commons defence select committee is highly critical of how the UK government has treated Afghan interpreters and other civilians who are not safe in Afghanistan. Earlier this month, the UK government made some concessions towards interpreters who have applied for indefinite leave to remain in the UK. Yet many people’s lives are still in limbo, including Nazir Ayeen’s, a former Afghan interpreter now living in the UK, who joins this episode to discuss how the UK and other Western countries treat their former military employees. We are also joined by Dr Sara de Jong, Research Fellow at the Open University. Sara de Jong currently conducts research on the claims for protection, rights and settlement by Afghans and Iraqis who have worked for Western military forces and development organisations, as well as on the activities and strategies of their supporters.

No one will have missed the royal wedding between American actress Meghan Markle and Prince Harry happening this week. Markle has moved to the UK is expected to become known as the Duchess of Sussex after the wedding. But not all family migration procedures are quite so joyful and straightforward. In a new research paper, Dr Marcia Vera Espinoza and Dr Joe Turner, both at the Department of Politics at the University of Sheffield, investigate the intimacy of the family migration visa application in the UK. They both have personal experience of the process, which is also part of the research. The disruption, fear and anxiety they describe is quite far from a fairy tale royal wedding.

Migration policy-makers tend to portray the migrant smuggler as their main enemy. Not only do they help facilitate irregular migration, but they are also seen as exploitative of the people they are helping. But who are migrant smugglers and what do they do? To help answer these questions, I talked to Dr Gabriella Sanchez, Research Fellow at the Migration Policy Centre at the European University Institute. Gabriella Sanchez is an expert on migrant smuggling, but also on the US-Mexico border, so this episode also covers details of that particular border area. Gabriella Sanchez is the author of Human Smuggling and Border Crossings.

When we talk, write and research about migration, do we see like a nation? Would we approach issues differently, and ask different questions, if instead we saw like a migrant? In his new book 'Toward a Cosmopolitan Ethics of Mobility; The Migrant's-Eye View of the World', Alex Sager, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Portland State University, claims that much research in migration is biased by methodological nationalism. If we could rid ourselves of methodological nationalism, perhaps we would be less focused, for example, on people moving between states and more focused on mobility as such. In this episode, Alex Sager discusses what methodological nationalism is and its consequences.

When we talk about migration, we assume the existence of borders. But what are borders? And should there be any? This is the topic of this episode with Bridget Anderson, Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol. Bridget Anderson is well-known for her defence of No Borders, as well as her 2013 book Us and Them? The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Control.

In September 2015, the president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, King Abdullah of Jordan and David Cameron, then Prime Minister of the UK, met to discuss the so called Compact Model, to create jobs for refugees in Jordan. The Jordan Compact was agreed in early 2016 and a similar, but smaller scale Lebanon Compact followed. Was the Compact Model the win-win solution everyone has been waiting for? In this episode I talk to journalists Daniel Howden and Charlotte Alfred at Refugees Deeply. They have investigated the impact of the Compact Models in Jordan and Lebanon and found that what was meant to work in certain ways on paper, turned out quite differently in practice. Read the full report here: http://issues.newsdeeply.com/the-compact-experiment?utm_source=rd-banner

Ahmad al-Rashid came to the UK from Syria in 2015. The journey took 55 days and was partly documented in the BBC documentary Exodus: Our Journey. Since arriving in the UK, Ahmad al-Rashid has become a campaigner for refugees and refugee integration. He is working with the course Aim Higher: Access to Higher Education for Refugees and Asylum Seekers. He was awarded a SOAS Sanctuary Scholarship and has just finished a Master’s degree in Violence, Conflict and Development at SOAS, University of London. In this episode, he talks about getting to the UK, refugee integration, reforming the refugee system and how you support refugees before and after conflicts. https://twitter.com/jackahmed12

Our world order is organised around sovereign states and each human being is meant to belong to at least one state where they are a citizen. Yet according to the UNHCR around 10 million people in the world are stateless – they do not have citizenship in any state. In a world completely occupied by territorially defined, sovereign states, what happens to those who do not belong anywhere? The topic has regained some urgency on the international political agenda as thousands of Rohingya, a stateless Muslim minority persecuted in Myanmar, have fled to Bangladesh in recent months. It is also the topic of a new book published by Routledge, Understanding Statelessness, edited by Tendayi Bloom, Phillip Cole and Katherine Tonkiss: https://www.routledge.com/Understanding-Statelessness/Bloom-Tonkiss-Cole/p/book/9781138711235 (use the code FLR40 for a discount). Two of the editors, Tenadyi Bloom, Lecturer in Politics and International Studies at the Open University, and Katherine Tonkiss, Lecturer in Sociology and Policy at Aston University, join this episode.

Restrictions on immigration, as well as certain integration policies, are sometimes justified on the basis that too much, or a certain kind of, immigration risks erode social cohesion in democratic welfare states. Political philosophers who analyse the ethics of immigration have therefore become interested also in the empirical validity of these claims. This was the topic of a recent conference at the Centre for Advanced Migration Studies, University of Copenhagen. Two political philosophers who presented their work at the conference joins this episode to discuss social cohesion and immigration. Nils Holtug, Professor at the Department of Media, Cognition and Communication at the University of Copenhagen, runs a major research project on shared values on social cohesion. Patti Tamara Lenard, Associate Professor Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, has written extensively on trust, immigration and culture, especially in her book Trust, Democracy and Multicultural Challenges.

Has the debate on immigration been damaged by people too easily resorting to calling out racism? Or is it precisely racism that is at the heart of hostility towards immigration and contemporary white nationalism? Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics at Birkbeck University of London, has argued in a recent report for Policy Exchange that there is a distinction between racism and what he calls 'racial self-interest'. The argument has proved controversial. One critique, Dr Garvan Walshe, CEO of Brexit Analytics and columnist for Conservative Home, joins this podcast episode to discuss what racism is and what its role in the immigration debate is.

Apologies for the poor sound quality of this episode. In 1987 Joseph Carens, Professor and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, University of Toronto, pioneered political philosophy on immigration by making the case for open borders. In his most recent book, The Ethics of Immigration, he restated his case for keeping borders open. Yet some people find that this is simply too idealistic and that even political philosophers must think about what can actually be done in the real world. Carens himself discusses this, for example in his recent book. He joins the podcast to talk about whether, when it comes to immigration, we should be idealists or realists, or both.

One of the ways that refugees have tried to make it to Europe is through the so called 'Balkan route'. Yet as EU and European leaders have tried to shut this way by increasing border controls, many refugees and other migrants have become trapped along the Balkan route. A research team, IR and Aesthetics, from Aston University have just returned from Serbia, Macedonia and Greece, where they spoke to the people who are stuck and those who are trying to help. In this podcast episode, we hear from two of the researchers, Dr Gemma Bird and Dr Patrycja Rozbicka, who discuss how refugees use technology to stay informed about border changes, the use of graffiti to make political statements and the prospects for those trapped on their journey. The team collected many photos and videos from the Balkan route, which are available through their Facebook and Twitter pages.

Political theorists have long debated the question of open borders. Do states have a right to exclude migrants from their territory? Is there a human right to immigrate? The focus has been on the external borders of states. Yet, in the forthcoming book Immigration and Freedom, Professor Chandran Kukathas, Chair in Political Theory and Head of the Department of Government at the London School of Economics, argues that political theorists must also consider internal border controls, such as restrictions on employers, landlords and universities. According to Kukathas, these internal controls do not just restrict the freedom of migrants, but of current citizens and residents too.

Italy is one of the key destinations for migrants coming to Europe, with many coming by boat from Libya. Now Italy is threatening to close its ports to stem the inflow of migrants and refugees. Italy wants more support from the rest of the EU and EU ministers met earlier this month to discuss. But what would it actually mean for Italy to close its ports? Are these threats a result of a country becoming overwhelmed, or is it mainly a change of politics? And what is the role of NGOs operating search and rescue to save people's lives at sea? We're joined in this episode by Dr Simon McMahon, who is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations at Coventry University, and who has been part of a large project research migration to Europe over the Mediterranean, MEDMIG. Two previous episodes discuss the findings of that project: episodes 6 and 2. Simon McMahon's research has looked at the situation in Italy and he has written a blog on 'Italy's bluff to close its ports'.

In 2015, a large number of refugees came to Europe in what has come to be referred to as a European refugee 'crisis'. Now, some of the focus has shifted towards questions of integration of those who came. But who were they? One of the countries hosting many of the refugees from 2015 is Austria, and a team of researchers spent some time in 2015 interviewing over 500 of those who came, asking them for example about their educational background, attitudes and values. Judith Kohlenberger, researcher at the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital, Vienna University of Economics and Business, joins us to tell us about what they found.

We are told that we are currently witnessing the biggest refugee crisis sine World War Two and that the average stay in refugee camps is 17 years. But is this true? Refugee historian Benjamin Thomas White, Lecturer in History at the University of Glasgow, joins the podcast to take issue with these claims. He argues that statistics are incomplete, that our understanding of refugees' experiences are often mistaken and that exaggerating the extent of the problem is unhelpful. Benjamin Thomas White is a Middle East historian by background, who now teaches the history of refugees in the world since the late nineteenth century. He also does research on the global history of the refugee camp. Find more on his blog, Twitter and here about his work on refugees in Syria.

Canada is often the country everyone looks to for inspiration when it comes to immigration. Why? Daniel Hiebert is Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia and has written a report for the Migration Policy Institute called “What’s So Special about Canada? Understanding the Resilience of Immigration and Multiculturalism”. Daniel Hiebert has led large research projects on immigration and cultural diversity in Canada and he has, amongst many other things, participated in a variety of advisory positions in the Canadian government. He is currently a member of the Citizenship and Immigration Deputy Minister’s Advisory Council. In this episode, he talks about this report and why we may describe Canada as a success case.

In a recent special issue of the open access journal Comparative Migration Studies, Will Kymlicka, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy at Queen's University wrote an essay on "Solidarity in diverse societies: beyond neoliberal multiculturalism and welfare chauvinism". He discussed the so called "progressive's dilemma" and argued that progressives should embrace a multicultural nationalism to overcome it. Several scholars discussed Kymlicka's thesis in shorter responses, including the special issue editor Rainer Baubock, Professor of Social and Political Theory at the European University Institute. Buabock takes issue with Kymlicka's thesis, being sceptical that liberalism nationalism is the way forward for progressives. In this podcast they discuss what they think is at stake in the "progressive's dilemma" and whether nationalism is the answer.

In this episode, we speak to Dr Marcia Vera Espinoza, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Sheffield, and Esteban Sanchez Botero, Master student from Colombia at the University of Sheffield, about refugees and migration in Latin America. The discussion begins with the question of how a US wall at the Mexican border may affect immigrants in the US from Latin America, as well as immigration within Latin America. But what about Latin American countries themselves, how welcoming are they to refugees and migrants, and who is welcomed?

10. What's wrong with ethnic discrimination in immigration policy? by Talking Migration

In this episode, we speak to Professor Keith Banting, Queen’s Research Chair in Public Policy and Professor in the Department of Political Studies and the School of Policy Studies at Queens University, and Dr Andreas Bergh, Associate Professor in Economics at Lund University as well as the Research Institute of Industrial Economics in Stockholm, about whether there is a conflict between migration and the welfare state. We also talk to Dr Lucy Hovil, Senior Researcher at the International Refugee Rights Initiative, about her new book Refugees, Conflict and the Search for Belonging.

After a summer break, we're back talking to Professor Ruth Wodak, The University of Lancaster and the University of Vienna, about her new book on populism, as well as to fiction writers Olumide Popoola and Annie Holmes, who's written a fictional book on the situation in Calais.

In the aftermath of the EU referendum in the UK, in which the British population voted to leave, we discuss the prominence of immigration in the debate with Robert Ford, Professor in Political Science at the University of Manchester, and Kenan Malik, writer, lecturer and broadcaster. We also talk to Nando Sigona, Senior Lecturer at the University of Birmingham, about the situation for unaccompanied migrant children arriving in Euro

This episode was recorded ad the British International Studies Association's Annual Conference in Edinburgh. We hear short versions of three research papers presented on the refugee crisis, by Dr James Souter, the University of Leeds, Kelly Staples, The University of Leicester, and Simon McMahon, Coventry University. Questions raised include whether accepting refugees is part of being a good international citizens, if the EU can really be held responsible for the refugee crisis and what the role of informal reception is in managing migration in It

In this EU-special we talk to Andy Mycock, Reader in Politics at the University of Huddersfield, about the role of identity and immigration in the referendum and to Madeleine Sumption, Director of the Migration Observatory, on what might happen to EU migration if the UK leaves the EU.

In this episode, Professor Tariq Modood talks about his new edited book Multiculturalism and Interculturalism: debating the dividing lines and Timo Lochocki at the German Marshall Fund tells us about German refugee policy and the success of the far right.

Professor Chris Bertram and Professor Martin Ruhs discuss whether there is a trade-off between migration and the rights of migrants. Sarnata Reyolnds talks about the situation for the Rohingya who are fleeing Myanmar (Burma).

With Professor David Owen, David Goodhart and Professor Heaven Crawley on the refugee crisis.

In this first ever episode of Talking migration, we talk to Professor Ruud Koopmans on attitude surveys of Muslims in Europe and to Professor Andrew Geddes on his forthcoming book The Politics of Migration and Immigration in Europe.